AEC alumnae mark 50 years as integration pioneers
A picture is worth a thousand words, and in this news story, the shot of our graduates seeing each other after years says it all! Weeks after our reunion of the Adult Education Center, the good press keeps on coming. Check out this recent article on Nola.com, the online home to two of New Orleans’ most prominent news organizations: The Times-Picayune and The New Orleans Advocate.
When the New Orleans Adult Education Center was founded in December 1965, the small vocational school welcomed an integrated class of mostly Black underemployed women to begin training to become the first secretaries who would integrate the all-white businesses of New Orleans.
More than 30 graduates of the center gathered Oct. 16 for a reunion at the Historic New Orleans Collection Williams Research Center, just blocks from the AEC’s former home at 431 Exchange Place in the French Quarter.
“During its period of operation from 1965 to 1972, the school placed 94 percent of its 431 graduates in jobs with salaries above the national average, thus making it one of the most successful programs of its kind in the war on poverty,” said Jeanne Geoffray, daughter of the Adult Education Center founder/director Alice Geoffray.
Eventually, the program’s success gained recognition from President Lyndon B. Johnson and a U.S. Senate subcommittee welcomed Alice Geoffray and three students to testify in Washington about the how the school succeeded when so many other jobs programs failed.
Scholarships in the name of the school are being awarded to encourage new generations of success through adult education.
At the event, five scholarships in the amount of $1,431 each were awarded. The program also included a tribute to Gen. Kemper Williams of the Historic New Orleans Collection, who was one of its largest private contributors.
In attendance at the event were more than 30 alumni of the Adult Education Center, including speakers Raphael Morgan (1971); L. Vee McGee Drake (1970); Pamela Cole Wimbley (1971); Sandra T. O’Neal (1969); Connie Payton-Nevels (1970) and Gwen Shepherd (1968).
Among other notables at the celebration were civil rights pioneer Leona Tate and Keith Plessy of the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation. To learn more about the center, visit www.431exchange.com.