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Alexander Pierre Tureaud Sr.
Alexander Pierre Tureaud Sr.
Born	February 26, 1899; New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Died	January 22, 1972 (aged 72); New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Alma mater	Howard University
Occupation(s)	Attorney; Civil rights activist
Political party	Republican-turned-Democratic (1944)
Children	A. P. Tureaud Jr.

Alexander Pierre "A. P." Tureaud Sr. (February 26, 1899 – January 22, 1972)^[1] was an African-American attorney who headed the legal team for the New Orleans chapter of the NAACP during the Civil Rights Movement. With the assistance of Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, A. P. Tureaud filed the lawsuit that successfully ended the system of Jim Crow segregation in New Orleans. That case paved the way for integrating the first two elementary schools in the Deep South.

Career

Background

Jim Crow laws 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 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.^[2]

Louis Berry, the civil rights attorney from Alexandria 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.^[3]

Cases

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court overturned Plessy and ruled in Brown v. Board of Education 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 NAACP.

Tureaud also filed suit in 1953 against the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors seeking desegregation on behalf of his minor son, A. P. Tureaud Jr.^[4] As a result, his son became the first black student at LSU.^[5]

Death

Tureaud died in New Orleans in 1972,^[1] roughly a month shy of what would have been his 73rd birthday.

Personal life

Tureaud was Catholic, a member of St Augustine Church and the Knights of Peter Claver.^[6] 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.^[7]

Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Richardson, Christopher M.; Luker, Ralph E. (2014). "Tureaud, Alexander Pierre 'A. P.' (1899–1972)". Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement (2nd ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 372–373. ISBN 9780810860643. LCCN 2013-45735. OCLC 863100777.
^ R. Bentley Anderson, Black, White, And Catholic: New Orleans Interracialism, 1947-1956, October 30, 2005. ISBN 0-8265-1483-9.
^ "Rachel L. Emanuel, History: Black Lawyersin Louisiana Prior to 1950" (PDF). lsba.org. August–September 2005. p. 108. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 12, 2012. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
^ "Board of Supervisors of Louisiana State University Agricultural and Mechanical et al, Appellants, v. Alexander P. Tureaud Jr., a Minor, by Alexander P. Tureaud Sr., his father, Appellee". openjurist.org. January 6, 1956. p. 895. Retrieved July 12, 2015.
^ "Honored 58 years after integrating LSU". The Louisiana Weekly. August 1, 2011.
^ Honora, Jari C. (July 7, 2013). "A Man for All Seasons: A. P. Tureaud". CreoleGen. Archived from the original on May 5, 2014. Retrieved June 28, 2021.
^ Campbell-Rock, C.C. (15 March 2021). "New Orleans HBCU graduates in the Modern Civil Rights Movement". Louisiana Weekly website Retrieved 29 July 2021.