Joe Waggonner - Waggonner's Background

Waggonner's Background

Waggonner was born in Plain Dealing to Joe David Waggonner, Sr. (June 11, 1873—March 9, 1950), and the former Elizzibeth Johnston (November 23, 1882 —December 24, 1957). He graduated from Plain Dealing High School and in 1941 from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, the seat of Lincoln Parish, where he was a member of Kappa Sigma. On December 14, 1942, he married the former Mary Ruth Carter (born 1921). The couple resided in their later years in Benton, the seat of Bossier Parish, and then in the more populous Bossier City.

During World War II and the Korean War, Waggonner served in the U.S. Navy, having attained the rank of lieutenant commander. He remained thereafter in the U.S. Naval Reserve.

He was first elected to public office in 1954 to a seat on the Bossier Parish School Board, of which he was president from 1956-1957. In 1959, Waggonner ran in the Democratic primary for the position of Louisiana state comptroller, previously known as auditor. He was defeated for the nomination by Roy R. Theriot, the mayor of Abbeville in Vermilion Parish in south Louisiana. Waggonner ran on the intraparty ticket headed by segregationist gubernatorial candidate William M. Rainach, a state senator from Claiborne Parish.

Shortly thereafter on July 23, 1960, Waggonner was nominated in the Democratic primary to the Louisiana State Board of Education from the Third Public Service Commission District, a configuration since disbanded that then included twenty-eight north Louisiana parishes. Waggonner unseated the incumbent, C. Raymond Heard, and was then unopposed in the November general election. In this campaign, Waggonner posed as a more determined segregationist than his opponent. One of his advertisements proclaimed: "For: Our Youth and Segregation; Against: Federal Aid to Education." In 1961, Waggonner was chosen president of (1) the Louisiana School Boards Association and (2) the United Schools Committee of Louisiana. He had also been instrumental, along with Rainach, in the founding of the White Citizens Council in the late 1950s.

Waggonner ran a wholesale petroleum products distribution agency that serviced northern Bossier Parish.