Woodlawn High School, built on this site in 1950, became nationally significant through the struggle to end racial segregation in public schools during the 1960s. Originally intended for white students only, the school stood at the center of conflicts that followed Brown v. Board of Education, which declared separate-but-equal schools for white and black children unconstitutional four years after Woodlawn opened. In Plaquemines Parish, schools remained segregated for ten years despite federal integration efforts, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 empowered the federal government to enforce the Brown ruling. In 1965, the Lyndon Johnson administration sued the parish and threatened to withhold oil royalties for failing to desegregate. Judge Leander Perez represented Plaquemines Parish in the federal lawsuits, but U.S. District Judge Herbert Christenberry denied his attempts to delay desegregation. Perez then organized a parish-wide boycott by white students. On August 31, 1966, five black students crossed picket lines to enroll at Woodlawn and faced white picketers carrying signs reading "Don't." The following month, after the Plaquemines Parish School Board ordered thirty-one black students to enroll in compliance with the federal integration order, Woodlawn's teachers quit, effectively closing the school. Although other parish schools gradually integrated in the following years, Woodlawn never reopened as a school. The building later served as offices until Hurricanes Katrina and Isaac damaged it in 2005 and 2012, and it was demolished in 2014.