Alexander Tureaud Sr.
*Alexander Tureaud was born on this date in 1899. He was a Black Creole Attorney and civil rights leader.
Alexander Pierre Tureaud, Sr. grew up at 907 Kerlerac Street, one block below Esplanade, at the bend of Dauphine in New Orleans' Seventh Ward, known as the Black Creole community. His father, Louis Tureaud, was a carpenter/contractor, and his mother, Eugenia, was a housewife and part-time domestic. There were eleven children, six boys and five girls. The family attended St. Augustine Catholic Church.
He received his early education in the schools of New Orleans. He received his law degree from Howard University in 1925. Tureaud first practiced law in Washington, D.C. He decided to return to his native state and opened a law office in New Orleans in 1926. In a later interview, he stated that he never regretted the decision. "Mr. NAACP," as he was called, fought against racial discrimination in the South for fifty years. In 1927, he joined the NAACP's legal team as an attorney for the organization's Legal Defense Fund, filing numerous lawsuits to desegregate schools, businesses, and public facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi.
He filed the lawsuit that successfully ended the system of Jim Crow segregation in New Orleans. That case paved the way for integrating the first two elementary schools in the Deep South. His name appeared on virtually every suit filed by the NAACP because, for a time, he was the only Black lawyer in Louisiana.
Alexander Tureaud, Sr. died on January 22, 1972. At his funeral, his longtime associate and noted civil rights attorney, Thurgood Marshall, delivered the eulogy.
