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I need a comprehensive history of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana
Hello! Thanks for your question concerning the history of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana and the impact and legacy of Leander Perez on the parish. The most useful sources I found to answer your question are "A Comprehensive Overview of Leander Perez" and "Historical: Plaquemines Parish."The short version is that Leander Perez was a virtual dictator of the Plaquemines Parish for over five decades until his death in 1969. He fraudulently stole millions of dollars from the parish and funneled it into his own private company, Delta Development. To this day, the parish, his descendants, and other historical families in the area are still in legal battles over reparations. Below you will find a deep dive of my findings.
METHODOLOGY
I focused on two research paths to best answer your question. To begin, I researched general historical information and important events that transpired in Plaquemines Parish. I then researched Leander Perez, what he did, and his impact and legacy on the parish, as well as his descendants. I also some basic data, as in: founding dates, population numbers, etc., as per your request. Please find all this information below.
HISTORY OF PLAQUEMINES PARISH
Plaquemines Parish was founded on March 31, 1807. The name "“Plaquemines” derives from Louisiana French Creole and the Atakapa word “piakimin,” meaning persimmons, which is a type of edible fruit originally found in the area." Plaquemines is located where the Mississippi meets the Gulf of Mexico (the parish is bisected by the river) and has the most combined "land to water ratio in the State of Louisiana." As Harnett T. Kane in "Bayous of Louisiana" says: "It is a place that seems unable to make up its mind whether it will be earth or water, so it compromises." Pointe a la Hache (in french: "point of the hatchet/ax") is the official seat of government. The parish is also the location of three historical forts: Fort De La Boulaye, Fort St. Philip, and Fort Jackson. Fort St. Philip and Fort Jackson were active during the Civil War. Fort De La Boulaye was founded much earlier, in 1700, as a French claim over the Mississippi delta and defense against the Native Americans.
CULTURE OF PLAQUEMINES PARISH
Historically, the people of Plaquemines Parish have earned their livings as fishers, trappers, and boat pilots. Up until recent history, the town was divided into three types of ethnic groups: African Americans, Creoles, and Whites. The African Americans and Creoles often intermingled, while the White people kept themselves separate and apart from the other two groups, who were considered "lesser." As is the case with most of Louisiana, Plaquemines Parish is strongly influenced by the historical French settlers who came to the area. As such, the predominant religion in the area is Catholicism. As Norbert Cazabat, a Creole growing up in Davant, a town in Plaquemines Parish, during the 1940's and 50's recalls of the Catholic churches:
"There were three Catholic churches on the east bank: St. Thomas in the parish seat of Pointe-à-la-Hache, Saint Martin de Porres in Davant, and Assumption in the northern half of Plaquemines. Unlike schools, churches were not legally segregated, and I do not recall any hard-and-fast rules about which ethnic group attended which church. But customarily, most African Americans and Creoles from Davant and Pointe-à-la- Hache attended St. Martin de Porres in Davant, while white residents generally attended St Thomas Catholic Church in Pointe-à-la-Hache. In deference to the predominant ethnic group in each church, there were understood rules of seating. In Saint Martin de Porres, African Americans and Creoles sat in the front of the church, while white families sat in the back pew. At Saint Thomas, white churchgoers occupied the front of the church, and black and Creole worshippers sat in the rear."
Baseball was also an important and integral part of the social and cultural fabric, especially among African Americans and Creoles, of Plaquemines Parish. Baseball games, held on Saturdays, and the post-game dances, were important summer events that brought out the whole town, as well as important events for men and women to meet and mingle.
LEANDER PEREZ
Leander Perez was born on July 16, 1891, in the town of Dalcour in Plaquemines Parish. His father, Roselins E. “Fice” Perez, was a well-off sugar and rice planter. Perez attended catholic school and then graduated from Tulane University with a law degree in 1914.
In 1919, Perez was appointed district judge for Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes (which, for a time, were one parish). He was elected to a full term in 1920. Although he served for only a short time as a district judge, he did earn, for the rest of his lifetime, the nickname "Judge Perez." Most of his career he acted as the district attorney, winning his first election in 1924.
