For The New Orleans Tribune
Elected officials, community leaders, historians, and civil rights advocates gathered in early June to unveil the state’s newest marker on the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail. Nearly 66 years after four young activists challenged segregation at a downtown New Orleans lunch counter, their courageous efforts are being honored and remembered with a marker at the site of the former McCrory Five and Dime store,
The ceremony began with former news anchor Norman Robinson thanking attendees and acknowledging relatives of Rudy Lombard, Oretha Castle Haley, Cecil Carter, and Sydney Goldfinch. The four local college students became known as the CORE Four, and their protest on Sept. 9, 1960, at McCrory’s, catapulted efforts to desegregate public spaces in New Orleans during the Civil Rights Movement…