Elbert Guillory: A Real Life Freedom Fighter

By Woody Jenkins, Editor, Central City News – Baton Rouge

Sen. Elbert Guillory is the first and only black Republican to serve in the Louisiana Senate since Reconstruction, which ended nearly 150 years ago!  But he is far more than that.  

Guillory is one of the most articulate spokesmen for conservative causes in the United States and one of the best thinkers who can explain why the Constitution, the rule of law, and traditional values are even more important for black people than for whites.

His classic film, Why I Am a Republican, has been viewed more than 5 million times. It lays out the case for black people entering the mainstream of American society, forsaking the false promises of the welfare state, and embracing freedom, free enterprise, and love of country.  It can be viewed by going to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_YQ8560E1w

Besides being an active leader in the Republican Party, Elbert Guillory is a civil rights activist and attorney who has been willing to risk everything to protect the rights of all citizens.

Elbert Guillory didn’t start as a champion of civil rights!  It all started by accident when he was 15. He simply wanted to be able to go to the parish library and check out some books!

Born in 1944, he grew up in Opelousas in St. Landry Parish, during a time when almost everything was segregated, including his school. In those days, most people, black and white, accepted segregation. “We really didn’t know anything different,” he said.

He remembers going to restaurants, and his family would have to go around back to order food.  They couldn’t go inside and eat. They had to eat outside or take it home.

Elbert said he didn’t think much about it.  Then one day when he was five he asked his daddy to take him to get a hamburger.  When they got to the restaurant, his dad told him to wait out front.  He said, “Watch this!”  Then his father, who was very light skinned, walked right in the front door like the white people did, and soon came out with hamburgers to go!  

“It was my first time to think about race,” he said.

As a teenager, Elbert loved books.  

The parish library in St. Landry Parish was well stocked, but blacks couldn’t use it.  The library wasn’t segregated! Instead, blacks were barred from using it at all!  

However, if you were black and in school, you could at least use your school library.  If your school library did not have a book, the school library could order it for you from the parish library and a few days later you could pick up the book at your school.  The system worked, and he didn’t know anything different, Elbert said.

However, when he was 15, there was a problem.  Elbert planned to do a lot of reading that summer.  However, the school library was closed, so there was no way to get books from the parish library — if you were black!

Not thinking it all through, he decided to walk to the parish library and see if he could check out some books directly.  He had his parish library card, which he used for ordering books through the school library.

He walked in the front door of the parish library and told the librarian he wanted to check out some books.  She told him he could but he would have to go through his school library.  He reminded her the school library was closed for the summer.

The librarian was very quick tempered and direct.  She told him to get his butt out of the library!

Elbert thought about it for a minute and decided instead to sit down at a table in the library and read some magazines.

“I sat there, knowing she had called the police on me.  I was trembling and scared to death!  I can’t remember what I was reading.  All I was thinking about was being arrested and going to jail.  But I wouldn’t leave the library like she told me.”

It was his first act of defiance!

“Soon the police came, took me downtown, and I was arrested.  Then juvenile officers took me home to my parents,” he said.

“Libraries are an important part of education, and they were important to my family.”

“The day of the arrest, I was 15.  Before the arrest, I was thinking of becoming a doctor.  But after the arrest, I thought of only one thing.  I wanted to became a warrior against injustice.  I had to be a lawyer!”

Thinking back, Guillory said, “It was only a one-man demonstration at the public library. It wasn’t planned.  I didn’t make the newspaper.  There was no public notice and it got no attention whatsoever, but it changed my life.  I decided I would never again sit idly by while peoples’ rights were being violated.”

“Over the years, I often had others demonstrating with me, and sometimes they were white.  Over the years, I got beat up pretty bad.  That experience left scars on my body but not on our heart!  It was me against injustice!”

Sen. Guillory is not a bitter man, although he could be, because he has seen so much injustice in his life.  Instead, he has turned experiences which could have made him bitter into life lessons he uses to change the world.

Sen. Guillory and his son Elbert Guillory, Jr., are talented filmmakers who inform and inspire their audiences.  Millions of people have watched their videos.

In one film, Elbert Sr. tells the story of a black man and his family who were being persecuted by night riders in the 1930’s.  The men came to his house in the middle of the night to rob, steal, and perhaps kill.

But the black man had been in the U.S. Army during World War I.  He had plenty of combat experience and had planned for just such an attack. He hid his wife and children under furniture and mattresses. The former soldier had several guns. He stationed them around the house and ran from window to window, firing at the angry mob. 

“They must have thought they were fighting a small army,” he said. Two of the criminals were wounded and the rest fled. With no one to help him, the black man had saved his family and their home!

“Do you see the importance of the 2nd Amendment to blacks?” Guillory asks his viewers.

Then he revealed that the family in that house was his, that the black man was his father, that it was his brother and sister hovering in that house, and that it all happened a few years before he was born.

Guillory talked about how since the Civil War Democrats have been trying to disarm Americans.  If they had their way, only the government and criminals would have guns, he said.  

Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XepJouchGWI

Sen. Guillory is unrelenting in his determination to show that the Constitution is for every man and woman, black or white.  

He talks about abortion and how most of the babies killed are black. A strong supporter of the right to life, he has been honored by Louisiana Right to Life.

As a civil rights lawyer and a conservative Republican legislator, he explains that conservative principles are the only principles consistent with living in freedom and fulfilling our God-given potential.

His grandfather was a slave who stayed on the plantation and continued to work for the man who had owned him before emancipation. Eventually, his grandfather bought the land, which is where Elbert and his family still live today.

Elbert Guillory earned his Juris Doctor degree from Rutgers University, where he later served as a member of the faculty.

He has had a very distinguished career in Opelousas and St. Landry:

•50 years as a practicing attorney, including service as Assistant City Attorney; general counsel for the Magnolia Peace Officers Association, and supervising attorney for Acadiana Legal Services.

•Past President, St. Landry Parish Bar Association

•Past President, St. Landry Chamber of Commerce

•Board of Directors, Washington State Bank

•Past President, Opelousas-St. Landry Mental Health

•Editorial board and columnist, Opelousas Daily World newspaper

•Board of Directors, New Life Center for battered wives

•Board of Directors, Lafayette Catholic Services

Elbert Guillory’s career also led him to governmental service in other states where he held responsible positions.  These included:

• Chairman, Maryland Associa- tion of Human Rights

•Division Director, Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission

•Executive Director, Seattle Human Rights Commission

During his years as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and the Louisiana Senate, Guillory distinguished himself by his conservative voting record.  

He received the Louisiana Family Forum Patrick Henry Award, the Louisiana Right to Life Legislative Award, Louisiana State Troopers Legislator of the Year, Lafayette Chamber Legislator of the Year, and many others.  

He served four years in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War. English is his native tongue but he is conversant in French and German. 

The Central City News is honored to endorse Elbert Guillory for Lt. Governor in the Oct. 14 election.