In Touch With The New Orleans Four

By Betty Miller Buttram
FWIS Contributing Writer

The title of this article refers to the four little Black girls who integrated two public schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, 64 years ago, on November 14, 1960. They were six-years old and first graders. Ruby Bridges, Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, and Tessie Provost were escorted to their new schools that day by U.S. Federal Marshals. Their previous schools were in the lower 9th Ward in New Orleans Ruby integrated the William Franz Elementary School all by her lonesome. Leona, Gail, and Tessie integrated McDonogh 19 Elementary School as a trio and were nicknamed the McDonogh Three. Ruby and the McDonogh Three are collectively known as the New Orleans Four.

The Brown v. Board of Education decision in May 1954 caused the South to spin with resistance, protest, new laws, and outrageous political statements about keeping the public schools separated by race. Louisiana did not want to have any part of integration, and so, they became pretenders and got creative. The Louisiana Pupil Placement Law had their views on segregated education and came up with a plan to prohibit Black children from being in the same school with white children. They created a board of officials and called it the Pupil Placement Board. These officials had the authority to assign students to the schools they would attend in their state. In pretending to keep up with this integration thing, the Pupil Placement Board created an admissions test that Black students had to pass to attend a school with white children. This test was intentionally challenging and was made to limit the number of applicants able to integrate into the schools. That plan did not work too well because the New Orleans Four passed the test plus two more making it a total of six Black students. The number went back to four after the parents of the other two students decided to let them stay at their present schools. The Orleans Parish Public School Board was eventually forced to abolish the Pupil Placement Law and ordered to expand integration by Judge J. Skelly Wright, Eastern District of Louisiana. That decision caused him to endure social ostracism, death threats and a cross burning on his lawn.

Bridges and her mother spent the entire first day in the principal’s office because of the chaos in the school and outside the school. Parents took their children out of William Franze Elementary School when Ruby Bridges showed up that day. She remained the only child in her class until the following year. She was met every morning as she walked to school with threats; she only ate food that she brought from home, and she was not allowed to participate in recess.

Over the course of the first day of school for the McDonogh Three, all the white students were pulled out of the school by the parents. The girls were alone in the first grade and half of the second grade; a classroom of three. The girls classroom windows were papered over so no one could look in. Recess was inside playing under the stairwell and jumping rope and hopscotch in the hallway to avoid the dangers outside. The water fountains inside the school were shut off to protect the girls from poisoning. For the third grade, Gail Etienne, Leona Tate, and Tessie Prevost desegregated a second elementary school, T.J. Semmes Elementary School along with twenty other Black students. The girls were not protected by U.S. Marshals this time. They and the Black students endured physical violent treatment and severe bullying. In the fourth grade, Leona Tate left T.J. Semmes Elementary and joined Ruby Bridges at William Frantz Elementary and then went on to integrate Kohn Middle School. Tessie Prevost and Gail Etienne attended a Black middle school named for Rivers Frederick, who had been a prominent Black physician/surgeon in New Orleans. Tessie Prevost attended a Black high school named for Joseph S. Clark who was once head of the Baton Rouge College and President of Southern University, both historical Black colleges. Gail Etienne, Ruby Bridges and Leona Tate had one last school to integrate and attended Francis T. Nicholls High School. Nicholls had been an attorney, politician, judge, and a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the Civil War, He served two terms as the 28th Governor of Louisiana. The school mascot was the Confederate Rebels. The Black students fought to change the team name and mascot. In the late 1990s the high school was renamed for former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass. Today, it is a charter school.

Ruby Bridges Hall still lives in New Orleans with her husband, Malcolm and their four sons. She is the Chair of the Ruby Bridges Foundation. She formed it in 1999 to promote the values of tolerance, respect, and appreciation for all differences.

McDonogh 19 Elementary School is now known as the TEP Center which stands for Tate, Etienne and Prevost Interpretive Center and is a teaching foundation for the past and present history of racial equity. The McDonogh 3 has become the McDonogh Two.

On May 14, 2024, Tessie Prevost, Gail Etienne, and Leona Tate were honored by the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Office of Education for the 70th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Prevost was unable to fly because of her illness. Tessie Prevost Williams transitioned into a better world on July 6, 2024.

Ruby Bridges, Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, and Tessie Provost became Civil Rights pioneers in 1960 because the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) asked their parents to participate in the desegregation of the New Orleans school system.