Witness to Change: From Jim Crow to Political Empowerment

Exiled from her beloved hometown of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Sybil Haydel Morial began to reflect upon her life-spanning one of the most critical periods in our nation’s history-and began this remarkable memoir. From her unique vantage point, she was witness to sweeping changes-desegregation, the end of Jim Crow, the fight for voting rights and political empowerment-that transformed the country during her lifetime. Her story is both historical and personal: it is an an account of her own evolution as an African-American woman in the midst of tempests of social and familial change. By necessity and choice, Sybil, her late husband, Ernest Dutch Morial, and their five children became political activists-holding political offices, participating in landmark legal battles, and fighting for civil rights. Sybil chronicles her encounters with the leaders of the Movement, as well as proving a glimpse into her family’s life in middle-class Black society during the Jim Crow era. Far from a simply a witness to this important era, Morial’s own role is revealed in these pages. As Ambassador Andrew Young, a childhood friend and later Sybil’s prom date, relates in his foreword: It is doubtful that New Orleans could have produced two mayors with the dynamic, creative, and visionary leadership of Dutch and Marc without a wife and mother of Sybil’s loving strength, intelligence, and moral courage. But the life she lived in the crucible times and her perception of the civil rights movement in New Orleans goes far beyond that.