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 Posted: Mon 02 Oct 2006 01:45 Post subject: MANY FEARED NAOMI DRAKE AND POWERFUL RACIAL WHIM |
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| Quote: | MANY FEARED NAOMI DRAKE AND POWERFUL RACIAL WHIM
by James O'Byrne, staff writer
In a society in which few white people could imagine anything worse
than being called black, Naomi Drake wielded the weapon of racism
with the ardor of an armed knight defending her king.
During 16 years as the head of the Bureau of Vital Statistics for
New Orleans, Drake made it clear that there was nothing worse in
the world than to allow a person to live as white who did not
deserve to do so. She lorded over the birth and death records of
generations of New Orleanians, and unilaterally changed the race of
thousands of them from white to black --almost never the other way
around.
When she was finally fired in 1965, Drake was feared and reviled -
by parents who could not get birth certificates to put their
children in public schools, by lawyers who could not do research or
complete wills, by adoption agencies and funeral homes.
But the source of her power and reputation says more about racism
in New Orleans than it did about her peculiar habits of mind. She
was able to wield such power because of racism's sway. No matter
what they looked like, who they were or how they had lived, white
people knew that to be touched by any hint of blackness was to be
tainted, stigmatized by the sting of their own racial prejudices.
That is what made people fear Naomi Drake.
The Civil Service Commission agreed to delete the names of any
witnesses from its final decision upholding Drake's firing. That
was to save the witnesses the embarrassment of having been
suspected as being black, however inaccurately.
If Drake thought there was the slightest hint that someone who
lived as a white person might have any African ancestry, she would
not issue a birth or death certificate.
At the time of her firing for her refusal to issue certificates,
the backlog of birth certificates had mounted to 4,700. Almost
1,200 death certificates had been held up.
And if she could prove African ancestry, however distant, she would
change a person's race in the official records of the City of New
Orleans, usually without notifying the person affected or any of
the person's family members.
According to testimony at her hearing, she once reportedly said,
"All the people in White Castle are half-breeds." She would ferret
out signs of African ancestry in children of unmarried mothers,
call them in to her office and inform them that their children were
"adulterous bastards," testimony showed.
Drake, who died in 1987, ordered her employees to pull every
certificate in the office designated by race with the letter "c" -
which usually meant mixed race, or 'colored,' but also sometimes
meant Chinese or something else - and change the race on such
documents to Negro.
She kept a list of "flagged names," that she believed were suspect,
and should be checked for signs of African ancestry. Any request
for a certificate of a person with a flagged name had to be held up
for further research. The list included such names as Adams,
Charles, Landry and Olsen.
She explained how she could tell when someone's birth certificate
was wrong at her dismissal hearing before the Civil Service
Commission: "Very often we are acquainted with the name," Drake
testified. "We know them to be the names of Negro families."
She had her workers scour the obituaries of people who had died,
looking for any clues that a dead person identified as white had
black relatives or survivors, such as services at a traditionally
black funeral home, relatives with traditionally black names or
burial at traditionally black cemeteries.
Her research was instrumental in a decision by the Orleans Parish
district attorney's office in 1956 to obtain an indictment against
a Plaquemines Parish woman on charges of filing a false document.
The woman's crime: She considered herself white and had recorded
that on the birth certificate for her child.
The woman was eventually acquitted, but only after being asked a
series of questions designed to attach to her any blackness at all,
including whether her doctor treated her as a black person or a
white person, and where her husband's sister's children attended
school.
When Drake was fired, few people were happier to see her go than
Peter Huhner, father of five. Huhner had tried to get birth
certificates for his children. But Drake suspected Huhner's wife
had African ancestry, and so refused to release the certificates.
After months of battling Drake unsuccessfully, Huhner finally put
his children in parochial school.
But what Huhner was most concerned about, according to his letter
to city officials after Drake's dismissal, was not the burden of
private school tuition or the denial of a public education, but
that his family had been besmirched.
"We find it difficult to understand how my wife's parents were
registered as being white as were their parents," Huhner wrote.
"And after being brought up that way, after all these years,
someone that does not even know the family at all has reason to
believe differently and would cause this much embarrassment."
When Bureau of Vital Statistics Director Naomi Drake decided
someone had African ancestry, she would simply cross out "White,"
in this case on a death certificate, and write in "Negro," often
without telling the families of her decision.
Copyright, 1993, The Times-Picayune Publishing Corporation. All
Rights
Reserved. Used by NewsBank with Permission.
Record Number: 9308190280 |
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