The life and legacy of Oretha Castle Haley
NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — No one played a larger role in the New Orleans civil rights story than that of Oretha Castle Haley.
Starting as a teenager, her leadership led us through the pivotal years of the movement.
WGNO spoke with her grandson Blair Dottin-Haley about her work and her legacy.
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According to Dottin-Haley, 'Oretha Castle Haley was a freedom fighter, organizer, a civil rights leader. Those who followed her called her the general in the civil rights movement. She joined the Dryades Street boycotts at a very young age while she was a student at Southern University at New Orleans and very soon, I think she realized but more importantly those around her realized that they needed to follow her lead.'
Our conversation took place at the Ashe Cultural Arts Center on the same Dryades St., now named in her honor.
Fellow Civil Rights legend Jerome Smith spoke to Haley's leadership as well.
'Oretha and I were classmates at Clark School. We all come from Clark. You have to deal with that in terms of the spiritual essence of a person. And being female, she could confront a situation with a determination and a sophistication that has yet to have been duplicated.'
Haley's involvement in the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality or C.O.R.E. led to direct street-level activism, playing a major role in the movement in our city.
Dottin Haley says this work continued later in her life.
'In the post civil rights era when I got to spend some time with her, she was running the Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation, she was minority recruiter for LSU, and she was running the campaigns of the first Black woman to be elected at large on the city council Dorothy Mae Taylor and the first Black woman on the school board, Gail Glapion.'
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Dottin Haley was only nine when his grandmother died of cancer at only 48 years of age. She lived a full life of achievement, but also full of moving New Orleans forward.
According to Smith, the disease deprived her of a promising future and our city of a true leader.
'I don't like to discuss it because I don't know how to express the loss. Because her definition of school was about liberation and betterment of person, and non-surrender,' said Smith.Trump defends Musk's 'genius' email to federal workers
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Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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