U. T. Downs

Uriah Thomas "U. T." Downs
Mayor of Pineville, Louisiana
In office 1914–1924
Sheriff of Rapides Parish, Louisiana
In office 1924–1940
Personal details
Born	(1880-10-12)October 12, 1880 La Salle Parish, Louisiana, USA
Died	July 21, 1941(1941-07-21) (aged 60) Rapides Parish, Louisiana
Resting place	Greenwood Memorial Park in Pineville, Louisiana
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Callie McCann Downs (married 1900-1941, his death)
Relations	Jam Downs (grandson) James Uriah Downs (grandson) Alice Daigre Downs Thomas (daughter-in-law)
Children	Carey and Carl Carney Downs J. Earl Downs Ruby Downs Zola Downs Penny Clifton Downs C. H. "Sammy" Downs
Parents	Thomas Crawford and Margaret Ruth Whatley Downs
Residence	Pineville, Louisiana
Alma mater	Jena High School in Jena, Louisiana
Occupation	Businessman
Religion	Southern Baptist

This article also contains the biography of U. T. Downs's older son, James Earl Downs. Scroll down.

Uriah Thomas Downs, known as U. T. Downs (October 12, 1880 – July 21, 1941), was a Democratic politician from Central Louisiana, who served in the early part of the 20th century as the mayor of Pineville and the sheriff of Rapides Parish.

Biography

Born in La Salle Parish in North Louisiana, Downs was the second of seven children of Thomas Crawford Downs (1854-1930) and the former Margaret Ruth Whatley (1854-1927). His paternal grandfather was Crawford Downs, originally from Mississippi. His maternal grandfather, Uriah Whatley, came to Louisiana about 1812 as a Methodist circuit rider. Thomas Downs was born in Ouachita Parish; Margaret Downs, in Catahoula Parish.^[1]

U. T. Downs was educated at Jena High School in Jena, the seat of government of LaSalle Parish. He was engaged in the mercantile business in Pineville, located on the eastern side of the Red River from Alexandria. For ten years, or two terms and a portion of a third, Downs was the part-time mayor of Pineville. In January 1924, he was elected sheriff of Rapides Parish, a position based in Alexandria which he held for the next sixteen years.^[1]

In November 1939, Sheriff Downs and three of his deputies W. C. Nash, N. G. Aymond, and Roy Yerby, were among nineteen persons named in sixty-six indictments by a Rapides Parish grand jury.^[2] The four were charged with malfeasance in office. Others faced charges for bribery, embezzlement, and income tax violations. Mayors V. V. Lamkin of Alexandria, a supporter of Governor Earl Kemp Long, was charged with bribery and malfeasance in office. Mayor R. C. Lawrence of Pineville and State Representative Richmond C. Hathorn was indicted for dual-officeholding or being "deadheads" on the state payroll.^[3] Other indictments were issued against George C. Gray, the former Alexandria police chief and a candidate to succeed Downs as sheriff, and Alexandria police officers Allen E. Zachary and Joseph T. Ohman.^[2]

In the 1920s, Sheriff Downs was for two years the "exalted cyclops" of the No. 12 unit of the Ku Klux Klan. When the white supremacist organization folded its Rapides Parish chapter, he joined a still functioning KKK unit in Atlanta, Georgia.^[1]

Like his parents, Downs and his wife, the former Callie McCann (1884-1983),^[4] had seven children. Two entered Louisiana politics. C. H. "Sammy" Downs, also known as Crawford Downs, an Alexandria educator-turned-lawyer, was a member of both houses of the Louisiana State Legislature from Rapides Parish and an associate of Governors Earl Long and John McKeithen.^[5]J. Earl Downs was from 1954 to 1962 the commissioner of public safety in Shreveport, Louisiana, when that city operated under the city commission government. The other Downs children were Carey, Carl Carney (1903-1974), Ruby Downs (died 2000), Zola Downs Penny (1909-2006), and Clifton.^[1]Downs had two grandsons who became prominent lawyers, Jam Downs, the Rapides Parish district attorney prior to his retirement in 2015,^[6] and James U. Downs, a North Carolina superior court judge from 1983 to 2013, since returned to private practice.^[7]

Downs was a deacon and Sunday school superintendent of the First Baptist Church of Pineville. He was also affiliated with the Masonic lodge in Pineville, the Knights of Pythias in Alexandria, and the Woodmen of the World. He, his wife, and other family members are interred at Greenwood Memorial Park in Pineville.^[1]

References (U. T. Downs)

James Earl Downs
Public Safety Commissioner for Shreveport, Louisiana
In office 1954–1962
Succeeded by	George W. D'Artois
Personal details
Born	(1905-06-18)June 18, 1905 Place of birth missing
Died	September 20, 1998(1998-09-20) (aged 93) Franklin, Macon County North Carolina
Resting place	Woodlawn Cemetery in Franklin, North Carolina
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Helen Whitener Downs
Relations	C. H. "Sammy" Downs (brother) Jam Downs (nephew)
Children	Retired Judge James U. Downs of North Carolina
Parents	U. T. and Callie McCann Downs
Residence	Pineville, Louisiana Shreveport, Louisiana Franklin, North Carolina
Alma mater	Louisiana College Louisiana State University
Occupation	Educator Businessman Social worker
Religion	Southern Baptist

