Pillars of Progress (Desegregation of SLI)

The court order came on July 16, 1954, in Constantine v. SLI, brought by Clara Dell Constantine, Martha Conway, Shirley Taylor and Charles Vincent Singleton. Admissions were then briefly suspended after District Attorney Bertrand DeBlanc warned he would file charges. John Harold Taylor of Arnaudville registered about six days after the order, the first Black student admitted, and about 80 Black students were on campus that September. They commuted by bus and stayed on the fringes of campus life, and swimming classes were dropped because the local public pool was not integrated.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vermilionville — 1.5 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 7.2 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
• St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 13 mi
  The Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.

More markers nearby

• Amédé Ardoin / Dennis McGee — steps away
• McNaspy Stadium Memorial — steps away
• 1898-1899 (ULL Walk of Honor) — 0.2 mi
• Dr. Edwin L. Stephens — 0.3 mi