Whereas the announcement was after all symbolic, Gov. John Bel Edwards made nationwide information in January when, on behalf of the State of Louisiana, he pardoned one in all its personal — Homer Plessy, who late within the nineteenth century bravely challenged segregation.
Plessy was convicted of violating an immoral statute and his case went all the way in which to the U.S. Supreme Court docket. Within the notorious Plessy v. Ferguson determination, the court docket made “separate however equal” the legislation of the land, with solely Justice John Marshall Harlan dissenting,
Did “separate however equal” ever work? Probably not, and even when it did, usually not very effectively for Black college students. However there’s a Louisiana establishment that benefited from the doctrine: Southern College.
As John Pierre, longtime professor and dean of SU’s Legislation Middle, recounted not too long ago, “separate however equal” performed a key function in creating his faculty 75 years in the past.
In 1946, Charles Hatfield sued the state, as there was no public legislation faculty in Louisiana that Black college students may attend. In a case technique that was replicated by nice attorneys like Thurgood Marshall, state governments and native colleges throughout the South have been challenged: Finish segregation or pay up in your “separate however equal” doctrine.
Hatfield “had no probability to be admitted to LSU legislation faculty, however he was brave sufficient to make utility,” Pierre recounted. And Marshall, A.P. Tureaud and Louis Berry — “all of them transformative leaders of their occasions” — compelled Louisiana to resist the realities of segregation.
As a substitute of admitting Hatfield and different Black college students to LSU, the state finally funded the Legislation Middle, and its firstclass of 13 males took up their books in 1947.
At 75, the middle is flourishing and serving a various pupil physique, Dean Pierre advised the Press Membership of Baton Rouge. However there’s a footnote to the story: As his case was being litigated, Charles Hatfield took a grasp’s diploma at Atlanta College and didn’t pursue a legislation diploma.
As a substitute, he grew to become a founding father of UTNO, the United Lecturers of New Orleans, a robust trainer union for a few years.
All these males have been leaders, as Pierre mentioned. They have been idealists, grappling with America’s evil of segregation. Lots of those that struggled in opposition to that evil regime had served in uniform in World Warfare II and returned to a nation that didn’t accord them full citizenship.
However that technology’s idealism was additionally, significantly within the minds of the good attorneys of the NAACP and different teams, leavened by a practical pragmatism. They wished to problem “separate however equal” they usually did so by not giving up their excellent of integration and equality however utilizing the instruments they’d at hand to point out its ridiculousness.
The creation of recent establishments serving the Black communities of the nation, like Southern’s legislation heart, was a byproduct of their authorized methods. Many lawsuits like Hatfield’s didn’t obtain the equality earlier than the legislation that Harlan referred to as for in his dissenting opinion within the case of Homer Plessy. What they did do, brick by brick, was to convey down the partitions of segregation.
What the story reveals is that if the arc of historical past bends towards justice, it usually takes detours. It’s Black Historical past Month in February, and the facet roads of the march towards equality — such because the SU Legislation Middle’s origins — are a part of that vast story.