Marcia Merlyn Ann McDonald Fenelon, Esq. (1926-1951)
It appeared that life had nothing but happiness in store for young Miss Marcia McDonald as she and her three bridesmaids made their way down the aisle of Saint Peter Claver Church on the first day of September in 1948. The 22-year-old Southern belle could not have made a prettier picture, arrayed in her ivory-colored gown and long embroidered train. The groom, just as full of youthful promise, was Robert Jules Fenelon, 26 years old, recently returned from the Second World War, and already beginning a successful career in the undertaking profession.
Marcia Merlyn Ann McDonald was the daughter of a well-trained and highly regarded dentist, Dr. Alden Andrew Erskine McDonald, and a mother, Grace Mary Perkins, who left her career in education to become a homemaker and socialite. What distinguished young Marcia (a 1942 graduate of Xavier Prep) is that three months before donning her satin bridal gown, she and two other Black young ladies, clad in black academic robes, graduated from the North Carolina College for Negroes School of Law in Durham. The then newly founded law school was an effort on the part of the North Carolina legislature to adhere to the doctrine of separate-but-equal by establishing a Black law school rather than integrating existing institutions. Marcia and the two other young women made history as an entirely female graduating class.
Marcia McDonald (front center) with law school classmates and faculty, 1948.
Marcia returned to Louisiana where she joined the faculty of the Southern University School of Law, which opened in September 1947. After being admitted to the bar, she was commissioned as a notary by Governor Earl Long and named as Southern University’s Law Librarian. It seemed as though while beset on every side by the smothering presence of Jim Crow segregation, Marcia, her new husband and, in time, their little daughter, were poised to make happy lives. This, however, was not to be, since the era of Jim Crow would soon bring her life to a brutal end.
Attorney Marcia McDonald and her father, Dr. Andrew McDonald, interviewed by O.C.W. Taylor on “Negro Forum” on WNOE radio (1949).
Taking advantage of the summer break from the university, Mrs. Fenelon had been visiting relatives in Alexandria and called her husband on Thursday, 9 August 1951, to remind him that she would arrive home to Baton Rouge the next morning on the Kansas City Southern (KCS)’s Southern Belle. The train had traveled about sixty miles outside of Alexandria and was less than an hour from Baton Rouge when it encountered a westward-bound KCS train in a head-on collision that remains one of the most horrifying and deadliest wrecks in Louisiana history. The other train was filled with 305 Marines en route to San Diego from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The military train failed to heed an order to switch to a sidetrack to allow the passenger train to pass.
Arriving at the Baton Rouge train station at 8:00 a.m., Robert Fenelon heard officials shouting, “Send all ambulances and medical aides!” Being an undertaker, he inquired about all the chaos. Realizing his wife was on the train, he drove to the scene of the collision. Displaying his embalmer’s license, authorities permitted him to enter the area. He then proceeded in sweltering 90-degree weather for three-and-a-half miles to the flaming wreckage. It was impossible to get close because of the intense heat. He made inquiries but found no trace of her. He thought she may have even wandered off in a dazed condition after having been injured in the blast.
Site of the collision – Pointe Coupee Banner, 16 August 1951.
Since there was no water in the area, tank cars rushed in to put out the flames. By the hundreds, excited people leaped into their automobiles and sped to the scene of the accident. Twenty-five doctors, deputies, railroad workers, nurses, and helpers-in-general rushed to assist in any way they could. A total of two hundred rescue workers spent the next 48 hours pouring tons of water on the blazing wreckage of the Southern Belle.
Leaving the scene without success, Robert Fenelon decided to return to Baton Rouge. While on his way home, he passed his wife’s parents on the highway heading in the direction of the crash. Together, they journeyed back home. Having just returned from a trip to Mexico, Dr. and Mrs. Andrew McDonald were driving from Opelousas to Baton Rouge when they picked up a news flash on their automobile radio about the horrendous train crash. They immediately knew their daughter was on that train. Arriving home, family members spent the remainder of the day telephoning hospitals in search of their loved one, hoping she had somehow survived. Up from New Orleans to Baton Rouge came Malcolm McDonald, an uncle, and other family members.
Finally, on Saturday morning, 48 hours after the crash, the charred remnants of Mrs. Fenelon’s body were found. With the assistance of her husband, a wedding ring, belt buckle, scissors, and buttons from a blouse were identified as belonging to her. The 25-year-old attorney, faculty member, and mother was among the 13 victims who died in the infernal blaze, and which killed every passenger in the Southern Belle‘s so-called “Jim Crow car.”
