J. D. DeBlieux

Joseph Davis DeBlieux, known as J.D. DeBlieux , was a Democratic member of the Louisiana State Senate who represented East Baton Rouge Parish from 1956 to 1960 and again from 1964 to 1976. DeBlieux is remembered as a crusader for civil rights in Louisiana politics during the latter years of the era of segregation. During the New Orleans school desegregation crisis of 19591960, DeBlieux chaired the Louisiana State Advisory Committee to the newly established United States Civil Rights Commission. He argued for equal rights for all, not for racial integration per se, as the American South slowly complied with the United States Supreme Courts 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education.

DeBlieux was the oldest of fourteen children born to Honore Louis Bubba DeBlieux, Sr. , and the former Ozet Perot . Honore and Ozet were both natives of Natchitoches Parish he was from Clarence and she from nearby Campti. The couple married in 1911 in Winnsboro, the seat of Franklin Parish south of Monroe. Honore was a farmer, operated a grocery store, and delivered Monroe News Star newspapers. In 1973, Ozet, whose last child was born in 1939, was named Louisiana Mother of the Year. The DeBlieux family had just relocated to Columbia, the seat of Caldwell Parish, at the time of J.D.s birth there. He graduated in 1929 from Caldwell Parish High School, then known as Columbia High School. While in high school, he worked for The Caldwell News.

Source: Wikipedia