Racist Leader

The 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 the battle cry against the four Negro girls in the city's first integrated schools: "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!" For much of its present trouble, Louisiana can thank Leander Perez.

The 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 habitat.

Way of 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.

The Offensive. Again, when New Orleans' Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph F. Rummel declared that segregation was sinful, Leander Perez breathed defiance. Himself a Catholic, he accused the Catholic hierarchy of "turning against their own people." The New Orleans parochial schools remained segregated, and fortnight ago, as Archbishop Rummel lay ill in a hospital after a fall, Perez hinted that it was all because of his stand against segregation.

Now, although he has seen to it that schools in St. Bernard's Parish have opened their classrooms to white "refugees" from New Orleans, the battle against integration is going against Leander Perez. Some Louisiana newsmen be lieve that his influence is waning. But those who know him best think he is just waiting for his next move. "I always take the offensive," Leander Perez once said, daintily flicking an ash from his omnipresent cigar. "The defensive ain't worth a damn."

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