William T. Frantz Elementary School

William T. Frantz Elementary School at 3811 North Galvez Street in New Orleans became a significant site in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. On November 14, 1960, a six-year-old girl walked through its doors and changed the course of history by entering a Deep South public elementary school that had previously been reserved for white students only. The desegregation of New Orleans schools stemmed from efforts by the NAACP and other Civil Rights organizations to end separation of school children by race. Since the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, schools across the Deep South became rigidly segregated. Although they were supposed to be equal in quality to white schools, the black schools received subpar facilities and educational materials. In September 1952, with assistance from attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, New Orleans Attorney A.P. Tureaud initiated a lawsuit on behalf of Earl Benjamin Bush calling for an end to the segregated school system in Orleans Parish., In 1954, the United States Supreme Court in the Brown v. Board of Education case set aside the Plessy decision and ruled that ordered segregated schools were unconstitutional. The high court that public schools be desegregate "with all deliberate speed." In 1956, the US Court of Appeals dismissed multiple attempts by the Louisiana Legislature to thwart integration efforts. In July 1959, Federal Judge J. Skelly Wright ordered the Orleans Parish School Board to integrate its schools. , After a series of aptitude tests, four girls were selected to become the pioneers at McDonogh No. 19 Elementary and William T. Frantz schools in the New Orleans Ninth Ward. With the eyes of the nation focused on New Orleans, U.S. Marshals escorted the girls (Ruby Bridges to William T. Frantz and Leona Tata, Gail Etienne Stripling and Tessie Prevost to McDonogh No. 19) amidst taunts and threats from segregationists. Despite those challenges, the four children successfully completed the school year. Their courage paved the way for more peaceful expansion of integration into other schools in the following years.