Irene Griffin (activist)

Last updated

Irene W. Griffin (November 10, 1927 - March 27, 2012) [1] was an African-American activist, and the first black woman to register to vote in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. She was married to Rev. Percy Murphy Griffin, also a civil rights activist in that community. [2]

Contents

Activism

Irene was married to Percy Murphy Griffin, [3] and their initial efforts focused on taking on segregationist Judge Leander Perez after Percy returned from serving in World War II. They started a voter registration campaign for black community residents. In 1954, Irene became the first registered African-American woman to vote in Plaquemines Parish. In 1963, their home was bombed due to their activism. [2] In 1966 after her husband Rev. Percy Murphy Griffin and his comrades organized a movement to integrate the Plaquemines Parish School system, Irene was right there on the battle field with him. Their mission on the Eastbank of Plaquemines Parish was to integrate the previous all white school, called Woodlawn. Nevertheless, they met opposite and protest from the whites who children attended the school. Twenty-seven black students where scheduled to attend Woodlawn high school after it opened it doors for the beginning of the school year. Unfortunately, some blacks jump the gun and took several black students to the school on the first day of opening. They met strong opposition from the white. Griffin and the remaining of the black students went to the school as scheduled on the 2nd day. Eventually the school was closed down. The Superintendent told Griffin to meet him at Phoenix High School on the following day. After he met with Griffin and other parents at Phoenix High, the superintendent informed them that they could send their kids to Belle Chasse High School on the westbank or leave them at Phoenix high. The scare tactics that the Superintendent used in his presentation, caused the parents of twenty-four black students to keep their children at Phoenix High. Mrs. Irene Griffin, under the guiding of her husband, allowed two of her sons to travel to Belle Chasse High School to partake in the movement.

Death

Irene Griffin died aged 84 in 2012. [2]

Further reading

The life of Percy Murphy Griffin : the struggles and victories of a black civil rights activist from Plaquemines Parish

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana</span> Parish in Louisiana, United States

Plaquemines Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 23,515 at the 2020 census, the parish seat is Pointe à la Hache and the largest community is Belle Chasse. The parish was formed in 1807.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belle Chasse, Louisiana</span> Census-designated place in Louisiana, United States

Belle Chasse is a census-designated place (CDP) in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, United States, on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Belle Chasse is part of the Greater New Orleans metropolitan area. The population was 10,579 at the 2020 United States census. Belle Chasse is the largest community in Plaquemines Parish. It is home to Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans, a Naval Air Station for the U.S. Navy Reserve.

The Deacons for Defense and Justice was an armed African-American self-defense group founded in November 1964, during the civil rights era in the United States, in the mill town of Jonesboro, Louisiana. On February 21, 1965—the day of Malcolm X's assassination—the first affiliated chapter was founded in Bogalusa, Louisiana, followed by a total of 20 other chapters in this state, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama. It was intended to protect civil rights activists and their families, threatened both by white vigilantes and discriminatory treatment by police under Jim Crow laws. The Bogalusa chapter gained national attention during the summer of 1965 in its violent struggles with the Ku Klux Klan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southern Christian Leadership Conference</span> African-American civil rights organization

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civil rights movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Height</span> American activist (1912–2010)

Dorothy Irene Height was an African American civil rights and women's rights activist. She focused on the issues of African American women, including unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness. Height is credited as the first leader in the civil rights movement to recognize inequality for women and African Americans as problems that should be considered as a whole. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. Height's role in the "Big Six" civil rights movement was frequently ignored by the press due to sexism. In 1974, she was named to the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which published the Belmont Report, a bioethics report in response to the infamous "Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leander Perez</span> American judge

Leander Henry Perez Sr. was an American Democratic Party political boss of Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes in southeastern Louisiana during the middle third of the 20th century. Officially, he served as a district judge, later as district attorney, and as president of the Plaquemines Parish Commission Council. He was known for leading efforts to enforce and preserve segregation.

