James Skelly Wright
(1911-1988)
(Courtesy: Harvard Law School Forum)
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Judge James Skelly Wright was born in New Orleans on January 14, 1911 and educated there. He received his J.D. degree from Loyola University School of Law in 1934, and served as Judge of U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana from 1949 to 1962 [1].
Judge Wright's service in New Orleans was terminated April 15, 1962, when he was commissioned to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Prior to his reassignment, he had been instrumental in enforcing the desegregation of public facilities in New Orleans, including the Orleans Parish public schools, which incurred the wrath of uptown society, the business community, and the then powerful White Citizens' Council of New Orleans [2].
Lolis Elie, a leading black lawyer, said: "The only man I know who stood hard and fast for change was Judge Skelly Wright, the federal judge. He was forcing the city to face the reality of having to integrate the school system." After the first day of school desegregation, Wright's effigy was hung from a post outside a high school [2].
One of Wright's last acts was his attempt to desegregate Tulane University in 1962, which ultimately was foiled by a newly-appointed conservative judge friendly to Tulane. By then, the hostility toward Wright and his wife by uptown society had made life in New Orleans intolerable. His appointment by President John Kennedy to the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, D.C. enabled Wright and his family to leave the city with dignity [2,3].
Southern scholar, Adam Fairclough, wrote: “As for Skelly Wright, some believe that his Tulane judgment, as much as his schools decisions, made his position in New Orleans untenable. With Louisiana's senators blocking his advancement to the Fifth Circuit, he was elevated to the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. He left New Orleans bitter at the abuse and social ostracism that he, his wife, and his son had suffered. "I'll never set foot in that town again to do anything public," he told Albert Dent [president of Dillard University], "unless those sons-of-bitches that ran me out of New Orleans invite me back."” [4] They never did, and in some quarters the racial and class distinctions that characterized the antebellum South persist to this day in modern dress.
References
- "Judges of the United States Courts," Federal Judicial Center (http://air.fjc.gov/history/judges_frm.html) accessed September 19, 2002.
- "Study Guide to A House Divided," The Southern Institute for Education and Research (http://www.tulane.edu/~so-inst/divided15.html) accessed September 19, 2002. See also: 5, infra.
- "Study Guide to A House Divided," The Southern Institute for Education and Research (http://www.tulane.edu/~so-inst/divided25.html) accessed September 19, 2002. See also: 5, infra.
- Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915 – 1972, University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA, 1995, p. 263 and reference to Albert Dent's interview, p. 526.
- Note: A House Divided is a documentary film by Burwell Ware that was produced by Xavier University Vice President Sybil Morial at its Drexel Center, New Orleans, in 1987. It deals with desegregation in New Orleans through the eyes of those who remember it. A House Divided: A Teaching Guide on the History of Civil Rights in Louisiana, was authored by Plater Robinson of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University, New Orleans, in 1995-96 and is available in print (114 pp.) as well as from the Internet (See 3, supra).
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