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 racé.
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."