Word: perez
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...symbol of Louisiana racism is a heavy man with pewtery hair, cold blue eyes, a cunning legal mind and a fanatic's zeal. To Leander Henry Perez, 68, there are just two kinds of Negroes: "Bad ones are niggers and good ones are darkies." Although he is not a member of the Louisiana legislature. Perez often operates out of a hideaway office in the skyscraper Baton Rouge capitol, has helped mastermind the legislative struggle against school integration. And at arousing the rabble, Perez has few equals. At a recent meeting of the New Orleans Citizens Council, Perez raised...
...seventh of 13 children of a Delta farmer, Perez was born in Plaquemines Parish (pop. 22,275), a spongy wilderness on the splayed toe of Louisiana, where the muskrats and the alligators outnumber the people. In Perez' lifetime Plaquemines has risen, through the discovery of rich oil and sulphur deposits, from Louisiana's poorest back-bayou parish to one of its richest. Although he has never made more than $7,000 a year as a public official, shrewd Leander Perez has become a multimillionaire through his law practice and interests in oil and sulphur lands in his native...
...Life. Perez hopped into parish politics right after he got out of Tulane Law School in 1914. At 27 he was a district judge, in 1924 became district attorney for Plaquemines and neighboring St. Bernard's Parish-a position he gave up only this week, having airily announced that his son, Leander Jr., would take over the job. But lest anyone get the idea that he was retiring, Perez explained: "I intend to remain as assistant district attorney. The state constitution provides that the assistant district attorney has all the powers of the district attorney...
With Leander Perez, defiance is a way of life. In 1943, when Louisiana's Governor Sam Jones appointed a Plaquemines sheriff against Perez' wishes, Perez mobilized the able-bodied men of Plaquemines, including the American Legion, set up a flaming roadblock of gasoline-soaked oyster shells in an attempt to turn the appointee back. Frustrated by a convoy bristling with state militiamen, Perez retreated to mid-Mississippi on a ferryboat, resorted thereafter to a volley of lawsuits (15 at one time), finally defeated the Jonesman in a typically casual Delta election...
...target, but segregationist tempers started to flare. That night 6,000 whites jammed into a White Citizen's Council rally at the municipal auditorium. They stamped and shouted as former State Senator Willie Rainach ranted warnings of the "conspiracy for the destruction of the white race," and Leander Perez, the notorious political boss of Plaquemines Parish in the Mississippi Delta, foamed at Jews, Catholics, Negroes, "Judge J. Scallywag Wright," and at Mayor de Lesseps Morrison as "weasel, snakehead Morrison...