Robert F. Kennon

Robert Floyd Kennon, Sr., known as Bob Kennon (August 21, 1902 - January 11, 1988), was the 48th Governor of Louisiana, serving from 1952-1956. He failed to win a second non-consecutive term in the 1963 Democratic primary.

After the Brown v. Board of Education decision of May 17, 1954, Kennon ordered the continued enforcement of laws relating to segregation. He vowed that his state would provide a public school system "which will include segregation in fact." Desegregation, however, began under Kennon's successors, Earl Kemp Long and James Houston "Jimmie" Davis, but it was a long process, not completed in Louisiana until August 1970.

The conservative Kennon grew disillusioned with his national party and endorsed Republican presidential nominees Dwight D. Eisenhower, Barry M. Goldwater, and Gerald R. Ford, Jr.

Early life and education

Kennon was born in rural Dubberly, south of Minden, the seat of government of Webster Parish seat. He was the fifth child of Floyd Kennon (1871–1966), who was born the year that Webster Parish was established, and the former Annie Laura Bopp. The Kennons operated an Independent Grocers Alliance store in Minden.^[1] After Floyd Kennon's retirement, the store was managed by two sons, Francis Edward Kennon, Sr., and Webb Kennon. Young Bob Kennon was an avid Boy Scout (See Scouting in Louisiana.) who attained the rank of Eagle Scout. He graduated in 1919 from Minden High School, then a comparatively new institution. Thereafter, he attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he procured numerous honors. At the end of his freshman year, he received an award for the best academic record. He was captain of his company in Reserve Officers Training Corps and the vice president of the Interfraternity Council. He was on the debate team and wrote for the campus newspaper, The Daily Reveille. He earned his first letter playing center for the LSU Tigers football team. He helped to organize the university tennis team and was one of the first two people to letter in tennis at LSU, from which he graduated in June 1923.

Kennon graduated from the Louisiana State University Law Center in May 1925. A month later at the age of twenty-two, he passed the bar exam.

Kennon wed the former Eugenia Sentell (December 27, 1908–May 24, 2002), a graduate of Louisiana Tech University (then Louisiana Polytechnic Institute) in Ruston, who taught home economics. Descended from a prominent Bossier Parish family, Mrs. Kennon was a sister of the Minden physician Charles Sherburne Sentell (1904–1972). She was a wonderful hostess and was able to cultivate several friendships that would later play key roles in her husband's campaigns. The Kennons had three sons, Robert, Jr. (born 1938), a lawyer, and Charles Sentell "Charlie" Kennon (born 1940), a physician, both in Baton Rouge, and Kenneth Wood "Kenwood" Kennon (born 1943), also a lawyer, who resides in St. Francisville in West Feliciana Parish. Kenneth Kennon is the father of Alex Kennon, an actress and writer who attends the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts in Natchitoches.

Municipal politics

By the time Kennon was twenty-three, he had successfully challenged Minden Mayor Connell Fort and became for a time the youngest mayor in the United States.^[2] In his brief time as mayor, Kennon was elected vice president of the Louisiana Municipal Association.^[3] Although his term was generally considered to have been successful, Kennon did not seek reelection in 1928. He was succeeded by a clothing merchant, Henry L. Bridges.

Kennon's relationship with Connell Fort did not end with the 1926 municipal election. Seven years later when Kennon was district attorney for the 26th Judicial District (Bossier and Webster parishes), Fort's son, John L. Fort (1906-1992), subsequently the long-time operator of a news stand in Minden, shot to death Abraham Brisco Nation (1886-1933), a Minden city councilman who had quarreled politically with Mayor Fort. In 1932, Fort had returned to office for a third nonconsecutive term. Nation was the father of twelve children and a foreman for the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway in Minden. John Fort was first incarcerated in Caddo Parish but then held in the Bossier Parish jail for two years. The grand jury never reported a true bill, and Kennon decided not to pursue charges against Fort despite the testimony of two eyewitnesses to the shooting, John L. Garrett and J.R. Murph, then the secretary of the city council.^[4][5]

District attorney and then judge

In 1930, Kennon won the election for district attorney of Bossier and Webster parishes, a position that he held for ten years and one month. His successor in the post was his law partner, Graydon K. Kitchens, Sr. (1903-1988), a native of Stamps, Arkansas, who held the seat until January 13, 1942.^[6] DA Kennon attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the National Guard, making him one of the highest ranked officers. Further active with the Masonic Lodge, Kennon was named "Grand Master" of the organization in 1936.

