“The nation is better and richer for his having lived among us,” Reynold Verret, the president of Xavier University, said Wednesday while confirming the death of civil rights pioneer and educator Norman C. Francis.
Certainly, Francis, as president of Xavier University in New Orleans for 47 years, both shaped a university as one of the nation’s top college presidents and a city as well, thanks to the huge role he played in rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Francis, who worked with civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesse Jackson, and who advised eight U.S. presidents on education and civil rights issues, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 94. Tributes have since been pouring in from his community, activists and leaders across Louisiana, AP reported.
The son of a barber, Francis was born in 1931 in Lafayette but moved to New Orleans in 1948 to attend Xavier, where he received a bachelor’s degree. His dedication to social change and social justice began when he was still an undergraduate.
While at Xavier, he was elected class president each year of his education there and was even made student body president when he reached his senior year. Following his graduation in 1952, he enrolled in the Loyola University School of Law, where he became the first African American to graduate. He achieved this while segregation was still rampant.
He later spent two years in the Army before joining the U.S. Attorney General’s office to help integrate federal agencies, as reported by the AP.
Still, Francis, like many Blacks at the time, was barred from using the front door to enter many New Orleans establishments, including hotels, department stores and restaurants.
“Some people say to me, ‘My God! How did you take that?’” Francis said during a 2008 interview with the AP. “Well, you took that because you had to believe that one day, the words that your parents said to you ‘You’re good enough to be president of the United States’ yes, we held onto that.”
Francis, who would come to advise several U.S. presidents, fought segregation in New Orleans as an attorney for the firm, Collins, Douglas & Elie, which counseled for the Congress for Racial Equality. But he later believed that fighting for equal rights for Blacks could not only be achieved in the courtroom, so Francis decided to move from his legal career to education.
He began his career at Xavier when he was appointed as the “Dean of Men” at the university in 1957. In 1968, he became the first Black and lay president of Xavier when he was just 37. Under his leadership, Xavier, the nation’s only predominantly Black Catholic university, grew its student body and chalked up more academic successes while enrollment doubled.
It further entered new partnerships and earned acclaim as one of the premier historically black colleges and universities in the country. Francis’ vision was also to shape the school into an institution for Black science and pre-med graduates. He thought of this at a time when most colleges were offering a general liberal arts education.
Today, Xavier is first in the country in the number of African Americans receiving bachelor’s degrees in biology, chemistry and physics, as reported by WDSU. The university is also the number one undergraduate source of African Americans who earn medical degrees, the report added.
In 2015, when Francis retired from Xavier, he was the nation’s longest-serving university president.
He was still at Xavier when Katrina hit in 2005. He helped rebuild the school while leading the state recovery efforts as chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said that Francis “stood in the breach” after Katrina. Landrieu, who was lieutenant governor when Katrina caused massive destruction in New Orleans, said he usually sought Francis’s advice and counsel during those difficult times.
Francis went on to counsel King, Jackson, and U.S. presidents, leaving his mark on his city, nation, and civil rights movement. The civil rights pioneer received 22 honorary degrees throughout his life and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“Dr. Francis was more than an administrator. He was an institution builder, a civil rights champion, and a man of quiet generosity,” Louisiana U.S. Rep. Troy Carter posted on social media. “He believed education was the pathway to justice. He believed lifting one student could lift an entire family.”
Francis, whose wife died in 2015, leaves behind six children and multiple grandchildren.
