Landry, Pierre, 1841-1921
Biographical Note
Pierre Landry (1841-1921) was born on a plantation owned by the Prevost family. The Prevost plantation was located in Ascension Parish and had one of the largest slave populations in Louisiana that revolved around the sugar industry. Landry was the son of a white plantation laborer Roseman Landry and Marcelite (Prevost) Landry a slave and cook on the Prevost plantation. He had two younger siblings Antoinette and Julian.
In 1854 Landry was sold in a public auction to the Bringier family. This family was very prominent in Louisiana during the antebellum period. They owned 35,000 acres of land in several Louisiana parishes. Landry was educated on the Bringier plantation in their primary and technical schools. He also received private instruction from Reverend W.D. Goodman and Reverend A.L. Atkinson during this time period.
After the Civil War in 1866, Pierre Landry moved his family to the town of Donaldsonville, Louisiana, which had the third largest black community in the state. Within his first year of living in Donaldsonville he founded two black schools, constructed a house for his family, and conducted a prosperous business, becoming an influential leader in the Black community, as well as in Ascension Parish. He served the community in various roles including as a lawyer, architect, judge superintendent of schools, juror, tax collector, president of police jury, parish school board, postmaster, and justice of the peace. In 1868 he was elected mayor of Donaldsonville and served for a one-year term. Landry was the first African American to hold a mayoral position in the United States. That same year Landry formed a self proclaimed faction of the Black Republicans Party in Ascension Parish. He established this faction in response to white carpetbaggers from northern states.
In 1872, Landry ran for a seat in the House of Representatives in the sate of Louisiana, with the help of Blacks and a significant number of white voters he won the election by a landslide. During his term in the House, he created numerous bills in support of African Americans, one of his more important victories came when his bill passed to establish New Orleans University, which became the third Black private college in Louisiana. In 1874 he was elected state senator where he served until 1880. During his term he was one of two black members to dine with President Ulysses S. Grant in 1875. Landry also served on the Ascension Parish School Board, served as a member of the police jury, and edited a Christian paper, The Monthly Report, during his term as a senator.
Landry began gradually relinquishing his control over the Republican Party and increased his duties in the Methodist Church. He became pastor of St. Peter's Methodist Episcopal Church in Donaldsonville in 1878. He was elected presiding elder of the Baton Rouge District in 1881. Landry was then elected presiding elder of the Shreveport District in 1885, and in 1889 he became pastor of St Paul Methodist Episcopal Church in Shreveport. At the annual Methodist Episcopal conference in 1891 he was elected to the highest position in the Methodist Episcopal Church, a Presiding Elder of the South New Orleans District.
Landry served as a principal and dean of several high schools, including Gilbert Academy in Baldwin, Louisiana, from 1900-1905. Gilbert Academy was a nationally recognized school that had its beginnings in 1865 as an agricultural and industrial college for recently emancipated Blacks. The college had been under the administration of the Methodist Episcopal Church and, in 1919, the school merged with New Orleans University, and was renamed Gilbert Academy High School.
Landry had fourteen children, twelve children with his first wife, Amanda Grigsby, and two by his second wife, Florence Simpkins.