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Thirty-two years ago, Ernest "Dutch" Morial forever changed the political landscape of New Orleans when he became the city's first Black mayor.
The year was 1977 and Blacks were still far from achieving the American dream.
Ernest Nathan Morial was raised in the city's culturally rich Seventh Ward, the son of Walter Etienne Morial, a cigarmaker, and Leonie V. (Moore) Morial, a seamstress. After attending Xavier Preparatory School, Dutch transferred to McDonogh 35 Senior High School, the city's first college preparatory high school for students of color. There, he played quarterback for the Roneagle football team before earning a bachelor's degree from Xavier University in 1951. In 1954 he made history by becoming the first Black student to earn a law degree from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
A year later, the McDonogh #35 alum married Sybil Haydel, a civic leader, and former Xavier University dean, with whom he had five children - sons Marc and Jacques, and daughters Julie, Cheri and Monique.
Sybil Morial, a Xavier Prep graduate, met Dutch when the two were teenagers. Morial, a former teacher at Henderson Dunn Elementary School in the Lower Ninth Ward, says she and Dutch were excited about the promise of greater opportunities for people of color in the wake of 1954's landmark Brown v. The Board of Education Supreme Court decision that outlawed public segregation. "When we met and started dating, it was all the excitement about the change that was coming because of the Supreme Court decision," she told The Louisiana Weekly Friday. "It was that milestone that brought us together and gave us something in common."
Mentored by legendary civil rights leader A.P. Tureaud, Morial used his legal expertise to dismantle segregation laws that forced Blacks to live as second-class citizens and served as president of the New Orleans branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1962 to 1965. After two unsuccessful bids for public office, Dutch Morial again made history when he became the first Black state legislator from New Orleans since Reconstruction, elected in 1967 to represent an Uptown New Orleans district.
On the heels of narrowly losing a bid to become a member of the New Orleans City Council two years later, he was elected the first Black Juvenile Court judge in 1970. Four years later, in 1974, he again made history by becoming the first Black elected to the Louisiana Fourth Circuit of Appeal.
Although few mainstream political pundits viewed him as a viable candidate, Dutch Morial made national history when he was elected the first Black mayor of the Crescent City in 1977, defeating City Councilman Joseph V. DiRosa by a vote of 90,500 to 84,300. Morial successfully became the city's first mayor of color by capturing 95 percent of the Black New Orleans vote and 20 percent of the city's white vote.
His ascendancy to become the city's chief executive officer ushered in a new era of politics in New Orleans that saw greater political participation among the Black masses and increased Black political representation on the New Orleans City Council, Orleans Parish School Board and a host of other public offices.
He served as mayor of New Orleans from 1978 to 1986.
National Urban League president Marc H. Morial, the son of Dutch Morial and the city's third Black mayor, said Friday that his parents "emphasized this idea of service to community and that (Dutch's election as mayor) was not for them simply a personal victory. It was a victory for the community, a victory for Black New Orleans, and their participation in the community was driven by their sense of commitment to change and service.
"My parents lived their lives according to that edict; that's the way they tried to raise us," Morial continued. "They did not emphasize it simply because my father had been elected mayor or my mother was doing important work in the community - they made it clear that they didn't think we were different or more special than anyone else. That's what I remember, being grounded."
Morial said he recognizes that same sober approach to his election in President Barack Obama and the First Family. "I see the same thing with Barack and Michelle Obama," he said. "I don't see them as being giddy because he's the president. I see them as people who want to remain who they are even though they have these tremendous responsibilities."
Sybil Morial had just begun working at Xavier and was active in the community at the time of Dutch's historic mayoral election. She says she was determined to keep her kids' heads out of the clouds. "I was very concerned that my children stay grounded, living in the 'fish bowl' and adjusting to that," she said. "I was determined to make them realize that this was just temporary. When he went out of office it was over, all of this attention and interest and so forth.
"I was balancing quite a bit, but my family was primary," she added. "My children were primary."
The former First Lady of New Orleans says she did everything possible to maintain a sense of normalcy in the Morial home. "They still had their responsibilities and they still knew that they had to do their best in school," she said. "There were people who wanted to be their friends because they were the mayor's children. I told them, 'You'll know who your friends are and you'll know those that are not your friends, that just want to be where you are and be in a good environment.'"
What advice would Sybil Morial give to Michelle Obama?
"Oh, she knows what to do," she told The Louisiana Weekly. "She's a good old Black mama. She knows how to keep her children in line. Really, you can't not give them all of your attention. They need it even moreso when they're in the limelight. I know she's going to do what she needs to do because she's a mother and her family comes first also. She has a strong mother who's there and she was raised to keep her feet on the ground. I think she's going to do very well and her children will too."
Sybil Morial says the night of her husband's historic election "was almost like the thrill that I felt when Obama was elected. Nobody thought (Dutch) was going to win... Dutch received a lot of discouragement but there were those that really believed that he could do it and that he would be a good mayor. As the campaign went along, it just looked more hopeful for him. But it was still quite an achievement. ...When the pollsters said 'You've got it,' it was unreal. Even though I felt in my gut we were going to win, there was still that doubt. It was a thrill. It was a thrill for everybody because it was a longshot."
"It was the product of a lot of hard work," Marc Morial said. "The campaign of 1977 was a very tough, hard-fought campaign. There was a sense of history. You're talking about 1977, 13 years after the Civil Rights Act, 12 years after the Voting Rights Act had passed. The signs of the buses and the water fountains hadn't been down 15 years when my father was elected.
