Norman C. Francis, a civil rights pioneer and champion of schooling who performed a pivotal function in serving to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, died Wednesday. He was 94.
Group members, activists and leaders throughout Louisiana celebrated the life and accomplishments of Francis.
“The nation is best and richer for his having lived amongst us,” mentioned Reynold Verret, the president of Xavier College, which confirmed Francis’ loss of life Wednesday in a press release.
Francis took a high-profile function within the state’s response to Katrina, heading the Louisiana Restoration Authority, which was tasked with overseeing the multi-billion-dollar rebuilding effort.
Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu mentioned that after Katrina, Francis “stood within the breach.” Landrieu, who served as lieutenant governor when Katrina decimated New Orleans in 2005, mentioned he typically turned to Francis for recommendation and counsel — together with in “his hardest moments.”
“Essentially the most defining half of his character is that he treats each human being with dignity and respect,” Landrieu posted on X on Wednesday.
Francis was well-known for his function as president of Xavier College in New Orleans, the nation’s solely predominantly Black Catholic college. Francis held the place for 47 years starting in 1968.
Throughout his tenure, enrollment greater than doubled, the endowment mushroomed and the campus expanded. The small college gained a nationwide repute for getting ready Black undergraduates for medical professions and for producing graduates in fields comparable to biology, chemistry, physics and pharmacy.
Within the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when elements of the college’s campus had been submerged underneath 8 ft of water, Francis vowed that the school would return.
A number of civil rights teams, together with the American Civil Liberties Union, honored Francis as one of the nation’s prime faculty presidents. In 2006, then-President George W. Bush awarded Francis with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“Dr. Francis was greater than an administrator. He was an establishment builder, a civil rights champion, and a person of quiet generosity,” Louisiana U.S. Rep. Troy Carter posted on social media. “He believed schooling was the pathway to justice. He believed lifting one pupil may carry a whole household.”
Francis, the son of a barber, grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana. He obtained his bachelor’s diploma from Xavier in 1952. He grew to become the primary Black pupil at Loyola College’s legislation college — integrating the college and incomes his legislation diploma in 1955.
He went on to spend two years within the Military, then joined the U.S. Legal professional Common’s workplace to assist combine federal businesses.
Even then, he nonetheless could not use the entrance door to enter many New Orleans inns, eating places or department shops as a result of of his race.
“Some individuals say to me, ‘My God! How did you’re taking that?’” Francis mentioned throughout a 2008 interview with The Related Press. “Properly, you took that since you needed to consider that someday, the phrases that your mother and father mentioned to you ‘You are adequate to be president of america’ sure, we held onto that.”
In 1957, he joined Xavier within the function of Dean of Males, starting his decades-long profession at the college.
Francis’s spouse, Blanche, died in 2015. The couple had six kids and a number of grandchildren.
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