NEW ORLEANS (AP) — First lady Jill Biden, former ambassador Andrew Young and the Rev. Al Sharpton were among those who paid tribute Monday at the funeral of New Orleans civil rights activist Sybil Morial.
Morial, who was also the widow of New Orleans’ first black mayor, Ernest N. “Dutch” Morial, and mother of former Mayor Marc H. Morial, died earlier this month at age 91.
New Orleans news outlets reported that Biden paid her respects in a video played for attendees of the service, held at Xavier University, where Morial went to school and worked for 28 years. Young, the former United Nations ambassador and former Atlanta mayor who was a friend of Morial’s since childhood, also spoke:
“There is something magical and spiritual about Sybil Morial’s life that will never die,” Young told the family.
Sharpton, who heads the National Action Network, said Morial’s activism has made them all better.
“What Sybil Morial did goes beyond her family, goes beyond her husband, goes beyond her children and grandchildren,” he said. “We are all better because she decided to join the fight to make the country better racially and gender-wise.”
Sharpton also read condolences from Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, who said Morial broke barriers for everyone and lived a life that made an impact and will be an inspiration for generations.
“Mrs. Morial will be remembered for the light she brought to this world,” Harris wrote.
Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, also sent their condolences, describing Morial as “an extraordinary woman.”
Born on November 26, 1932, Morial was raised by her father, a physician, and her mother, a schoolteacher, in a deeply segregated New Orleans. She attended Xavier University of Louisiana, one of the city’s historically black institutions of higher learning, before transferring to Boston University, where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. earned a theological degree and gave guest sermons at churches. She met King there and returned home inspired to join the civil rights movement.
She founded the Louisiana League of Good Government, which helped black people register to vote at a time when they still had to pass tests such as memorizing the preamble to the Constitution. She was also a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging a Louisiana law that banned public school teachers from being involved in groups that opposed segregation, according to the LSU Women’s Center.
During her children’s reflections, Marc Morial, who now heads the National Urban League, said the city had “lost its matriarch.”
“She is one of the last living figures from that magical era of the ’50s and ’60s who opened doors for us to walk through,” he said.
He said he believed he and his siblings inherited many of their mother’s traits. His brother, Jacques, and sister, Julie, got their high IQs from her, while his sister Cherie adopted their mother’s ease in making friends and his other sister, Monique, manifested her drill sergeant enforcement persona, he said. As for himself, he said, he inherited her ability to multitask.
“She could cook, talk to you on the phone, help us with homework and every hair would still be in place. She was a master at doing many things at once,” he said.
In his final meditation, he told Peter, one of Jesus’ twelve apostles, to prepare himself.
“Open the gates! Sound the trumpet! Roll out the red carpet! Our queen is coming your way!” he said, drawing applause.
