Celeste Frierson, School Desegregation Activist, Dies
Times Picayune  05-21-1996

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Celeste Frierson, a civic activist who lobbied for children's issues and
helped desegregate New Orleans area public schools, died Sunday at her New
Orleans home of an asthma attack. She was 82.

A native of New Orleans, Mrs. Frierson was active there and in Lexington, Ky.,
where she moved in the late 1930s after marrying her first husband, Dr.
William N. Offutt III.

"When Mother got on a bandwagon, she was really something," said her daughter,
Dr. Maury Offutt Reeves of Lexington, Ky.

Born Marie Celeste Lyons, she attended Louise S. McGehee School, made her
debut into society and graduated from Newcomb College, where she was elected
to Phi Beta Kappa.

In Lexington, where she was elected to the Junior League and won the women's
singles tennis title, she helped found the city's chapter of the League of
Women Voters. She was chairwoman of the citizens advisory committee at the
Glendale State Reformatory and lobbied for child-welfare legislation.

She took her lobbying duties seriously, her daughter said, even when she was
introducing her father to the governor during a tour of the Kentucky Capitol.

"Happy Chandler was governor. She had worked to get him elected," Reeves said,
"but his predecessor had instituted a nice piece of child legislation, and
Happy demolished it. While she was introducing her father, she couldn't pass
up the opportunity to lobby him. By the time she finished, she had shaken the
governor by his lapels in his own office."

When she returned to New Orleans after her 1960 divorce, the city's school
system was in crisis because it had been ordered to desegregate.

Mrs. Frierson jumped right in, her daughter said. "My mother drove black
children to New Orleans schools. I was a sophomore at Newcomb. I came home one
day and she said she had been getting threatening phone calls but said, 'Try
not to be too concerned about it.' "

She also was active in Plaquemines Parish, where political boss Leander Perez
had ordered teachers to stay home rather than preside over integrated
classrooms. "Mother and three other (League of Women Voters members) went down
to teach and kept the schools open for two weeks until the teachers returned,"
Reeves said.

Mrs. Frierson, who married George S. Frierson Jr. of New Orleans in 1961, was
chairwoman of the league's juvenile court study committee. She was honored
last year for longtime service to the organization.

She also was a benefactor of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana.

Besides her daughter, survivors include three sons, M. Webb Offutt of New
Orleans and Drs. William N. Offutt IV and Randolph L. Offutt, both of
Georgetown, Ky.; a stepson, Louis Frierson of New Orleans; five grandchildren;
and two stepgrandchildren.

A memorial service will be held Thursday at 5 p.m. at Lake Lawn Metairie
Funeral Home, 5100 Pontchartrain Blvd. Visitation will begin at 4 p.m. Her
body was donated to science.