Leander Perez: The Political Boss of Plaquemines

The Political Boss of Plaquemines

For the better part of four decades, one man controlled everything that happened in Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes — every election, every oil lease, every dollar that moved through the marshes south of New Orleans. His name was Leander Perez, and he ran those parishes like a private kingdom.

Born in 1891 in Plaquemines Parish, Perez worked his way up through the local legal system — district judge, then district attorney, then president of the Plaquemines Parish Commission Council. But the titles barely hint at the scope of his power. Perez controlled the vote counts, and he wasn't subtle about it. Elections under his reign sometimes produced voter rolls in alphabetical order. He openly admitted to paying voters two, five, or ten dollars depending on the election.

The oil money flowing through Plaquemines Parish's marshlands made Perez extraordinarily wealthy, and investigations later alleged he'd secretly diverted millions from parish coffers through illegal oil deals. A lawsuit filed after his death was eventually settled for twelve million dollars in restitution.

But Perez's most lasting — and most damaging — legacy was his role as one of the South's most ferocious segregationists. After the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Perez helped organize the White Citizens' Councils across Louisiana. In 1960, when New Orleans began desegregating its public schools, Perez gave a speech that helped catalyze a mob of two thousand white men to assault the school administration building.

His defiance of desegregation was so extreme that Archbishop Joseph Rummel excommunicated him from the Catholic Church in 1962 — one of the most dramatic clashes between religious authority and political power in Louisiana history.

Perez died in 1969, having never yielded an inch on segregation or his grip on power. He represents a chapter of Louisiana political history that the state has spent decades trying to move past — the era when parish bosses ruled like feudal lords and used that power to maintain a racial order that was already crumbling around them. Understanding Leander Perez is essential to understanding how Louisiana got to where it is today.