Episode 9. Hullabaloo. In the summer of 1965, Alice begins to work with Father Tim Gibbons on a temporary basis, during her obligatory summer teaching break, assisting with his preparations to open the Adult Education Center by the fall of 1965. The Center’s mission was unprecedented – to teach Black and white women from poor neighborhoods the technical and tactical skills they would need to integrate the clerical offices of the Deep South. To do so, they had to steer through uncharted and hostile territory. The school had possibly the first integrated faculty in New Orleans’ vocational schools, along with the first truly integrated student populations. The first pilot program of the school was shut down mostly because it was located in a posh area of New Orleans, on the campus of Dominican College. Scores of landlords turned Tim and Alice down as they searched in vain for a new location. On top of all those challenges, Gibbons was unexpectedly forced to leave his post in New Orleans for causing a political “Hullabaloo.” In a shocking twist, he nominates Alice, a 41-year-old mother of seven with no administrative experience, and no appetite for political upheaval, to take over the program.
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