Break the Line

Norman C. Francis, who would one day become the beloved, influential president of Xavier University of Louisiana, arrived as a freshman at this historically black and Catholic university when he was 17.

Born in 1931, Francis, along with his three sisters and brother, grew up 150 miles from New Orleans in Lafayette, Louisiana. They attended Catholic schools and parishes at a time when the United States Supreme Court – based on a legal challenge to Louisiana law regarding “separate but equal” – upheld racial segregation.

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