Celebrating Edgar Poree Jr.'s 90th Birthday
Edgar Poree Jr. with Joyce Armstead (AEC ’68) at The 431 Exchange’s 2023 Party with a Purpose in New Orleans. A trailblazer in education, business, and civic leadership, Edgar celebrated his 90th birthday on October 5, 2026.
A Personal Reflection on Edgar Poree’s 90th Birthday
Our friendship with Edgar Poree began when he read an article in The Times-Picayune about the work Jeanne and I were doing through The 431 Exchange, the nonprofit we founded to carry on our mother Alice Geoffray's legacy in education and civil rights. Edgar reached out because he remembered our mother and wanted to tell us about his work with her years earlier on funding for the New Orleans Public School System.
Edgar was a trailblazer in his own right. A former public school teacher and director of a major youth employment program, he became one of the first Black men to reach middle management at Southern Bell in New Orleans. In 1966, he helped lead a campaign for a one-cent sales tax to support public schools that passed with an extraordinary 73% of the vote. The following year, he served as a guest lecturer at Alice's Adult Education Center. Their friendship and professional collaboration continued for decades, including a successful campaign in 1980 for another half-cent sales tax to support public education, for which Edgar enlisted Alice's help.
That first conversation told us a great deal about the man. Edgar was warm, engaging, curious, and genuinely interested in what we were trying to accomplish. His enthusiasm for his work, his family, and his community was infectious. And for Jeanne and me, it was a particular joy to meet someone who could share firsthand memories of our mother's professional life, adding another piece to the history we were working so hard to preserve.
I subsequently read Edgar's memoir, Dreamer Who's Been Extremely Blessed, and came away with an even deeper appreciation of him. His story provided a personal window into an extraordinary period of change in New Orleans, particularly in race relations, education, business, and civic life. What struck me was not simply what Edgar had accomplished, but the relationships, determination, and sense of responsibility to others that ran through his story. His memoir reminded me why personal histories are so important: they allow us to understand the past through the experiences of people who actually lived it and helped shape it.
Those reflections also resonated deeply with our work on Exchange Place, the story of how our mother and hundreds of courageous Black women helped transform opportunities in New Orleans during the civil rights era. Edgar helped us appreciate that history not simply as a collection of dates and milestones, but as something made by individual people who built relationships, opened doors, and changed what was possible for those who came after them.
Perhaps most meaningful to Jeanne and me was that Edgar didn't stop at sharing his memories. He wanted to become an enthusiastic supporter of The 431 Exchange and our continuing work. At a time when we were still building the organization, knowing that someone with Edgar's experience, accomplishments, and character believed in our mission gave us encouragement and confidence. His generosity made us stronger.
I think that says something essential about Edgar. His accomplishments are part of the public record, but his instinct to reach out, to encourage, and to help others succeed reveals something even more important about the man himself.
We didn't go looking for Edgar Poree. He found us. And we have been the richer for it.