Plaquemines Parish
Trump’s Executive Order just killed a 59-year-old civil rights protection in Plaquemines Parish. A parish of 23,000 once ruled by Leander Perez, an open white supremacist-just made it to the White House.
Leander Perez, a political boss of Spanish descent—specifically of Isleño heritage from the Canary Islands—ruled Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes with near-total control from the 1920s through the 1960s. Despite his own ancestry tracing back to Spanish immigrants, Perez became one of the South’s most unrelenting enforcers of white supremacy. From the bench and the courthouse to the oil fields and the school board, he used every lever of local power to uphold segregation and suppress civil rights—an irony to those he oppressed.
— in his own words:
“The Lord created the white man, and he intended that he should rule the world.”
— Leander Perez, 1960“Don’t wait for your daughter to be raped by these Congolese. Do something about it now!”
— Perez called Black children “Congolese”
What he did:
- Blocked Black voter registration
- Diverted public school funds to preserve segregation
- Mobilized violent mobs to resist integration (including during the Ruby Bridges crisis)
- Built segregated schools and defied federal court orders
Declared “integrated” — but with no proof that racial inequality is gone
We should all be paying attention. Because if they can declare the job done in Plaquemines Parish — a place with a past soaked in Jim Crow and a present still unequal — then they can declare it done anywhere.
Other Louisiana parishes still under court supervision — including East Baton Rouge, St. Martin, and Ouachita — may be next. And the message doesn’t stop at Louisiana’s borders.
Now the federal government under the Trump says:
✅ Racism is over.
✅ Case closed.
✅ Next parish, please.
This isn’t progress. This is rollback.
And they’re using Louisiana — a state with a history of corruption, white supremacy, and backdoor deals — to do it.
We are not a loophole. We are not expendable. We are watching.
