Exchange Place: How A Small Struggling School Transformed Civil Rights in New Orleans and the Nation
Season 1, Episode 3: Why Now, Why Us

APRIL 21, 2023 | THE 431 EXCHANGE; MYA CARTER (HOST), JEFF GEOFFRAY (NARRATOR); KEVIN GULLAGE (MUSIC)

TRANSCRIPT:

[Dear Audience, this transcript corresponds exactly to the Youtube Podcast version that has a slightly different structure for the opening three minutes. Therefore, while the words correspond perfectly the timecode is off by 30 seconds or so. Thank you for your understanding. Thank you.]

[00:00:00] Jeff Geoffray: 2009. In the ten years following, my sister Jeanne’s grief over Alice’s death barely subsided. Compounding the grief of a mother’s passing, Jeanne was devasted and haunted by the fact that Alice whose life had been filled with a sense of agency died having lost her sense of purpose and was ultimately unable to care for herself. She felt defeated and invisible.

This is us on our journey to heal the wounds [00:00:30] left by our mother’s failing heart, a journey that led us to reconnecting with the people in her life who she loved and respected the most. In the end, it’s a story of resurrection. 

[00:00:44] Mya Carter: The 431 Exchange presents Exchange Place: How A Small Struggling School Transformed Civil Rights In New Orleans and the Nation. Exchange Place is the story of a school whose mission was to train mostly African [00:01:00] American women the skills they needed to integrate the secretarial offices of the Deep South between 1965 and '72. Those offices were not just segregated, for the most part they were completely off limits to women of color and many were fighting to ensure the workplace would stay that way for years or decades to come. The first season of the podcast tells the inspirational biographies of four of the school's graduates who changed the moral [00:01:30] skyline of their city, how they did it, and how the school's teachers and supporters struggled to overcome the massive forces arrayed against them. 

[00:01:39] EPISODE INTRO: 

 Episode 3: 

Why Now, Why Us with Jeff Geoffray

Part 1

[00:01:47] Jeff Geoffray: In the long and final years of my mother’s life, as she saw the country’s election of its first Black President, it only reminded her of the haunting echo of the all-too-quick claims of victory [00:02:00] over ongoing deeply serious problems such as discrimination and segregation she had heard in the late 1960’s. She didn’t have to watch the news to know she was right. As someone who had carefully studied the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, the malignant effects that the symbol of a Black President had on an electorate weaned on a narrative of White supremacy and American exceptionalism was palpable. [00:02:30] Circuits were shorting. She feared it was only a matter of time before there would be a backdraft.

She was reminded how the conflicting declarations of victory and defeat in the war on poverty, the war on educational and job discrimination, was a relief for people who weren’t committed to addressing those problems in the first place. The false specter of radical social change was potent ammunition for [00:03:00] opportunistic politicians and hucksters of all kinds to take advantage of those panicked by just the thought of substantive change.

Alice thought there was sure to be a backlash to Obama’s election, the kind that accompanied the landmark civil rights victories of the early to mid-1960’s. She knew that the people who control the past will control the future. There had been a time in her life where she was in a position to write history. [00:03:30] In her final years, she felt powerless to do so, and she was worried that a post-racial narrative would write over the truth.

[00:03:44] Mya Carter: Part 2

[00:03:50] Jeff Geoffray: In the early 1960s, a determined effort to modernize the American workforce was expanded to a war on poverty by President Lyndon Johnson [00:04:00] in the wake of the assassination of his predecessor. The declaration of the war on poverty and the proposed steps to eliminate it, were a call to action for professional educators like Geoffray, businessmen like James Coleman Sr., and women like the Center's alumnae, women like Hilda Jean Smith who had not scratched the surface of their own potential. They took Johnson’s declaration seriously; they believed it wasn’t an empty platitude. For [00:04:30] them the goal of eliminating poverty in their own lives and communities – in their time - was as serious as the declaration of putting a man on the moon, a goal that had been set in the same period. But it turned out landing a man on the moon was a far more vital goal to the country than eliminating poverty. 

