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EARLY YEARS Courtney served in the U.S. Navy in World War II . Then he was a pilot for Pan American Airlines . He also worked as a commerical officer with the British Consulate in New Orleans . He was a public relations spokesman for a fruit shipping company. After he obtained his degree in Business Administration in 1950 from Tulane University in New Orleans , he taught economics, banking, and marketing for three years at the institution. He was a member of the American Legion and served on its "Americanism" committee. In 1954 , Courtney was the chairman of the New Orleans branch of Ten Million Americans Mobilizing For Justice (a group formed to defend Senator Joseph McCarthy against Censure ). After he lost his Democratic race for the New Orleans City Council in 1954 , Courtney and his wife Phoebe launched their Free Men Speak newspaper, which was renamed the Independent American. Courtney traveled a great deal during this period to address right-wing groups around the country while Phoebe edited the newspaper. In 1956 , Courtney organized a campaign to prevent leftist professor Walter Gellhorn of Columbia University in New York City from lecturing at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge . RALLYING FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY In October 1959 , Courtney sponsored a two-day meeting in Chicago , which included a banquet to honor Robert W. Welch, Jr. , the founder of the anticommunist John Birch Society . William F. Buckley, Jr. , publisher of National Review magazine and a leading columnist, also attended. The meeting called for the establishment of a new party on grounds that the Republicans were too similar in philosophy to the Democrats as to offer conservative voters little choice in General Election s. The rally for a new party was promoted by columnists Tom Anderson of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee , and Medford Evans, Utah Republican Governor J. Bracken Lee , and investigative conservative journalist and former FBI agent Dan Smoot . RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR AND PRESIDENTIAL ELECTOR In April 1960 , Courtney ran as the Louisiana States Rights Party Gubernatorial nominee and received 12,515 votes, or less than 2.5 percent. The winner that year was former Governor Jimmie Davis , elected to his second nonconsecutive term. Kent Courtney's brother, Cy Courtney, also of New Orleans , had been an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor on a Segregationist intraparty "ticket" with gubernatorial hopeful William M. Rainach in the 1959 primary. Cy Courtney lost out to fellow Democrat C.C. "Taddy" Aycock, a Conservative from Franklin in St. Mary Parish . Ironically, Kent Courtney, as a member of a third party, could not actually vote for his brother in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor. In the November 1960 General Election , Courtney was a States Rights Party presidential elector, along with future Republican Congressman and Governor David C. Treen . The Democratic ticket of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson won Louisiana's Electoral Votes that year. After the gubernatorial disaster, Courtney organized a southern conference that again included columnists Tom Anderson and Medford Evans as speakers, along with other controversial right-wing figures Matt Cvetic, David Molthrop, Robert Nesmith, Harold Poeschel, and Clayton Rand. COURTNEY AND GOLDWATER In July 1960, Courntey organized a "Goldwater for President" rally in Chicago on the eve of the Republican National Convention. He hoped to derail the certain nomination of Vice President Richard M. Nixon as the GOP presidential nominee. Courtney, who considered Nixon as liberal as nearly any Democrat , also grew disillusioned with Goldwater because he perceived the Arizona senator as too accommodating to the moderates in his own party. In January 1964, Mrs. Courtney wrote about Courtney's meeting with Goldwater after the senator announced his presidential candidacy. According to Phoebe, "Kent told Goldwater that on the basis of the strong anti-communist position contained in his opening announcement that the Independent American would support him." In 1961 , Phoebe had urged Goldwater to quit the GOP and campaign as an independent Conservative . The Courtneys were outraged when Goldwater said that were he a New York er, he would vote in 1962 to reelect Governor Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller and U.S. Senator Jacob Javits , both Liberal Republicans . In April 1961, Courtney sponsored a "Convention of Conservatives" to call again for a new political party. He claimed that Goldwater, who had once called the Eisenhower administration a "dime store New Deal," had been tainted by "socialism". He and 17 others signed a "Declaration of