In Louisiana: The Legacy of a Parish Boss Lives On

By WALTER ISAACSON

Beyond New Orleans, the Mississippi River winds southward for a hundred miles toward the Gulf of Mexico. The marsh and swampland through which it flows is Plaquemines Parish, La.

The parish is narrow and looks a bit like the toe of boot-shaped Louisiana being dipped into the gulf. Its highest points are the spines of levees that hold back the river and salt marshes from the 10% of the parish that is dry land. The main highway, Louisiana Route 23, hugging the river's west bank, runs past wooden stands where home-grown oranges are sold and small mountain ranges of lemony-colored sulfur waiting to be loaded on ships.

Such a clime, and such a corner of the world, is likely to produce a special type of ruler, and in Plaquemines it did: Leander Perez, cigar-chomping, white-suited boss of the parish for almost half a century. He ruled like an arrogant and protective plantation owner, although he preferred sowing oil leases to crops. He fought federal intervention with Faulknerian tenacity, a battle that began over control of oil reserves and evolved into a crusade against "forced integration," which he saw as the plot of an international Communist conspiracy. Taunted Governor Earl Long: "What are you going to do now, Leander? The Feds have got the atom bomb."

It is almost ten years since Perez died. His old home, "Promised Land," serves as one of the parish's white, private academies, a testament to his failure to prevent integration of the public and parochial schools. Blacks, who constitute 25% of Plaquemines' 25,000 people, now hold many parish jobs; there are even black sheriffs deputies. And the wood shanty bars that dot the highways serve all comers.

But more ways than not, Perez's legacy dominates Plaquemines, an anachronism in the South and an affront to Southerners who like to think that racism has migrated North. Parish-owned Port Sulphur Hospital has segregated waiting rooms. There are two hurricane evacuation plans--one for whites and another for blacks. Joycelyn Mackey, a 29-year-old black, found that out during a hurricane threat in 1975 when she was refused admission to the refugee center at Belle Chasse School and sent to a nearby U.S. Navy station. There are even two bookmobiles, each serving primarily one race.

Leander Perez's power has passed down to one of his sons, 55-year-old Chalin, president of the five-man parish Commission Council. Unlike his flamboyant father, Chalin comes across as a dark-suited conservative lawyer. His is not the voice of a segregationist, but of a typical official with very rich constituents. "We are one of the most overemployed areas in the United States," he says. And it is true that there are plenty of jobs for blacks as well as whites in the oil and sulfur companies, in fishing and orange growing. "We try to maintain the standards of those who are here. Everybody in the country complains about federal regulation. We've resisted federal dollars to avoid federal dictatorship."

But the avoidance of federal money and control is small consolation to people who do not share in the general prosperity. Just upriver from the Freeport Sulphur Co., amid signs advertising bail bondsmen and flood insurance, are the offices of white Attorney Joseph Defley, a former FBI agent who 14 years ago married the sheriff of Plaquemines' daughter and moved down from Chicago. One of his clients is Merlis Broussard, 45, a barrel-chested black construction worker who once helped dig a crayfish pond behind Chalin Perez's new home. They have just won a federal court suit to end the parish's method of selecting council members, which has long kept blacks from exercising political power.

Broussard knows better than anyone the problems of being black in Plaquemines. He was born and still lives in Ironton, an all-black town of 200 nestled against the levee. Ironton has no running water; instead, the parish delivers wat^r by truck to each home once or twice a week. Broussard's wife developed a serious kidney ailment eight years ago, probably from drinking cistern-stored water. Two or three times a week he had to drive her to Charity Hospital in New Orleans. "They lent me a dialysis machine, but I had no water to hook it up. It had to run off my old wooden cistern. Each night I would ride to Lake Hermitage [now Lake Judge Perez] to get water to keep it running. The doctors at Charity tried to get parish officials to help me find a place to live with running water, but none of them lifted a hand." Within a year, the doctors personally raised enough money to buy him a bigger tank and a pump. The day they were to be delivered, his wife died.

Parish officials, who point out that two white towns also lack running water, say it would cost $200,000 to bring pipes to Ironton. But they recently bought a golf course in a corner of the parish. Asked about these priorities, Chalin Perez replied: "That golf course provides recreation for many people. It's a question of judgment for elected officials to make."

Recently, Plaquemines has had a new minority to deal with. An old wooden shrimp boat, billowing black smoke, pulls into an isolated bayou near the mouth of the river. Laughingly pushing his cousin aside, Phuoc Nguyen, 11, grabs the tie line and loops two half hitches around a stake on the bank. Phuoc, who has picked up English in the three years he has been in the U.S., translates for his uncle as a white-haired mechanic explains the problem with the carburetor. "How much we owe you?" asks the boy. The mechanic shakes his head, refusing payment. Like many others, he is embarrassed by the way the Vietnamese refugees are being chased out of the parish.

The Vietnamese in Louisiana have taken jobs in shipyards and seafood plants, working as many as 80 hours a week. Some have pooled their money to buy old boats and hoped to make Plaquemines their base. Their welcome has been mixed, partly because they have docked illegally, unable to rent proper space, and failed to follow safety procedures. The fishermen in Plaquemines are naturally protective of their territory. Said one: "It's like having an apple. You'd rather split it four ways than six."

Other residents are more sympathetic. One motel owner arranged mooring space in a small canal she owns, and local volunteers helped move the Vietnamese boats there. But after an explosion, parish officials put pressure on her to have them evicted. As in most things, what really matters is how Chalin Perez feels. Father Michael Haddad, who runs a group that coordinates the resettlement of Vietnamese, says, "Perez is quick to enforce the law but slow to be accommodating."

Van Tran, head of the Vietnamese Fishing Association, is preparing to move his people to nearby Terrebonne Parish, where he hopes officials will be more hospitable. Says Perez: "They don't understand our laws. They fish out of season. There are reports they catch seagulls, pluck them alive, and when they decide to eat them, wring their necks. Dogs -- that's one of their favorite foods too. I have a friend who had a setter, and one day he came home and saw the hide sitting right out front. That's their business if they eat dogs, but they shouldn't eat our dogs." As in the case of water for Ironton, Perez refuses to apply for federal grants to help the Vietnamese, because he fears federal controls.

It's a recent Wednesday in Plaquemines. Perez has delayed a Commission Council meeting because he had to appear in a New Orleans court to justify the disqualification of an anti-Perez man from a school-board race. Now a parish helicopter puts him down on the lawn of the old brick courthouse in Point a la Hache. As he strides to his seat on the council dais, under a mounted blue marlin, a commissioner shows him a proposed zoning change. "That's not the way we're going to do it," Perez replies, pulling out a pen. "What they have to do is buy this piece here and start subdividing like this." During the meeting, he reads out his resolutions, adding, almost as an afterthought, "Moved by Mr. Petrovich, seconded by Mr. Kirby and adopted unanimously."

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