Malcolm Lafargue

Malcolm Emmett Lafargue (November 4, 1908 – March 28, 1963) was a United States Attorney from Shreveport, Louisiana. He was known for his prosecution in 1939 as an Assistant US Attorney of several figures in the corruption scandals known as the "Louisiana Hayride." He achieved several convictions, including of Governor Richard W. Leche, and many of these officials were sentenced to prison. This ushered in a period of political reform in the state. (Leche and other major figures soon received parole and were later pardoned by President Harry Truman.)

Malcolm Emmett Lafargue
U. S. Attorney for the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana in Shreveport
In office 1941 – May 18, 1950
Preceded by	Harvey Fields
Succeeded by	William J. Fleniken (acting) Harvey Locke Carey
Personal details
Born	(1908-11-04)November 4, 1908 Marksville Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, USA
Died	March 28, 1963(1963-03-28) (aged 54) Shreveport, Caddo Parish Louisiana
Cause of death	Apparent heart attack
Resting place	Centuries Memorial Park in Shreveport
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Jewett Todd Lafargue (married 1931–1963, his death)
Relations	Adolphe Jolna Lafargue (grandfather) Alvan Lafargue (uncle) Alfred Briggs Irion (maternal great-grandfather) Arnaud D. Lafargue (great-uncle)
Children	Robert Todd Lafargue
Parents	Edwin Louis and Martha Elizabeth O'Bannon Lafargue
Residence	Shreveport, Louisiana
Alma mater	Northwestern State University Louisiana State University Loyola University New Orleans College of Law
Occupation	Lawyer

In 1950 Lafargue ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate in a heated campaign against his fellow Democrat, Russell B. Long, of the powerful Long family. The Democratic Party had the only competitive contest in what was essentially still a one-party state.

"I have been fighting the Longs for fourteen years. This isn't something new", said Malcolm Lafargue in his announcement of candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 1950 against Russell Long.

Background

Malcolm Emmett Lafargue was the oldest of six children of Edwin Louis Lafargue (1881–1922) and the former Martha Elizabeth O'Bannon (1879–1969). He was born in Marksville in Avoyelles Parish in south central Louisiana, into a longtime political family. His grandfather, Adolphe Jolna Lafargue, studied law at Tulane University Law School; he was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives and as a state court judge. A great-uncle, Arnaud D. Lafargue, was also a state legislator. Adolphe Lafargue also published The Marksville Weekly News, a newspaper begun under other names by his father, Pierre-Adolphe Lafargue (1818–1869). The Lafargues are descended from a French family who emigrated to Louisiana from the Pyrenees Mountains.[1]

Lafargue's maternal great-grandfather, Alfred Briggs Irion, was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Louisiana's 6th congressional district from 1885 to 1887; the district then extended as far north as Avoyelles Parish. Lafargue's uncle, Alvan Lafargue, was a 50-year physician who founded a hospital and served as a mayor of Sulphur near Lake Charles. Malcolm and his uncle died within six weeks of each other in 1963.[2]

Malcolm Lafargue graduated from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and in 1932 from Loyola University College of Law in New Orleans. While in law school, he worked in the minerals division of the Louisiana Conservation Department in New Orleans.[3]

U.S. attorney in Shreveport

After passing the bar, Lafargue moved to Shreveport to engage in the practice of law. He lived and worked there for the rest of his life. After an unsuccessful but competitive race for district attorney for Caddo Parish,[4] Lafargue was appointed in 1937 as Assistant U. S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana under Harvey Fields, a Longite political figure. He was also a native of Marksville. The Western District then encompassed forty of Louisiana's sixty-four parishes.[3]

In 1939, Lafargue was assigned the task of investigating and prosecuting within the Western District the suspects in the Louisiana public corruption cases known as the "Louisiana Hayride".[3] The corrupt practices resulted in the resignation of Governor Richard W. Leche and his subsequent conviction. He was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Earl Kemp Long,[5] and LSU President James Monroe Smith.[6] Lafargue worked in the successful prosecution of Leche and other Long associates, the architect Leon C. Weiss, the contractor George Caldwell, and labor commissioner B. W. Cason.[7][8]

In 1941, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Lafargue as U.S. Attorney. In 1946, after local officials had failed to act, Lafargue was directed by the United States Department of Justice to institute federal proceedings against six men in a case involving the lynching of 28-year-old John Cecil Jones and the mortal beating with a blowtorch of 17-year-old Albert Harris, Jr., two African Americans accused of prowling in the backyard of a white woman. The deaths occurred at Dorcheat Bayou west of Minden in Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana. The six defendants included deputy and later Sheriff O. H. Haynes, Jr., and Minden Police Chief Benjamin Garey Gantt. The charges against Gantt were dropped, and the other defendants were quickly acquitted by an all-white jury.[9]

