Charlie Duthu remembers his school days fondly despite the racially segregated arrangement enforced in Terrebonne Parish and across the South.
Duthu, a 73-year-old United Houma Nation tribal member, attended Daigleville School while the parish operated a public school system that segregated campuses three ways: all white, all Black, all Native American.
“I’m glad that the School Board allowed us to have our own school," said Duthu, who graduated from the Houma school in 1966. "There was a stigma back then against us."
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down racial segregation in public schools with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, but Terrebonne still divided students according to their skin color.