The African American Experience in Louisiana

campaign of building begun, which this time included one school for African American children.
It is curious that at a time when New Orleans schools were supposed to be integrated that new
schools were being constructed with racial designations. The exact circumstances of this are
unclear, but the timing coincides with riots against mixed schools in New Orleans organized by
the White League and the exclusion of schools from the Civil Rights Act of 1875. McDonogh
No. 6 was designed by the well-respected New Orleans architect William Freret and completed
in 1875. It was the first of Freret’s many designs for the public schools and the first building of
this quality constructed specifically for African American children in Louisiana with public
funding.
For the most part, integrated schools were confined to New Orleans. It seems that all
parties involved, even the enthusiastic integrationist, Superintendent Conway, conceded that
forcing racial mixing in rural schools would only result in a lack of schools. With segregated
schools tacitly accepted, there was a substantial improvement in public education during
Reconstruction as more schools were opened to more children. 160 In 1871, Jefferson Parish
reported four public schools for African Americans and one public school for whites operating
on one bank of the Mississippi, while Iberville Parish reported eight public schools for African
Americans and five for whites. 161 Rare examples of integrated schools in rural locations
included one on the plantation of a Colonel Laforest in Lafourche Parish and one at Bayou
Mangoin in the Atchafalaya marsh that served fifteen African Americans and eleven whites. 162
The education of African Americans during Reconstruction was further enhanced by the
establishment of universities. The American Missionary Association founded Straight
University in New Orleans in 1869 as well as Baton Rouge College, which served as a normal
school. New Orleans University was founded in 1869 as the Union Normal School of New
Orleans and in 1883 moved into a permanent location on St. Charles Avenue. Leland University
was founded in 1870 with the support of the Freedmen’s Bureau and the American Baptist Home
Mission Society. In 1873 the first of its St. Charles Avenue buildings was completed. 163
Enrollment in these universities was open to all though their student bodies were predominantly
African American.
Of course politics and education were not the only areas of change during
Reconstruction. The economy and labor patterns were also subject to deep changes as the result
of war and emancipation. A system of free wage labor got its initial start during the war under
the direction of General Butler followed by General Banks. As both plantation owners or
overseers and freed people negotiated the most advantageous terms for free labor, three basic
systems emerged: wage labor, tenancy, and sharecropping. In the first system, laborers earned
set wages for their work, typically on a monthly basis. Basic living essentials such as food,
clothing, shelter, and a plot of land for growing food and raising livestock might be provided
160 Roger Fischer, “Country Parish School, 1868-1877,” in The African American Experience in Louisiana: Part B,
ed. Charles Vincent (Lafayette: University of Southwestern, LA, 2000), 350, first published as Chapter 5 in Roger
A. Fischer, The Segregation Struggle in Louisiana, 1862-77 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1974).
161 Ibid., 340.
162 Ibid., 345.
163 Edwin Whitfield Fay, The History of Education in Louisiana (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1898),
161-68.
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