Or was it? In one case, the case of the Apollo missions to reach the moon, there was a political and cultural will to do so [00:05:00] even in the face of disaster. When the first Apollo mission, Apollo 1, blew up in a pre-flight test killing all three of its astronauts before the much-anticipated launch in 1967, the program continued in the face of tragedy. Efforts were redoubled, not pulled back. There were actually five more unmanned missions before manned missions began again with Apollo 7 in 1968. [00:05:30] It wasn't until Apollo 11 that the United States triumphed with the incredible feat of putting a man on the moon a mere two years later in 1969. 

Did the Apollo missions continue because there was a cultural and national will to land the first human -- an American -- on the moon? Or, was it a political imperative that allowed for further experimentation and testing even in the wake of failure? 

In the first place, [00:06:00] unlike the war on poverty and civil rights in general, there were no forces determined to undermine the effort by all means possible. In retrospect, political expediency and prejudice were the real causes for why the war on poverty turned into law-and-order campaigns, along with the war on drugs and mass incarceration.

President Johnson rejected the findings of his own [00:06:30] all-star commission that was tasked with finding the root problems that led to the riots in the summers of 1965 and 1966. The bipartisan Kerner Commission found that White supremacy, in the North and South, led to police brutality and discrimination and that, in turn, resulted in a widespread lack of job and educational opportunities for Blacks and other minorities. 

The [00:07:00] so-called Moynihan Report on Black Families also placed the root causes of joblessness and lack of education on White supremacy. The report explicitly extolled the virtues of Black communities and Black fatherhood especially in the face of widespread prejudice. Yet, by the late 1960’s, politicians and pundits of all stripes, used statistics in Moynihan’s report in the most perverse way [00:07:30] to place the blame for poverty on Black communities and the Black family.

Funding for the war on poverty, including its Total Community Action programs, began to dwindle even in 1965 as the costs for the War in Vietnam in men and coin increased. By 1968 that War was mostly abandoned. Even though programs like the Adult Education Center had proved their worth, [00:08:00] or proved further experimenting was merited, critics claimed it a failure – or futile - before the results could even be tallied. Yet numerous programs started in that period became an integral part of government and society, including Head Start, Medicare and Medicaid. PBS and Sesame Street, Big Bird, too.

When she became the director of the Adult Education Center in 1965, [00:08:30] Alice was a forty-one-year-old schoolteacher with zero administrative experience, a failing marriage, a frail self-image, and the sole support for six of her seven children. She was not enlisted in any program related to the Civil Rights movement. 

The job fell into her lap because the founder of the school, a young charismatic and visionary Catholic priest named Father Timothy Gibbons, was removed from his [00:09:00] chaplain’s post practically on the eve of the school’s opening. His initiatives on behalf of Dominican College had become a lightning rod for intense criticism at the highest and lowest levels of New Orleans society. The young dashing idealistic priest from an all-white farm town in Illinois, whose home state, unbeknownst to him, was filled with hundreds of so-called Sundown Towns that would not let Blacks, [00:09:30] Jews, or other minorities live or work after sunset, was branded an outside agitator, a troublemaker. He was essentially kicked out of New Orleans and sent to a new post that served a Native American community in Albuquerque, New Mexico, more than a thousand miles away from New Orleans. He was said to have caused trouble there too. Perhaps good trouble.

The school that Gibbons started in uptown New [00:10:00] Orleans had already been shut down once. The thought was that by removing Gibbons, who had applied for and received the grant from the federal government for the experimental school, the experiment would end once and for all. By removing Gibbons it was possible that the funds from the Federal government for the program would be disqualified. And even if that didn’t happen, who would be foolish enough to be the director of the fledgling program?

Giving African American [00:10:30] women the skills they needed to qualify for white-color office work was too much, too soon for a large segment of the New Orleans public. Desegregating the secretarial offices of the Deep South could wait until society had the time to catch up to the idea. And if it never caught up. So be it. 

But in a surprise move, a twist, Father Gibbons nominated our mother who had served as his [00:11:00] secretary in the months leading up to the school's opening as the school's director. Gibbons saw something in Alice she did not see in herself. He saw someone who could overcome the formidable obstacles ahead in order to put her students in a position to succeed. And succeed they did. The school's alumnae achieved a nearly 100% track record of full employment. On average, their salaries [00:11:30] after graduation were four to five times their pre-enrollment incomes. Plus those jobs came with the kind of insurance and social security benefits that their work as domestics did not. 

