Exchange Place: How A Small Struggling School Transformed Civil Rights in New Orleans and the Nation
Season 1, Episode 7: Economic Apartheid

JUNE 16, 2023 | THE 431 EXCHANGE; MYA CARTER (HOST); 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.]

[00:00:00] Mya Carter: While Geoffray described the summer of 1965 as the beginning of the most incredible period of her life, Gibbons and Adult Education Center graduates like Lorraine Washington didn't share the same nostalgia when they reminisced decades later. Thirty-four people died in the Watts riots and it took 14,000 members of the California Army National Guard to quell it. Closer to New Orleans, on [00:00:30] July 4th, the KKK demonstrated in front of the governor's mansion following a rally on the steps of the state capitol. Klansmen were fighting to maintain White control over jobs in a Bogalusa paper mill despite newly passed job discrimination laws. People who had power perceived they were losing their grip on power, and they were not going to do so without a fight.

The 431 Exchange [00:01:00] 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 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 [00:01:30] 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 ofthe school's graduates who changed the moral 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.

Episode 7, Part 1, Economic Apartheid

In the summer of [00:02:00] 1965, women like Lorraine Washington were continuing to suffer from the economic apartheid that had been in place since the end of reconstruction. Pervasive job discrimination made a mockery of new civil rights laws that had been passed with fanfare. The Adult Education Center’s mission was to be on the vanguard of desegregation in the workplace, but change was not inevitable. The White businessmen of New Orleans were inclined to avoid hiring African [00:02:30] American women even though laws and a degree of public sentiment seemed in favor of doing so. Some considered it. But who would go first? What employer was going to risk hurting his business by having a Black employee as a front-office receptionist or a secretary? Many said they would do so when they “finally” found someone who could meet their qualifications. The speech patterns of candidates was a common excuse. Yet over the phone, future Center student Dorothy Payton's speech pattern was indistinguishable [00:03:00] from those of a White candidate, but the managers of the drugstore she applied to still rejected her once they met her and saw Payton was Black.

When Gibbons began writing the MDTA proposal, he knew he would need to convince the federal government that there was a definitive need for well-trained secretaries in New Orleans. Gibbons knew that the grant evaluators would only approve a test case if it had the very least probability of failure. [00:03:30] Gibbons concluded that there would be no problem making such a statement. New Orleans had a firm industrial base, and hundreds of jobs in offices went unfilled each year because there were not enough highly trained or adequately prepared clerks, stenographers, and secretaries to fill them.

Another excuse many employers gave for not hiring Blacks was that there were no qualified candidates whose education had prepared them for the job. [00:04:00] But prejudice extended to New Orleans’s business schools. Even in a theoretically "color blind" job market, Blacks, worse educated and worse trained than whites, would find it difficult to compete. Harvey Britton's experience trying to find secretarial help for the NAACP office in New Orleans exemplified the problem: "most applicants lacked basic skills," he complained; "those hired proved to be poor [00:04:30] workers."

In his proposal, Gibbons went a step further to justify the need for the school. He looked into the status of educational opportunities for women in these fields. He quickly found, and Geoffray could confirm, that Black women were being inadequately prepared in the public schools. Furthermore, admission to the top-notch business schools, where employers traditionally interviewed for secretaries, was not available to them. Here, [00:05:00] too, speech patterns were found to be a hindrance. One summer afternoon, Gibbons impersonated an African-American male and made phone calls to every accredited business school in the Greater New Orleans area seeking enrollment in their fall program. Gibbons used just a few colloquial markers based on the research of his speech therapists to affect a dialect shift that would hint he was from a Black or poor White neighborhood. Gibbons was either [00:05:30] rejected immediately, "registration is closed," or given the runaround about why "enrollment isn't possible at this time." He did not receive one invitation to discuss enrollment or one offer that gave him any hope of admission. No one wanted to see his transcripts or discuss his high school records.

One of Geoffray's colleagues, a White executive secretary, attended the for-profit Soule [00:06:00] Business School around 1965. Soule touted itself as "the oldest and most respected business school in the South." It was established in 1856 by Colonel George Soule, a Confederate officer who was captured at the Battle of Shiloh, one of the bloodiest conflicts of the Civil War. The school was "known to generations of New Orleanians as the preferred doorway to a business career."

