National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Office of Field Director of Louisiana

Historical Note

The Louisiana Field Office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) worked to coordinate activities and programs throughout the state in the areas of voter registration, as well as racial discrimination in education, economics, employment, and housing. The Field Office also worked in the areas of justice for violence based on race, as well as inequality and treatment of prisoners in the Louisiana State Prison system.

Early in 1966, Mary Jamieson, originally from Long Island, New York, and the first White student at Grambling College became Field Director for the NAACP in Louisiana. She was replaced in October that same year by Harvey Ronald H. Britton, a native of New York City, a posting he held for nine years. The Louisiana Field Office first organized a voter registration drive in advance of the 1966 Louisiana State Primary in August and supported the NAACP’s economic boycott against businesses in Ferriday, Louisiana, to end racial discrimination.

Programs to force compliance with the Louisiana State Compulsory School Attendance Law started in 1967 and Harvey Britton arrived in Louisiana to take up the post of Field Director. Under Britton’s leadership the Office intensified its efforts in the areas of voter registration, housing, and education in northern Louisiana and supported the appointment of Arthur J. Chapital, Sr., of the NAACP New Orleans branch to the Equal Employment Opportunity’s “watch dog” committee by the National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees. In 1968, the Director demanded the suspension of all policemen involved in an incident that resulted in the biting of four Black youths by a police dog. In 1969, the Field Office organized an inquiry into the sanitary conditions in the Leesville City Jail. From 1970 to 1976, the office supported the NAACP’s challenge to the Louisiana state law that provide aid to private schools; aided a boycott by Black students to end racial discrimination in the Iberville Parish Public Schools; investigated the treatment of inmates in the Louisiana State Prison at Angola; and supported the Baton Rouge branch’s investigation into a shootout involving a splinter group of the Black Muslims and the Baton Rouge Police.

In 1963, the Field Office Director called for a statewide leadership conference to discuss the shootings of Blacks by law enforcement officials. From 1974-1976, the Field Office worked for equality in higher education by assisting the Ad Hoc Committee to gain participation of Black colleges and universities in the Mid-Winter Sports Association. Though the NAACP and Field Office supported a plan to dismantle the dual system of higher education in Louisiana, the NAACP opposed any plan that would close Grambling and Southern Universities.

In May 1976, the Louisiana Field Office closed and all records and files of the Office were transferred to the Amistad Research Center.

Citation:

Abstract:

The records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Office of the Field Director of Louisiana.

Fairglough, Adam, Race and Democracy: the Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1995.

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