Leander Perez

American politician and segregationist

• Born: July 16, 1891
• Birthplace: Jesuit Bend, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana
• Died: March 19, 1969
• Place of death: Belle Chasse, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana

Cause of notoriety: As a political boss in south Louisiana, Perez leased governmental land at low cost in order to profit personally, spurring charges of corruption. He also became a vocal opponent of racial integration. He was investigated but never convicted of various types of fraud.

Active: 1919-1969

Locale: Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana

Early Life

Leander Perez (lee-AN-duhr PEHR-ehz) was one of thirteen children born to Roselius “Fice” Perez and Gertrude Solis. Fice was a successful farmer elected to the parish police jury and served for twenty-four years; he also served on the Lafourche Levee Board for thirty-five years. However, there are few records of his being perceived as a powerful politician.

Leander attended Our Lady of Holy Cross College and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, although he did not graduate. However, he had enough credits to enter Tulane Law School, from which he graduated in 1914. Perez then began a small law practice and in 1916 ran for the state House of Representatives against the powerful local political boss John Dymond, Jr. Although he was defeated, Perez caught the attention of reform-minded politicians such as Louisiana governor-elect John Parker and rising political star Huey Long. In 1917, Perez married Agnes Octavee Chalin.

Political Career

When Twenty-ninth Judicial District judge Robert Hingle died in 1919, Perez was appointed to fill the final year left in Hingle’s term of office. Perez then won a bitterly contested election by a slim margin to gain a four-year term to the judgeship. Though he never served on the bench again, he was known as Judge Perez for the rest of his life. He was elected district attorney for the Twenty-fifth Judicial District in 1924, and he was continuously elected to that office until he died.

While seen as an ally to Long in his bids for the governorship of Louisiana (in which Long was defeated in 1924 but victorious in 1928), Perez was not known for delivering a significant number of votes to Long. However, when Long faced impeachment, Perez was the leader of Long’s legal defense team. This team developed what was labeled the Round Robin strategy, whereby fifteen senators signed a document stating that they would not consider any charges against Long. With this document, it was evident that no attempt to impeach Long would succeed.

His defense of Long made Judge Perez a figure of statewide prominence. His relationship with Long was cemented when Long received more than 90 percent of the Plaquemines vote in his election for governor, and the “Long ticket” of endorsed candidates shared years of incredible electoral support there. Among the most interesting situations was the 1932 gubernatorial primary, in which 3,152 votes were cast for the Long-supported O. K. Allen and none for Allen’s four opponents. Down the ticket, all other Long opponents officially received zero votes as well. For several elections held from the 1930’s through the 1950’s, ridiculous election returns came in from St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes. On some occasions, more votes were recorded than the actual number of voters registered.

Although his salary never exceeded seven thousand dollars per year, Perez amassed a significant fortune. By the early 1930’s, he had established a complex web of businesses to make money from the mineral wealth of the lands belonging to the school board, parish, and levee board. Contracts to develop this land were awarded by the police jury, which was supervised by the district attorney. Specific companies were awarded the rights to lease governmental land at very low cost. The companies would immediately sublease the lands to a company that would extract the oil and mineral riches of the land. Perez was frequently insulated from accusations of corruption because he served as the attorney for these companies rather than as owner of them. Instead, family members and close associates who owned the companies, located in various regions of the country, paid significant amounts of their revenue to Perez to serve as their attorney.

Perez’s political power also was used to promote racial segregation. Although blacks constituted generally one-third of the population of Plaquemines Parish, few voted throughout Perez’s term of office. For a time in 1952, no blacks were registered to vote in the entire parish. Numerous references cite Perez’s address to the White Citizens’ Council in 1960, in which he contributed to inciting a riot with such incendiary statements as “Don’t wait for your daughter to be raped by these Congolese. Don’t wait until the burrheads are forced into your schools. Do something about it now.”

Perez was active in the states’ rights and racial segregationist movements. Nearly all politically powerful people in Louisiana were Democrats for the first three-quarters of the twentieth century; however, while Perez was a Democrat and heavily involved as a member of the state central committee, on a national level he publicly opposed all of the Democratic presidential candidates, from Harry S. Truman in 1948 to Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Moreover, Perez was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church for his public defiance of the order from New Orleans archbishop Joseph Rummel to desegregate the region’s Catholic schools throughout the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.

At the age of seventy-seven, Perez died of a heart attack at his fishing camp. His excommunication from the Church was quietly lifted shortly before his death, and his funeral mass was held at the Holy Name of Jesus Church in New Orleans. More than one thousand people attended his funeral, representing a virtual who’s who of powerful southern politicians.

Impact

Louisiana has always had a reputation for corrupt politicians, which has led to significant mistrust of large corporations investing in the state, as well as federal allocations of block grants. Leander Perez was accused of mishandling numerous contracts that would have led to billions of dollars of revenue for the state of Louisiana. His intractability in negotiating state royalties for offshore oil leases led to the state of Louisiana receiving virtually no money. Moreover, the legacy of the local controls of the levee board may have significantly contributed to a lack of federal support in gaining adequate maintenance and care for the numerous levees in Louisiana. This lack of coordination demonstrated itself when the levees failed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in late summer, 2005.

Perez’s excommunication from the Catholic Church is frequently referenced in order to challenge Catholic politicians who defy certain Church doctrines, including those regarding abortion. Many Catholic politicians, including 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry, have been subject to threats of excommunication for supporting political issues such as the right to choose an abortion.

Bibliography

Boulard, Gary. The Big Lie: Hale Boggs, Lucille May Grace, and Leander Perez in 1951. Gretna, La.: Pelican, 2001. A detailed description of the way in which Perez exercised political power throughout the state of Louisiana in the 1950’s.

Conaway, James. Judge: The Life and Times of Leander Perez. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. An independent biography describing Perez as a political power.

Jeansonne, Glen. Leander Perez: Boss of the Delta. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977. An independent biography that details many aspects of Perez’s life.