Geoffray's colleague [00:06:30] recalled that when she attended Soule around 1965, an entire day of classes was devoted to a presentation by the far-right conservative John Birch Society, for no apparent reason other than to try to indoctrinate and recruit future members. The John Birch Society opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act among other civil rights measures and federal government intervention in righting the wrongs of the Jim Crow [00:07:00] Society. It has to this day a reputation for peddling in conspiracy theories that undermine American democracy. Given all that, it was hard to imagine the school welcoming any Black student even if one could afford to attend.

The exclusion of Black women from vocational education opportunities, the exclusion of Black women from the skilled workforce entirely, was occurring at a time when the economy of New Orleans, and other parts [00:07:30] of the country, was prospering. As Gibbons found in his research, in consultation with leaders of the community like Dr. Norman Francis, and in discussions with local employment administrators like John Duarte of the Louisiana State Employment Service, secretarial and clerical jobs were in high demand. As an experienced teacher in vocational education, Geoffray confirmed the need for qualified applicants to Gibbons too.[00:08:00]

Gibbons knew what he was trying to do was radical. Even those who did not claim to be segregationists felt society might not be ready for an integrated work force, for the same reasons they did not believe in desegregated elementary schools, high schools, colleges, or vocational schools. Since the end of the Civil War, to the end of Reconstruction, and even after Brown versus Board of Education and the passage of landmark civil rights legislation in 1964 [00:08:30] and 1965, many Americans felt society was moving too quickly. Even well-meaning people wanted to slow down progress in civil rights for a multitude of reasons. Some were practical or strategic or selfish, others tapped into humanity’s primal response to competition for resources.

For decades politicians who were predominantly White and male and whose decisions funded public institutions such as [00:09:00] colleges, ignored equitable treatment of minorities and women with voting restrictions. These decision makers could afford to call for “patience” and “civility.” Their lives weren’t being impacted. The economic result was that for easily a century there was more money to spend on a small proportion of the population.

That same segment had little competition for housing and jobs, including those in the [00:09:30] public sector. Meanwhile, New Orleans had a steady supply of undereducated, cheap labor to support its homes and businesses. Up until even the 1970s in the United States, and particularly in the South, a domestic worker or maid was considered essential to running households. Without washers, dryers, dishwashers, microwaves, and other modern conveniences we now take for granted, running a home with even a [00:10:00] small family was practically impossible. In New Orleans, many White middle-class families -- who benefitted from the ready supply of cheap labor -- had large families where the maid had an enormous amount of responsibility though not the wage to go with it. Furthermore, the exclusion of farm and domestic workers from coverage under the Social Security Act of 1935 meant that the maids helping to raise the children of middle [00:10:30] and upper class New Orleanians did not benefit from one of the most important programs of the New Deal.

In the face of this intransigence to change and numerous discriminatory policies, until the Adult Education Center was formed, the career prospects of the women who would soon attend it were dim. Almost all of them had tried and failed to find the kind of education that would lead to upwardly mobile career paths. Their high [00:11:00] schools did not give them the practical foundation to find fulfilling careers. The city’s best business schools were unwelcoming. And universities, even Black colleges, didn’t accommodate for the challenges of working mothers, even if they could afford to attend. All the hard work and determination in the world couldn’t result in a better job if there was no path to obtaining it.

[00:11:30] Episode 7, Part 2, Patricia Morris

In the Southern caste system, Patricia Morris described herself as "high yellow"—a Creole, born in the segregated wing of Charity Hospital in 1939, Patricia was the first of her mother's eleven children. She was raised in a rustic neighborhood called Gentilly, at that time considered "out in the country," far from the heart of what most people today think of as New Orleans. That was [00:12:00] before White flight and before developers pushed the boundaries of New Orleans's suburbs farther east in the late 1950s.

Morris's parents were a mixture of French Canadian, Cajun, Haitian, and Mexican. Morris was light enough to pass the "paper bag test," where a Black person's skin was considered more acceptable if it was lighter than a brown grocery bag. For much of her growing up and adulthood, Morris found herself caught [00:12:30] between two worlds; she was envied for her light skin color by some in the Black community [as well as pursued by men because of it], but considered an outsider for the same reason. Her sisters and brothers were fathered by her mother's second husband, a much darker man who wanted to marry someone with lighter skin. Conversely, Morris's darker-colored siblings often took joy in telling her she was ugly. But at the end of the day, by the laws of Jim Crow, [00:13:00] Morris was Black.

Morris's father was of Mexican heritage. He and his family owned so much land in her neighborhood that there is a street still named after them there today. While Morris looked nearly identical to her father, he refused to give her his last name or provide for her. Like the plot of a dark fairy tale, two of her father's sisters kept tabs on their little niece as she grew up because they had an interest in [00:13:30] exploiting her when she was old enough.

