Historical Miniature

The Bishop and the Politico, 1960s-style:

“Do you know what the Negro is?” Leander H. Perez once asked in 1965. “Animals right out [of] the jungle. Passion. Welfare. Easy life. That's the Negro.” As a state judge and political boss of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana, Perez was able to enforce his racist views on the county's 3,000 to 4,000 African-American residents. Because of him, black people essentially couldn't vote, get decent housing, or even mix with whites. Yet for decades Perez was in full communion with the Catholic Church. After all, Perez had not only helped modernize the rural county with roads and electricity but was a stout anti-Communist, according to historian Glen Jeansonne in Leander Perez: Boss of the Delta.

But to New Orleans Archbishop Joseph F. Rummel, racial segregation was an intolerable evil. In 1949 he denounced it as un-Christian, and in 1953 he rebuked Perez and other Catholic segregationists, for keeping the archdiocese's schools all white. His pastoral letter of that year, “Blessed Are the Peacemakers,” was read aloud in all of the archdiocese's churches. Perez and his allies didn't budge. And when the archbishop threatened in 1956 to excommunicate them, they responded in kind, withholding church contributions and staging protest rallies. At one point, a cross was burned on the archbishop's lawn.

By 1962, Rummel had enough. On March 23 he announced that in the fall, the city's Catholic schools would admit black students. And when Perez and his allies persisted in their opposition, the archbishop delivered the ultimate Church penalty: On April 16, he excommunicated Perez, state senator E. W. Gravolet, and activist B. J. Gaillot. By the fall, 104 black children were admitted to the city's Catholic schools. By 1968, Perez repented and, after his death in 1969, was given a Catholic burial.

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