When he was a kid, Stanley Crosby walked to Gretna Colored Elementary School, avoiding sidewalks because, as he remembers it, Black people weren’t supposed to use them. Some White children took school buses. Black children who got rides rode in the back of pickup trucks.
Crosby remembers his school being inferior to the Whites-only public schools “in every aspect — except the teachers.” Teachers who cared and were determined made the difference.
After finishing up at Grambling State University, Crosby returned to Jefferson Parish to become one of those caring teachers. And make a difference he did.
In 1965, about 1,500 students at the all-Black Lincoln High School in Marrero protested the separate and unequal education and paltry resources compared to White schools. Crosby supported the students, and chastised the all-White School Board. After he was drafted and served in the Army, the school board would not reinstate him until he threatened to get the military involved.
He went on to teach English for more than 50 years, 34 of them at West Jefferson High, before retiring in 2011.
“I’ve taught students’ mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers,” said Crosby, 88.
A lot has changed for the better over those years. Louisiana’s largest school system is now led by a Black superintendent and educates a notably diverse student body. Crosby's elementary school was renamed after Frederick Douglass.
And over the summer, the current Jefferson Parish School Board — the same official body that Crosby once fought to get just treatment — lauded him for his contributions and put his name on the Lincoln Elementary School for the Arts library.
It's a fitting honor for an educator whose own life should serve as a lesson to all students, and a nice sign of the district's willingness to right past wrongs.