As with many people in the country, and even the city, Morris's life was humble. She slept on a soft mattress stuffed with Spanish moss, the friendly epiphyte that hangs from oak and cypress trees like an old man's beard and is closely associated with the Southern landscape. From time to time, a man she recalls named "Mr. Joe" would harvest the moss nearby and come around to her [00:14:00] childhood home to freshen up the mattresses.

Morris remembers being scared during the blackouts and air attack drills of World War II. An older family member would hold her tight to make her feel safe.

Until she was about 7 or 8, Morris lived primarily with her maternal grandmother, whom everyone knew as "Big Mama." Big Mama's real name was Anges Sylve, and she spoke French and broken English. Big Mama paid for Morris's [00:14:30] private education at a segregated Catholic school for Black girls.

Morris had only one White teacher in her life until she attended the Adult Education Center in her late twenties. The nuns were kind to Morris; they cared about her. As with so many of the Center's graduates, school was a refuge for Morris from an early age.

Big Mama paid for Morris’s schooling as much to get her out of the house as to ensure her education. Big Mama was [00:15:00] busy. At night, she fished in the Mississippi and in the waterways and the bayou near her home; by day, she sold crayfish and the other seafood she had caught in a roadside stand. She was facile with figures, and both kind and shrewd in business. Meanwhile, her home was open to anyone in her neighborhood who needed help or advice. As busy as she was, she never ignored her granddaughter. [00:15:30] Morris said that "Big Mama loved me up."

So insane was the whole notion of color and race that Morris didn't know she was Black until a dark-skinned family moved into her neighborhood. When she first saw them, a young Morris rushed into her house and announced, "Hey, there are Black people moving in across the street!" Months later, Mr. Mead, the father of that family, took an interest in her education. At the time, it was common [00:16:00] for adults within the African American community to take an interest in the education of children of other families. While Mr. Mead worked in his yard he would sit Morris and other kids on a bench and have them recite their times tables and teach them as much as he knew about arithmetic.

At twelve, after her first Communion, Morris was taken from Big Mama by her father's nefarious sisters. The two aunts lived in a mixed neighborhood not far [00:16:30] from downtown New Orleans where they worked. They were seamstresses who made delicate clothes for the Black mammy dolls that sold so well in tourist shops in the French Quarter, and they also made draperies for the city's fancier hotels. Morris was forced to do all the housework as well as the laundry for their household and others. At that time, laundry was arduous, even dangerous, because pressing clothes meant using an iron heated on a [00:17:00] wood-burning stove. Morris was trapped as a live-in maid. Her aunts didn't think Morris's future required an education. After all, what kind of career requiring an education was open to a Black woman anyway?

Morris lived in the back of her aunts' shotgun house in a room blocked off from the rest of the home. She had to go around to the front to get into the living room and kitchen. There was no love in the home and barely an acknowledgment [00:17:30] of kinship. If Morris complained about stale food or bugs in her school lunch, her aunts didn't care. Yet Morris managed, somehow, to find joy. She had a friend next door, a young White girl her age with whom she played. She loved listening to the music of Perry Como, a popular White singer and entertainer whose television shows defined good taste. But it was torture when her aunts kept [00:18:00] her from watching him because they knew it gave Morris pleasure. Though she didn’t know it at the time, the aunts were receiving government assistance for being Morris’s legal guardians.

Before she entered high school, Morris ran away. But she was determined to continue her education. To support herself during high school, Morris got a job at a local restaurant washing dishes and busing tables for fifty cents per day. She gave the money to the nuns for her [00:18:30] tuition, and they put a little aside to pay for her high school ring and other things related to graduation. Even though she was working nights and weekends, Morris managed to graduate tenth in her class in the "A section," designated for those qualified for office work.

With her light skin and attractive figure, Morris had no problem attracting men. In her early twenties, she met a man who had graduated from Dillard University, a [00:19:00] historically Black college, and who had a good job as a teacher. He liked women with light skin and wanted children who had lighter skin too. Morris had a baby with him. When their child was eighteen months old, he cheated on Morris with another teacher who became pregnant. When Morris's boyfriend had the audacity to ask her if his pregnant girlfriend could live with them because her parents had kicked her out, Morris knew "it was time to get out [00:19:30] of there with my baby in a hurry." Morris asked Big Mama if she would take care of her toddler temporarily, and thankfully her grandmother said yes. Morris moved into a shed at a friend's house that had no bathroom, only a chamber pot. At a time when opportunities in higher education were rare for Black women, Morris was offered a full scholarship to prestigious Xavier College, the school where Dr. Norman Francis would soon be [00:20:00] president. Morris was awarded the scholarship based on her excellent work in high school and recommendations from her teachers. To make ends meet, she worked as a caretaker for two senior citizens. Doing so provided the money she needed to move out of the shed and into a home with her son. Morris started at Xavier, but caring for her son, attending classes and studying, and working around the clock in the demanding caretaker job [00:20:30] proved too exhausting. With regret, she eventually quit Xavier to focus solely on earning a living and raising her son.

