Segregation in the Field of Public and Private Law

This is the only known copy of the legal analysis that was used to justify the desegregation of Tulane University. The Louisiana Research Collection has digitized it and placed it online.

As a Tulane law student, David Lee Campbell clerked for the firm of Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent, Carrère & Denègre L.L.P. The firm’s founder, Joseph Merrick Jones, Jr. (who was also President of the Board of Administrators of Tulane University), asked Campbell to work on a private, secret project reporting only to him. That project led to Campbell’s report, “Segregation in the Field of Public and Private Law—Status of the Tulane University of Louisiana,” which he delivered on September 4, 1959. The sixty-page report covered a wide swath of research into desegregation law, including areas to which it applied (jury cases, housing, the right to vote, restrictive covenants, labor unions, etc.), the Fourteenth Amendment, whether Tulane University was a private or public corporation, and laws and cases pertaining to Tulane. Campbell went on to graduate first in his class from Tulane Law School and earn a doctorate in law from Oxford University.

Attorney, historic preservationist, and environmentalist, David Lee Campbell was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1936 and spent his formative years in Fort Worth, Texas and Morocco. After receiving his BA from North Texas State University and his law degree from Tulane University, Campbell, a Marshall Scholar, earned his D. Phil. in law from Oxford University in 1963. He began his legal career with Lemle Kelleher, branched off to open the Law Offices of David Campbell, and eventually moved to Deutsch, Kerrigan, & Stiles. He was named "Outstanding Young Lawyer of Louisiana" in 1975. The Young Leadership Council named him a New Orleans "Role Model" in 1995.

Campbell’s environmental concerns led him to found the Little Tchefuncte River Association. As a historic preservationist, Campbell founded the Peniston-Gen Taylor Association to successfully stop the Mississippi River Bridge at Napoleon Avenue and then the proposed Riverfront Expressway. A past president of the Preservation Resource Center and the Louisiana Landmarks Society, in 2016 he received the Harnett T. Kane Award from the Louisiana Landmarks Society for significant lifetime contributions to historic preservation. He published his memoir, “A Double Life,” in 2016 and a book of poetry, “Nature all Around Us,” in 2017.

LaRC is proud to preserve David Campbell's papers. The guide to the David Campbell Papers is available online.