Our History
The Louis A. Martinet Legal Society was created in 1957 by Earl J. Amedee, Israel M. Augustine, Louis Berry, Lionel Collins, Robert F. Collins, Niles R. Douglas, Norman C. Francis, Benjamin J. Johnson, Alvin Jones, Vanue B. LaCour, Ernest N. Morial, Justice Revius Ortique, Jr., J. T. Powell, James Smith, A. P. Tureaud, Freddie Warren, and Lawrence Wheeler to challenge racial injustice.
The Society is named in honor of an African-American pioneer in the legal profession, Louis André Martinet. Martinet was the first African-American graduate of Straight University Law School (now Dillard University) in 1876. He graduated law school after he passed the Louisiana Bar Examination a year earlier, in 1875. In 1890, he helped organize the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens Committee) to offer legal resistance to the Separate Car Law of Louisiana. This law, passed by the Louisiana Legislature, required blacks and whites ride in separate coaches on all public transportation in the state. Martinet publicly denounced the Separate Car Law in the Daily Crusader and quickly mobilized African-American attorneys to combat the law. He was a key strategist in orchestrating Homer Adolph Plessy’s arrest for violating the Separate Car Act, an act that led to the landmark 1896 United States Supreme Court decision, Plessy vs. Ferguson, which established “separate but equal” as the law of the land. Because Martinet was not admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, he selected S.F. Phillips and A.W. Tourgee to serve as attorneys of record.
The Greater New Orleans chapter of the Louis A. Martinet Legal Society includes members throughout the practice and the bench. Our objectives are to encourage interchange of ideas, promote legal scholarship, advance the science of jurisprudence, promote the administration of justice, uphold the order and ethics of the courts and the profession of law, and promote the welfare of the legal profession in Louisiana.
The Martinet Foundation
The New Orleans Martinet Legal Foundation, Inc. was established in 1999 as the charitable, 501(c)(3) arm of the Greater New Orleans Louis A. Martinet Legal Society, Inc. The goals of the Foundation are to: (1) endow the future of the Greater New Orleans Louis A. Martinet Legal Society, Inc.; (2) support deserving law students and law student programs, which enhance the quality of legal education; (3) support public forums where lecture, discussion, and debates of legal subjects of public interest are presented to the general public; (4) finance in whole or part litigation that is of significant public interest; (5) publish scholarly writings on legal subjects to disseminate to the general public; (6) promote through scholarship and other media, the history and works of individuals who have furthered justice and equality in the African-American community; and (7) improve the administration of justice and promote high ethical standards for lawyers and judges.
