Former students recall integration of Acadiana schools
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LEIGH GUIDRY, Lafayette Daily Advertiser
May 14, 2021
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1of11Albert Al Hayes Jr., right, a member of the St. Landry Parish School Board, speaks with Ken Richard outside a coffee shop in Eunice, La., Monday, May 3, 2021. As a 1969 graduate of Charles Drew High School, he was in the last graduating class of the all-Black high school before schools in the area were integrated. (Scott Clause/The Daily Advertiser via AP)SCOTT CLAUSE/APShow MoreShow Less
2of11Antoinette Pete and Jimmy Meche look at Crowley High School yearbooks from the early 1970s at the Acadia Parish Public Library Monday, April 26, 2021 in Crowley, La. Pete was a ninth-grader and Meche her assistant principal when the school was integrated in 1971. (Scott Clause/The Daily Advertiser via AP)SCOTT CLAUSE/APShow MoreShow Less
‘Don’t hate; just keep your head held high’
Antoinette Chaffers’ Pete, 65, grew up in west Crowley and attended a small, all-Black Catholic school connected to her church and run by the Sisters of the Holy Ghost from San Antonio. St. Theresa Catholic Church still stands on West Third Street, but the school has long been shuttered and the sisters returned to Texas.
The youngest of eight, Pete jokes that the sisters gave her mother, a devout Catholic, a discount on tuition at the school that went up to eighth grade. Her siblings continued into Ross High School, the school afforded to Black students in Crowley during segregation.