Leander Perez was able to create a miniature welfare state in the parish, by financing the parish with the oil wealth in the area, instead of taxation. This allowed him to control the residents, many of them poor, and maintain and control political power as he wished.
Leander Perez had many political schemes, scandals, and dealings throughout his five-decade stronghold on the parish. However, he is known for three things: being vehemently and vigorously racist, stealing $80 million dollars from the Louisiana Government, and playing a major role (perhaps the pivotal role) in denying the Louisiana government its share of off-shore oil profits.
LEANDER PEREZ AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Leander Perez, was, as the New York Times put it: "a vicious segregationist." He greatly opposed and hated President Harry Truman, who had passed a law that had integrated the armed forces. He supported many political candidates who opposed desegregation, with both his word and much of his money. In 1948, he supported South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond, another infamous foe of civil rights in his bid for the presidency.
He was quoted as saying: “Are you going to wait until Congolese rape your daughters! Are you going to let these burr-heads into your schools! Do something about it now!” after four African American girls were enrolled in two public schools. Plaquemines Parish, under the direction of Perez, fought bitterly against national orders to desegregate. Leander Perez was ex-communicated from the Catholic Church in April 1962 by Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel, after Perez failed to heed the Catholic Church's warnings to stop obstructing desegregation. This, however, did not seem to slow Perez down and, in 1964, he threatened to jail "outside agitators" of the civil rights movement that dared set foot in the parish in Fort St. Philip, long abandoned and snake infested, but with the new addition of barbed wire, courtesy of Perez. No one was ever jailed there, and in 1967, Plaquemines Parish grudgingly desegregated its school system.
LEANDER PEREZ AND LOUISIANA'S OFF-SHORE RIGHTS
In 1945, President Truman introduced his Continental Shelf Proclamation of 1945. In it, it declared that the federal government had control of all off-shore resources. This was in response to the burgeoning off-shore drilling industry. However, in a gesture and acknowledgment of the coastal state's reliance on these resources, President Truman announced that he was willing to bargain with these coastal states. Federal officials offered to give Louisiana "two-thirds of all revenues accruing from mineral bonuses, leases, and royalties in a three-mile band extending from the Louisiana coastline outward into the Gulf of Mexico, and 37.5 percent of all revenues in the tidelands outside this boundary." However, Perez, because of his strong hatred of Truman, and because of his own self interest in the leases of oil-rich land he had (illegally) accrued through the Louisiana Government, pulled political strings and attempted to have Louisiana reject the deal. He succeeded, and in response, the federal government kept all of the profit, and Louisiana (and Texas) lost all of its off-shore rights.
LEANDER PEREZ'S ILLEGAL MILLIONS
Upon Leander Perez's death in 1969 at the age of 77, it was discovered that he had made some untold millions (it is estimated around $80 million-- the majority of his fortune) between 1936 to 1938 by manipulating and controlling the two levee boards in the parish into granting mineral leases to Delta Development, secretly owned by Mr. Perez, on thousands of acres that later became oil and gas fields.
His two sons, Chalin and Leander Jr., inherited the political dynasty, but soon lost it due to in-fighting and lawsuits leveled against them. The lawsuits after the discovery of Leander Perez Sr.'s fraudulent behavior are numerous and interesting and still last to this day.
In 2014, an article in the Louisiana newspaper The Advertiser explained how some of Leander Perez's grandchildren had filed a legacy lawsuit against oil companies for damaging their land in spills. A comment by Councilmen Burghart Turner seems to best sum up the general feeling of both the article and the people of Plaquemines Parish: "You've stolen from the people and now you want to sue for damages. Isn't that crazy? Only in Plaquemines. I was going to say in America, no. Only in Plaquemines Parish. I think audacity is even a mild term. So I don't understand. I can't even fathom how a person, or a family, who has robbed this parish and this community for so long, still feels entitled to claim any right."
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, Leander Perez was a virtual dictator of the Plaquemines Parish for over five decades until his death in 1969. He fraudulently stole millions of dollars from the parish and funneled it into his own private company, Delta Development. To this day, the parish, his descendants, and other historical families in the area are still in legal battles over reparations. Thanks for using Wonder! Please let us know if we can help with anything else!