Algie D. Brown

Algie Dee Brown (March 8, 1910 - October 29, 2004)^[1] was an attorney from Shreveport, Louisiana, who from 1948 to 1972 was a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives. He served under Governors Earl Kemp Long, Robert F. Kennon, Jimmie Davis, and John McKeithen. His interest in politics began in the early 1930s when he heard the legendary Huey Pierce Long, Jr., give a stem-winding speech in Shreveport.

Background

Brown was born to John Spence Brown and the former Melody Bryan in a log house on a farm near Waldo near Magnolia in south Arkansas. One of seven children, he outlived his six siblings. The Browns moved to Shreveport in 1924, where Algie graduated in 1928 from C.E. Byrd High School, the first public high school in the city. One of his Byrd classmates was his future legislative colleague, Frank Fulco, who became a leader of the Italian American community in Louisiana. In 1934, Brown received a Bachelor of Arts from Methodist-affiliated Centenary College.^[2]

In 1935, Brown obtained a degree from the Louisiana State University Law School in Baton Rouge and established his law practice, which was interrupted after eight years by World War II. Brown was a United States Navy lieutenant aboard several aircraft carriers in the Pacific Theater of Operations. He was a radar control officer aboard the USS Natoma Bay when the escort carrier was struck by a Japanese kamikaze airplane during the Okinawa campaign in June 1945. Brown was discharged from active duty in 1946 and resumed his law practice.^[2] From 1953 to 1961, his law partner was William J. Fleniken, the former U. S. Attorney and later judge of the Louisiana 1st Judicial District Court.^[3]

Political life

Brown served as an at-large Caddo Parish delegate during his House career. By the time he declined to seek a seventh term in 1972, single-member districts were instituted in Louisiana legislative races. In the 1964 general election, Brown ran third for the five available seats but was outdistanced by Republican candidates Morley Hudson and Taylor O'Hearn. Joining Brown in the delegation were Frank Fulco and newcomer J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., later a United States senator. Brown was not pleased at finishing behind two Republican beneficiaries of Charlton Lyons, who was waging the first well-organized GOP campaign for governor since Reconstruction. The sixth-place candidate, narrowly eliminated in the competition by Johnston, was Wellborn Jack, a Shreveport attorney, who had served in the House for the preceding twenty-four years. A second Democrat voted out in the temporary Republican sweep of Caddo Parish was Jasper K. Smith of Vivian.^[4]

Brown co-sponsored the 1960 bill creating the ten-member Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities, modeled after the United States House Committee on Un-American Activities.^[5] The stated purpose of the committee was to investigate "communist and socialist activities" within Louisiana.^[6] The bill achieved final approval but only after the Louisiana State Senate amended it to require that the committee act through the office of the state attorney general, then Jack P.F. Gremillion, to enforce contempt actions.^[7]

In the 1966 legislative session, Brown opposed the establishment of 60-day annual legislative session, which he claimed would "mean just that many more bad bills we'd have to kill." Brown proposed a second deputy voter registrar for Caddo Parish because of federal intervention in the registration process, which began through the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He advocated the adoption of a new criminal code for Louisiana.^[8]

Death

In 1947, Brown wed the former Hazel Turner (April 29, 1919 – June 21, 1994).^[1] In 1996, he married Elise Beaudreaux (December 20, 1923 – October 1, 2003)^[1] of Ruston, Louisiana.

Brown died at his Shreveport home after a lengthy illness. Services were held in the Frost Chapel of the First Baptist Church of Shreveport, of which Brown had been a member for seventy-five years. Brown was buried beside first wife Hazel at Forest Park Cemetery East in Shreveport. He was survived by two sons, Curtis Brown of Shreveport and Bryan Brown, two grandsons, and three stepchildren.^[2]

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