Segregation and Tulane University: A Legal Analysis (Video)
- [Music]
- Hello. My name is David Lee Campbell,
- Without knowing it, I played an interesting and important role in 1959
- in the desegregation of Tulane University. And I'd like to tell you about it.
- Really no one knew this before.
- I arrived in New Orleans from a segregated college in Texas in 1957 on an essential-for-me
- Law School Scholarship to Tulane, which was also segregated.
- After my first year, I was – to my surprise – ranked first in my class.
- That first summer I knew I'd have to go back to Texas or
- get a good-paying job to stay in New Orleans. Luckily, I landed one on Offshore Oil Rig Catco 19. Good money.
- Shortly after I returned for my second year at Tulane though, Catco 19 blew up and killed 12 men, one of
- which was the gentleman I’d been bunked with and who had planned to retire after that last shift.
- The second summer, I opted - for
- much less money – to clerk for the biggest firm in the City. I had my choice,
- as my ranking in class was still number one.
- That was why I chose the firm of Jones Walker.
- A week after I started, I was called in to see
- Mr Joseph Merrick Jones, the Founder and senior managing partner in the firm. He told me I
- was to put aside any other assignments; that he would have me work solely for him on only
- one large legal research project; that it was to be kept between him and me; and that I was not to
- tell anyone what I was working on. He would hire an out-of-office secretary to type the manuscript.
- I didn't know why all of this.
- For the next three months, I researched and analyzed the historic precedent and current
- state of the law with regard to segregation in all areas of life: education, housing,
- employment, the military, and other civil liberties and restraints. When finished, my thesis
- was typed up by an out-of-office secretary and sent to Mr. Jones, who was in the Bahamas at the time.
- This event was first made public in my 2017 memoir
- "The Double Life: A Survivor's Guide to Transcend Success and Tragedy."
- Then I got a call from Mr. Jones. He said he’d just finished
- my “tome” as he called it, that it was “beyond the call of duty,” and
- that he was putting a check in the mail for “going beyond the expected.” Unfortunately,
- though I ran home every day to check the mail to see whether he meant $100 or $1000,
- I didn't know,
- no check ever arrived. After my third year at Tulane Law, I was one of
- 12 American scholars to be awarded the British Marshall Scholarship to Oxford University,
- where in 1963 I finished my degree, D. Phil. in private international law.
- Shortly after returning to New Orleans and deciding to live there, I chose a very different large firm as
- Associate to begin my career. An then a tragic fire broke out in the Jones home, engulfing both
- Mr. and Mrs. Jones and everything in the home. My “tome” was for Mr. Jones’ use, apparently
- not filed at the firm itself. I assumed it too was lost, but I still had my old tissue copy
- that he let me keep.
- Mr. Jones served as Chairman of the Tulane Board of Administrators throughout this time,
- including when I wrote the brief for him, which I learned when in England, he needed in order to
- make the decision as Chair of the Board of Administrators whether to voluntarily desegregate Tulane, as litigation was
- also pending to compel it by judicial order.
- I have donated my papers, including this desegregation “tome,”
- to Tulane. And now, after that tragic fire and the death of Mr. Jones, the only other known copy
- of that foundational legal research is freely available to everyone, online at the Tulane
- Digital Library at digitallibrary.tulane.edu. I’m both proud and humbled. So thank you, Tulane.
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