As a 6-year-old, Leona Tate helped desegregate schools. Now she wants others to learn that history

Leona Tate, 65, who helped to desegregate the Deep South when she was six years old. Gus Bennett/New Orleans People Project

By Katy Reckdahl

NEW ORLEANS — Clutching a small purse, six-year-old Leona Tate walked into McDonogh 19 Elementary School here and helped to desegregate the South.

Images of that November morning in 1960 are seared into the national memory: Tate and three other little first-grade girls in white dresses and hair ribbons walking into New Orleans schools, flanked by federal marshals and heckled by hateful crowds.

Read the full article at The Hechinger Report