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NEW ORLEANS - Lolis Edward Elie, a New Orleans lawyer whose work put him in the thick of the civil rights movement, with clients who included African-Americans seeking jobs and the right to eat at lunch counters, Freedom Riders and the Black Panther party, died Tuesday at his Treme home. He was 89.
His career spanned 46 years -- he retired shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005 -- and it encompassed a life-altering journey. Born in New Orleans when segregation was so pervasive that police would holler at him just for walking through Audubon Park, Mr. Elie not only represented people who challenged the social order but also met with leaders of the white establishment to try to make changes happen.
"He just wanted to help people," said his son, the journalist and screenwriter Lolis Eric Elie.
"Throughout his life, Elie was drawn to defend blacks who were willing to risk their lives to achieve freedom, especially blacks who resisted white oppression," Kim Lacy Rogers wrote in "Righteous Lives: Narratives of the New Orleans Civil Rights Movement." "He had initially been impressed by the courage of the young people in (the Congress of Racial Equality, better known as CORE), who went into dangerous Southern jails, and confronted violent whites with nonviolent tactics."
But the frustration over the lack of progress took a toll on him, Rogers said, and he became impressed by the philosophy of the Black Muslims and Malcolm X, and by the importance of self-defense of black communities.
"Lolis was a complex personality," said former New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu, a longtime friend. "He was an amazingly committed guy. ... He had very strong views about matters, and he lived those strong views."
Mr. Elie wound up defending 12 young African-American men and women who had formed a local Black Panthers chapter and been involved in a shootout with police.
They were "standing up for human dignity," he said during the 1971 trial. They were armed, Mr. Elie said, because they "were acting rationally in assuming the police were there to murder them."
Although the odds seemed to be against the defendants, they were acquitted. In an interview, Mr. Elie ventured an explanation for that outcome: A black judge was presiding, and members of the black community packed the courtroom.
"We won by intimidating him," Mr. Elie said in the interview.
More drama occurred several weeks later, when he and James Farmer, CORE's founder, were in a group that was marching in Plaquemine. When they were warned that state troopers were coming in on horseback to break up the protest and arrest -- and, perhaps, beat -- Farmer, he and Mr. Elie wound up in a funeral home while a wake was being held.
When troopers pounded on the door, demanding to be let in, Farmer was smuggled out in a hearse.
Mr. Elie was born in Uptown New Orleans, in a neighborhood west of Audubon Park that was hard by the Mississippi River. His first name, which is found in several generations of his family, came from a man who came to teach in New Roads, where Mr. Elie's relatives lived, his son said.
His birthdate has been a matter of dispute. For years, it was believed to be Jan. 9, 1930, but the date on his birth certificate is Feb. 9, 1928.
He attended Gilbert Academy, a Methodist high school that occupied the site where the Jewish Community Center stands. Other alumni include Andrew Young, who became Atlanta's mayor and the ambassador to the United Nations, and the pianist and music-family patriarch Ellis Marsalis.
In an interview with Robert Penn Warren for his book "Who Speaks for the Negro?" Mr. Elie said his father, a truck driver, didn't encourage his intellectual pursuits.
So Mr. Elie did a six-month stint as a merchant seaman and wound up in New York, where he was dazzled by the music clubs and the Apollo Theater. To support himself, Mr. Elie did menial work such as shining shoes and delivering stationery.
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After earning his degree, he, Robert Collins and Nils Douglas formed a partnership and set up an office on Dryades Street, near the Dryades YMCA.
Dryades, much of which has since been renamed to honor the civil rights worker Oretha Castle Haley, happened to be the site of the first civil rights action in which Mr. Elie was involved.
Because Canal Street stores didn't admit black customers, Dryades Street was their principal shopping thoroughfare. But the stores didn't hire African-Americans except for janitorial jobs.
The Louisiana Consumers' League was formed in late 1959 at Mr. Elie's office to change that situation by organizing a boycott, and it hired him to be its attorney.
The boycott was planned just before the following Easter, traditionally a busy shopping time, Mr. Elie told The Louisiana Weekly, and black and white college students joined the pickets....
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