Marie Justine Cirnaire Couvent left land in 1837 to educate Black orphans, creating a legacy rooted in empowerment and access. Yet today, the Archdiocese of New Orleans has chosen to sell the school founded on her land to settle abuse claims, while her name has been stripped and her vision sidelined

The removal of Marie Couvent's name from the school she founded is emblematic of a wider inconsistency in how we honor historical figures. The New Orleans school board, as part of its initiative in the 1990s to remove the names of slaveholders from public structures, stripped her name. However, this