“A voteless people is a hopeless people.”
Ernest J. Wright said it, believed it and took action to prevent it.
The New Orleans activist was born in 1909. Between the 1930s and 1970s, he organized labor unions, fought for civil rights and encouraged Black people to register to vote.
Known for riding around the city with a bullhorn touting the importance of voter registration, Wright founded the People’s Defense League in 1941. The league was “the first organization to advocate widespread African-American electoral participation,” according to the Amistad Research Center. The FBI, which considered the league to be “the most powerful Black organization in New Orleans,” kept a file on Wright, a 2017 Times-Picayune article states.
A graduate of Xavier University and the University of Michigan, Wright held court every Sunday at Shakespeare Park (now A. L. Davis Park), often referred to as “Wright’s Auditorium.” His daughter, Erness Wright-Irving, told the Times-Picayune that thousands of people came out to hear what her father had to say about education, workers’ rights and, of course, voter registration.
In one of his speeches, which Keith Weldon Medley excerpted in his book “Black Life in Old New Orleans,” Wright emphasized the importance of fighting without fear.
“The big difference between you and me in this fight for rights is that I am not afraid to die for a principle and you are,” Wright said. “I am not afraid to go to jail for a principle and you are. We can’t get anywhere by being afraid.”
In addition to writing a column, “I Daresay,” for the Louisiana Weekly, Wright became the city’s first Black social worker. He ran for lieutenant governor in 1963 and received nearly 40,000 votes.
Wright died in 1979. A bronze plaque hangs at A.L. Davis Park in his honor.
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.