The Avery Alexander Story
Published By: Lamont Jack Pearley, video produced by WDSU News Project Community
Avery Alexander
Avery Caesar Alexander was a Louisiana civil rights leader and politician. He graduated from Union Baptist Theological Seminary and was ordained into the Baptist ministry in 1944. He was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1975 and served in that office until his death.
Alexander participated in several marches with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and in sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters. In a well-publicized and videotaped incident in the basement cafeteria at City Hall on October 31, 1963, he was arrested and dragged upstairs by the heels. In a similar incident in 1993, police used a chokehold to subdue Alexander when he participated in a protest against former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke at the Battle of Liberty Place Monument ceremony in New Orleans after Alexander repeatedly crossed police lines separating protesters and celebrants.
The City of New Orleans did not remove the Liberty Place Monument, which celebrated white supremacy, from the public space it occupied near the foot of Canal Street until nearly two decades later.
After becoming an ordained Baptist minister of the Union Baptist Theological Seminary, the Rev. Alexander joined the NAACP to become an activist within the historic Civil Rights Movement. Throughout his duration as an activist, Alexander performed many political stances upon segregation and racial discrimination in New Orleans. For instance, leading bus boycotts against racial discrimination of African-American employees. As well as his “lunch-counter sit-in,” in 1963, aimed to integrate public cafeterias. Continually, Alexander was even known to throw out wooden barriers used to racially separate whites from Blacks in streetcars.
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Chief Warhorse has worked with and was mentored by Reverand Alexander. According to the report of WDSU, “Alexander gave a voice to people with no voices as a legislator in Baton Rouge”
The article goes on to say, “That included Chief Elwin Warhorse Gillum, who is the chief of Tchefuncta Nation and the Chahta Tribe.”
Chief Warhorse is quoted saying, “Alexander stood alongside her in her fight to have Martin Luther King Jr. Day recognized as a holiday in St. Tammany Parish in 1983.”
Gillum continues “He made me feel that I could conquer the racism of St. Tammany as a woman because they had my back, I’m standing in front of this monument and it just gets me because he has always had my back.”