Perhaps Gibbons could see in Alice the perfect leader for the job. Ella Baker, the community organizer extraordinaire, who worked with the likes of W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael, said [00:12:00] that "strong people don't need strong leaders." Ms. Baker believed that the most effective community groups are ones that rally around a purpose, not an individual.

The participants in the experiment that was the Adult Education Center were all dedicated to the singular purpose of equal job opportunities. Alice proved that the graduates' initial success stuck over the long term. In follow up studies seven [00:12:30] years after the last class graduated the alumnae scored high in terms of their own measures of job satisfaction and quality of life. They also received high marks in confidential responses from their employers.

[00:12:55] Mya Carter: Part [00:13:00] 3

[00:13:03] Jeff Geoffray: News of the school's success traveled far and wide. The program and its graduates were lauded on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the innovative curriculum of the school was featured in articles in Time Magazine and across numerous papers, internal government reports and the television news.

A delegation of graduates led by Alice was even invited to appear before a [00:13:30] U.S. Senate subcommittee studying human resources where they testified about the factors they believed led to the school's obvious and unchallenged success. The conservative Republican Senator from Oklahoma heading that committee was one of the authors of the Kerner Commission report.

Yet, in 1967, after two classes had matriculated, the school was shut down for a second time. It was starved of funding by Louisiana State officials [00:14:00] who began to take control over the massive amounts of funding for education coming from the federal government. 

After the school was resurrected it became the subject of an Emmy Award winning documentary called, appropriately, “The School That Would Not Die.” But that documentary did not explore the reasons why the school was shut down in the first place, a mystery that we only unraveled in the present day. The Wall Street Journal reporter who had written the [00:14:30] paper’s second article about the Center, that became a rallying call for the city’s businessmen, told us that when he was investigating the school in 1967, he had uncovered a coordinated effort to kill the program. But the Journal decided not to pursue the story because corruption in Louisiana politics was not as sensational a story as Black women getting jobs as secretaries. 

The front-page article [00:15:00] went to press without explaining why the school was being shut down. Instead, the focus of the article was on the graduates’ success and the fact that a successful program in the war on poverty was ending for no good reason. 

When Alice was given the opportunity to be the director of the school, she was not, nor was she in any position to be, a ‘White savior’, a term used to describe the trope in many books [00:15:30] and movies, where Black people achieve success because of someone else’s agency and not their own. In a very real way, the school and its students saved her from a life of poverty and despair. The students gave her hope. Gave her a platform to practice her vocation. She learned from them.

She went on to apply the lessons learned over the following decades. In a television profile [00:16:00] produced in the 1980’s called "Quiet Heroes," produced and narrated by the renowned journalist Angela Hill, Alice was described as “The Mother of Career Education” in the State of Louisiana for her tireless efforts to help students in both high school and after high school find and develop their vocation. As the first coordinator of Career Education in Louisiana she crisscrossed the state, travelling thousands of miles in her little yellow [00:16:30] Volkswagen [which she had only a few years before learned to drive] to help local high school teachers, administrators and businessmen design career educational programs that answered the needs of nearby industries. As director of Career Education, she launched career educational programs in every single Parish of the State. For instance, she was instrumental in arranging funding and other resources for a nascent creative arts program, [00:17:00] started by Shirley Trusty Corey, that became the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts [NOCCA], one of the most prestigious high school arts magnets in the United States. 

Yet, with all her successes over the course of decades, helping to place thousands of students in meaningful jobs, Alice was frustrated that she could not claim more progress in alleviating poverty, prejudice, political expediency, and pollution, the forces she called “The [00:17:30] Four Horsemen of the 20th Century.” Her priority had always been to make a positive difference in other people’s lives: one student, one good job at a time. But she continued to ask herself, had she made a difference? 

By the late 1990s, Alice did less crisscrossing Louisiana and more reflecting on the work she had done and the people she had hoped she had helped. To Alice, the accomplishments of the Adult [00:18:00] Education Center were a reflection of the New Orleans Black community, a community built on resilience and the bonds of mutual responsibility. Their community reflected a centuries-long history of individuals coming together to support one another, as they could not rely on the support of White society, the government, or anyone but themselves. 

