Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes prospectus, 1887 September 15. - Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes prospectus, 1887 September 15.

Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes (1859-1928) was a writer, civil rights activist, Creole, and free man of color born in New Orleans to Jeremiah Desdunes, a Haitian immigrant, and Henrietta, a Cuban. His brother, P. A. (Pierre-Aristide, 1828-1894) was a poet, author, and activist. Rodolphe was a member of the Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law (also known as the ""Comité des Citoyens""), which is said to have launched the Plessy v. Ferguson case to the Supreme Court. He also wrote and published, Nos Hommes et Notre Histoire, an anthology of biographical sketches of about fifty free people of color living in New Orleans during the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1887, he helped to found L'Union Louisianaise, which developed into the New Orleans Crusader, for a time the nation's only African American daily newspaper. He married Mathilde Chaval of Point Coupee Parish and New Orleans. The couple had six children: Wendell, Daniel, Cortiza, Agens, Lucille, and Jeanne.</br></br>Alexander Pierre Tureaud was an attorney and civil rights leader, born in New Orleans on February 26, 1899 to Louis Tureaud and Eugénie Dejean. A graduate from Howard University Law School, class of 1925, he was the sole practicing African American attorney in Louisiana from 1937-1947. As part of Thurgood Marshall's team of NAACP attorneys after 1939, he acted as lawyer of record in scores of civil rights and desegregation cases in Louisiana. In 1931, he married Lucille Dejoie, daughter of Joseph and Louise Dejoie of New Orleans; the couple had six children. He died in New Orleans on January 22, 1972 and is interred at the St. Louis Cemetery III.