U.S. Marshals escort Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, and Tessie Prevost from McDonogh #19, Nov 1960.
It’s Giving Tuesday and, as in years past, we’d like to give you a story.
For the past several months we’ve been traveling to New Orleans, gathering stories and sound for “Levee Stream,” a pop-up radio station installation collaboration with Otabenga Jones & Associates and Project& for the citywide exhibit Prospect.4. We’ve woven these interviews and recordings into an epic Sonic Prayer Flag, full of New Orleans voices, shards of sound and archival audio. Today we’d like to share a strand of this prayer flag, the story of Leona Tate…
November 14, 1960 — Four six-year-old girls, flanked by Federal Marshals, walked through screaming crowds and policemen on horseback as they approached their new schools for the first time. Leona thought it must be Mardi Gras. Gail Etienne thought they were going to kill her.
We are committed, now more than ever, to creating documentaries that chronicle untold stories of American culture and tradition, to keeping the nation’s airwaves vibrant, imaginative and accessible, and to building community through storytelling. It is you, our community, that makes these stories possible.
Kitchen Sister Nikki with Leona Tate, Prospect.4: Levee Stream, New Orleans, Nov 2017