Research At The National Archives And Beyond!

Witness To Change - From Jim Crow to Political Empowerment Sybil Haydel Morial is an activist and community leader in New Orleans.  She spent her career in the education field, first, as a public school teacher and later as an administrator at Xavier University. Sybil’s memoir reveals a woman whose intelligence overrides the clichés of racial division. In its pages, we catch rare glimpses of black professionals in an earlier New Orleans, when races, though socially isolated, lived side by side; when social connections helped to circumvent Jim Crow; when African-American culture forged New Orleans—and American—identity. Through loving eyes, Sybil traces the rise of her sons and daughters: After Dutch’s death, Marc Morial served two terms as New Orleans mayor. Sybil’s other children—a physician, a public policy strategist, a community development director, and a judge—lead and serve their communities before, and after, Hurricane Katrina’s devastation.