NEW ORLEANS – The Leona Tate Foundation for Change, Inc. has opened “The Principal’s Office,” a permanent new exhibit at the Tate, Etienne, and Prevost (TEP) Interpretive Center.
The TEP Center has welcomed nearly 10,000 students in grades K-12 to experience its educational programming since its founding in May 2022. in 2026, the TEP Center anticipates welcoming more than 6,500 learners of all ages. Visitors participate in hands-on learning experiences, workshops, and guided reflection rooted in civil rights history.
Fabrication That Brings History to Life
The fabrication of “The Principal’s Office” was spearheaded by Downtown FabWorks, a New Orleans–based scenic and architectural fabrication firm that delivers custom experiential fabrication and technical design for live events, brand activations, educational displays, and immersive exhibits across the U.S.
Through experiential fabrication techniques, the team transformed historical narrative into a tactile, real-world experience designed to immerse visitors in the story.
The result is a vivid, multi-layered environment that includes:
- two large exterior banners which they say ground the building in its historic meaning;
- interior panels and glass window graphics incorporating 1960s-era headlines, photographs, and imagery from the first day of integration;
- a tactile hopscotch installation at the principal’s office;
- a permanent wall installation introducing Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, and Tessie Prevost; and
- layered narrative banners and spatial graphics that guide visitors through the space.
The exhibit was originally designed by Gallagher & Associates (G&A) which helped shape the conceptual foundation that FabWorks brought to life through high-impact museum exhibit fabrication.
The TEP Center’s “The Principal’s Office” exhibit is supported in part by an African American Civil Rights grant from the Historic Preservation Fund administered by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior, with additional support from Keesler Federal Credit Union, which sponsored the exhibit’s glass walls.
“A Walk in Our Shoes” — An Immersive, Emotional Journey
While the official exhibit title is “The Principal’s Office,” the space is marked with signage reading “A Walk in Our Shoes,” signaling the core experience of the installation. The exhibit recreates the route taken by three six-year-old girls as they entered the school for the first time, tracing their path from the front steps to the principal’s office and inviting visitors to physically walk into history.
The story is conveyed through experiential design and narrative-flow elements intended to help guests feel the moment, rather than simply read about it.
Built in 1929, the building formerly known as McDonogh 19 Elementary School became one of two flashpoints for school desegregation in New Orleans in 1960. On Nov. 14 of that year—six years after Brown v. Board of Education—first-graders Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, and Tessie Prevost walked through a crowd of jeering protesters, flanked by federal marshals, becoming the first Black students to integrate the school.
Now known as the TEP Interpretive Center, the building has been transformed under the leadership of Dr. Leona Tate, who, along with community partners, reclaimed the site to preserve its legacy and repurpose it as a hub for civil rights education, racial equity dialogue, community programming, and low-income senior housing.
A Future Reimagined
“The Principal’s Office” is now open to the public at the TEP Interpretive Center, located at 5909 St. Claude Ave. In preserving the legacy of the McDonogh Three, the founders say the exhibit sheds light on a pivotal but often overlooked chapter in America’s desegregation story, connecting civil rights history to ongoing work around educational equity, justice and community empowerment.
Building on this momentum, the Center’s next goals include installing multimedia components within “The Principal’s Office,” developing a new first-grade classroom exhibit and creating a civil rights timeline to further deepen historical context for visitors.
