Byrd, Daniel Ellis, 1910-1984

Dates

• Existence: 1910 - 1984

Biographical Note

Deeply involved with the NAACP for a number of years, Daniel Ellis Byrd served in various positions within the organization, including President and Organizer of the NAACP State Conference of Branches, Assistant Director of the Department of Teacher Information and Job Security, and Field Secretary of the Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Byrd assisted in many desegregation cases throughout the south and in Illinois.

Daniel Ellis Byrd was born January 3, 1910, in Phillips County, Arkansas. The Byrd family moved to Gary, Indiana, in 1920, and Daniel graduated from the city's Froebel High School nine years later. Byrd attended Crane College and Northwestern University between 1929 and 1935, graduating from Northwestern with a Bachelors of Arts degree.

Byrd played professional basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters from 1935-1936 before moving to New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1937. He served as President and Organizer of the NAACP State Conference of Branches from 1939-1947. Byrd aided in the suit of Joseph McKelpin v. Orleans Parish School Board (1941-1948), which equalized teachers' salaries in the parish public schools; in Wiley Butler McMillan v. Iberville Parish School Board, which brought about equal teachers' salaries in that parish; and worked with A.P. Tureaud in the voter registration case of Edward Hall v. T.J. Nagel, Registrar of Voters of St. John the Baptist Parish.

In 1946, Byrd served on a three-man NAACP team that investigated the "blow torch" lynching of John C. Jones in Minden, Louisiana, and supplied the names of the lynchers to the United States Department of Justice. The following year, he joined the professional staff of the NAACP as a Regional Coordinator. From 1948-1960, Byrd served on the First Citizens' Advisory Committee of New Orleans during the tenor of Mayor deLessup S. Morrison.

During 1949-1950, Byrd worked on desegregation cases in Cairo and Alton, Illinois. In 1950, he was appointed Field Secretary of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. The following year, he served as a conciliator during the St. Louis riots.

Byrd aided the cases of Autherine Lucy and Pollyanna Myers in their 1950-1952 suit against the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. From 1951-1967, he assisted in the school integration case of Oliver Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board. In 1952, he investigated the charges of discrimination in the United Packinghouse Workers of America union in Atlanta and worked on Georgia school desegregation. The following year, Byrd assisted with research on the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment and segregation during the Reconstruction era for the appellants in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

Byrd provided technical assistance in the desegregation suit of Clara Dell Constantine v. Southwestern Louisiana Institute (1953-1956) and in the Alexander Pierre Tureaud Jr v. Louisiana State University case to desegregate the undergraduate school at that university (1953-1963). Between 1953 and 1963, he aided in the litigation of Priscilla Angel v. Louisiana State Board of Education, a suit aimed at desegregating the state's trade schools.

In 1954, Byrd assisted in the suit to desegregate Louisiana State University of Law, Roy Wilson v. Louisiana State University Board of Supervisor. He was appointed the Assistant Director of the NAACP Department of Teacher Information and Job Security the following year. From 1954-1970, he aided the plaintiff in Clifford Eugene Davis v. East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, which integrated the parish public schools. In Arnease Ludley v. Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors (1956-1962), Byrd aided in the challenge of the state law that required students to get a certificate of "good moral character" from their high school principals while at the same time prohibited principals from signing such a certificate if it disrupted the pattern of segregation.

Between 1956 and 1970, Byrd gave technical assistance in school desegregation cases in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, and Illinois. From 1967-1974, he served on the Louisiana Education Association-Louisiana Teacher Association Joint Committee, which negotiated the merger of the two organizations. In 1974, he served on the Louisiana Committee for the Dismantling of a Dual System of Higher Education. Byrd retired from the NAACP in 1977. He passed away in 1984.

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