The Orleans Parish school crisis began within the summer of 1960, but the seeds for it were planted in 1954, when the US Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional. Faced with the order to desegregate, the urban center School Board—with the support of thousands of angry white parents—tried resisting, postponing, and defying the writ in every way possible. city board members even asked the governor to intervene, hoping that he would close the state’s public schools before he would integrate them. Despite massive resistance and crowds of protestors, four African American school girls—Ruby Bridges, Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne—attended formerly all-white schools within the fall of 1960, beginning the long journey toward the mixing of recent Orleans’s public schools.