Kennon took advantage of his growing circle of influential friends and in 1940 ran for justice of the state's Second Circuit Court of Appeal, based in Shreveport. With 46 percent of the ballots, he nearly won outright in the first primary. In the Democratic runoff, he faced the incumbent judge, Harmon Caldwell Drew, a fellow resident of Minden. The Drew family, one of the first to live in Webster Parish long before its establishment, has held judicial positions in north Louisiana for five generations, including besides H. C. Drew, Richard Maxwell Drew, Richard Cleveland Drew, R. Harmon Drew, Sr., and current Circuit Judge Harmon Drew, Jr.. The Kennon-Drew race was vigorously contested with considerable mudslinging. Kennon won by a margin of nine thousand votes,^[7] but he did not carry either his home parish of Webster or neighboring Bossier Parish.

The circuit judgeship would not become vacant until 1942. At the time in Louisiana, it was customary to allow more than a year between election and the taking of judicial positions. As an active member of the National Guard, Kennon was soon called to duty in 1941 as colonel of the XIII Corps of the Ninth Army. He could not hence assume the circuit judgeship until he returned from World War II duty in May 1945. Drew continued to serve as justice until Kennon returned to claim his seat, part of that time under appointment to the Louisiana Supreme Court, where he served from 1945-1947, having replaced A. T. Higgins.

Gubernatorial race, 1948

In October 1947, Judge Kennon entered the 1948 gubernatorial primary election as a self-proclaimed candidate "independent of contending political faction," referring to Long and anti-Long groups then organized in state politics. The Kennon platform was dedicated to "economy, honesty, and efficiency" with a "progressive postwar program for Louisiana, its industries, farms, roads, schools, and institutions."^[8]Kennon opened his campaign on October 10 at the Webster Parish Fair. His intraparty ticket mates, all World War II veterans, included Rufus Fontenot of Crowley for secretary of state, J. David McNeill of New Orleans for attorney general, Jules Deshotels of Kaplan for lieutenant governor, and Allison Kolb of Baton Rouge for state auditor.^[9] In that race, Kennon spoke against ad valorem property taxes at the state level.^[10]

However, Kennon was overshadowed by two better-known former governors who secured the coveted runoff positions, Earl Kemp Long and Sam Houston Jones, who carried the endorsement of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Kennon had claimed that he, not Jones, could defeat Long.^[11]A fourth candidate was U.S. Representative James H. Morrison of Hammond. Long in turn won a convincing rematch over Jones, who had unseated Long eight years earlier. None of the Kennon-endorsed candidates was elected to a statewide office.

Kennon closed his primary campaign at the Minden High School auditorium^[12] but still lost Webster Parish in the returns.

A quick U.S. Senate campaign, 1948

When U.S. Senator John H. Overton died in office, a special election was called to fill the seat for a two-year term extending through January 1951. Fresh from his race for governor, Kennon challenged Russell B. Long, the older son of the legendary Huey Pierce Long, Jr., who not quite thirty was still a few days too young to take office at the time of the election. Kennon said state politics should be "reshuffled after the bad deal" of the Long victory in the 1948 gubernatorial race. He urged "mature representation" in the District of Columbia. The Kennon senatorial platform called for $50 per month old-age pensions, a veterans' housing program, forestry and soil conservation measures, and expansion of the Rural Electrification Administration. He also avowed that as a senator, he would work to "cut red tape" in government operations.^[13]

The outcome was close, but Long prevailed, 264,143 (51 percent) to Kennon's 253,668 (49 percent). Long's plurality was hence 10,475 votes. As with the earlier gubernatorial primary, Kennon lost his own Webster Parish in the Senate race against Long, 4,096 to 2,994.^[14] Based on the Senate returns, many in the anti-Long faction began to consider Kennon once again as a possible gubernatorial candidate in 1951. Long held the seat without a serious challenge until he announced his retirement, effective January 1987.

Gubernatorial matters

In 1952, despite major opposition within the Democratic primary, Kennon won his party's nomination in a runoff with state District Judge Carlos Spaht of Baton Rouge, who had the backing of some of the organizers of outgoing Governor Earl Long. Kennon polled 482,302 votes (61.4 percent) to Spaht's 302,743 (38.6 percent). Spaht's running-mate for lieutenant governor was a future governor, John Julian McKeithen, then a 33-year-old state representative from Columbia, the seat of Caldwell Parish, in northeastern Louisiana. McKeithen was defeated for lieutenant governor by C. E. "Cap" Barham (born 1905), a state senator and an attorney from Ruston, the seat of Lincoln Parish. Barham, who stood to the left of Kennon politically, had not been Kennon's first choice for lieutenant governor, and the two ran on a common intraparty ticket of convenience in 1952. Elmer D. Connor had been Kennon's unsuccessful first choice for lieutenant governor.