Though he was a segregationist, Lafargue argued for civil liberties and warned that neither police officers nor private citizens could take the law into their own hands.[10] Prior to the jury's decision to exonerate all the suspects, Lafargue delivered an impassioned argument:

We are here in federal court because free government and good government were not available in Webster Parish. ... I come from this state. My grandfather had slaves. But to me civil liberties means human rights, God-given rights for all Americans. This is not a social question. This is not an economic question. It is a question of God-given rights. If you want a feudal society with overlords, or a Hitler or Mussolini government, then this country is no place for you. We can have as much danger from within this country, from groups of intolerant men who would destroy the rights our forefathers gave us, as from any outside enemies.[11]

Years later, Lafargue's son, Robert, described his father, a short, stocky man, as "an honest, straitlaced, aboveboard man, who was not afraid to tangle with anybody."[11]

Senatorial campaign

In 1950, Lafargue resigned as U.S. attorney[3] to challenge in the Democratic primary election Senator Russell Long, son of Huey Pierce Long, Jr., and nephew of Earl Long. Russell Long successfully won the first of six consecutive six-year terms in office. Long had been nominated and elected in 1948 for a two-year term created by the death of Senator John H. Overton of Alexandria, who had earlier defended Huey Long in the 1929 impeachment trial before the Louisiana State Senate.[12] Overton had recommended Lafargue for the assistant U.S. attorney position.[3]

Lafargue was succeeded as U.S. attorney on an acting basis by William J. Fleniken.[7] The pro-Long Harvey Locke Carey was appointed as Lafargue's permanent successor. Carey served less than two years from August 1950 to January 1952.[13] An Arkansas native, Carey was a former clerk of the Louisiana House of Representatives who had married into the powerful Drew family in Minden. He had managed the 1948 campaigns in northwest Louisiana for both Earl Long and Russell Long.[14] Fleniken, who had continued as assistant U.S. attorney under Carey, was sworn in to succeed Carey on April 23, 1952. He continued in the position until the early part of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, in which Republicans appointed their own US Attorneys.[15]

In the 1948 senatorial primary, Russell Long had narrowly defeated Robert F. Kennon of Minden, an intra-party rival of the Drews. Four years later Kennon was elected governor.[16] Long in the general election of 1948 overwhelmed Clem S. Clarke, a Shreveport oilman and the first Republican to run for a US Senate seat in the state since implementation in 1914 of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which established popular election of US Senators.[17]

In an advertisement in his 1950 race against Long, Lafargue questioned how the then-freshman senator was the self-proclaimed "poor man's friend", because Long "pretends to sneer at millionaires, but Long is a millionaire himself."[18] In his announcement of candidacy, Lafargue said: "I have been fighting the Longs for fourteen years. This isn't something new".... [The Longs] have heaped taxes on the pocketbook of consumers and industry and have given relatively little in return. In Baton Rouge, they preach private enterprise but practice a kind of semi-socialism of which the people have had their fill."[7]

Mayor deLesseps Story Morrison formally endorsed Lafargue in the primary against Long, as did Morrison's erstwhile ally, Robert Kennon. Morrison's backing of Lafargue was intended to satisfy his good government base and the anti-Long Crescent City Democratic Organization that Morrison had founded as an alternative to former Mayor Robert Maestri's pro-Long "Old Regulars". But Morrison's endorsement was a smokescreen, as he had struck a deal with his intra-party rival, Governor Earl Long. He would not actively oppose Russell Long for a full term in the Senate if Earl Long would agree to the restoration of home rule for New Orleans. At the time, the city was virtually being governed by the state legislature from Baton Rouge. Morrison endorsed Lafargue, but privately he urged many of his followers to support Russell Long, whom he expected to win the election anyway.[19][20]

Analyst and historian Glen Jeansonne described Lafargue as "an obscure United States attorney with no statewide organization whose chief asset seemed to be that he was a French-speaking Cajun Protestant who resided in Shreveport, which presumably was calculated to appeal to both South Louisiana Cajuns and North Louisiana rednecks."[21]

When Lafargue spoke in rural Marthaville in Natchitoches Parish, where his great-grandfather had once taught school, he accused Senator Long of having broken campaign promises from just two years earlier. Specifically, Lafargue claimed that Long failed to work to lower federal income tax rates and to obtain funds to widen U.S. Highway 71 between Shreveport and New Orleans, and U.S. Highway 80 from Shreveport to Monroe. Lafargue said that some blacktopping had been undertaken on Highway 71 but no improvements to Highway 80: "So we have high taxes out of Russell's pledges to work for lower taxes.... We have blacktopping of concrete roads out of his pledges to make them into four-lane highways."[7] Lafargue claimed that the movement of state welfare funds proposed by the Earl Long administration was for "political highway bribes in behalf of Russell Long now and for Long candidates in state elections later.... Most of the people who are supporting Russell are getting something out of it. They've either got their hands in the pot or their heads in the trough."[7]

