Tulane University's
Louisiana Research Collection

The Robert C. Davey School, located in 1936 at 1307 Dryades St., between Erato and Thalia, was built on the site of two previous schools, the Webster School and the Jefferson School. Around 1911, it was named in honor of New Orleans politician Robert Charles Davey (1853-1908), who had served in the U. S. House of Representatives.   Later in the century, this building housed the  Myrtle Banks Elementary School.    LaRC Manuscripts Collection 184 consists of scrapbooks compiled by teachers and students of the Robert C. Davey School. Vol. 1 includes keepsakes commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the school in 1936, such as invitations, programs, telegrams, greeting cards, ribbons, buttons, leaves, children's artwork, mounted photographs of the school, teachers and other school employees, and other items of social ephemera. Vol. 2 includes school papers covering sessions in the 1950s. Images of the nineteenth-century schools on the locatio...

The Louisiana Research Collection has recently acquired the records of the First Unitarian Church of New Orleans. Among First Church’s records are the papers of Reverend Albert D’Orlando, who was a vocal Civil Rights activist in the 1960s. Reverend D’Orlando was especially active in the fight for the integration of New Orleans public schools. Below is a letter co-authored by Rev. D’Orlando and Charles Foster, the president of the church’s Board of Trustees, which describes the church’s the efforts  to support the families of children attending integrated schools, as well as teachers and protesters during this turbulent period in New Orleans’s history.  Transcription January 4, 1961 Dear Friends,                 Brotherhood itself is on trial today in New Orleans. At stake here is the future course of integration itself; for, it is clear that New Orleans will mark the turning point for ...

LaRC Manuscripts Collection 809 holds the records of the planning of a multi-purpose playground on the uptown New Orleans campus of Robert M. Lusher Elementary School (7315 Willow St.) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Lusher Playground Project, also called the Lusher School Community Recreation Area Project, came about because of a common need of the school’s enrolled students and other children living in adjacent neighborhoods of New Orleans, for a supervised play area after school hours. Racial tensions involved in this discussion are apparent in the collection's correspondence. The school leaders and students, parents, the school board, the city recreation agency (NORD), Tulane University School of Architecture, and other community members all collaborated successfully on this project, opening the grounds for community use in 1971. Included in the collection are handwritten and typed letters, printed newsletters, financial records (such as accounts, contribution records an...