Public schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, were desegregated to a significant degree for a period of almost seven years during the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War of the United States.
[1]: 666 Desegregation of this scale was not seen again in the Southern United States until after the 1954 federal court ruling Brown v. Board of Education established that segregated facilities were unconstitutional.
[1]: 663 There had previously been attempts by the free black community to integrate schools in New Orleans in 1862, following its Union occupation during the Civil War.
[2]: 22–23 The 1867 Louisiana constitution, with its provision that racial segregation was no longer to be permitted in public facilities, marked the beginning of three years of legal wrangling and evasion by whites resistant to the idea of integrated schools.
Opponents of interracial cooperation used varied tactics, from newspaper editorials to political posturing to violence, to express their point of view.