Fred S. LeBlanc

Fred S. LeBlanc, Sr.
Louisiana Attorney General
In office 1944–1948
Preceded by	Eugene Stanley
Succeeded by	Bolivar Edwards Kemp, Jr.
In office May 1952 – May 1956
Preceded by	Bolivar Edwards Kemp, Jr.
Succeeded by	Jack P. F. Gremillion
Mayor of Baton Rouge, Louisiana
In office 1941–1944
Preceded by	W. H. Bynum
Succeeded by	Powers Higginbotham
Judge of the Louisiana 19th Judicial District court
In office April 11, 1958 – June 11, 1969
Succeeded by	John S. Covington
Personal details
Born	July 24, 1897 Near Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Died	June 11, 1969 (aged 71) Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Genieveve Bruce LeBlanc
Children	Fred S. LeBlanc, Jr. (born 1926) Francis P. H. LeBlanc (born 1929) Judge Daniel W. LeBlanc Lawrence LeBlanc (deceased) Jane LeBlanc McMahon
Alma mater	Catholic High School Louisiana State University Law Center
Occupation	Attorney
Religion	Roman Catholic

Frederick Saugrain LeBlanc, Sr., known as Fred S. LeBlanc (July 24, 1897 – June 11, 1969),^[1][2] was a 20th-century politician in the U.S. state of Louisiana who served two terms as his state's attorney general and was firmly allied with the anti-Long faction of the predominant Democratic Party.

Background

LeBlanc graduated in 1916 from Catholic High School in Baton Rouge.^[3] He thereafter graduated in 1920 from the Louisiana State University Law Center. For a time he was a Louisiana State University professor and the district attorney of West Baton Rouge Parish^[4] From 1941 to 1944, LeBlanc was the mayor of Baton Rouge.^[5] In 1944, LeBlanc was elected state attorney general in the first administration of Governor Jimmie Davis. He defeated by a relatively narrow margin the Long-backed candidate, State Senator Joe T. Cawthorn of Mansfield in DeSoto Parish.^[6] Eliminated in the 1944 primary was the one-term incumbent Eugene Stanley, won the office on the Sam H. Jones intra-party ticket in 1940, and Kemble Kenneth Kennedy, Sr. (1903-1952) of Tangipahoa Parish. .

Also victorious on the Davis ticket in 1944 was the lieutenant governor candidate, J. Emile Verret, who defeated Earl Kemp Long for the second office in a runoff election.^[7] LeBlanc was unseated in 1948 by Bolivar Edwards Kemp, Jr., the choice of the successful gubernatorial candidate that year, Earl Long. LeBlanc instead ran with Long's opponent, former Governor Sam Houston Jones, who fared poorly in the 1948 contest.^[8] Bolivar Kemp, the new attorney general was a brother-in-law of Cajun humorist and chef Justin Wilson.

In 1952, LeBlanc returned to office as attorney general as a candidate on the Robert F. Kennon intraparty ticket. He defeated the Long choice, Joe Arthur Sims of Hammond in Tangipahoa Parish.^[9]

1953 Baton Rouge bus boycott

LeBlanc became involved in the summer of 1953 with a short-lived Baton Rouge Bus boycott by T.J. Jemison, an African-American minister. Jemison tested a new ordinance allowing black passengers to fill up empty seats from the rear of the bus so long as whites could have access to the front seats. Jemison sat in a front seat of a bus. The bus company suspended two drivers for not complying with the ordinance. The drivers' union called a four-day strike, which ended when Attorney General LeBlanc declared the ordinance unconstitutional on the premise that it violated Louisiana's segregation laws. Blacks then formed the United Defense League, organized a free-ride network so that passengers could avoid using the city buses, and filed suit against the city to desegregate the buses. The Baton Rouge experience was observed by Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrote that Jemison's "painstaking description of the Baton Rouge experience proved invaluable" to him two years later in the Montgomery bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.^[10]

On June 23, 1953, Jemison called off the boycott after the city council passed a new ordinance under which the first-come, first-served, seating system of back-to-front and front-to-back was reinstated, with the first two seats on any bus reserved for white passengers and the back bench left for blacks. Anyone else could sit on any of the rows in the middle. To comply with state segregation laws, blacks and white were prohibited from sitting next to each other within this arrangement.^[11] While a number of boycotters had wanted to challenge segregation directly, the majority backed the municipal compromise.^[10]

Defeat in 1956

LeBlanc was unseated in the 1956 Democratic primary by Jack P.F. Gremillion, the choice of Earl Long, the runaway winner of the governor's race that year. Oddly, LeBlanc had years earlier taught Gremillion at LSU. LeBlanc claimed that Gremillion lacked the capabilities needed for the position of attorney general.^[4] LeBlanc ran in 1956 on the ticket of deLesseps Story "Chep" Morrison, Sr., the mayor of New Orleans, who made the first of his three failed gubernatorial bids.^[12] In the runoff election with Gremillion, LeBlanc pledged a full-fledged fight against racial integration.^[4]

After his tenure as attorney general, LeBlanc was soon elected as a judge of the 19th Judicial District in East Baton Rouge Parish, a position which he assumed on April 11, 1958.^[3] In this capacity in the summer of 1959, LeBlanc signed the long-remembered letter which committed his old rival, Earl Long, to undergo psychiatric treatment for paranoid schizophrenia.^[9] Long later said that signing the order was the "happiest day" of Judge LeBlanc's life.^[9]

Judge LeBlanc was also known for imposing stiff penalties and sky-high bail on civil rights demonstrators who came before his court.^[13]

In December 1965, LeBlanc presided over a death-penalty case in Baton Rouge stemming from the shooting of a convenience store clerk. A capital punishment watchdog group claimed that the trial was "rife with serious constitutional errors: suppressed mitigating evidence, perjured testimony, and ineffective assistance of counsel." Repeatedly, Judge LeBlanc refused defense requests to delay the trial.^[14]

LeBlanc died while still serving as a district judge. He was succeeded by John S. Covington, the appointee of Governor John J. McKeithen.

Though LeBlanc is mentioned in Who's Who in America in several editions during the 1940s, there is no biographical information included in the national publication, not even his date of birth.

References

3. "Catholic High School Hall of Fame". catholichigh.org. Retrieved September 5, 2010.
4. "LeBlanc Pledges Segregation Fight", Minden Herald, February 2, 1956, p. 1
5. "Elected and Appointed Officials in City-Parish Government" (PDF). brgov.com. Retrieved September 5, 2010.
6. "Louisiana election returns". Miami, Oklahoma, Daily News. March 1, 1944. p. 3. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
7. Minden Herald, December 24, 1943
8. Minden Herald, January 16, 1948, p. 2
9. Walter G. Cowan and Jack B. McGuire, Louisiana Governors: Rulers, Rascals, and Reformers, p. 211. Google Books. Retrieved September 10, 2010.
10. The Best of New Orleans.com, June 17, 2003
11. "Baton Rouge Bus Boycott". Civil Rights Movement Veterans. Retrieved September 5, 2010.
12. Louisiana Secretary of State, Primary election returns, January 17, 1956
13. Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1995, p. 293. Retrieved December 16, 2010.
14. "Billy Sinclair, "A Death Penalty Trial", 1965". capitalpunishmenbook.com. Retrieved September 10, 2010.