Alexander Pierre Tureaud (February 26, 1899 – January 22, 1972) was the attorney for the New Orleans chapter of the NAACP during the civil rights movement. With the assistance of Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, A.P. Tureaud, as he was known, filed the lawsuit that successfully ended the system of Jim Crow segregation in New Orleans. That case paved the way for integrating the first two elementary schools in the Deep South.
New Orleans was one of the most segregated cities in the nation when the movement for civil rights began. The Plessy v. Ferguson case, 163 U.S. 537, of 1896, began in the New Orleans court system. This was the United States Supreme Court decision that made segregation legal throughout the United States. [1]
New Orleans attorney A.P. Tureaud initiated a suit on behalf of Earl Benjamin Bush calling for an end to the segregated school system in Orleans Parish. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court overturned the Plessy decision and ruled that segregated schools are unconstitutional. The high court ordered that public schools be desegregated “with all deliberate speed.” In 1956, the US Court of Appeals set aside multiple attempts by the Louisiana Legislature to thwart integration efforts.
In July 1959, Federal Judge J. Skelly Wright ordered the Orleans Parish School Board to integrate its schools. After a series of aptitude tests, Gail Etienne, Leona Tate, Ruby Bridges, and Tessie Prevost were selected to fulfill the court’s mandate. On November 14, 1960, three of the four children became students at McDonough #19 School at 5909 St. Claude Avenue and Ruby Bridges began classes at William Frantz School at 3811 North Galvez Street.
Tureaud retired in 1971. He died in New Orleans at the age of 73. His papers are archived at the Amistad Research Center, at Tilton Hall on the campus of Tulane University.[2] London Ave., a thoroughfare in New Orleans, was renamed A.P. Tureaud Avenue in his honor. Marie C. Couvent School at 2021 Pauger Street was renamed after him in 1999.
Tureaud Hall on the campus of LSU was named for A.P. Tureaud, Sr. His son, A.P. Tureaud, Jr., was LSU's first African American undergraduate student. [3]
Tureaud was a Republican until 1944, when he changed his registration to Democrat.