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The Louisiana Education Association (originally the Louisiana Colored Teachers Association) was a professional organization representing African-American teachers in Louisiana during the period of racial segregation in the United States. The Association existed from its founding in 1901 to the merger with the white-only Louisiana Teachers’ Association in 1976, forming the Louisiana Association of Educators.

Background

Since 1724, slaves in Louisiana had been guaranteed some amount of education, but in the years leading up to the Civil War, slave codes prohibited teaching slaves to read or write. Although the state was home to the most prosperous and educated free black population in the United States, increasing repression limited the success of private free black schools. After the Civil War, the Louisiana State Constitution of 1868 specifically prohibited segregated public schools, but due to the proliferation of white-only private schools and the refusal of the Louisiana legislature to support an integrated public school system, there was de facto segregation, with not a single white child attending New Orleans public schools by November of 1868. Although African-American educators made some progress in the 1870s, Democratic victories in the state in 1879 led to drastic cuts in education funding, and by the end of the 19th century, there were no high schools for black students in the state. In response to the generally poor state of education in Louisiana, white educators organized the Louisiana Teachers’ Association in 1892.

Foundation and growth

Under the new Louisiana Constitution of 1898, which required segregation in public schools, African-American educators recognized that they would have to take action on the education issue in order to challenge the political structure of the state. J. B. LaFargue and other teachers organized the Louisiana Colored Teachers Association (LCTA) in 1901, initially following the advice of Booker T. Washington to advocate for industrial and vocational education for African-Americans.

For the first three decades of its existence, the LCTA had no permanent headquarters or records, and no executive officer, but held annual conventions, founded the Louisiana Colored Teachers Journal in 1925, and helped form local associations in every parish that had schools for black students. A 1930 study of state spending on education showed gross inequality between white and black students. The national average for annual spending was $99 per student, but in Louisiana, it was $38.74 for white students and only $6.01 for black students. In some parishes the disparity was even worse; East Feliciana Parish spent almost twenty times as much on white students as on black students. To combat this inequality, the LCTA helped establish both the Louisiana Parent Teachers Association and the Louisiana Interscholastic Athletic and Literary Association, and worked to ensure that public school textbooks fairly and accurately represented African-American contributions to the country. The LCTA was chartered on March 24, 1937.

Post-World War II changes

During the Second World War, in response to the finding that approximately 58% of African-American men who registered for the draft in Louisiana were ruled ineligible, mostly due to lack of education, the LCTA began to take a more aggressive and comprehensive leadership role in the struggle for civil rights. New initiatives included the formation of teachers’ credit unions and a cooperative group insurance plan, support for enforcement of a new compulsory attendance law, and organized opposition to new race-based salary schedules for teachers. Of these, the single pay scale became the driving issue of the immediate post-War years, with the LCTA funding all of the suits filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in the state. An African-American teacher in 1947 made approximately 82% of the salary of a similarly qualified white teacher. By October of 1948, the LCTA had eight cases in Louisiana courts challenging the pay inequity, and some parishes had begun to increase pay for black teachers voluntarily in response. The legislature took action that year and instituted a state-wide single pay scale for all Louisiana teachers.

In 1947, on the recommendation of LCTA president J.K. Haynes, the association officially changed its name to the Louisiana Education Association (LEA) and established its headquarters in Baton Rouge. Along with the new name, the association’s leadership took a bolder approach toward short-term goals and a more active role in state politics, providing an increasingly sought-after endorsement to politicians who supported the association’s goals. in 1953, the LEA’s Statewide Citizens Committee on Equal Education had 26 cases either in or ready for court, challenging segregation at every educational level from grade school to university. The constitutionality of separate but equal public education was settled with the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, but Louisiana did not experience significant desegregation until 1969.

From 1958 to 1960, a battle went on with state and federal courts ordering desegregation on one side and the Louisiana legislature and governor enacting emergency legislation to keep schools segregated on the other. The LEA supported the desegregation drive through the publication of the Legislative Bulletin to inform the association’s members of the ongoing status of their legal challenges, and by allocating $100,000 for interest-free loans in Orleans Parish in case the governor and legislature placed a hold on teacher pay. The association gained significant recognition in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson invited the LEA’s executive secretary, J. K. Haynes, to participate in the White House Conference of Educators.

Merger

The National Education Association (NEA), with which the LEA was affiliated, passed “Resolution 12” in 1964, requiring all affiliated associations to remove all membership restrictions based on race, religion, or ethnicity by July 1, 1996 and integrate racially distinct state associations. Louisiana was one of six states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina, that still had segregated teachers’ associations at this time. The LEA and its white counterpart, the Louisiana Teachers’ Association (LTA) formed a joint committee on merger in 1967, which produced two opposing proposals the following year: the LEA wanted to form a new organization, but the LTA wanted to merge the two under its own constitution. The primary disagreement in the conflict was over whether the members of the LEA would be guaranteed sufficient representation under the new order. On June 25, 1969, dissatisfied with the lack of resolution, the NEA suspended the two Louisiana associations until that December, and threatened to disaffiliate both if the merger was not approved. The LEA voted to accept the merger under the terms of an NEA factfinder, but the LTA refused and was disaffiliated by the NEA, making the LEA the only nationally recognized education association in Louisiana. Finally, after two additional votes in which the voting membership of the LTA refused the terms of a merger by narrow margins, the LEA merged with the LTA to form the Louisiana Association of Educators on December 1, 1977, making Louisiana the last state in the nation to form a single desegregated education association. After his presidential address at the 1977 annual meeting of the NEA, John Ryor recognized three members of the LEA, Allan West, Sam Ethridge, and Jim Williams, for their work in effecting the historic merger, “thereby strengthening the teaching profession and advancing the cause of education.”