Jeanne and I had always been wowed by Alice’s transformation as Director of the Adult [00:18:30] Education Center. Alice had changed from a ‘cowardly lion’ to a visionary who succeeded in building confidence and professional capabilities into each of her 431 students. The school succeeded in getting its students all placed in well-paying jobs that integrated New Orleans' business offices. One of her aspirations had been to write a book about the remarkable ‘experiment.'

When Alice began working on her [00:19:00] book, she wrote about the political expediency and prejudice that continued threatening opportunities for students like those at the Adult Education Center. She hoped the book would help make sense of the conundrum between those who saw no reason for a school like hers and the potential the young Black women around her showed in their studies and their desire to earn responsible administrative positions in the corporate or business offices in New Orleans.

[00:19:30] As fate would have it, Alice had a stroke, followed soon after by a fall that broke her hip. Suddenly she needed more care than was immediately available for her in New Orleans. It was my next oldest sister, Jeanne, who without hesitation, invited our mother to Dallas to live. 

Adept at juggling family, work, and a myriad of special projects, Jeanne set our mother up in an assisted living apartment near her in [00:20:00] 1998. Eventually, Alice moved into Jeanne’s home. My brother-in-law, Julian, and Jeanne were delighted to have Alice with them. They gladly added Alice’s needs to their schedules. For eight years they took care of my mother. Though Jeanne embraced the responsibility, eventually the stress took its toll. As any caretaker to a loved one can relate, especially those trying to maintain their own career and [00:20:30] marriage, the pressures mounted even with the help of others from time to time. 

In 2001, Jeanne and I thought a gift to our mother would be a reunion with as many of the graduates from the Adult Education Center as we could locate to be held in New Orleans. Our work making the reunion a reality was especially gratifying. We were reminded that just as the school had saved our mother – and us - in the [00:21:00] 1960's from a life of poverty and despair, it was the students who had given her hope then. And they did so again in 2001.

The reunion was a huge event for all of us. Everyone who made their way to New Orleans had come to see their fellow graduates, their teachers, mentors, and especially their beloved director, the gifted woman who had empowered each of them to rise to their greatest potential and remain [00:21:30] there. Who had emphasized the importance of love in learning for both teachers and students.

Hours of reminiscing, catching up, exchanging information, warmth, and joy, were captured in photographs. The story was covered widely on the Sunday evening television news programs and a long article landed on the front page of the New Orleans Times Picayune. 

The gathering was such a success that when she [00:22:00] got home Alice set to work once again on the manuscript, a good portion of the which she had already begun. 

After reconnecting with so many of her graduates who had lifted her spirits, Alice decided to contact Tim Gibbons. She hoped, of course, based on their work together, that he would be glad to hear from her and offer to help her with the book. Unfortunately, he was unable – or unwilling - to help her. Alice put the manuscript [00:22:30] aside, giving up on her dream. 

Jeanne did everything she could to rally her mother’s spirits, but the pain of her mother’s despair cut deeper and deeper into Jeanne soul, despite Jeanne’s perennially positive disposition. Perhaps our mother would be better back in New Orleans with the rest of the family and her friends. The decision was made to have Alice closer to ‘home,’ so she went to live in an assisted care facility on the [00:23:00] North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain. While she was happy to be back in Louisiana, near family and old friends, Alice found the residents cliquish and endlessly sharing a narrative of White supremacy.

As Alice’s health deteriorated and her strength ebbed away, Jeanne and I had annual conversations about ‘doing something’ with Alice's book.’ Given the success of the reunion in 2001, we continued brainstorming to [00:23:30] reconnect our mother with her former students, but in 2009 she died regretting she could no longer make a difference.

When Alice died Jeanne herself was in great despair from the loss of our mother and her own inability to find the salve Alice needed to be at peace with her enormous contribution to thousands of people's lives, the lives of their children and grandchildren, not to mention her own children and grandchildren, and [00:24:00] great-grandchildren.

Jeanne's journey of healing began eight years after Alice died when she decided to start a scholarship fund in honor of Alice. It wasn't long into the scholarship process that the engine driving Jeanne's efforts became mine too. We both felt a need to be close to the people in our mother's life who loved and cherished her, men and women who had been a constant source of joy and inspiration to her and who had been [00:24:30] our role models in turn. Women and men, heroes all, who had been in the trenches with her and shared her indefatigable determination to make the world a better place, one person, one interaction; and, in Alice's case, one job placement at a time.

