United Teachers of New Orleans Statement on the Life and Legacy of Nat LaCour, UTNO President Emeritus.
Local 527 membership elected Mr. LaCour vice-president in 1969 and then president in 1971, a post he held until he was promoted to a position in the American Federation of Teachers in 1998. He transformed Local 527 from a relatively small group of mostly segregated teachers into the largest local in the state. In 1972, amidst top-down faculty desegregation, Mr. LaCour helped orchestrate a merger with the mostly-white NEA local to form UTNO: The United Teachers of New Orleans. The merger was unprecedented: