Wisdom, Betty (Mary Elizabeth), 1930-2007

Dates

• Existence: 1930-2007

Biographical Statement

Betty Wisdom, was a prominent New Orleans civic leader who engaged in numerous philanthropic activities, among which were efforts to end segregation in the city's public school system. She was a founder of the Alliance for Affordable Energy and a member of organizations such as the Audubon Park Commission and the League of Woman Voters.

Born Mary Elizabeth Wisdom, to William B. and Mary Freeman Wisdom, Betty Wisdom was an heir to the Freeman family fortune. She attended Isidore Newman and Country Day schools in New Orleans, and later the National Cathedral School, a boarding school for girls, in Washington, DC, before entering Mount Holyoke College.

Betty Wisdom began a prominent role as a civil rights activist in the 1960s. Her activism cost her job as writer and reporter for the Orleans Parish School Board's radio station. She quit because the system did not permit employees to advocate for school desegregation. When the state legislature debated closing New Orleans' schools rather than integrating them, she testified before the legislature and protested against their efforts.



Wisdom was a director of Save Our Schools (SOS), a non-profit organization chartered on April 26, 1960 by a group of concerned parents and citizens "to further, by all proper and legitimate means, the continuation of a statewide system of free public education." They were dedicated to the task of keeping the public schools open by discouraging "white flight" from the system. Wisdom and other SOS members established a car pool to transport white children to the schools each morning. They escorted the few white children whose parents kept them in the city's first two integrated schools between their homes and the schools, and encouraged other white families to send their children to the integrated schools. They suffered verbal taunts and physical intimidation at the hands of the angry crowds of Whites outside the schools, and had to obscure their license plates to prevent unruly segregationists from getting their phone numbers and harassing them with threatening phone calls. They were forced to brave criticism and were ostracized by neighbors and friends.



Wisdom's Uncle, John Minor Wisdom, was a judge on the 5th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which issued many rulings that helped end segregation of the schools in New Orleans and throughout the South. President Lyndon Johnson appointed Betty Wisdom secretary of the Louisiana Civil Rights Commission, and New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu appointed her to the city's Human Relations Committee.



Wisdom was a member of the Audubon Park Commission for 23 years, serving as chair from 1976-1981. She is credited with saving the city zoo by convinced neighbors who were opposed to renovation to change their opposition and won public support for badly needed improvements. She was awarded the 1994 Times Picayune Loving Cup in recognition of her wide-ranging efforts to better the lives of New Orleanians. She died of complications from cancer on September 22, 2007 at Ochsner Medical Center.

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