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The Archives and Manuscripts Department is the official repository for all records of the university that have enduring historical, administrative, or community significance. The Archives Collection includes: printed volumes, manuscripts, and photographs, prints, and other visual media. The Rare Book Collections consist of works by 20th-century authors. It also includes records of the founding and growth of the university as well as an extensive collection documenting regional history.
Baton Rouge Sit-Ins
As Sit-Ins spread across the upper and mid-south, the all-white Louisiana State Board of Education threatens “Stern disciplinary action” against any student who participates in a sit-in. The President of Southern University (SU) — a segregated, state-funded, Black college in Baton Rouge — tells students they will be expelled if they sit-in. On March 28, seven SU students were arrested for sitting-in at a Kress lunch counter. Charged with “Disturbing the Peace,” their bail is set at $1,500 (equivalent to $10,000 in 2006 dollars) — an astronomically high bond for a misdemeanor charge. The next day, seven more students were arrested for sitting-in at the Greyhound bus terminal and two more at the Sitman’s Drug Store. The following day, led by SU student and CORE supporter Major Johns, 3500 students march to the state capitol building to protest segregation, the arrests, and the outrageous bail amounts.
Major Johns and the 16 students arrested for sitting in are expelled from Southern University and barred from all public colleges and universities in the state of Louisiana. In response, SU students call for a student strike — a boycott of classes until the 17 are reinstated. Marvin Robinson, President of Senior Class and one of the expelled students later explains: “What is more important, human dignity or the university? We felt it was human dignity.”
The SU administration tried to break the boycott by appealing to the students' school spirit and calling parents with accusations that the student leaders are inciting a riot. The parents, fearing for the safety of their children, began pulling their sons and daughters out of the university. The boycott evolves into a mass withdrawal to protest SU's complicity with segregation. Over the weekend of April 2nd, hundreds of students leave SU, hundreds of others want to leave but are unable to do so due to lack of funds for bus fare.
Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the “Disturbing the Peace” convictions of the 16 students who were arrested for sitting at “white-only” lunch counters. In 2004 — 44 years after being expelled — they are awarded Honorary Degrees by Southern University and the state legislature enacts a resolution honoring them. Researchers interested in the changes that protests and marchers brought about during the 1960s not only for African Americans, but the nation as a whole, will find this collection a valuable resource.
New Orleans Merchant Boycotts & Sit-ins (1960-1963)
There are three major Black colleges in New Orleans — Dillard University, a private college; Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA), a venerable Catholic institution; and Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO), which is state-financed and subject to the Louisiana Board of Education and legislature.
In 1960, close to 40% of New Orleans’ population is Black. The city's main shopping-commercial avenue is Canal Street where all the stores are white-owned with segregated facilities — Blacks can buy goods but not eat at the lunch counters, the restrooms are segregated, and so on. There is also a Black shopping-commercial district — the second largest in the city after Canal Street — along Dryades Street. Here the stores are also white-owned, but the shoppers are almost all Black. Blacks can use the facilities, yet except for an occasional janitor all of the employees and managers are white. Many of the white store-owners are Jews who are themselves prevented from owning stores on prestigious Canal Street by the same white power-structure that enforces segregation on Blacks.
Students from XULA, SUNO, and Dillard — along with a few white students from Tulane and University of New Orleans (UNO) — join the picket lines on Dryades Street. When the Consumers' League of Greater New Orleans (CLGNO) pickets are temporarily halted by an injunction, they form a CORE chapter led by former XULA student body President Rudy Lombard, Oretha Castle from SUNO, Jerome Smith one of the students who withdrew from Southern University in Baton Rouge, and Hugh Murray a white student from Tulane.
On September 9, the new CORE chapter stages a sit-in at the Woolworth on Canal Street. The integrated group of Blacks and whites are arrested and charged with “Criminal Mischief.” The next day, CORE leader Oretha Castle is fired from her job at the Hotel Dieu Hospital: “The good nun gave me my paycheck and said, 'Take it, and get out of here, and don't ever come back.'”
Hampered by lack of bail money, CORE sit-ins continued off and on as funds became available, and the NAACP Youth Council led by Raphael Cassimire pickets the stores to protest segregation and the arrests. Crowds of angry whites taunt, abuse, and attack the CORE and NAACP demonstrators, beating them, scalding them with hot coffee, and throwing acid on them.
On September 16, 1960, CORE field secretary Jim McCain, Reverend Avery Alexander, and other members of CLGNO are arrested for picketing stores on Claiborne Avenue. Some 3,000 people attend a support rally for the “jailbirds” at the ILA (longshoremans' union) hall, and SCLC leader A. L. Davis opens his church to CORE activists for meetings and training sessions in Nonviolent Resistance.
On September 17, Rudy Lombard, Oretha Castle, Dillard student Cecil Carter, and Tulane student Sydney Goldfinch are arrested for sitting-in at the McCrory's department store lunch counter. As a Jew, Goldfinch is particularly hated by the white power structure. He is charged with “Criminal Anarchy” which carries a potential sentence of 10 years in state prison, his bond is set at $2,500 (equal to $17,000 in 2006). As police repression against the Movement increases, not only are sit-ins and picketers arrested but so too are those whose only “crime” is handing out leaflets.
The New Orleans sit-ins, pickets, boycotts, and arrests continued for years, culminating in a massive Freedom March in September of 1963. Slowly — too slowly — public facilities in New Orleans are desegregated. Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 overturns all segregation laws, but custom and practice yield slowly, taking years more to change.
Source: "New Orleans Merchant Boycotts & Sit-ins (1960-1963)." Civil Rights Movement Veterans. Web. 31 Jan 2010. http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960brsu.
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