In 1960, when Leona Tate was only six years old, she became a civil rights leader in her community as she and two other Black girls desegregated New Orleans’ McDonogh Public School. Decades later, Dr. Tate reopened the closed McDonogh school building using National Park Service grants totaling in $1.5 million dollars in funding. The building, now known as the TEP Center, operates as a community and education center as well as affordable housing for seniors.
MPS Episode 6: Dr. Leona Tate Transcript
[intro music] Dave: Welcome to My Park Story, presented by the National Park Service. People form connections with their favorite national parks and programs, and this park-cast is a place to come together and share those stories. I’m your host, Dave Barak. Today's guest is NPS grants recipient, Dr. Leona Tate.
[intro music fades out] Dave (voiceover): In 1960, when Leona Tate was only six years old, she became a civil rights leader in her community as she and two other Black girls desegregated New Orleans McDonogh Public School. Decades later, Doctor Tate reopened the closed McDonogh School Building using National Park Service, Save America's Treasures, and African American Civil Rights Grants totaling $1.5 million in funding. The building, now known as the TEP Center, operates as a community and Education Center as well as affordable housing for seniors. This week marks the desegregation anniversary, which took place 63 years ago. Here is Doctor Tate's story.
Dave: It is my great honor today to be speaking with Dr. Leona Tate of the Leona Tate Foundation. Her story is an inspiration and the work that she has done with her foundation and with help from the Park Service is truly community, community-building and we're really excited to have her. Let's start from the beginning. You attended the McDonogh school when you were a girl, is that correct?
Dr. Tate: Yes. Yeah. Six years old. Yes.
Dave: Six years old. What was this event that you needed to prepare yourself for as a six year old girl?
Dr. Tate: New Orleans had selected two elementary schools that had formerly been an all white school to be desegregated, and it was three at McDonogh 19 where I attended- myself, Gail Etienne and Tessie Prevost and it was Ruby Bridges at William Frantz [Elementary School] and I was one of the little girls that was selected for that process. We had to be prepared a special way. We had to be rigorously psychologically tested. It was strange for a 5-year-old girl, you know, we didn't understand what was happening, but we knew something different was about to happen. And, but I knew I was going to a new school. Very excited about going to a new school because I was not happy with my old school. We were selected from an application that was placed in the newspaper for children in the 9th Ward area of New Orleans. There were, like, 140 families that turned these applications in. The criteria was very high. There was five families that were selected. We had to be psychologically tested and just doing, you know, different things to make sure we could endure what we were about to face. Out of the 140, I said five was selected but only four participated, because the criteria asked you to be a whole family, you could not be without a dad in the household, and one of the girls was without a dad, so she couldn't participate.
Dave: Do you know what your parents’ reasons were to want their girl to go to a newly desegregated school?
Dr. Tate: The only thing I could remember my mother ever saying was that she paid her taxes and she felt like I could go to get an education at a better school. But she had so much support, you know. So I think, you know, even though she was stron- willed, you know, I know she needed that backup to to go through this, and you know, both parents, and I really think that's really what got us true- my mother just wasn't, she wasn't giving up. She wasn't giving up. She just stood her ground. She was standing her ground.
Dave: You wanted to go, you said, because you didn't like your old school- but did you know what the challenges were going to be?
Dr. Tate: I had no idea, no idea. When I woke up that morning, I was, my house had family and friends that you would have thought it was a holiday, just somebody doing something to prepare. And everybody seemed to be in a good spirit, you know, things going along smoothly, and then all of a sudden a car pulled up in the front of the door, it was a black car. And one of the marshals got out and he came to the door and my house got real quiet and I can remember that silence today. I can remember that. So I knew then in the back of my mind, well what's going on. I knew something was about to happen. So before we approach the door, my mother had already told me when I got to the car and sat down to the back of the seat, don’t face to the window. And I tell children today, obedience had to play a big part of what we have to do because we really had to listen. And I was excited because I was getting a ride to school; I had been walking...
Dr. Tate: ...eleven miles to go to the old school and this school was in my neighborhood, you know, so I was very happy to be going to a new school
Dave: Going to the new school, which was in your neighborhood, did you know any of the other children? Did you know your classmates as neighbors or from other places around town?
Dr. Tate: I don't remember recognizing anybody when I got there. But you know, when we approached the school, we came in from th rear of the building and, you know, it was masses of people out front. I really, I didn't even pick up on the anger of the crowd. I just thought, to me, the only thing I could relate it to was that a parade was coming.
Dr. Tate: Because I knew I knew a parade passed on that street. We entered the building, and it took us about half the day to get placed in the classroom. They asked us to take a seat on the bench that was outside the principal's office, and we sat there quite a while before they wanted to put us in the classroom. But I remember getting going into class, it was a full body of students, but I don't remember recognizing anybody, but I know our neighborhood was a mixed neighborhood at that tim, but I don't remember children my age, you know what I'm saying? And I tried to speak to a little girl that totally ignored me; it was like I was invisible. But before you know it, their parents were pulling all the white students out, they were leaving, and by 3:00, they were all gone. We went only three in that building for the entire year and a half.
Dave: Did that register with you as a child?
Dr. Tate: Not right away, it didn't. You know, and like, I thought, I thought a parade was coming and I really thought that's why they were leaving, to go outside and watch the parade. And I kind of think, remember asking my mom why everybody gets to watch the parade, and I thought it was Mardi Gras because that's what it looked like. And she said that wasn't the case, but it didn't affect me. We didn't question it at all, you know. We know we wound up being the only three students, but we were comfortable at McDowell 19. We were very comfortable, you know, and and it was just a normal day. We we just couldn't play outside. We couldn't eat from the school, we had to bring out food and beverages. Water fountains were turned off. We couldn't see outside, no one could see inside. Didn't realize how protected we were and how confined we were, for protection.
Dave: It sounds like, in an effort to desegregate McDonogh that they, in effect, re-segregated it with only Black students in one class and white students in the other classes.
Dr. Tate: There was no white students in the other class. They all left.
Dave: They all left the school completely.
Dr. Tate: They all left the school completely. There were two brothers that lasted only till the end of the week- but we never saw them, they were in another part of the building. But all of the students were gone. When I said this was an empty building with just the three of us, it was an empty building with just the three of us. The teachers were in their classroom because they had gotten a telegram that morning saying that if they didn't report to work, they didn't have a job. But no other teacher had students but my teacher.
Dave: And how long did that last? That lasted for a day, a month?
Dr. Tate: A year and a half. We ended up first grade that way and we started 2nd grade the same way, the same way.
Dave: What changed in the middle of 2nd grade?
Dr. Tate: Well, Christmas came and when we came back, 25 other students had joined us, but they were all Black except two sisters. And well, after second grade, McDonogh 19 had become a school for Black students and we were transferred, because they wanted to keep the three of us in the white environment, to another all white school. So when we got transferred, we didn't have the marshals, or the police protection anymore. So in this transfer was at T.J. Semmes School, and that's where we faced integration. We endured it a lot.
Dr. Tate: We endured it a lot, but we had to endure it for it to work.
Dave: When did it dawn on you that you were part of the civil rights movement? Dr. Tate: I don't think I understood that it was a movement, a civil rights movement, for a while, but I know in 3rd grade, we did realize that it was because the color of our skin that we weren't wanted. I think around the time, maybe 4th or 5th grade, I think around when, it might have been around when President Kennedy was assassinated, or I think mostly around when Martin Luther King was assassinated, you know, we were watching it on TV. And and I can remember my family talking and things like that and, you know, just things that they were talking made me know that that I was a part of of that, of that type of movement. And, but it took a while, it took a while- because, you know, I kind of like wanted to know and didn't want to know, because it was so overwhelming, until I just didn't want to really talk about it, you know.
Dave: You were integrated into McDonogh in 1960, is that correct? Dr. Tate: Correct. Dave: OK, So it would have been roughly 8 years later, Doctor King was assassinated in 1968. I look back on these parts of recent history for Black civil rights, for gay rights, women's rights, and I think, I don't know if I, Dave, would have the fortitude to be brave and stand up. And here I am sitting, speaking with you and this is within your lifetime, it's within my parents lifetime, that this was all occurring. So your story is inspirational, and I am so pleased to see the work that you do now, as a culmination of your life's experiences. And I want to make sure that we talk about what became of the McDonogh school, because you were so instrumental in creating what it is today. What happened after you left McDonogh, and then what became of it?
