Sybil Haydel Morial, a prominent civil rights activist, widow of New Orleans’ first Black mayor, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, and mother of former Mayor Marc Morial, passed away at the age of 91.
Her family shared the news of her death on Wednesday through a statement from the National Urban League, where Marc Morial serves as president and CEO. No details regarding the cause or timing of her passing were provided.
The family’s statement honored her legacy, saying, “She confronted the hard realities of Jim Crow with unwavering courage and faith, which she instilled not only in her own children but in every life she touched,” the statement said.
Born on November 26, 1932, Sybil was raised in a segregated New Orleans by her father, a physician, and her mother, a schoolteacher. While studying in Boston, she met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and returned home inspired to contribute to the civil rights movement.
In her 2015 memoir, Witness to Change: From Jim Crow to Empowerment, Morial recounted being chased out of New Orleans’ City Park by a police officer because of her race, alongside future Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and other friends.
She initially attended Xavier University, one of the city’s historically Black institutions, before transferring to Boston University, where King was pursuing a divinity degree. While traveling home, Morial and other Black passengers were forced to move to the baggage car once their train crossed the Mason-Dixon line.
“The barricade that kept us out of schools, jobs, restaurants, hotels, and even restrooms would have to be dismantled brick by brick, law by law,” she wrote.
Morial was in Boston in 1954 when the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling overturned racial segregation in schools. Reflecting on the era in a 2018 interview with Louisiana Public Broadcasting, she said, “Those of us from the South… wanted to return home because we knew change was coming, and we wanted to be part of it.”
That same year, she attempted to integrate Tulane and Loyola universities by enrolling in summer classes. Despite attending classes for nearly a week at Tulane, she was eventually denied enrollment due to her race. At Loyola, she was informed that “by state law, Negroes cannot attend the same school as whites.”
Morial’s return to New Orleans in 1954 also led her to meet her future husband, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, during a book club discussion on the recent Supreme Court desegregation decision. They married the following year, and she supported him throughout his career, raising their five children and teaching while he pursued political office, eventually becoming the state’s first Black mayor in 1978.
As mayor, Ernest Morial faced intense opposition, and Sybil often shielded their children from racist threats, answering the phone to intercept hateful calls. During his first term, when the 1979 police strike led to the cancellation of Mardi Gras, the National Guard was stationed at their home to protect the family.