In the following low-turnout general election in the spring of 1952, Kennon trounced Republican Harrison Bagwell, 118,723 (96 percent) to 4,958 (4 percent). Until 1952, Louisiana Republicans had not even offered a token name on gubernatorial general election ballots.

As a delegate to the 1952 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Kennon led a walkout of the Louisiana delegation, most of whose members opposed the party's civil rights plank, a point that he used in his advertising for the failed gubernatorial comeback bid in the fall of 1963.^[15]

Governor Kennon was often said to have conducted his office as if he were instructed by a "civics textbook."^[16]In addition to his interest in state sovereignty, Kennon pushed to procure voting machines to all Louisiana precincts to replace paper ballots still used in some rural parishes. Such machines were designed to eliminate the periodic problem of vote-stealing. Kennon expanded Louisiana state civil service with help from the New Orleans attorney Charles E. Dunbar, who had authored the original reform measure in 1940 under the Sam Houston Jones administration.^[17]

In 1955, Kennon was named chairman of the National Governors Conference.^[18]

In the 1956 gubernatorial election, Kennon, who was ineligible to succeed himself, supported Fred Preaus, an automobile dealer from Farmerville, the seat of Union Parish in north Louisiana, who had been Kennon's highway director. Preaus also vowed a "strong stand on segregation."^[19] Another segregationist candidate, James M. McLemore, an Alexandria businessman, however, claimed that Kennon had done little to stem pending desegregation. According to McLemore, the Kennon administration had been "like an ostrich with the head buried in the sand" and had provided "no leadership" to halt racial integration.^[20]

"Cap" Barham, meanwhile never politically close to Kennon, sought reelection as lieutenant governor (Only governors were then term-limited in Louisiana.) on the deLesseps Story Morrison ticket. Morrison, then the mayor of New Orleans was a former law partner of Barham's 1952 ticket mate, then U.S. Representative Hale Boggs.^[21]

After his governorship, the Kennons resided for the remainder of his life in Baton Rouge, where he maintained a law practice. Kennon appointed his former law partner in Minden, Graydon Kitchens, also a graduate of the LSU Law Center, to the Louisiana Tax Commission. Earl Long, however, convinced the state legislature to remove Kitchens from the panel so that Long could make his own appointment.^[22] Kennon also named a Minden supporter, Leland G. Mims, to a vacancy on the Webster Parish Police Jury. Mims in 1965-1967 was president of the Police Jury Association of Louisiana.^[23]

A third gubernatorial campaign, 1963

Kennon's term ended in the spring of 1956, and he was succeeded by his long-time foe, Earl Long. He unsuccessfully attempted to run for governor again in 1963. Three LSU scholars described Kennon as "the traditional anti-Long type: respectable, business-oriented, an exponent of governmental quietism, and an advocate of 'good government' administrative reform."^[24]

In the Democratic primary, Kennon ran fourth (127,870 votes or 14.1 percent). He was therefore eliminated from a runoff between Public Service Commissioner John McKeithen of Columbia in Caldwell Parish and the more liberal contender, former New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story Morrison, Sr. Some observers theorized that the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, which occurred two weeks before the primary election, may have weakened Kennon's prospects because Kennon had in a televised address criticized policies of both President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He called the Kennedys "young, misguided men." Kennon was also weakened by the presence of the fifth-place candidate, veteran Education Superintendent Shelby M. Jackson, a native of Concordia Parish in eastern Louisiana, whose votes are believed to have come primarily at the expense of Kennon and therefore worked to deny Kennon the coveted runoff position against Morrison. Jackson was the vocal segregationist among the five candidates, as Kennon discussed "state sovereignty", which some saw as a code word for segregation. Even if half of Jackson's votes had otherwise gone to Kennon, then Kennon, and not McKeithen, would have entered the runoff with Morrison. Jackson's supporters were also believed in many cases to have been previous backers of the 1959 segregationist gubernatorial hopeful, William M. Rainach of Claiborne Parish. Another candidate in the race was former State Representative Claude Kirkpatrick from Jefferson Davis Parish, who had headed the Department of Public Works under outgoing Governor Jimmie Davis. Kirkpatrick's widow, Edith Killgore Kirkpatrick, is a native of Claiborne Parish and a past political figure in her own right.

McKeithen won the runoff and the ensuing general election. Kennon did not endorse either runoff candidate. His nephew, Edward Kennon (a son of F. E. Kennon, Sr.), a Shreveport developer and a later member of the Louisiana Public Service Commission, stumped for the Roman Catholic and pro-Kennedy "Chep" Morrison, who had endorsed Kennon in the 1951-1952 election cycle after the elimination of Morrison's first choice, his former law partner, U.S. Representative Hale Boggs of New Orleans.