Unworried about Lafargue's challenge, Russell Long campaigned little in his reelection bid, but Earl Long took to the stump and made colorful speeches on behalf of his nephew. Russell Long prevailed in the primary, 359,230 to 156,918. Lafargue carried only Plaquemines Parish, with 93.7 percent of the vote. There he held the support of the powerful Judge Leander Perez, a leader among the state's former Dixiecrats of 1948; he was unhappy at the time with both Earl and Russell Long.[20][21][22]

In the general election, Long overwhelmed the Republican Charles Sidney Gerth (1882-1964), a businessman from New Orleans. He had earlier run unsuccessfully in the 1948 Democratic primary against the state's senior senator, Allen J. Ellender of Houma in Terrebonne Parish. Long and Ellender were senatorial colleagues from 1948 until Ellender's death in 1972.

After the failure of his Senate race, Lafargue joined Percy N. Browne in the Shreveport law firm of Browne and Lafargue.[3] Lafargue was a member of Sigma Nu fraternity, the Masonic lodge, the Shriners,[23] and the Episcopal Church.[3]

Death at 54

Lafargue died of a heart attack in Shreveport at the age of fifty-four. He is interred at Centuries Memorial Park in Shreveport. He and his wife, the former Jewett Todd, a native of Marietta, Georgia, whom he married in 1931, had one son, Robert Todd Lafargue.[3]

References

1. "Lafargue Family papers". Tulane University. Retrieved February 13, 2015.
2. "Lafargue, Alvan Henry". Louisiana Historical Association: A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography. Archived from the original on February 25, 2012. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
3. "M. E. Lafargue, Former District Attorney, Dies – Succumbs in Sleep Here at Age 54; Services Saturday". Shreveport Journal. March 28, 1963. pp. 1-A, 4-A. Retrieved February 10, 2015.
4. Corrine L. Saucier (1943). History of Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company. p. 326. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
5. "Louisiana: Jimmy the Stooge". Time. July 10, 1939. Retrieved February 11, 2015.
6. "Smith, James Monroe". A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography (Louisiana Historical Association). Archived from the original on July 16, 2016. Retrieved February 11, 2015.
7. "Lafargue Says Long Promises Broken". The Monroe News-Star. June 30, 1950. p. 2. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
8. "Lafargue to Be Long Foe". The Monroe News-Star. May 19, 1950. p. 1. Retrieved February 20, 2015.
9. Christopher Waldrep (2006). Lynching in America: A History in Documents. New York City: New York University Press. pp. 146–147. ISBN 978-08147-9398-5. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
10. Rachel L. Emanuel and Alexander P. Tureaud, Jr. (2011). A More Noble Cause: A.P. Tureaud and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Louisiana. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. pp. 114–115. ISBN 978-0-8071-3793-2. Retrieved February 13, 2015.
11. John Egerton (1994). Speak Now Against The Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South. New York City: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-30783457-7. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
12. "John H. Overton". The Political Graveyard. Retrieved February 12, 2015.
13. "Fleniken sworn in as U.S. Attorney". The Monroe News-Star. April 23, 1952. p. 1. Retrieved February 20, 2015.
14. "Carey, Harvey Locke". Who Was Who in America, Vol. IX. 1985. p. 63. Retrieved February 20, 2015.
15. "U.S. District Attorneys for Louisiana, 1823-1998 (Harvey Locke Carey should be 1950-1952.)". The Political Graveyard. Retrieved February 18, 2015.
16. "Louisiana Governors: Robert Floyd Kennon". la-cemeteries.com. Retrieved February 11, 2015.
17. Historians Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill (1951). "Reminiscences of Clem S. Clarke: Oral history". New York City: Columbia University. Retrieved February 10, 2015.
18. Advertisement, Minden Herald, July 21, 1950, p. 3
19. "Chep Morrison (1912-1964)". knowla.org. Archived from the original on February 13, 2015. Retrieved February 12, 2015.
20. Michael L. Kurtz and Morgan D. Peoples (1990). The Saga of Uncle Earl and Louisiana Politics. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0-8071-1577-0. Retrieved February 13, 2015.
21. Glen Jeansonne (1995). Leander Perez: Boss of the Delta (2 ed.). Lafayette, Louisiana: University of Louisiana at Lafayette. p. 149. ISBN 157806-917-3. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
22. Adam Fairclough (1996). Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. p. 182. ISBN 978-08203-3114-0. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
23. "Malcolm Emmett Lafargue". The Political Graveyard. Retrieved February 11, 2015.

Preceded by Harvey Fields	United States Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana Malcolm Emmett Lafargue 1941-1950	Succeeded by William J. Fleniken (acting) Harvey Locke Carey