Dr. Tate: McDonogh stayed at school, but it was, you know, it was focused on Black students at that time. It went through a few changes. They had a name change in in the 80s, late 80s I think, and they renamed it Louis Armstrong. Then Hurricane Katrina came, and but it wasn't the hurricane that shut it down, it closed down, it was a failing school after a while. It got water damage on the bottom floor, and a lot of wind damage on the 2nd and the 3rd floor. But this building has always been sentimental to me, Gail and Tessie so, you know, when we were allowed to come back in this area to see our losses, my dad still lived in the community, it was a must that I come and see what the building looked like, which we couldn't come in yet, but we could pass, and it looked fine, you know, it it didn't look like anything. And then, just in the midst of the crowd talking, I come to find out that they were only going to reopen one school back here in that area, I said, well, why they can't really do something with this building and have a school, so if people try to come home, they don't have enough space to bring kids? Well, everybody I talked to wasn't for that idea, you know. They had already decided to close it. They didn't know if they were going to tear it down, they were going to refurbish it to something else, or sell it, you know. So we did form the foundation, and finally, finally got an answer that this would never be a school again because schools are now required to be on 3 acres of land and it's only on 1.8 acres of land.
Dr. Tate: But it's three stories high. So I I just couldn't understand that. But nobody remembered what had happened at the building, you know, so I went to the school board, I had to do a presentation and tell the story of what had happened here. And you know, that kind of like made people start thinking and remembering. It was one member on the board that kind of remembered those days because he was older than the rest of the board members, and they had already put up a sale sign and an auction sign on it. And so they, I don't know- it must have been prayers that day, because they decided to reassess- not just this building, it was a few other buildings in the city- and see, you know, what could be done. But they still anticipated maybe tearing it down. So we went to the state and I had to do a presentation at the state to have it put on a National Historic registry.
Dave: Right. Dr. Tate: And it happened, and it happened. And I think that's what saved it from being torn down. But that gave us time to try to think of something, because I knew it needed to be something educational, it needed to be. Dave: When did that designation come?
Dr. Tate: Oh, my God, what year was that? 2014, 2015? Somewhere in there.
Dr. Tate: Yeah, somewhere in that area, yeah.
Dave: OK. And at what point did you have the spark of an idea of what you and your foundation would do with this historic building?
Dr. Tate: Well since our story had been lost, I thought, why not have something here that they can know what happened here? You know, I didn't know, at that time, I didn't know what I was thinking. I kept saying, well, a museum. You know we don't, New Orleans didn't have a civil rights museum at that time. And that's just what I kept thinking about, you know, and I kept talking to people, and I finally got introduced to a developer that finally said that my vision could be done.
Dr. Tate: And that's what happened. So that's when we took a chance in applying for the National Park Service grant. We didn't think we're going to get it that first try.
Dt. Tate: And we got it, yes, we did.
Dave: That was your first African American Civil Rights Grant from the National Park Service.
Dr. Tate: Exactly, sure was.
Dave: OK, and that one was for, I think, $500,000.
Dave: Followed by another one for $500,000.
Dr. Tate: And then another one.
Dave: And then another one. The third one is Saving America's Treasures, and that was for the final $500,000. And with these grants, what what have you created? What did you create with your passion and energy and your foundation? And then now you have this operating budget.
Dr. Tate: Well, the Old McDonogh 19 School building is now, TEP is short for Tate, Etienne and Proevost, because I always promised Gail and Tessie that if I ever got my hands on this building, it would be named after the three of us, and that's what I did. So the bottom floor, which used to be in an auditorium space and classrooms, is now classrooms plus the interpretive center that tells the history and of what happened during the 1960s, and tell other histories, too, that we can host here, and that's my vision for the TEP Center, is to not just tell about our story, tell about all local stores here in New Orleans. And we also have two floors of affordable apartments for seniors, 55 and olders, 25 apartments.
Dr. Tate: On the second and third floor, yes.
Dave: Oh, that's amazing. And I think about, I used to live in Louisiana, by the way, I lived in Lafayette. And so I I mean, I think about what I've seen in other cities where a building, a school, church, a brewery, I mean a store, whatever, you know, is no longer used and it's just, oh, we're just gonna make luxury condos. And you took McDonogh 19, you created the TEP center, and it's so interesting to me that you've made housing a part of that project, because your foundation is not solely based on teaching civil rights and anti-racism, but focus on women's rights, LGBTQ rights, housing. There's so many things that your foundation does beyond just action on civil rights. And this is such a concrete way to express your dedication to addressing the housing crisis. It's out of this world, and it's...
Dr. Tate: Right, and my first focus was to try to get elders that had been relocated for Katrina and wanted to come home. But nobody kept track of people like that, so, you know, we almost failed. We're just about, we got two left, two apartments left.
Dave: I'm so grateful to you, Dr. Tate, for your time and for sharing this story with me and with our listeners. And it's so important as the National Park Service that we're not just these beautiful national parks, but we strive to help projects within communities, foundations that are aiding their communities. Thank you for sharing with us all of these stories, Dr. Tate. You are incredible.
Dr. Tate: Thank you. So nice to meet you.
