Jared Y. Sanders, Jr.

Jared Young Sanders, Jr. (April 20, 1892 – November 29, 1960), was a prominent Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, the Louisiana State Senate, and the United States House of Representatives, perhaps best known for his conservative opposition to legendary Governor and U.S. Senator Huey Pierce Long, Jr., and his support of the States' Rights Party in 1960.

Early life and education

Sanders was born in Franklin, the seat of St. Mary Parish in south Louisiana, to Governor Jared Young Sanders, Sr. (1908–1912), and the former Ada Shaw of Fouke in Miller County in southwestern Arkansas. His parents divorced when Sanders was twenty.

He was educated in public schools and the Dixon Academy in Covington, the seat of St. Tammany Parish, one of the suburban areas of New Orleans. He graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1912. He attended Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, from 1912 to 1913. He then transferred to the Tulane University Law School in New Orleans, from which he received his LL.B. degree in 1914. He was admitted to the practice of law in Bogalusa, the seat of Washington Parish, where his father, whose term as governor had expired, was also then practicing law. Shortly thereafter, Sanders moved to Baton Rouge, where he would reside for most of the remainder of his life.

During World War I, Sanders served in the U.S. Army in France, having obtained the rank of captain. On October 5, 1921, he married the former Mary Briggs of Little Rock, the daughter of C.H. Briggs and the former Eugenia Tate. They had a daughter, Mary Elizabeth.

Career in politics

Sanders was elected to the Louisiana House in 1928 and served a single term. He was elected to the Louisiana State Senate in 1932 and, with Cecil Morgan of Shreveport, became the opposition leader to Governor and Senator Huey Long. In the impeachment proceedings brought against him by the Louisiana House in 1929, Long had been accused of having plotted to kill Sanders.

In 1934, Sanders was elected to the United States House of Representatives from the Baton Rouge-based Sixth District, a seat also held by his father from 1917 to 1921, and made vacant by the death of incumbent Bolivar E. Kemp. Sanders first ran in a "revolt election" in December 1933 protesting a hurriedly called special election won by Kemp's widow, the Esther Edwards Conner, known as Lallie Kemp. The House refused to seat either Sanders or Lallie Kemp. Lallie Kemp did not run in the subsequent special election in April 1934, and Sanders was elected by defeating Agriculture Commissioner Harry D. Wilson, an ally of Long and the father of Cajun humorist Justin Wilson. Justin Wilson's sister was married to Bolivar Edwards Kemp, Jr., son of Bolivar Kemp, Sr., and Lallie Kemp and the state attorney general from 1948 to 1952.

Sanders was defeated for renomination in 1936 by John K. Griffith. Sanders then staged a short comeback for the congressional seat in 1940, when he defeated Griffith. Then Sanders was toppled in the 1942 primary by the liberal James H. "Jimmy" Morrison, Sr., of Hammond, the principal city in Tangipahoa Parish. Morrison held the position until after his 1966 primary defeat at the hands of conservative Judge John Richard Rarick of St. Francisville in West Feliciana Parish.

Sanders attended meetings in 1935 to plan an anti-Long ticket in the state elections. Long accused him of involvement in a plot to assassinate him. Their conflict was bitter, but there is no evidence that either plotted to murder the others.

Sanders attended the Democratic national conventions which renominated President Franklin D. Roosevelt for third and fourth terms in 1940 and 1944. He continued his law practice in Baton Rouge. In 1960, the conservative Sanders refused to support either Democrat John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts or Republican Richard M. Nixon of California for the presidency. Instead he was an unsuccessful candidate for presidential elector on the Louisiana States Rights Party, along with future Republican Governor David C. Treen, Plaquemines Parish District Attorney Leander Henry Perez, political activist Kent Howard Courtney then of New Orleans, and former state Senator William Monroe Rainach of Claiborne Parish. He died just days before the successful Louisiana electors cast their ballots in Baton Rouge for the winning Kennedy-Lyndon B. Johnson slate.

Sanders was an active Mason and was deputy grand master of the Grand Lodge of Louisiana in 1960. He was a member of the Church of Christ, Scientist. He died in Baton Rouge and is interred in Roselawn Memorial Park there.

References

• Jared Y. Sanders, Jr. at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Retrieved on 2009-02-22
• "Jared Young Sanders, Jr.," A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol. II (1988), p. 715
• Henry E. Chambers, A History of Louisiana (1925)
• T. Harry Williams, Huey Long (1969)
• Sanders obituary, New York Times, November 30, 1960
• Encyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. 37
• "Louisiana Contest Up in House Today", New York Times, January 3, 1934 (subscription required)
• "House Upholds Ban on Louisiana Seat", New York Times, January 30, 1934 (subscription required)
• "Quits Louisiana Race", New York Times, March 19, 1934 (subscription required)