One of the first evenings in New Orleans I accompanied Wilma and the children to Tulane University. I left her the car and took the streetcar back. We changed on Canal Street and sat down in the last row of seats, where there was room for all of us. In Little Rock, segregation on public carriers had been abolished, and I had forgotten that this was not yet the case in New Orleans. With the children—Jonathan was not yet two —and without witnesses I had not intended to test the law. But when the driver stopped the streetcar and asked me to go to the front, I told him that this violated federal law and remained seated. The streetcar remained standing in the middle of the traffic until two matronly police women came and led me away. They did not arrest me, but left us standing in the street and only asked me if I would not feel better with my own people.
Since the schools were still segregated by race, our children were bused to the closest white school several miles away. An empty bus picked up Jeremy and Dan, who was only in the first grade, in the morning and returned at noon with Dan only, and then drove some distance to a white neighbourhood, where other children gradually filled the bus. At noon the bus arrived at Dillard University with Dan, who as a first grader had only half a day of school, as the only passenger, and in midafternoon again, this time with Jeremy as the only passenger. One of the main arguments of the segregationists against desegregation was that it involved the massive bussing of children away from their neighborhoods. But in fact, a very large number of schoolchildren were bussed in New Orleans to keep the schools segregated.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Two Lives in Uncertain Times, New York: Berghahn Books, 2006, p. 85f