Conservative Principles." Still, despite their reservations, the Courtneys voted for Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election over the victorious Lyndon B. Johnson . THE CONSERVATIVE SOCIETY OF AMERICA On April 15, 1961, Courtney formed the "Conservative Society of America" in Chicago, with himself as the national chairman. The announced purpose was to support , Harold Poeschel, Frank Ranuzzi, E. Merrill Root, and Major General Charles Willoughby. Courtney, a member of the John Birch Society , endorsed the views expressed by Robert Welch in his controversial book The Politician, which claimed that former President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a "conscious, dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy." Many Republican candidates at the time repudiated the John Birch Society in part because of the outrage felt over Welch's book. In 1962, Look magazine declared that Courtney's CSA had a staff of fifteen and an income of $133,000 in 1960 and $181,000 in 1961. The CSA also rated members of Congress. In 1962, it declared that there were only two 100 percent conservative senators, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina (still a Democrat ) and John Tower of Texas , and three perfect House conservatives, James Utt of California , Clare Hoffman of Michigan , and Bruce Alger of Texas . Goldwater received an 88 percent rating, and Senate Republican Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois garnered only a 64 percent rating. Over the years, Tower would lose his high standing with the most conservative Republicans as he steadily moderated his views. Alger's staunchly conservative views contributed to his defeat for reelection by Democrat Earle Cabell in 1964 . Courtney, also in 1962, published America's Unelected Rulers, a book which claimed that the private organization Council On Foreign Relations was seeking to hijack American foreign policy to create world government, which would be dominated by socialists and communists. IN DEFENSE OF SEGREGATION Courtney agreed with former Professor Medford Evans of Northwestern State University (then Northwestern State College) in Natchitoches, Louisiana , who declared that it would be "impossible" to integrate white and black society. Evans further said that integration was one of the two chief communist operations designed to bring about world conflict. Courtney was also active in the White Citizens Councils, which were organized to fight the Desegregation of public schools, once the Supreme Court issued Brown v. Board of Education. Courtney was a strong supporter of staunchly conservative and Segregationist Democrat Congressman John Rarick of St. Francisville in West Feliciana Parish . Rarick ran for governor in 1967, but for Courtney to have been able to vote for him he would have had to have been a registered Democrat at the time. In that same Democratic primary, Courtney was supporting another right-wing fixture in Louisiana , Ned O'Neal Touchstone ( 1926 - 1988 ), a Shreveport bookstore owner, who was challenging Education Superintendent William J. "Bill" Dodd ( 1909 - 1991 ). THE ALEXANDRIA YEARS Sometimes prior to 1973, Courtney relocated to Alexandria to serve as an aide to Democrat -turned- Republican Mayor Charles Edward "Ed" Karst. Karst was originally from New Orleans , but records do not clearly reveal how the two became politically connected. Karst vacated the mayoral office in June 1973 . As mayor, Karst was not particularly known for Conservative policy issues. Kent Courtney surfaced again in 1976, when, running as an independent, he challenged the reelection of popular Eighth District Democratic Congressman Gillis William Long , also of Alexandria . He polled only 6,526 votes, or 5.8 percent. No Republican filed for the race, and some have speculated that at least half of Courtney's vote came from regular Republicans who wanted an alternative to Long on the General Election ballot. The Courtneys later divorced, and Phoebe, who died in 1998 , relocated to Littleton, Colorado , where she continued to publish so-called "Tax Fax" pamphlets that the couple had begun years earlier. The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not investigate the Courtneys, but Director J. Edgar Hoover referred to them in a reply to an inquiry as "known rabble rousers and hate mongers." REFERENCES New York Times, April 15, 1961 Oklahoma City Daily Oklahoman, June 8, 1962 Time, December 8, 1961 Conservative Society of America Newsletter, September 24, 1966 America's Unelected Rulers by Kent and Phoebe Courtney Look magazine, March 13, 1962 Billy Hathorn, "The Republican Party in Louisiana, 1920-1980," Master's thesis (1980), Northwestern State University at Natchitoches Robert Welch, The Politician FBI file: HQ 94-57456,#6 (October 24, 1962) |
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