Frank Voelker, Sr.

Frank Voelker, Sr.
Judge of the Louisiana 6th Judicial District
In office January 1, 1937 – July 2, 1963
Preceded by	Francis Xavier Ransdell
Succeeded by	Clifton C. Adams
Personal details
Born	August 30, 1892 Lake Providence East Carroll Parish Louisiana, USA
Died	July 2, 1963 (aged 70) Lake Providence
Resting place	Lake Providence Cemetery
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Isabel Ransdell Voelker
Relations	Franxis Xavier Ransdell (father-in-law) U.S. Senator Joseph E. Ransdell (uncle by marriage) David Ransdell Voelker (grandson)
Children	Five children, including: Katherine Voelker Cain (1919-2008) Isabel Voelker Hathorn (1923-2003) Frank Voelker, Jr.
Alma mater	Christian Brothers Academy Tulane University Law School
Occupation	Attorney; Judge
Religion	Roman Catholic
Military service
Service/branch	United States Army
Battles/wars	World War I

Frank Voelker, Sr. (August 30, 1892 – July 2, 1963),^[1] was a judge of the Louisiana 6th Judicial District Court^{[nb 1]} of his native Lake Providence in East Carroll Parish in the far northeastern corner of his state. The 6th district also encompasses Madison and Tensas parishes south of East Carroll. He was of German descent.

Background

Voelker's father, an East Carroll Parish planter, served on the police jury, the parish governing body. His mother was the former Kate Ashbridge, a descendant of an old antebellum family. His brother, Stephen Voelker (born 1900), organized in 1930 the Tallulah Production Credit Association in Tallulah in Madison Parish, which in 1937 lent some $1.5 million to farmers.^[2]

Frank Voelker attended Christian Brothers Academy in Memphis, Tennessee, and received his legal degree from the Tulane University Law School in New Orleans.^[2]

Career

Military and law career

Voelker served in the United States Army during World War I. He had a law practice in Lake Providence for about two decades prior to his becoming state district judge.^[2]

Judicial career

He served on the state court for twenty-six-and-a-half years, from 1937 until his death. He was elected five times without opposition.^[3] Voelker was an alternate delegate to the 1944 Democratic National Convention in Chicago to nominate the Roosevelt-Truman ticket.^[4]

African American voter registration

In the summer of 1962, prior to the Democratic primary for congressional elections, and during his last year on the bench, Judge Voelker attracted national attention when he challenged the U.S. District Judge Edwin F. Hunter in Lake Charles regarding the pending voter registration of twenty-eight African Americans, the first members of their race allowed to vote in East Carroll Parish since 1922. Voelker said that Hunter, a former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from Shreveport, overstepped his judicial limits by acting in an executive authority in ordering the registration of the black citizens. The East Carroll Parish voter registrar, Cecil Manning, resigned and closed the office on June 14 rather than to allow the new registrants to be placed on the rolls. Hunter acted under a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, signed into law two years earlier by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ultimately, the judge himself registered the new black voters. Backing up Hunter, another U.S. district judge, Benjamin C. Dawkins, Jr., of Shreveport, issued an injunction against racial discrimination in the registration of voters.^[5][6][7] The 1960 provision was strengthened and made uniform across most of the American South in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Marriage and family

Voelker married Isabel Ransdell, one of six daughters of Judge Francis Xavier Ransdell and Louisiana governor contender against Huey Pierce Long, Jr. He was nephew by marriage of U.S. Senator Joseph E. Ransdell.^{[8][nb 2]} Voelker was a brother-in-law of State Representative John Martin Hamley (also referred to as John Martian Hamley, who was married to another of Judge Ransdell's daughters, Katie or "Kate".^{[nb 3]}

Frank and Isabel Voelker had five children. Son Frank Voelker, Jr., was an attornery and gubernatorial candidate.^{[9] [nb 4][nb 5]}

Voelker died in 1963 and is interred at Lake Providence Cemetery in East Carroll Parish.^[1]

Notes

1. At the time of Voelker's service the present 6th district was the 9th district.
2. The brothers Francis and Joseph Ransdell were born at Elmwood Plantation in Rapides Parish near Alexandria. Faced with family crises, the Ransdells migrated north to Lake Providence, where they established legal practices, farms, and residences. Joseph Ransdell's political career was cut short when he was defeated for senatorial renomination in 1930^[8] by then Governor Huey Pierce Long, Jr..
3. In 1933, John Martin Hamley was elected as the East Carroll Parish tax assessor.
4. Frank, Jr. was a city attorney in his native Lake Providence and later established a practice in New Orleans. The junior Voelker served in the early 1960s during the second administration of Governor Jimmie Davis as the chairman of the Louisiana Sovereignty Commission, a panel created by the legislature to develop alternatives to resist lawfully the encroachment of national political power over the states. In 1963, the younger Voelker was a gubernatorial candidate in the Democratic primary,^[9] but he withdrew from the race and became campaign manager for Robert F. Kennon in a contest ultimately won by John McKeithen.
5. A Voelker grandson, David Ransdell Volker, was a partner and chief executive officer at Voelker and Conway Investments in New Orleans. Following Hurricane Katrina, Democratic Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco named the Republican David Voelker to the Louisiana Recovery Authority. Blanco's successor and past opponent, Republican Bobby Jindal, elevated Voelker as chairman of the authority. David Voelker died at the age of sixty from complications of a lung transplant.^[10]

References

1. "Grave transcription - Frank Voelker". Find a Grave. Retrieved June 25, 2013.
2. Frederick W. Williamson and George T. Goodman, eds. Eastern Louisiana: A History of the Watershed of the Ouachita River and the Florida Parishes, 3 vols. (Monroe: Historical Record Association, 1939, pp. 734-735, 782-786
3. James Matthew Reonas, Once Proud Princes: Planters and Plantation Culture in Louisiana's Northeast Delta, From the First World War Through the Great Depression (PDF). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Ph.D. dissertation, December 2006, p. 269. Retrieved July 19, 2013.
4. "Voelker". politicalgraveyard.com. Retrieved July 21, 2013.
5. "State Judge Restrains Federal Judge's Order", Sumter Daily Item, Sumter, South Carolina, July 21, 1962, p. 1
6. John Henry Scott (2003). Witness to the Truth: John H. Scott's Struggle for Human Rights in Louisiana. University of South Carolina Press. pp. 131–146. ISBN 978-1-57003-489-3. Retrieved 26 June 2013.
7. Associated Press (July 21, 1962). "Order Halts Voter Action". Lake Charles American-Press (accessed via newspapers.com). Retrieved June 26, 2013.
8. "Joseph E. Ransdell". bioguide.congress.gov. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
9. Ruston Daily Leader, Ruston, Louisiana, May 30, 1963, p. 1
10. "David Voelker, 'one of the great saints of the recovery,' dies at 60". New Orleans Times-Picayune. Retrieved June 8, 2013.