I’m thankful that Charles and Dorothy Prevost were the kind of people they were and the kind of parents they were. Because of them, my childhood was much different from what it might have been.
The Prevosts and thousands of others watched as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 that it is unconstitutional to racially segregate public schools, a 9-0 decision that overturned the high court's precedent establishing a "separate but equal†doctrine in Louisian’s Plessy v. Ferguson case.
A bit more than four months later, Tessie Prevost was born to Charles and Dorothy Prevost. Just over a year later, I was born to Leatrice and William Sutton.
The Prevosts and thousands of others watched as year after year as White people who wouldn’t want to be called segregationists today fought to keep Black kids out of classrooms where their White children were used to getting an education with no Black children in the school. Only occasionally were Black cafeteria, maintenance and sanitation workers seen.
When Tessie Prevost was 6 years old, her parents made a critical, important and selfless decision. They decided that their daughter would attend a previously all-White elementary school, , along with Gail Etienne and Leona Tate, both 6. On the same day, elsewhere in the Lower 9th Ward, Ruby Bridges, also 6, integrated William Frantz Elementary School.
Gail, Leona, Ruby and Tessie were brave little girls to face loud, ugly crowds shouting things no good parent would want their child to hear at that age. But they didn’t make those decisions.
Abon and Lucille Bridges, Ruby’s parents; Robert Sr. and Doris Mae Webb, Gail’s parents; Roy Davis and May Pauline Leffert “Louise†Tate, Leona’s parents, and Charles and Dorothy Prevost, Tessie’s parents, made difficult, history-making decisions to send their children, their daughters. I’m not sure I could’ve done that with my own flesh and blood.
“I was so afraid, I used to pray every morning when my baby would leave,†Dorothy Prevost said years later.
"Sometimes I’d be crying,†. “My only child, scared, with those White people chanting... and calling us all kinds of names.â€
These children’s parents made the right decisions for their daughters, their families, Black families everywhere — and me. The first day of public school integration in New Orleans was Nov. 14, 1960. That’s in the usual history books. What isn’t often in history books is that it wasn’t the last challenging day for first graders Gail, Leona, Ruby and Tessie and their parents.
Just two years later, when they started third grade, Dorothy Prevost and the other parents decided not enough had changed. Gail, Leona and Tessie transferred to T.J. Semmes Elementary School. Semmes was still all-White. They were integrating a second school.
They and Bridges had national attention and U.S. Marshal protection when they integrated the first New Orleans public schools in 1960. There was little national attention and no marshal protection this time. White parents kept their kids out of school rather than send them to school with Black children at McDonogh 19. At Semmes, White kids were in the majority, and the sickening shouts and chides from two years before were inside Semmes, in the cafeteria and on the playground.
It was still happening when I followed them to Semmes in 1965. White people didn’t want my siblings and me at the school, and they made it clear. But they and we were at school, getting an integrated education.
Dorothy Prevost wasn’t finished. In 1963, she sent her daughter Tessie to join Gail and Leona to integrate a third school, Joseph Kohn Junior High School. Once again, they faced ugliness, name-calling and more. Once again, I followed, attending Kohn, a short distance from Frantz.
Tessie passed away in 2024. She was 69. Her mother passed away Feb. 20. She was 94. I learned about Dorothy Prevost’s death just hours after she left us. My heart sank.
She was the last surviving parent of those who put their children in harm’s way for the greater good. When I was honored with a legacy award by the New Orleans Association of Black Journalists in October, it was a blessing and an honor to have Dorothy Prevost accept my invitation to join my wife and my family at my table for the jazz scholarship brunch. She was beautiful, happy and regal. But she was also concerned about things happening in our nation. There was still fight in her, and she’d share it with anyone who would listen.
Thank you for sharing with me, Mrs. Prevost. And thank you for making my childhood education better than it might have been.