Crescent City Schools: Public Education in New Orleans, 1841-1991

Public Education in New Orleans, 1841-1991 by Donald E. DeVore and Joseph Logsdon with a chapter on the architecture of education by John C. Ferguson and an epilogue by Everett J. Williams In 1841 New Orleans opened its public schools with the personal assistance of Horace Mann, the early champion of public education in the United States. Those first schools launched public schooling not only in the Crescent City but throughout Louisiana and much of the Deep South. At the time, New Orleans was the only large city of the slave South in a majority black state. The problems of race are, as a result, deeply rooted in its public schools. Longer than any other urban school system, the Crescent City’s public schools have faced the challenge of racial equity. During the Civil War, the Union generals who governed New Orleans began the first system of public schooling for black children in the South. When the war ended, black and white visionaries framed a new state government that brought even