Plaquemine High School is a public high school located at 59595 Belleview Drive in unincorporated Iberville Parish, Louisiana, United States, south of the City of Plaquemine. It serves grades from seven to twelve and is administered by the Iberville Parish School Board.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johnnie Carr</span>

Johnnie Rebecca Daniels Carr was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from 1955 until her death.

Plaquemines Parish School Board (PPSB) is a school district headquartered in unincorporated Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, United States.

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, "Jim Crow" being a pejorative term for an African American. Such laws remained in force until 1965. Formal and informal segregation policies were present in other areas of the United States as well, even as several states outside the South had banned discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted by white-dominated state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era. Such continuing racial segregation was also supported by the successful Lily-White Movement.

The Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) Project of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was a voter registration civil rights initiative conducted from 1965 to 1966 in 120 counties in six southern states. The goal was to recruit white college students to help prepare African Americans for voting and to maintain pressure on Congress to pass what became the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Dr. Martin Luther King announced the project at UCLA in April 1965, and other leaders recruited students nationwide.

William J. Bogan Computer Technical High School is a public 4–year high school located in the Ashburn neighborhood on the southwest side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Operated by Chicago Public Schools district, Bogan opened in 1959. The school is named for Chicago Public Schools Superintendent William J. Bogan. In 1999, the school began offering the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program; and becoming an International Baccalaureate World School in 2004.

Belle Chasse High School (BCHS) is a grade 9–12 senior high school in Belle Chasse, an unincorporated area in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is a part of the Plaquemines Parish School Board.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">School integration in the United States</span> Racial desegregation process

In the United States, school integration is the process of ending race-based segregation within American public and private schools. Racial segregation in schools existed throughout most of American history and remains an issue in contemporary education. During the Civil Rights Movement school integration became a priority, but since then de facto segregation has again become prevalent.

The history of the 1954 to 1968 American civil rights movement has been depicted and documented in film, song, theater, television, and the visual arts. These presentations add to and maintain cultural awareness and understanding of the goals, tactics, and accomplishments of the people who organized and participated in this nonviolent movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willie Barrow</span> American civil rights activist and minister

Willie Beatrice Barrow was an American civil rights activist and minister. Barrow was the co-founder of Operation PUSH, which was named Operation Breadbasket at the time of its creation alongside Rev. Jesse Jackson. In 1984, Barrow became the first woman executive director of a civil rights organization, serving as Push's CEO. Barrow was the godmother of President Barack Obama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederick D. Reese</span> American civil rights activist

Frederick Douglas Reese was an American civil rights activist, educator and minister from Selma, Alabama. Known as a member of Selma's "Courageous Eight", Reese was the president of the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) when it invited the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King Jr. to Selma to amplify the city's local voting rights campaign. This campaign eventually gave birth to the Selma to Montgomery marches, which later led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

This is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for people of color. The goals of the movement included securing equal protection under the law, ending legally institutionalized racial discrimination, and gaining equal access to public facilities, education reform, fair housing, and the ability to vote.

The Baton Rouge bus boycott was a boycott of city buses launched on June 19, 1953, by African-American residents of Baton Rouge, Louisiana who were seeking integration of the system. They made up about 80% of the ridership of the city buses in the early 1950s but, under Jim Crow rules, black people were forced to sit in the back of the bus, even when the front of the bus was empty. State laws prohibited black citizens from owning private buses outside the city systems.

Ralph Edwin King Jr., better known as Ed King, is a United Methodist minister, civil rights activist, and retired educator. He was a key figure in historic civil rights events taking place in Mississippi, including the Jackson Woolworth’s sit-in of 1963 and the Freedom Summer project in 1964. Rev. King held the position of chaplain and dean of students, 1963–1967, at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. At this critical juncture of the civil rights movement, historian John Dittmer described King as “the most visible white activist in the Mississippi movement.”

References

  1. "Irene W. Griffin". Tributes. Retrieved December 22, 2019.
  2. 1 2 3 "Irene Griffin, first black woman to register to vote in Plaquemines Parish, dies at 84". New Orleans Times-Picayune. 30 March 2012. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
  3. The life of Percy Murphy Griffin : the struggles and victories of a black civil rights activist from Plaquemines Parish