James Earl Downs

James Earl Downs, also known as J. Earl Downs (June 18, 1905 – September 20, 1998),^[1] was a Democratic politician from Shreveport, Louisiana, who served from 1954 to 1962 as the municipal public safety commissioner, a citywide elected position under the former city commission government. He was unseated in the 1962 primary election by George W. D'Artois, a former Caddo Parish deputy sheriff.^[2][3]

Background

Downs was descended from a political family based in Rapides Parish in Central Louisiana. His father, U. T. Downs, was the mayor of Pineville from 1914 to 1924 and the Rapides Parish sheriff from 1924 to 1940.^[4]Downs's younger brother, C. H. "Sammy" Downs, was a member of both houses of the Louisiana State Legislature in the 1940s and 1950s and was an advisor to Governors Earl Kemp Long and John McKeithen.^[5] His nephew, James Crawford Downs, son of Sammy Downs, is the former district attorney for Rapides Parish.

Earl and Sammy Downs were two of seven children of U. T. Downs and the former Callie McCann (1884-1983).^[6]He graduated in 1928 from Southern Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College in Pineville. He then obtained a master's degree from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. C. H. "Sammy" Downs followed this same educational path but in 1946 obtained a law degree as well. Earl Downs taught and coached during the 1930s in Jena, where his father graduated from Jena High School, and in Logansport in DeSoto Parish and Winnfield in Winn Parish. He left the education profession to become a traveling salesman. Beginning in 1944, he entered into an oil and gas business.^[7]

Political life

In 1948, Earl Downs ran unsuccessfully for the Louisiana Public Service Commission for the seat held from 1942 to 1944 by Governor Jimmie Davis.^[7] In 1954, Downs was elected Shreveport public safety commissioner, a position previously held from 1938 to 1942 by Jimmie Davis. Downs served two terms, first with Mayor James C. Gardner^[8]and then with Clyde Fant.

Early in 1955, Victor Bussie, an officer in the Shreveport Fire Department acting through the Central Trades and Labor Council in Shreveport during his lunch hour, called a strike of waitresses at Brocato's Restaurant when the company declined to rehire a fired waitress. In retaliation, Commissioner Downs demoted Bussie to the rank of captain and assigned him to a fire station. Bussie took unpaid leave and appealed Downs's decision to the Shreveport Fire and Police Civil Service Board. After fourteen sessions and fifty hours of testimony, the civil service board voted 4–1 to uphold the demotion, with the lone dissenter being the firefighters' representative. Bussie announced that he would appeal to the courts. Meanwhile, he became the state AFL-CIO president for the remainder of his working career and resided in Baton Rouge. No action was ever taken by the courts in Bussie's appeal of his demotion by Downs.^[9]

In the fall of 1961, Commissioner Downs, along with Mayor Fant, Caddo Parish Sheriff J. Howell Flournoy, chief deputy and subsequent Sheriff James M. Goslin, were defendants in a desegregation suit filed by the United States Department of Justice at the request of the Interstate Commerce Commission against the Continental Southern, Inc., which operated the Trailways bus terminal in Shreveport. Hugh B. Walmsley, manager of the terminal removed signs that had required racially separate facilities for restaurant, waiting room, restroom, and ticket sale services. Judge Benjamin C. Dawkins, Jr., of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, based in Shreveport, in his 1962 ruling sided with the Justice Department, as did the United States Supreme Court on appeal. The court decreed that the segregated facilities "imposes an undue burden upon interstate commerce in violation of the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. The city of Shreveport was ordered to pay the costs of the litigation. The city was represented in the case by later U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston, Jr.^[10]

After his tenure ended as the public safety commissioner, Downs was a social worker involved in job training and vocational rehabilitation services.^[11]

Later years

Downs was married to the former Helen Whitener (1908-2007), originally from Natchitoches, the daughter of Samuel S. Whitener, Sr., and the former Harriet Rebecca "Bitsy" Brewton.^[12]The Downses had one son, retired North Carolina senior resident Superior Court Judge James Uriah Downs (born in Shreveport in 1941) and a graduate of Virginia Military Institute and the Loyola University New Orleans School of Law. Originally appointed to the court by Governor James B. Hunt, James U. Downs was elected to the bench four times without opposition. His jurisdiction was in Buncombe and other counties in western North Carolina. He returned in 2014 to the private practice of law, with an office in Franklin in Macon County in southwestern North Carolina.^[13]

In their later years, Earl and Helen Downs relocated from Shreveport to Franklin, North Carolina, to be near their son and his family. They were already living in Franklin by 1985 at the time of the death of Sammy Downs.^[5] Earl Downs died in 1998 of congestive heart failure^[11]at the age of ninety-three and is interred alongside his wife at Woodlawn Cemetery in Franklin.^[1]

References (J. Earl Downs)

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