Kennon's death

Kennon died in 1988 at the age of eighty-five. He and his wife, who survived him by fourteen years, are not interred at the Minden Cemetery, as are many of his family members, but in the Young Family Cemetery in Port Hudson in East Baton Rouge Parish.^[25]

Bill Dodd's eulogy of Kennon

One of Kennon's 1951 primary opponents, William J. "Bill" Dodd, offered this eulogy in the form of a letter to the editor of the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate on the passing of Kennon:

"As a personal friend and colleague of one whose death deserves more than a routine news story and a short obituary, I am writing this letter in the hope that its contents will be made available to the citizens of Louisiana.

"Recently, Louisiana lost one of its greatest citizens, Robert F. "Bob" Kennon. He was the kind of person most often mentioned in sermons as a role model for those seeking perfection in their daily lives. Also he was the kind of politician professors of government describe as a good public official.

"In both his personal and public life, he proved that the preachers and the political science professors were right.

"At LSU, he was an honor student, colonel of the cadet corps, and a varsity football player. As a young lawyer, he was successful in his practice of law, which led him into politics, {and} he became mayor of Minden, a district attorney, a District Court of Appeals judge, and a Supreme Court judge.

"When World War II came, though married and the father of young children, he volunteered into the U.S. Army and served with distinction, at home and overseas in Europe.

"Bob Kennon was elected governor of Louisiana in 1952. During his tenure as governor, he reenacted Civil Service for state employees, put voting machines in every voting precinct (which ended vote stealing forever) and took slot machines and gambling out of Louisiana.

{Instead of running up deficits, Governor Kennon ended each fiscal year with a surplus and was the only governor I can recall who actually reduced taxes.

"For his four years, there were not only no scandals in state government, but there were no hints of wrongdoing by the governor or his department heads.

"From 1952 until he went out of office {1956}, Governor Kennon, his lovely and gracious wife, and three fine sons lived in the Governor's Manson and made it a real home for the first family as well as a model for the whole state.

"Governor Kennon's appointments were men and women of the highest moral standards and possessed of excellent government experience. Like their governor, they regarded their public offices as public trusts.

"Governor Kennon was never tried and acquitted of wrongdoing because he didn't break the law or do anything suggesting he ever acted illegally or even unethically. He never spent any time with AA or in a CDU for he didn't drink alcohol and didn't snort cocaine. And when he took trips on boats, he went fishing or to a hunting camp with his boys and not to a hideaway like Bimini. His family was exemplary and made no waves that called for suppressing hospital or police records or anything else.

"Perhaps the fact that Kennon was honest and efficient and ran the state and his life according to the laws of God and man, he missed out on the press coverage that goes to those who have to be rehabilitated and forgiven for their unethical and illegal conduct; coverage that often praises those rascals for their courage and fortitude to face the public after disgracing themselves and their friends who elected them.

"Whatever the reason for Governor Kennon's lack of recognition for having been a model father, soldier, judge, and governor, the cold base record shows that he was exactly the kind of man the public, the preachers, and the press say they want but seldom get in the governor's office.

"Bob Kennon was, with all his success, a humble man and, if living, he would not want credit for what he did. He regarded his going a good job as his duty, and Bob was a man who always did his duty. . . .^[26]

Extended family

Several members of the extended Kennon family served in public office. John T. Kennon, Jr., or Sonny Kennon (1928–2005), son of John T. Kennon, Sr. (Governor Kennon's first cousin) served as the elected ward marshal of Webster Parish and in 1971 ran unsuccessfully for Webster Parish sheriff against O.H. Haynes, Jr. John T. Kennon's sister was Josephine Kennon Williams (1925–2009), wife of Bert David Williams, Sr. (1917-2011), pharmacist and co-owner of City Drugs in Minden.^[27] The Williamses' daughter, the former Barbara Jo Williams (born 1948), is married to retired state District Judge Jim Wiley of Winnfield. Their daughter, Anastasia Wiley, is also a judge in Winnfield.^[28]

In 2001, Kennon was posthumously inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.^[29]

See also

• List of the youngest mayors in the United States
• Youth politics
• Doris Dorcas Carter, "Governor Robert Floyd Kennon," North Louisiana History, Vol. 25, Nos. 2,3 (Spring-Summer 1994), pp. 55-71

References

External links

• State of Louisiana - Biography
• Cemetery Memorial by La-Cemeteries
• Burial site of Robert F. Kennon at Find A Grave