Article Of Naomi Drake and Race Changes in the Vital Stats Office Orleans Parish Louisiana
Submitted By Peggy Rooney September 2003

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Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA)
August 16, 1993
MANY FEARED NAOMI DRAKE AND POWERFUL RACIAL WHIM
Author: JAMES O'BYRNE Staff writer
Section: NATIONAL
Page: A7
Estimated printed pages: 4
Article Text:
In a society in which few white people could imagine anything worse than
being called black, Naomi Drake wielded the weapon of racism with the ardor
of an armed knight defending her king.
During 16 years as the head of the Bureau of Vital Statistics for New
Orleans, Drake made it clear that there was nothing worse in the world than
to allow a person to live as white who did not deserve to do so. She lorded
over the birth and death records of generations of New Orleanians, and
unilaterally changed the race of thousands of them from white to black -
almost never the other way around.
When she was finally fired in 1965, Drake was feared and reviled - by
parents who could not get birth certificates to put their children in public
schools, by lawyers who could not do research or complete wills, by adoption
agencies and funeral homes.
But the source of her power and reputation says more about racism in New
Orleans than it did about her peculiar habits of mind. She was able to wield
such power because of racism's sway. No matter what they looked like, who
they were or how they had lived, white people knew that to be touched by any
hint of blackness was to be tainted, stigmatized by the sting of their own
racial prejudices. That is what made people fear Naomi Drake.
The Civil Service Commission agreed to delete the names of any witnesses
from its final decision upholding Drake's firing. That was to save the
witnesses the embarrassment of having been suspected as being black, however
inaccurately.
If Drake thought there was the slightest hint that someone who lived as a
white person might have any African ancestry, she would not issue a birth or
death certificate.
At the time of her firing for her refusal to issue certificates, the backlog
of birth certificates had mounted to 4,700. Almost 1,200 death certificates
had been held up.
And if she could prove African ancestry, however distant, she would change a
person's race in the official records of the City of New Orleans, usually
without notifying the person affected or any of the person's family members.
According to testimony at her hearing, she once reportedly said, "All the
people in White Castle are half-breeds."
She would ferret out signs of African ancestry in children of unmarried
mothers, call them in to her office and inform them that their children were
"adulterous bastards," testimony showed.
Drake, who died in 1987, ordered her employees to pull every certificate in
the office designated by race with the letter "c" - which usually meant
mixed race, or 'colored,' but also sometimes meant Chinese or something
else - and change the race on such documents to Negro.
She kept a list of "flagged names," that she believed were suspect, and
should be checked for signs of African ancestry. Any request for a
certificate of a person with a flagged name had to be held up for further
research. The list included such names as Adams, Charles, Landry and Olsen.
She explained how she could tell when someone's birth certificate was wrong
at her dismissal hearing before the Civil Service Commission: "Very often we
are acquainted with the name," Drake testified. "We know them to be the
names of Negro families."
She had her workers scour the obituaries of people who had died, looking for
any clues that a dead person identified as white had black relatives or
survivors, such as services at a traditionally black funeral home, relatives
with traditionally black names or burial at traditionally black cemeteries.
Her research was instrumental in a decision by the Orleans Parish district
attorney's office in 1956 to obtain an indictment against a Plaquemines
Parish woman on charges of filing a false document. The woman's crime: She
considered herself white and had recorded that on the birth certificate for
her child.
The woman was eventually acquitted, but only after being asked a series of
questions designed to attach to her any blackness at all, including whether
her doctor treated her as a black person or a white person, and where her
husband's sister's children attended school.
When Drake was fired, few people were happier to see her go than Peter
Huhner, father of five.
Huhner had tried to get birth certificates for his children. But Drake
suspected Huhner's wife had African ancestry, and so refused to release the
certificates. After months of battling Drake unsuccessfully, Huhner finally
put his children in parochial school.
But what Huhner was most concerned about, according to his letter to city
officials after Drake's dismissal, was not the burden of private school
tuition or the denial of a public education, but that his family had been
besmirched.
"We find it difficult to understand how my wife's parents were registered as
being white as were their parents," Huhner wrote. "And after being brought
up that way, after all these years, someone that does not even know the
family at all has reason to believe differently and would cause this much
embarrassment."
_________________________
Illustration:
Naomi Drake, shown here in her office in the Bureau
of Vital Statistics, was fired in 1965. She refused to issue
4,700 birth certificates - most of them because she suspected
white babies of having African ancestry.
When Bureau of Vital Statistics Director Naomi Drake decided
someone had African ancestry, she would simply cross out
"White," in this case on a death certificate, and write in
"Negro," often without telling the families of her decision.
2 PHOTOS
Memo:
Memo:
Part 3, Day 2
Series:
TOGETHER... APART: The myth of race. [SPECIAL REPORT]
Copyright, 1993, The Times-Picayune Publishing Corporation. All Rights
Reserved. Used by NewsBank with Permission.
Record Number: 9308190280