Bolivar Edwards Kemp Jr.

Bolivar Edwards Kemp Jr. (September 23, 1904 – October 27, 1965),^[1] was the Democratic attorney general of the U.S. state of Louisiana from 1948–1952 during the administration of Governor Earl Kemp Long. He was allied with the Long faction in state politics.

Family

Kemp was the son of U.S. Representative Bolivar E. Kemp of Amite City, the seat of Tangipahoa Parish, one of the Louisiana Florida Parishes east of Baton Rouge. His mother was the former Esther Edwards Conner (1875 – November 1, 1943), widely known as "Lallie" Kemp.^[2] Kemp's paternal grandparents were Judge William Breed Kemp Sr. and the former Elizabeth Newsom.^[3] His maternal grandparents were Sidney Simonton Conner of Statesville, North Carolina, and the former Orra Anna Edwards of Tangipahoa Parish. Kemp had a younger sister, Eleanor Ogden Kemp (born 1909), later Eleanor Ellis, married to Louisiana District Court Judge Robert S. Ellis Jr.^[4]

Kemp's wife, Menette, was one of the three sisters of the Louisiana chef and humorist Justin Wilson, also of Amite. Their father, Harry D. Wilson, served for thirty-two years from 1916 until his death in January 1948 as the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry. Kemp had one foster son named Richard Tipton.^[5]

Kemp graduated in 1897 from Tulane University Law School in New Orleans; his classmates included later U.S. Senator John H. Overton and E. L. Stewart, a lawyer in Minden and a state representative for Webster Parish from 1904 to 1908^[6]

In 1933, at the time of his father's sudden death, Kemp was an assistant United States district attorney in New Orleans.^[3] In 1943, at the time of his mother's death, Kemp was the district attorney for Tangipahoa Parish.^[4]

Political career

Kemp was politically allied with William J. "Bill" Dodd, the lieutenant governor from 1948–1952, who hired Justin Wilson as Dodd's campaign manager in the 1952 Louisiana gubernatorial election. Kemp and Dodd maintained that Louisiana seriously erred when it rejected a compromise tidelands offer from the Truman administration. According to Dodd, had Governor Earl Long agreed to the plan, Louisiana would have gained billions of additional dollars in state revenues over the coming decades. Long rejected the compromise on advice from Judge Leander Perez of Plaquemines Parish, who argued that Louisiana could win a much better settlement before the United States Supreme Court. As it turned out, the assessment of Dodd and Kemp was correct, and the Supreme Court rebuffed Louisiana's attempt to get a greater share of the offshore revenues. Dodd maintained that Louisiana government would have been the best funded in the nation had Long accepted Truman's offer. In 1982, Edgar Poe, former president of the National Press Corps in Washington, D.C., wrote Dodd that "Louisiana would be a tax-free state had the compromoise proposed been accepted. As you know, offshore Louisiana is the most intense oil and gas development area in the world. As a result, the federal government is collecting hundreds of millions of dollars every year from lease sales of its share of the oil and gas sales."^[7]

Kemp's stint as the state's top legal officer fell between the two nonconsecutive terms of Attorney General Fred S. LeBlanc of Baton Rouge, who served in the first Jimmie Davis and Robert F. Kennon administrations, respectively.

Death

Kemp died at the age of 61 and is interred beside his parents, at Amite Cemetery. Kemp's wife, who was deceased at the time of her brother Justin Wilson's death in 2001, is not mentioned in the cemetery listing.^[1] The 1943 obituary of Lallie Conner Kemp does not mention any grandchildren.^[4]

References

Attorneys General of Louisiana
Martin Mazureau Moreau-Lislet Robertson Mazureau Preston Morphy Eustis Mazureau Roselius Preston Elmore Johnson Morse Moïse Semmes Goode Herron Lynch Beldon Field Hunt Steele Ogden Egan Cunningham Rogers Cunningham Guion Pleasant Coco Saint Porterlie Ellison Gardiner Stanley LeBlanc Kemp LeBlanc Gremillion Guste Ieyoub Foti Caldwell Landry