Voting in Jefferson Parish in 1947 didn't come easy [View all]

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The Rev. Robert Lee Jr. at his home in Clayton.
Photo by Brianna Piche


IN his younger days, Robert Lee Jr. sat at the front of the train but the back of the bus. He sat upstairs at movies and downstairs on boats. And none of it was up to him.

Lee, now 98, has seen two Americas: one in which the color of his skin made him inferior, and one in which a man with his skin color can become leader of the free world. He never thought he would live to see the latter, but he can pinpoint the day things began to change.

It was August 10, 1946.

That was the Saturday when Lee and 13 other black men, encouraged by the New Orleans chapter of the NAACP, walked into the Jefferson Parish registrar of voters office and entered their names and voices into the democratic process. They were among the first Louisianians of their race to do so since Reconstruction . . .

Lee saw a change he could never have dreamed in 2008 with the election of Barack Obama as president. The idea of a black man leading the country seemed so farfetched that Lee didn't think it could happen -- until the night Obama was elected . . .


read more: http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/03/retired_minister_recalls_two_a.html


Lee has kept the Jefferson Parish voter registration certificate he obtained in 1947. He and 11 others were the first black people to register in that parish since Reconstruction.