Desegregation pioneer Leona Tate preserves civil rights history in New Orleans

Summer campers in New Orleans are getting to walk in the footsteps of school desegregation pioneers at a new civil rights center in the Lower 9th Ward.

"We are here at historic McDonogh 19 now known as the Tate Etienne and Prevost Center, TEP for short," says Tremaine Knighten-Riley as she welcomes students from the Kedila Learning Center.

The former McDonogh 19 Elementary School is now preserved as an interpretive space to teach New Orleans’ civil rights history.

The TEP center is named after Leona Tate, Gail Etienne and Tessie Prevost. They’re known as the "McDonogh 3" -- the first three Black girls to integrate the school.

It was 1960 and they were just six years old. A couple of miles away, that same day, a fourth Black student, Ruby Bridges, integrated the all-white William Frantz Elementary.

Knighten-Riley, the program director here, starts her tour in front of the McDonogh School, a 3-story Italian Renaissance Revival-style building with a grand split staircase and wrought-iron railing.

She points out where hostile white crowds had gathered in the street back then, just outside the girls’ classroom.

"Can you imagine having protesters making a lot of noise outside while you’re trying to learn in first grade?" she asks the students who shout "no" in response.

She leads them up the same steps the girls climbed on November 14, 1960, primly dressed in their Sunday finest, under escort of federal marshals as police on horseback held back the angry crowd.

New Orleans was one of the first school systems in the Deep South forced by federal courts to come up with a desegregation plan.

It had been six years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling that found segregated schools unconstitutional.

Black families had to submit applications and the girls chosen were given rigorous schoolwork and other training in preparation for their role.

"That first day, I remember like it was today," says Leona Tate. "We came up the steps, 18 steps, and approached the principal's office."

They were told to sit on a bench in the hallway and waited for hours, she says, playing hopscotch and other games until they were enrolled. That was the start of what would become a tight bond for the three girls.

"The way we were prepared was not to do anything alone," Tate says. "Whatever we did, we had to do it with the three of us."

White students fled

Their enrollment marked a major shift in the South, and it was met with stiff resistance.

"School was a full body of students up until that time. And when we got in, the parents just started coming in and pulling the kids out," she recalls.

The African-American girls were ostracized.

"I remember trying to speak to a little white girl. It was like I was invisible, she didn’t look my way," she says.

By the end of the day, Tate, Etienne and Prevost were the only three students at McDonogh, alone with their teacher, Mrs. Meyers, one of the few white adults who offered support other than the federal marshals. They would remain the only students in the building for the next year and half as white families stayed away.

The girls weren’t allowed to eat in the school cafeteria, or use the playground, out of fear for their safety.

Today young people can now walk through the school to see Leona Tate’s desk, and the makeshift playroom they created beneath an internal stairwell.

The New Orleans school system closed McDonogh 19 in 2004, the year before Hurricane Katrina. It suffered storm damage and had been left to deteriorate when Tate set out to save it five years later.

She started the Leona Tate Foundation for Change to raise money, and got the building listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

"It was like what happened had just been forgotten," says Tate. "They didn't even remember it when I brought this project to the attention of the school board."

The foundation opened the TEP Center to the public in 2022.

Since then, hundreds of students have come through. And Tate is an integral part of the program, telling her story and taking questions.

Hands shot up on this morning, with the mostly Black audience excited to question the person who lived the history.

"How did you feel when they treated white people differently than Black people?" a young student asks.

"I didn't understand at first. I didn't realize what was going on," says Tate. "It was because of the color of my skin. After I began to understand then it was a little heartbreaking."

That heartbreak took a toll. For years, she buried the experience.

Decades of silence, and a forgotten history

"I didn't talk about it," she says. "I just put it in the back of my mind. I didn't really think about it at all."

Tate says she held in the trauma -- it was too overwhelming and emotional for a long time. But now she’s taken ownership of the story in the way she presents it at the TEP Interpretive Center.

"It feels like it's open to me now. I can talk about it now without shedding a tear."

The foundation raised $16.2 million using dozens of partner organizations, public and private funds, and tax credits to renovate McDonogh 19.

Now the building not only serves as a civil rights center but has also been used for a food pantry and includes 25 affordable apartments for seniors. It’s home to the Lower Ninth Ward Living Museum, and to interns with the Center for Sustainable Engagement & Development, an environmental non-profit doing research in nearby wetlands.

The idea is to serve as a hub for the historically disinvested Lower 9th Ward, says program director Tremaine Knighten-Riley.

"In Black and brown communities, the funds to promote historic preservation is not there,” she says. “So to have a project that has a Black woman at the head of it is just so important, especially in the time and climate that we're in right now."

And preservationists are taking note of what Leona Tate has done.

"She’s amazing. She found a way to turn that building into a true asset for our community," says Daniel Hammer, president and CEO of the Historic New Orleans Collection, a museum and cultural heritage organization in the French Quarter.

"It's truly a remarkable story," he says. "Shining a light on history that has been not yet told."

The TEP Center, and Alembic Community Development, were honored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation last year for the renovation of McDonogh 19.

Hammer says there is increasing willingness to recognize projects like TEP that put the focus on cultural heritage, and not simply architectural significance.

“You know, it's not Buckingham Palace. It's not St. Louis Cathedral,” he says of the school building. “If you were in an architectural historical vacuum, it is maybe not a building of great significance.”

But he says when you put it in the context of the history made there, and the programs underway today, the picture changes.

“I would defy anyone to identify a more significant place,” Hammer says.

Passing the civil rights torch to a new generation

One of the McDonogh 3, Tessie Prevost, died earlier this month. Leona Tate, now 69, hopes a new generation will see the need to preserve New Orleans’ civil rights history.

“I just think that if we just keep telling these stories, they won't die,” Tate says. “Our older generation is dying off now. And we have to get these stories told by these younger people. They have to realize they're going to pick up this torch and keep going with it.”

NPR producer Michael Radcliffe contributed to this story