Louisiana criminalizes teaching enslaved people to read.

New Orleans opens a public school system for white children.

Couvent School opens on a bequest from Marie Couvent, a formerly enslaved West African woman. 

The census records high rates of literacy and skilled trades among free Black New Orleanians.

Louisiana's largest slaveholder, John McDonogh, dies and leaves his fortune to build public schools. 

The Sisters of the Holy Family, the city's first order of Black nuns, open St. Mary's Academy.

Straight University is founded and provides the Black teacher-training program the school board refuses to fund.

One third of New Orleans schools are integrated.

The White League overthrows the Reconstruction government at Liberty Place.

Reconstruction ends with the Tilden-Hayes Compromise.

Black education in Louisiana is capped at sixth grade. 

Homer Plessy is arrested as part of Citizens’ Committee’s challenge to the Separate Car Act.

NAACP founded. One of its major goals is the overturn of Plessy v. Ferguson

The school board restores sixth grade for Black students.

McDonogh 35 opens as the city's first public high school for Black students.

Louisiana authorizes a separate curriculum for Black students.

Valena C. Jones Normal School opens, training Black teachers.

Fannie C. Williams builds a student health program at Valena C. Jones and opens the city's first kindergarten for Black children.

A. P. Tureaud sues for equal pay for Black teachers.

Booker T. Washington High School opens.

Louisiana adopts a minimum salary schedule with no racial pay gap. 

Ninth Ward Civic and Improvement League organizes a class action to desegregate the schools.

St. Augustine High School opens.

Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board is filed to challenge school segregation.

Black students, faculty, and staff boycott McDonogh Day.

Supreme Court issues Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Judge J. Skelly Wright orders OPSB to produce a desegregation schedule.

Voters reject tax increases to generate money for New Orleans public schools for 13 years.

The Republic of New Africa movement opens the Ahidiana School.

Hubbard v. Tannehill forces the state to supply African American history textbooks.

The white teacher’s union merges with the Black teacher’s union AFT Local 527, to form United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO).

Rose Loving wins a seat on the Orleans Parish School Board, the first Black woman elected to citywide office in New Orleans.

UTNO strikes and wins teacher raises.

Dr. Everett J. Williams Jr. becomes the first Black superintendent of New Orleans Public Schools.

Dorothy Mae Taylor, educated in the city's segregated schools, becomes the first Black woman on the New Orleans City Council.

Louisiana authorizes charter schools.

No Child Left Behind Act institutes high stakes testing.

Act 9 creates the Recovery School District to take over failing schools.

New Orleans Public Schools  is under federal investigation for missing Title I funds. An independent auditor finds no loss or misspending of funds.

A New York-based financial firm is appointed to manage OPSB’s finances. Their plan is to outsource school services, shrink the teaching population, and close schools.

LEAP Testing results show 93 of New Orleans’ 120 schools showed growth over the previous year’s school performance scores.

Katrina makes landfall.

OPSB places all 7,500 employees on disaster leave without pay.

Act 35 redefines criteria for a failing school and shifts 107 New Orleans schools into the Recovery School District. 

7,500 OPSB educators and staff are fired.

Money pours in from FEMA, federal grants and national philanthropy to expand charter schools in New Orleans.

New Orleans experiences some of the most dramatic academic gains of any school district in the country. 

Test score gains level off after a decade of improvement. Researchers find the growth came largely from closing low-performing schools rather than from existing schools improving.

New Orleans is among the nation's earliest COVID hotspots. When standardized testing resumes in 2021, student learning losses are severe.

Louisiana becomes the only state to exceed its pre-pandemic fourth-grade reading scores, and New Orleans climbs faster than the state. 

The Orleans Parish School Board establishes The Leah Chase School, the first direct-run school in 18 years.

The School Board passes a resolution to establish New Orleans Black Education History Week as an annual commemoration every November.