"Like the Obama victory, if you had predicted a year before my father was elected mayor that he would have been elected mayor, that New Orleans would elect an African-American mayor, most people would have bet against it," he continued. "The odds were long. In the same fashion, if a year ago or so someone had said that Barack Obama would be the next president of the United States and that he would win a decisive victory, most people would bet against it. The fact that it was a victory against the odds, that's what I remember."
Asked about her husband's legacy, Sybil Morial said, "He just took on one challenge after another. He opened doors and in every instance a Black followed him... He opened the doors and this was an opportunity for Blacks to really be at the table.
"He was a very good mayor," she continued. "He had a good balance. He cared about all the people and had a special concern for poor people. He knew how important it was to serve all segments of the community. He had a sense of that, and that was the talent that he had."
Asked about the high expectations after the historic elections of Morial and Obama, Marc Morial said, "I don't think expectations are too high; I just think expectations are too high that things can happen immediately.
"Electing someone as a mayor or president is not like electing a king, queen or messiah," he continued. "You've elected someone who is going to take control of government. You have to have high expectations, but I think sometimes the expectations of immediate change are too soon. That's sort of beyond the ability of an elected official or reality.
"My father still had to contend with a majority-white city council," Morial said. "He had to contend with the fact that there were a large number of people who were not pleased that he won the election and they were determined to continue to oppose him. You see the same thing with President Obama. Even though he won a decisive victory, there are still those who are going to oppose him and vote against the stimulus plan. There are people who have just decided that there's nothing he can do; they're going to oppose him. We have to be mindful of the fact that in a democracy absolute power does not come with victory. With victory goes the ability to influence and a considerable amount of authority to make changes, but the opponents don't go away. The opposition does not lay down its arms; they will continue to battle and fight.
"That's one of the great lessons from my father's administration. Although he was successful and popular, he had to fight every step of the way to bring about change."
Morial recalled efforts by the state legislature to take over the New Orleans airport, Audubon Park and other New Orleans facilities. "He had to fight them and get the Louisiana Supreme Court to declare those takeover positions unconstitutional," he said. "The approach that many of his opponents took is 'We'll gut the power of the office now that the mayor is African-American."
Morial sees the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center as one of his father's "greatest legacies. There were a lot of people who were opposed to the convention center; some were opposed to the site," Morial said. "... I think those in the city, the entrenched, highly conservative interests, are still in 2009 longing for some sort of pre-Civil Rights New Orleans. I think it manifested itself in the effort to shrink the footprint of the city after Katrina where some of the same opposition said 'OK, the Black community is gone, let's make sure they don't come back.' People need to understand that the same old entrenched interest that fought the integration of the schools, the same mindset that fought the election of African Americans in City Hall, the same entrenched interests that still have some vision of a city where African Americans don't have any political influence. That's just the way it is.
"It's unfortunate that in New Orleans you still have some people holding on to that past," he continued. "They cloud it, put up smoke screens and make all kinds of arguments that in my mind are pretextual."
Morial was understandably angered by efforts of some New Orleans officials to remove Ernest N. Morial's name from the convention center. "I thought that was an act of complete disrespect," Morial told The Louisiana Weekly. "I think that they backed off because there was never any rationale for it. Quite frankly, here's New Orleans where you still have statues of Robert E. Lee, streets named after Jefferson Davis, and a statue of P.G.T. Beauregard. And in the past 30 years of so we've named some things after African Americans... My father's name is on the convention center because he was the prime proponent for getting the building built. It wasn't just 'Let's put Dutch's name on something.' He was the prime proponent of it and it passed unanimously in the legislature. The Convention Center Board doesn't have the ability or authority to change the name of the building."
Sybil Morial, who retired from Xavier University two months before Hurricane Katrina struck and has been living in Baton Rouge, La. near two of her daughters and several of her grandchildren ever since, is keeping busy these days writing her memoirs, which she expects to complete in June. The two chapters that have not yet been written are about Hurricane Katrina and the historic election of President Barack Obama.
She says there still remains a lot of work to be done to bridge the racial divide in New Orleans. "We have to have strong, intelligent and capable leadership that all people can trust," she said, "and someone who has a sense of strategic planning and performance. Someone who sees the whole picture the way Obama is doing it.
"It's going to take strong, intelligent leadership to pull us out of this hole that Katrina put us more deeply into," she continued. "I don't know who that's going to be. It's got to come at the top level, and then the City Council, then you need good representatives at the state level. And you need a governor who's going to be even-handed with New Orleans. We're kind of the stepchild in the legislature even though the state depends on New Orleans and its health."
Morial says she remains hopeful about the future of New Orleans and is "praying that we get new strong leadership that's going to start pulling this together. It's going to take somebody very capable and somebody who has a broad perspective about what's needed."
Marc Morial says his hometown and home state are going to have to find a way to move beyond racial enmity if things are going to take a turn for the better. "I believe that one of the most critical issues facing the future of Louisiana and New Orleans is whether there can be some racial reconciliation," he told The Louisiana Weekly. "There's a sense of holding on to the divisions of the past and a house divided cannot stand. There needs to be some coalition with give and take on all sides. New Orleans and Louisiana are going to have to grapple with that going forward."
While Morial calls the election of President Obama "a step in the right direction," he warns people to avoid assuming that we have "overcome."
“All electing people to public office represents is a seat at the table," he said, "a tool to bring about social and economic change. The issue is whether the conditions of people change. That's what we've got to keep our eye on."
This article was originally published in the February 02, 2009 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper
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