Photo from A.P. Tureaud.org
A.P. Tureaud (1899-1972) -- prominent civil rights attorney & activist
Alexander Pierre Tureaud was born in New Orleans in 1899, three years after the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that established the "separate but equal" doctrine of legalized racial segregation. In 1925, he completed law school at Howard University. Two years later, he returned home to New Orleans and was admitted to the Louisiana Bar Association. In 1927, he joined the NAACP as an attorney for their Legal Defense Fund, filing lawsuits to desegregate schools, businesses, and public facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi. Between 1937 and 1947, Tureaud was the only black lawyer in the state of Louisiana.
From the early 1940's through the 1960's, Tureaud handled nearly all desegregation and civil rights cases filed in Louisiana. Among them, Tureaud successfully obtained equal pay for Louisiana's black teachers and the admission of qualified students-- regardless of color-- to state-supported professional, graduate and undergraduate schools. He fought to end segregation on city buses in Louisiana, and he successfully defended one of the first sit-in cases to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Tureaud died on January 22, 1972. At his funeral, his longtime associate and noted civil rights attorney, Thurgood Marshall, delivered the eulogy.
Learn more about this history maker:
Black Life in Old New Orleans by
African Americans, their city, and their past. Capturing 300 years of history and focusing on African American communities' social, cultural, and political pasts, this book captures a significant portion of the diversity that is New Orleans. Author Keith Weldon Medley's research encompasses Congo Square, Old Treme, Louis Armstrong, Fannie C. Williams, Mardi Gras, and more in this groundbreaking work. He creates a comprehensive history of New Orleans and the black experience.
A More Noble Cause by
Throughout the decades-long legal battle to end segregation, discrimination, and disfranchisement, attorney Alexander Pierre Tureaud was one of the most influential figures in Louisiana's courts. A More Noble Cause presents both the powerful story of one man's lifelong battle for racial justice and the very personal biography of a black professional and his family in the Jim Crow--era Louisiana. During a career that spanned more than forty years, A. P. Tureaud was at times the only regularly practicing black attorney in Louisiana. From his base in New Orleans, the civil rights pioneer fought successfully to obtain equal pay for Louisiana's black teachers, to desegregate public accommodations, schools, and buses, and for voting rights of qualified black residents. Tureaud's work, along with that of dozens of other African American lawyers, formed part of a larger legal battle that eventually overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized racial segregation. This intimate account, based on more than twenty years of research into the attorney's astounding legal and civil rights career as well as his community work, offers the first full-length study of Tureaud. An active organizer of civic and voting leagues, a leader in the NAACP, a national advocate of the Knights of Peter Claver -- a fraternal order of black Catholics -- and a respected political power broker and social force as a Democrat and member of the Autocrat Club and Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, Tureaud worked tirelessly within the state and for all those without equal rights. Both an engrossing story of a key legal, political, and community figure during Jim Crow--era Louisiana and a revealing look at his personal life during a tumultuous time in American history, A More Noble Cause provides insight into Tureaud's public struggles and personal triumphs, offering readers a candid account of a remarkable champion of racial equality.