Those people included graduates of the Center who we had been close to since we were kids: Connie Payton, Cheryl Tyler Golson, Patricia Morris, [00:25:00] Dorothy Payton, Gwen Shepherd and Linda Phoenix; graduates we grew close to afterwards, Hilda Jean Smith, Raphael Morgan, Dr. Sandra O’Neal, and Lorraine Washington. Sharon Rodi and other teachers and former supporters joined too. 

The people we grew closer to included Tommy Coleman, the son of James Coleman Sr., the landlord who was brave enough to offer the school a [00:25:30] home when scores of other landlords [as many as fifty-nine others] turned them away. James Coleman was a business leader who championed the cause of the school with men who held the levers of power in their time, from the presidents of the world’s largest oil companies to politicians like his good friend Congressman Hale Boggs. 

The people we grew closer to included Tim Gibbons, who we barely knew and had not spoken with since [00:26:00] 1968. Yet, Tim graciously gave us hours upon hours of his time in a series of interviews. We knew we had a story when, after we sent Tim a copy of our mother’s memoirs to read his response was, “No, no, no. It was nothing like that!” Then proceeded to show us how different that was from his perspective.

Before we started contacting the graduates we did not know well, Jeanne and I were nervous. Would they remember Alice? Would [00:26:30] they remember us? Would their memories of the school be as fond as our mother’s memory? Were they in good health? Did they, as Alice hoped, work and retire happily ever after? It was as if our memories were protected behind a glass seal and we didn’t want to unlock that seal for fear of breaking something precious that might be far too fragile to hold.

Jeanne was hesitant of all the cold calls to [00:27:00] be made, but our fears were unfounded. In phone call after phone call an outpouring of love and curiosity enveloped us. There were no cold calls.

[00:27:15] Mya Carter: Part 4

[00:27:20] Jeff Geoffray: It was as if each alumna or former teacher or participant in the experiment that was the Adult Education Center was waiting for Jeanne's call -- [00:27:30] ready to begin a new chapter with us. After all, these were men and women who did not sit around wishing on a star. They were people engaged with life, with praxis.

Soon there were reunions to be planned scholarship fundraising campaigns to be strategized. Bread to be broken.

We’ve learned so much since Jeanne started taking the forward steps to reunite us with Alice’s former colleagues and students. We [00:28:00] learned, and are still learning, especially from those women whose lives spanned Jim Crow and the post Civil Rights era; women who made the transition from a world as oppressive as the one depicted in "A Handmaid’s Tale" to succeed in the world of "Mad Men." There is so much value and wisdom they have to offer. In a confused and broken world, they found meaning. 

In our memories, the Center was a [00:28:30] magical place, where women with hopes and dreams met others who had the ways and means. We asked the graduates to help us understand the source of that magic. It turns out that the magic was perhaps not magic at all but rather the product of a community that was organized to constantly overcome adversity and to never let adversity trample over it.

It's our belief that, especially with the problems we face today, there is so much to learn from the [00:29:00] historic African American community of New Orleans.

As children we could not understand how our inclusion into this community via the culture of the school was unique. How it gave us strength. What we could sense at the time, especially Jeanne, was that our mother was becoming, for the first time in her life, a truly happy and confident woman. 

Therefore, we could not tell the story of the school or the alumnae without trying [00:29:30] to better understand the African American culture from which the students came. 

Alice and her colleagues came to the same conclusion as the Center was being formed, informed by Black leaders like the young Norman Francis, and Clarence Barney, and "Dutch" Morial, not to mention the would-be students themselves. 

The teachers were tasked with supporting their students’ ambitions to acquire jobs in a White business environment. [00:30:00] But they took pains to avoid suggesting their students abandon their culture when they walked through the school’s doors. Or that their culture, their homes and, in particular, their speech, were inferior to their White counterparts. On the contrary, they embraced each student and their cultural experiences and encouraged them to share those experiences as part of the school’s curriculum. 

In the vein of Ella Baker, [00:30:30] Alice’s quiet leadership style made it possible to incorporate the contributions of many strong people, men and women, Black and White. All were bound together by a concept that ultimately carried a moral imperative…creating equal educational and employment opportunities. 

The more we connected with Alice’s former students, the more Jeanne felt her broken heart finally starting to heal. With each graduate, [00:31:00] teacher and colleague, we interviewed, she felt her grief finally subsiding. 

It was in those conversations that Alice came back to life for both of us. It was as if, by communicating with the alumnae, we were communicating with our mother. When we look into their eyes, we can see her light shining there. When we hear their voices, we hear her voice as we share a laugh, or tears. These interactions finally [00:31:30] brought peace to us. We have the graduates to thank for bringing our mother back into our lives and for helping us let her go. Likewise, they tell us Alice is resurrected in us.

Former teacher Floyd McLamb, a devout atheist, said he admired the way Alice didn’t talk about her religion, she tried to live by it. Jeanne and I couldn’t help but think that in this way, too, the graduates were the living embodiment of our mother. Their [00:32:00] morality had been forged in the intense warmth and struggle of the New Orleans African American community. We know Alice drew strength from their resilience and accountability as well as her own faith and upbringing. She was inspired by them and they have inspired us as she lives in them. As Thomas Campbell wrote, “To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die."

In 2018, Jeanne and I created a website [00:32:30] and blog for our next steps forward: The 431 Exchange website. When Alice’s graduates and supporters heard, we were going to honor her life’s work by providing scholarships to outstanding adults, regardless of age, race, gender, or path -- adults who were committed to a higher education -- they eagerly sought to help us. The 431 Exchange is a nonprofit with a Board, a [00:33:00] Scholarship Committee, and more in the wings keeping the website and us current and relevant. In 2019, we presented our first scholarship and have been able to provide more scholarships every year since then. 

Why Now, Why Us? 

In 1969, Alice was asked by a television reporter if she thought the country was moving too fast. He asked her if she thought the [00:33:30] process of integrating the workplace was too much change too quickly. She responded, “We can’t wait: one of my graduates has been able to get proper medical care for her handicapped daughter because she finally has the same kind of insurance tens of millions of other Americans enjoy; one of my graduates and her husband can now pay college tuition for all their sons and daughters; one of my graduates can buy their [00:34:00] first car; go on their first vacation away from New Orleans; buy their first house; start their own business.” Alice asked him, “Who would YOU choose to hold back? Who would you deny the right to a meaningful education or job?” She said, "these women, the ones who are still applying for training, can’t wait!”

Comedian George Carlin put it another way, “they call it the American dream because you have to [00:34:30] be asleep to believe it...” 

Perhaps we can show how the graduates of the Adult Education Center made the American dream a reality, so we can start believing in it with both eyes wide open.

This podcast has three main purposes. First, to have the graduates of the Adult Education Center take a bow for their place in history. I can think of no work of art more dramatic or [00:35:00] amazing than the arc of their lives. Secondly, to celebrate the African American culture that nurtured them in their New Orleans neighborhoods so that we can learn from its strength and resilience. Third, to foster a constructive conversation about the wounds inflicted in other eras so we can heal them more consistently in the present. 

Despite all the challenges we face, from [00:35:30] cultural wars to climate collapse, we believe the time is now to visit with – to listen closely to – women and men who have overcome challenges not just to survive, but to thrive and bring light to the world. Why us? If not us, then who? 

[00:35:54] Mya Carter: That concludes Episode 3 of Exchange Place: Why Now, Why Us [00:36:00] 

Please join us for Episode 4.

[00:36:03] Jeff Geoffray: This has been a presentation of The 431 Exchange. We're a nonprofit organization dedicated to adults seeking to transform their lives through continuing education. We invite you to learn more about us by going to our website at www.431exchange.org. To hear more inspiring stories, please sign up for our newsletter. Thanks! 

Copyright 431 [00:36:30] Exchange LLC, 2022. 

“ Respect [00:37:00] Her” Written and Performed by Kevin Gullage 

She’s more than just a smile.

More than a pretty face.

She’s the type to stay a while

and put you in your place.

She commands the room.

With poise and grace.

She will share her love.[00:37:30] 

She could never hate.

Respect her.

Respect her.