18 Facts About Leander Perez

Leander Perez was known for leading efforts to enforce and preserve segregation.

Leander Perez attended Holy Cross School in New Orleans for his secondary education but he did not graduate from the school.

Leander Perez later enrolled at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge as a subfreshman and graduated from the university in 1912.

In 1919, Judge Leander Perez launched a reign of bought elections and strictly enforced segregation by ensuring laws were enacted on his fiat and rubber-stamped by the parish governing councils.

Elections under Leander Perez's reign were sometimes blatantly falsified, with voting records appearing in alphabetical order and names of national celebrities such as Babe Ruth, Charlie Chaplin, and Herbert Hoover appearing on the rolls.

Leander Perez sent large tough men into the voting booths to "help" people vote.

Leander Perez testified that he bribed voters $2, $5, and $10 to vote his way, depending on who they were.

Leander Perez took action to suppress African-Americans from voting within his domain, but most were already disenfranchised due to the state constitution passed at the turn of the century, which added requirements for payment of poll taxes and passing literacy tests in order to register to vote.

Leander Perez used this position to negotiate payoffs between corporations he set up and the big oil companies that leased the levee board lands for drilling.

Leander Perez helped organize the White Citizens' Councils, white supremacist "front organizations for the Ku Klux Klan", among them the Citizens' Council of Greater New Orleans.

Leander Perez researched and wrote much of the legislation sponsored by Louisiana's Joint Legislative Committee on Segregation.

Leander Perez tried to control the activities of civil rights workers by prohibiting outsiders from entering Plaquemines Parish via the bayou ferries, which were the chief way to cross rivers and enter the jurisdiction.

In 1960, while opposing desegregation of New Orleans public schools, Leander Perez spoke provocatively at a rally in the city.

Leander Perez's speech is credited with catalyzing a mob assault on the school administration building by some 2,000 white men, who were fought off by police using fire hoses.

Leander Perez's group made threats to whites who allowed their children to attend desegregated schools.

Leander Perez arranged for poor whites to attend a segregated private school without charge, and he helped to establish a new whites-only private school in New Orleans.

Leander Perez led a movement to pressure businesses into firing any whites who allowed their children to attend the newly desegregated Catholic schools.

Leander Perez received a requiem Mass at Holy Name of Jesus Christ Church at Loyola University in New Orleans.