While it may seem surprising, like many of the students at the Adult Education Center, Morris wasn't particularly interested in desegregation. Discrimination throughout New Orleans was a hindrance, an annoyance, but it wasn't something that she felt would always define her. At the same time, the best jobs were in [00:21:00] White-owned businesses, and that is what she aspired for: a good job. Still, Morris was subject to the everyday dehumanization— relentless and banal—that people of color faced despite the civil rights laws and other measures on the books that were supposed to prevent it. Once, Morris wanted to eat at a lunch counter, but all the patrons were White and the owners made it clear they preferred she not take a seat. She decided to walk [00:21:30] out and not force the issue after she saw a cockroach scurry on the floor. She remembers thinking the restaurant wasn't good enough for her and not the other way around. Frequently, there was no place for her to get a drink of water. The image of a "White" water fountain conveniently located next to a "colored" one in photographs of the time is for the most part inaccurate. In reality, in wide swaths of New Orleans and its surrounding neighborhoods and areas, [00:22:00] there were no places to sit, eat, get a drink of water, or even go to the bathroom if you were Black. That is one of the reasons why Father Gibbons decided it was so important to locate the Adult Education Center in the business district. Even though it was just as segregated as other parts of New Orleans, Gibbons knew students would not be familiar with the neighborhood unless they worked there as janitors or dishwashers. By being immersed in the district [00:22:30] daily while in school, students would learn how to navigate the neighborhood and its deprivations to prepare them for working within it. Gibbons thought starting cold would add too much stress for students on top of the pressure of being trailblazers for integration in the district’s White offices.

Morris held a series of unsatisfying jobs while struggling to maintain a home. At a Black-owned insurance company where she worked briefly, a White manager [00:23:00] constantly hit on Black women. It was an all-too-common practice and many men expected women to "play ball" for the sake of keeping a scarce office job. Morris wouldn't play ball and quit instead. At another place of employment, a young White woman was hired as a cashier even though she didn't know how to make change. On many occasions, Morris helped the White girl with basic arithmetic, a [00:23:30] fact obvious to her employers. When there was a job opening for the same position, Morris wasn't allowed to apply and was forced to stay in a lower paying, lower-profile position. As a result of these indignities and for many other reasons, Morris felt she had grown up to be a woman "without a face." She felt she was never seen or acknowledged as a real person with her own identity.

Yet even in her darkest [00:24:00] moments, Morris knew she needed more education to provide for her son in the way she envisioned, including giving him a good private school education. She was too stubborn to give up. When Morris heard about the Adult Education Center at her church, she applied and was accepted. She was aware of other job programs being launched around the same time, but didn't feel any were as practical or reputable as the Center appeared to be. In the following [00:24:30] months, financial and logistical delays and a hurricane prevented the school from opening on time.

These events caused Morris to miss the chance to be part of the first class. But she didn't give up on the school or herself and continued to follow its travails and progress. In 1966 Morris was accepted again into the Adult Education Center’s program. After graduating, she took a job with the U.S. [00:25:00] Naval Enlistment Center and stayed thirty-one years, breaking the cycle of generational poverty for herself and her family. At the Center, not only did Morris find “her face”—meaning her personhood and confidence—she would become the face of the Adult Education Center in public when the school needed the support of its former students most in order to stay alive. Amongst her many public appearances on [00:25:30] behalf of the school, on television and elsewhere, Morris was one of three students who traveled to Washington DC in 1968 to testify before a Senate Subcommittee on behalf of the school and humanistic approaches to career and vocational education.

That concludes Episode 7 of Exchange Place. Please join us for Episode 8!

[00:25:55] Jeff Geoffray: This has been a presentation of The 431 Exchange. We're a nonprofit [00:26:00] 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 Exchange LLC, 2022.

Outro Music:

Composed by Kevin Gullage

“On the Horizon”

[00:26:30]