Miss McDonald (seated front, right) and her sorors in Alpha Chi Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority (1946)
Summarizing the long history of fatalities associated with Jim Crow railroad cars, historian Mia Bay has written: “Train crashes took on a racial logic that was obvious even outside the railroad industry.” Jim Crow cars were often outdated and more likely to be crushed in collisions than the steel fire-resistant cars railroads put into service for white passengers. The Jim Crow cars were more dangerous and uncomfortable as they were closest to the heavy locomotives, which spewed smoke and cinders into the air, and in the event of a crash were likely to explode. LSU sociology professor William O. Scruggs once commented on this hazardous condition so clearly linked to race to a fellow white train passenger who blithely remarked, “It costs the road more to kill a white man than a nigger, and so it takes extra precautions for us.”
Just eighteen days before what would have been her third wedding anniversary, six of Marcia Fenelon’s fellow attorneys, who acted as her pallbearers, carried her earthly remains down the aisle of Saint Peter Claver Church, the same place where the bright and beautiful lady had begun her married life. Her tragic death left her husband widowed and her three-year-old daughter motherless. It also ended her promising career as an early Black Southern female attorney. It was just one more brutal reminder that life under Jim Crow segregation was separate but inherently unequal.
Lolita Villavasso Cherrie
Sources: “Final Rites are held for Attorney Here,” The Louisiana Weekly, 18 April 1951, p. 1; “Jim Crow Car, Lone Survivor Tells of Last Call to Breakfast,” The Louisiana Weekly, 18 April 1951, p. 1; The Daily Advertiser (Shreveport, Louisiana), 12 August 1951, p. 1, 6; “United in Impressive Wedding Ceremony,” The Louisiana Weekly, 1 September 1948, p. 6; “Rainy Body Believed Found in KCS Wreck,” The Town Talk, 13 August 1951, p. 1; “Wreck Claimed 12 Lives, 60 are Injured,” Pointe Coupee Banner (New Roads, Louisiana) 16 August 1951, p. 1; “Spears Boy Killed in Aftermath of Troops – Passenger Train Wreck,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 16 August 1951, p. 1; “Burns to Death in Train Collision,” The Louisiana Weekly, 18 August 1951, p. 1-2; “Southern University Law Professor Killed in Train Crash, 2 Other Victims also Identified,” The Chicago Defender, 18 August 1951, pages 1-2; “Train Wreck, Lawyer Crash Victim,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 18 August 1951, p. 1; Marcia McDonald Fenelon obituary, The Times-Picayune, 13 August 1951, p. 2; Alden Andrew Erskine McDonald obituary, The Times–Picayune, 17 August 1982, sec. 1, p. 13; The Jackson (Mississippi) Advocate, 15 January 1949, p. 2; Mia Bay, Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021), 71-72; The Maroon and Gray, 1946 (Durham: North Carolina College for Negroes, 1946), p. 27, 67; and The Maroon and Gray, 1948 (Durham: North Carolina College for Negroes, 1948), p. 14, digitized copies, North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, www.digitalnc.org.
– Special thanks to Mr. Dominick Cherrie for formatting and typesetting assistance.
I enjoyed reading such an informative and inspiring article. Another piece of our history I never knew. Thank you to all who contributed to writing this wonderful article!
Excellent story. Thanks.
So sad and so very enlightening…I did not know about the jim crow railroad cars. Thanks for writing about this woman’s life and death.
You may want to read “The Warmth of Other Suns.” It has more train stories of people who worked in them and rode in them. It was a fantastic book. So educational.
Thank you for reminding me of Isabel Wilkerson’s great book, “The Warmth of Other Suns.” I found myself rereading portions of the novel today, especially the trips on Jim Crow trains migrating from the South to the North and West. We should never
forget what we as a people had to endure.
So sad! 😢 Excellent well-written article. Thanks for keeping alive our history and stories! I have ridden on the Jim Crow train cars for “Colored” back in the early 1950s.
Thank you for a timely publication of this tragic story that needs telling again and again….
This is absolutely heartbreaking. My heart breaks for her family. She would have gone to do amazing things. May she rest in peace.
Another sad moment, not to be forgotten.
Thank you for posting.
Powerful story. Thank you.
I once lived in Opelousas, so I knew Robert Fenelon and his business, but I never knew his family tragedy. Thanks for this article, it was narrated well.
Many thanks for sharing that historical information.
A rather sad reminder as to how far we have not come.
Thanks for sharing. Mr.and Mrs. McDonald were friends of my parents. I grew up with their granddaughter, Fay.
An excellent detailed story of this tragic event. Dr. McDonald was our family dentist. I was 9 yrs. when this happened, and I remember the sadness in my home at the time. This has given me a clearer understanding of what had occurred. Thank you.
Thanks Lolita for the wonderful article on my mother.
Thank you for the article. Our history does not need to be embellished. The truth speaks for itself. It must be told, written and handed down, but never forgotten and never banned.
This article is very interesting… I would love to learn more about it! – The assistant of this story.
Thanks so much for this story. Keep, keeping us abreast of our history which have been forgotten or hidden. We and our children should never forget.