Sybil Haydel Morial grew up living in a middle-class cocoon.
“We were exposed to many things through the two African-American universities, Dillard and Xavier,” she told a National Public Radio (NPR) interviewer in 2016. “We couldn’t go to the public places — the symphony, the opera, the theater — so we went to what was provided by these two Black schools.”
Life outside the cocoon, however, was harsh.
“When we stepped out of our homes, here we were blocked from everything, subject to humiliation,” she continued. “Couldn’t go to public places. So it was sort of a double life. “This cocoon made it very bearable — it was good inside that cocoon.”
Morial, who died Wednesday at 91, eventually left the cocoon to fight for civil rights and to teach her students that “Black is beautiful.”
“She confronted the hard realities of Jim Crow with unwavering courage and faith, which she instilled not only in her own children but in every life she touched,” a Morial family statement said. “Like many women of the Civil Rights Era, she was the steel in the movement’s spine. From the moment she met our late father, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, they were joined in the fight for justice and equality.”
Born in New Orleans in 1932, Morial grew up in the 7th Ward. Her father was a surgeon and her mother was a teacher. A graduate of Xavier University Preparatory High School, Morial attended Xavier University for two years before graduating from Boston University with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education in 1952 and a master’s in education in 1955.
That same year, Morial married a prominent civil rights lawyer who later would become the first Black member of the Louisiana House of Representatives since Reconstruction, the first Black juvenile court judge in Louisiana, and New Orleans’ first Black mayor.
“We won … the first Black mayor in the southern city,” Morial said about her husband being elected in 1977. “It was absolutely enthralling.”
Morial began her 12-year teaching career in the Orleans Parish School System in 1959. She talked to her students about their beauty.
“My goodness, we all have been conditioned to think that Black is ugly,” Morial told NPR. “Our dark skin, our broad features, our kinky hair — that’s what we are. And we are beautiful and we need to accept that.
“I brought that in stories … for the rest of my teaching career. That Black is beautiful,” she continued. “White America has set different standards, and they’re not standards of beauty for us. So that was a good lesson for my students and for myself.”
In the early 1960s, Morial wanted to help Black Americans register to vote. “You had to pass a citizenship test, a literacy test, figure out your age in years, months, weeks and days, and have the appropriate identification” in order to register, Morial said as part of “The Trail They Blazed” traveling exhibit.
She tried to join the League of Women Voters but was rejected because of her race. So, she started the Louisiana League of Good Government, which organized voter registration drives in Black communities until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was adopted.
In 1977, she left the classroom to direct Xavier’s Special Services Program. She was an administrator at the university for 28 years, retiring in 2005.
New Orleans’ first Black First Lady – and mother of five – also was committed to the arts. Morial created Symphony in Black, a five-year project to bring Black musicians and conductors to the New Orleans Symphony to attract Black audiences. In 1995, Morial began supporting the Arts and Cultural Host Committee, which hosts the Louis Satchmo Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp.
According to Jackie Harris, executive director of Louis Armstrong Education Foundation (LAEF), and LAEF President and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, Morial’s support contributed to the future success of thousands of aspiring jazz musicians.
“First Lady Sybil Morial was a cultural icon, a political icon, a community icon and a humanitarian,” Harris and Marsalis said in a statement. “She is an excellent example of what any and all women should be during their lifetimes.”
In 2015, Morial’s memoir, “Witness to Change: From Jim Crow to Political Empowerment,” was published. She told Boston University that the book came out at the right time.
On some levels, Black people are fighting the same battles as they did during her husband’s day, but “we can’t go back,” she said. “All my children are involved (in the fight for racial equality), and I’ll be involved as long as I can. I think hope is very important. It keeps the door open.”
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.
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