Allen J. Ellender

Allen J. Ellender (1890-1972) was a Democratic politician from the U.S. state of Louisiana. An original follower of Huey P. Long, Ellender was elected in 1936 as Long's permanent successor to the United States Senate. He served in the upper house of Congress from 1937 until his death in the summer of 1972. At the time he was campaigning for yet another term in the Senate. Ellender was succeeded by interim Senator Elaine S. Edwards, the first wife of then Governor Edwin Edwards. His permanent successor was his chief primary rival in 1972, former state Senator J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., of Shreveport, who held the U.S. Senate seat until his retirement in January 1997. Johnston had also been Edwin Edwards' rival for the 1971 Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

Ellender was a native of Terrebonne Parish in south Louisiana and a lawyer who graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans. Prior to his Senate tenure, he served from 1924 to 1936 as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives. He was the House Speaker from 1932 until 1936. In the U.S. Senate, he was known for his support for school segregation through the signing in 1956 of the Southern Manifesto. Ellender was also an advocate of farm subsidies and the school lunch program, and he opposed the investigations into communist infiltration of the U.S. government conducted prior to 1954 by his Republican colleague, Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Though Ellender later opposed the Vietnam War, he voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964. During his Senate tenure he was chairman of the Agriculture Committee and then the Appropriations Committee. He was considered a mostly conservative Democrat in comparison to his party colleagues. He was a non-practicing Roman Catholic.

One of his nieces, Bonnie Robichaux, married Bob Livingston the Republican former U.S. representative from New Orleans.