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four god’s฀valiant฀minority Teachers and Civil Rights The great fight of the N.A.A.C.P. to equalize educational opportunities should inspire the colored people in the South, because there is where we are worst treated . . . But all of the old fight is still with us, against lynching, jim crowism, segregation, and legal injustice. The fight will go on for generations. T eachers were the most natural constituency of the NAACP. Educators had stable jobs, earned a reasonable wage, lived and worked at the center of civic life, and were seen as being central to the general advancement of the entire black community. In 1940 there were over 4,000 black teachers in Louisiana, with women making up approximately three-quarters of their ranks. Of the twentyeight teachers of Danneel School in New Orleans who joined the city’s NAACP in 1935, only four were men. Most teachers were well educated and could respond positively to NAACP calls for educational improvement and greater social militancy. Many contributed their professional networks to the organization’s campaigns, and there was a concerted attempt by the NAACP to attract mass teacher involvement in the civil rights struggle. It specifically promoted legal cases that sought to equalize black teachers’ salaries with that of their white counterparts, which instigated one of the more successful NAACP campaigns in Louisiana. Yet teachers, in the main, contributed to the middle-class predominance of the NAACP and perpetuated the belief that a morally virtuous and educated community was the road to freedom.1 Education was one of the key campaigning areas of the NAACP national office, in equalizing facilities and standards with white establishments and, later, by seeking to desegregate institutions. However, the goal in the late 1930s was to have the “separate but equal” rule strictly applied, which would either force the educational system to be integrated due to the high costs of maintaining a dual system, or at least allow more evenly proportioned availability of schooling. Integration was increasingly the strategy during the 1940s, however, although local and state NAACP organizations generally preferred to concentrate on equality through separation of teachers’ salaries and, consequently, in educational standards. The problem that beset the NAACP in attracting teachers to its ranks was the possibility of direct threats from their employers, the local educational boards. This was particularly challenging when it came to encouraging teachers to put themselves forward as plaintiffs in their parishes to fight an equalization case and to be so publicly affiliated to the NAACP. But in order to establish legal precedence, the NAACP needed to be prepared to challenge each separate parish education authority on equal salary until the whole state of Louisiana achieved teacher salary equality.2 Local branches of the Louisiana NAACP for the most part followed their own agenda for education as they saw befitting their communities. Mainly they attempted to force local authorities to equalize black education with white rather than actually advocating full-scale integration. In Baton Rouge during 1944 the branch secretary attempted to get the school board of East Baton Rouge Parish to provide transportation for the children of Istrouma, Louisiana, to school and back from remote rural locations. The Scotlandville branch in 1943 reported to the national of- fice that it had secured “elementary and high school facilities for Negro children and authorization to select [the] location for [a] new high school building,” as well as a “promise” for a senior high school. Meanwhile, the Iberville branch membership was looking forward to an equalization of educational facilities campaign and had the parish teachers “up for a fight,” including the “older teachers too.” In New Orleans the branch was persistently petitioning the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) for more teachers and high schools, playground space, trade schools, and a music supervisor. The NAACP and the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) at Macarty School, New Orleans (under the name of a parents’ “Cooperative Club”) raised money for a kitchen, a school radio, and a 16mm sound projector. The objective was to get the best education for black children in a district and make schools accessible for remote communities. Integration was not necessarily the priority; indeed, the Scotlandville example shows an issue of establishing black schools beyond the elementary and high school levels so that black children could simply continue their education beyond elementary level.3 Teachers may have been particularly drawn to campaigns to equalize educational facilities with those of whites, as conditions were...

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