William T. Frantz Elementary School at 3811 North Galvez Street in New Orleans became a significant site in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s when, on November 14, 1960, a six-year-old girl entered a Deep South public elementary school that had previously been reserved for white students only. The desegregation of New Orleans schools grew from efforts by the NAACP and other Civil Rights organizations to end the separation of schoolchildren by race. Since the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, schools across the Deep South had become rigidly segregated, and although black schools were supposed to be equal in quality to white schools, they received subpar facilities and educational materials. In September 1952, with assistance from attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, New Orleans attorney A.P. Tureaud initiated a lawsuit on behalf of Earl Benjamin Bush calling for an end to the segregated school system in Orleans Parish. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education set aside the Plessy decision and ruled that ordered segregated schools were unconstitutional, directing that public schools be desegregated with all deliberate speed. In 1956, the U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed multiple attempts by the Louisiana Legislature to thwart integration efforts, and in July 1959 Federal Judge J. Skelly Wright ordered the Orleans Parish School Board to integrate its schools. After a series of aptitude tests, four girls were selected to become pioneers at McDonogh No. 19 Elementary and William T. Frantz schools in the New Orleans Ninth Ward. With the eyes of the nation on New Orleans, U.S. Marshals escorted Ruby Bridges to William T. Frantz and Leona Tate, Gail Etienne Stripling, and Tessie Prevost to McDonogh No. 19 amid taunts and threats from segregationists. Despite those challenges, the four children successfully completed the school year, and their courage paved the way for a more peaceful expansion of integration into other schools in the following years.
