Each generation of our community has benefited from the thinking power of men and women who formulated the strategy for our community and led the struggle.
The challenge for today’s leaders is to learn what those before them have done and to develop a strategy for this generation. A quick review will make the point.
After slavery, our strategy was education and voter education. Our thinking was guided by the Barrington Family (Barrington Drive in the Foster Homes is named after them). They built a school for the freed slaves and orchestrated black voting strength to elect a black judge, sheriff, Clerk of Court and even used their influence to get the city’s first black mayor, George B. Hamlet. Their impact was felt for nearly 50 years.
In the 1920s, the young leaders pushed against the Klan and lynchings. They were led by young members of the Pierce family, most notably N.S. Pierce and S.L. Pierce, who helped form the NAACP in 1926 along with S.B. Smith. The great thinkers in the group included prominent members of the Foster family, including Madison J. Foster (A school and a housing project is named after him today).
The Foster and the Pierce families shaped our united push for two generations that resulted in Monroe Colored High, hospital care for Coloreds at the Natatorium, and the building E.A. Conway Hospital for the poor. Drs. J.C. Roy and Miller pushed to expand black businesses, built the Miller-Roy Building in 1929, and formed the Black Chamber of Commerce.
They were followed by Education leaders such as Gertrude Ammons, the first black education Supervisor, the civil rights push of Anthony Facen, and the Calvary Baptist Church leaders under Dr. P. Rayfield Brown, III. Together they attacked poverty by establishing CAP and Headstart and forced desegregation of the Police Jury, Parish School Board, and other public facilities.
The Robinsons, including B.D. and Emily P., Mary F. Robinson Goins, I.B. January, John and Frances Reddix, Alex Burns and Morris Henry Carroll, and others formed the next generation. Between them, they fought for voter registration and higher education, desegregation of ULM, City Schools, and the City of Monroe.
A young generation of leaders such as Willie Haynes, Richard O. Miles, Ervin “Peter” Turner, Brenda and Roy Shelling, Alfred Blakes, Clem Toston, and Abe E. Pierce plunged us into the era of electoral politics that resulted in city school changes, black representation in city government and election of a Black mayor.
The legal minds of former Senator Charles Jones, former Rep. Willie Hunter, Jr., and Benjamin Jones shaped and attacked the criminal justice system and reformed the courts to allow black judges across the state.
Onto this stage of giants, too many to name in this article, comes the present generation of leaders, ranging in age from their late 20s to their mid-forties.
Each generation before them plowed new ground, charted a different path, and fought the battles necessary to move us to the next level.
What legacy will this generation leave behind?
Only time will tell.
