Frank Voelker Sr.

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, Clemens August Voelker (1855-1926), an East Carroll Parish planter, served on the police jury, the parish governing body. His mother was the former Kate Ashbridge,^[2] 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.^[3]

Frank Voelker attended Christian Brothers Academy in Memphis, Tennessee, and received his legal degree from the Tulane University Law School in New Orleans.^[3]

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.^[3]

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.^[4] Voelker was an alternate delegate to the 1944 Democratic National Convention in Chicago to nominate the Roosevelt-Truman ticket.^[5]

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.^[6][7][8] 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.^{[9][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.^{[10] [nb 4][nb 5]}

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

Notes

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