The U.S. Department of Justice dismissed a decades-old school desegregation case against Plaquemines Parish on Tuesday, ending an integration order that local leaders forcefully resisted in the 1960s before ultimately complying.
The Justice Department filed the lawsuit in 1966 after Plaquemines Parish, led by political boss and staunch segregationist Leander Perez, refused to integrate its schools. In 1975, a federal judge said that the parish school board had ended its system of racially segregated schools, yet the case remained open for another 50 years, according to Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who said her office worked with the federal government to have the case dismissed.
Now, Murrill and Gov. Jeff Landry are urging the Justice Department to close all remaining desegregation cases in Louisiana.
“DOJ’s decision marks an important step forward, not only for the Plaquemines Parish School Board, but also for school boards across the State that can now follow suit,” Murrill said in a statement Tuesday.
About 30 of Louisiana’s 69 traditional public school districts were still under desegregation orders as of 2020, according to an analysis by The Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank.
Federal courts have imposed “unnecessary requirements” on those districts, costing schools “tens of millions of dollars,” Landry said in a statement. Local leaders, not “unelected, activist federal judges,” should make important education decisions, he added.
“For those school systems still under desegregation cases, I want you to know there is an end in sight,” he said, “and I encourage you to reach out to the Attorney General.”
Filed Tuesday, the “joint stipulation of dismissal” by the federal government, Murrill’s office and the Plaquemines Parish School Board formally closes the desegregation case and ends court oversight of the district.
Board President Niko Tesvich and Superintendent Shelley Ritz Board called it a “truly historic day.”
“This dismissal confirms that the court’s supervision of the School Board has ended and that the elected school board members have full control of the Plaquemines Parish School System,” they said. “The School Board reaffirms its commitment to continuing to provide quality educational services to all students in a non-discriminatory manner.”
Desegregation fight
The U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional in its landmark 1954 case, Brown v. Board of Education. But school systems and state Legislatures across the South spend years fighting integration.
Plaquemines Parish made national headlines as Perez helped lead white resistance to school integration. During the New Orleans school desegregation crisis of 1960, he told residents to “take action now,” which contributed to a mob of thousands storming City Hall.
After the federal government sued to force school integration in Plaquemines Parish, Perez represented the parish in the legal case. Newspapers quoted him as saying that integration would be a “worse catastrophe than Hurricane Betsy.”
U.S. District Court Judge Herbert Christenberry issued a desegregation order in 1966, which prevented Perez and other officials from interfering, and warned that the FBI would act if they didn’t comply.
Still, the resistance continued. After the school board sent about 30 Black students to all-White Woodlawn High School, the school’s teachers quit and the school closed, never to reopen.
Case lingers for decades
In 1975, the court ruled that Plaquemines Parish had taken sufficient action to integrate the schools and eliminate “the effects of past discrimination,” and the case was “administratively closed.”
After that time, there were no further actions in the case, according to government. Yet the case remained in the court system.
“That ended today,” the Justice Department said in a news release Tuesday, adding that Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon “righted a historical wrong” by closing the case.
“No longer will the Plaquemines Parish School Board have to devote precious local resources over an integration issue that ended two generations ago,” Dhillon said in a statement.
