Alexander Pierre "A. P." Tureaud Sr. (February 26, 1899 – January 22, 1972) was an African-American attorney who headed the legal team for the

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

chapter of the

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...

during the Civil Rights Movement. With the assistance of

Thurgood Marshall Thoroughgood "Thurgood" Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme C ...

and Robert Carter from the

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (NAACP LDF, the Legal Defense Fund, or LDF) is an American civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City. LDF is wholly independent and separate from the NAACP. Although LDF ca ...

, A. P. Tureaud filed the lawsuit that successfully ended the system of

Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, " Jim Crow" being a pejorative term for an African American. The last of the ...

segregation Segregation may refer to: Separation of people * Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space * School segregation * Housing segregation * Racial segregation, separation of human ...

in New Orleans. That case paved the way for integrating the first two elementary schools in the

Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion of the Southern United States. The term is used to describe the states which were most economically dependent on Plantation complexes in the Southern United States, plant ...

Career

Background

Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were U.S. state, state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, "Jim Crow (character), Ji ...

arose directly from a Supreme Court ruling which validated a "states' rights" notion that blacks and whites could be equally well served using

separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protectio ...

public facilities. With '' Plessy v. Ferguson'' (163 U.S. 537 (1896)) the United States Supreme Court confirmed the right of state legislatures to enact discriminatory legislation. With this authority, civic organizations throughout the American South moved to restrict citizen access and limit citizens from exercising their civil rights based on the basis of their social and economic status, and on their personal history as descended from a former slave.R. Bentley Anderson, ''Black, White, And Catholic: New Orleans Interracialism, 1947-1956'', October 30, 2005. . Louis Berry, the civil rights attorney from

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and the first African American admitted to the Louisiana bar since Tureaud himself, had hoped to join Tureaud's law firm in the late 1940s, but Tureaud could not at the time afford to take on another attorney.

Cases

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court overturned ''Plessy'' and ruled in ''

Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the ...

'' that segregated schools were unconstitutional and must be desegregated "with all deliberate speed." In the following years, A. P. Tureaud and the NAACP initiated the lawsuits which eventually forced the Orleans Parish School System to desegregate. He worked out of an office in the Peter Claver Building, which partly served as a headquarters for the local chapter of the

. Tureaud also filed suit in 1953 against the

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as Louisiana State University (LSU), is an American Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louis ...

Board of Supervisors seeking desegregation on behalf of his minor son, A. P. Tureaud Jr. As a result, his son became the first black student at LSU.

Death

Tureaud died in New Orleans in 1972, roughly a month shy of what would have been his 73rd birthday.

Personal life

Tureaud was

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

, a member of St Augustine Church and the Knights of Peter Claver. A. P. Tureaud Jr. is his son.

Honors

The subject has a statue at the beginning of A.P. Tureaud Street in the 7th ward.Campbell-Rock, C.C. (15 March 2021). "New Orleans HBCU graduates in the Modern Civil Rights Movement"
Louisiana Weekly website
Retrieved 29 July 2021.

Notes

References

* Rachel Lorraine Emanuel and Denise Barkis-Richter. ''Louisiana Public Broadcasting''

* Saint Augustine Church, Fauborg Treme, New Orleans

* New Orleans Public Library System
"Notable African Americans from Louisiana."
* Donald E. Devore and Joseph Logsdon. ''Crescent City Schools'', July 1991. . Chapters VI and VII. *
A More Noble Cause: A. P. Tureaud and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Louisiana (A Personal Biography).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tureaud, A.P. 1899 births 1972 deaths African-American Catholics Lawyers from New Orleans Louisiana Republicans Louisiana Democrats Howard University alumni American civil rights lawyers Activists from Louisiana 20th-century American lawyers Knights of Peter Claver & Ladies Auxiliary Roman Catholic activists 20th-century African-American lawyers