Background
Felix Edward Hebert was born on October 12, 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. He was the son of Felix Joseph Hebert, a streetcar motorman, and Lea Naquin, a teacher.
(Signed by John McMillan. A very good hardcover copy with ...)
Signed by John McMillan. A very good hardcover copy with bright gilt spine and front cover lettering. Tight binding. Clean, unmarked pages. Very good jacket in removable mylar; light fading and speckling, with small tear on front. NOT ex-library. Indexed. 478pg. Shipped Weight: Under 1 kilogram. Category: Autobiography; Signed by Author. Inventory No: 019284.
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Felix Edward Hebert was born on October 12, 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. He was the son of Felix Joseph Hebert, a streetcar motorman, and Lea Naquin, a teacher.
Hebert attended public and Catholic schools in New Orleans. At Jesuit High School he wrote for the school paper and managed athletic teams. He won awards for debate at Jesuit and at Tulane University, which he attended from 1920 to 1924, but did not receive a degree.
Hebert's first profession was journalism. He was a sportswriter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune while still in high school. After working in public relations from 1926 to 1929, he became political editor of the New Orleans States. While in that position, he attacked Huey Long and members of his political machine daily in a front-page column. In 1935, Huey Long was assassinated, but his organization remained. Four years later, Hebert became city editor and broke the story of corruption in state government, which resulted in criminal convictions of some members of the Long organization and came to be known as the "Louisiana Scandals. "
In 1940, Hebert sought and won the Democratic nomination to the United States House of Representatives from the First Congressional District of Louisiana, defeating Joachim O. Fernandez, known as "Bathtub Joe. " Hebert could hardly have failed in the political climate of reform he had helped to create. Since Louisiana was then a one-party state, the Democratic nomination was the equivalent of election to the office. It was an office which Hebert would hold for thirty-six years, until reformers of a later day rejected him and the principles for which he stood.
In January of 1948, Hebert was appointed to fill a vacancy on the House Un-American Activities Committee. Richard Nixon joined the committee at the same time; the two got along well and remained friends over the years.
Although he was on the committee for only one year, Hebert had a reputation as a hard worker who was concerned about treating witnesses fairly, although he himself might be unfair, if he genuinely believed that a witness was a Communist. He was committed to the work of the committee and did not leave it voluntarily.
After the election, the House Democratic Caucus, apparently with an eye to removing Hebert, adopted a rule requiring that all members of the Un-American Activities Committee be experienced lawyers. Since Hebert was not a lawyer, the rule permitted the party to replace him with a loyalist.
However, the early 1960s was not a good time congressman. The vision in his one functioning eye was deteriorating because of a cataract. In 1966, Hebert had successful surgery on the eye, which seemed to reenergize him. In 1970, after chairing a subcommittee investigation, he accused the military and the State Department of trying to cover up evidence related to the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, even though he had been a supporter of the Vietnam War.
By virtue of his seniority, Hebert assumed the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee in 1971, upon the death of Congressman L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina. Following in the footsteps of previous Armed Services chairmen, he continued to give strong support to the military and to ensure continued appropriations of funds for defense installations in his district, as well as the New Orleans metropolitan area, part of which was outside his district. Hebert's predecessor as chairman had used the slogan "Rivers Delivers"; Hebert was less blatant and claimed to have instructed the Defense Department not to locate anything in his district on account of his chairmanship of the Armed Services Committee alone. A friend of the military, he said that he would take Pentagon officials to the woodshed and spank them when necessary.
Just as political scandals propelled Hebert to Washington, so scandals hastened his return home. In the 1974 elections, the American public reacted to the Watergate scandal by sending seventy-five new, liberal Democrats to Washington. They were instrumental in changing House Democratic procedures to require that committee chairmen be voted on by the party caucus--that is, all House Democrats--in a secret ballot. Hebert's promilitary stance and his general conservatism were unacceptable to them. He was one of three congressmen who were removed from their chairmanships.
Hebert continued to serve on the Armed Services Committee until 1976 but did not seek reelection to the House. He died in New Orleans.
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Typical of southern Democrats of the 1940s and 1950s, Hebert was a strong supporter of the military and an equally strong foe of Communism and racial equality. When he went to Congress in 1941, his first committee assignment was to the District Affairs Committee. From his position on that committee, he strove to promote good government but not self-government, for the District of Columbia, with its large African-American population.
In later years, he opposed civil rights legislation and kept a junior Reserve Officers Training Corps program out of Louisiana because it would have been racially integrated.
In the 1948 presidential election, Hebert supported the Dixiecrat candidate.
Hebert was the six-foot, two-inch, sturdily built congressman.
A boyhood accident caused young Hebert to lose the sight of his left eye.
On August 1, 1934, Hebert married Gladys Bofill. The couple had one daughter, Dawn Marie, who married a future judge of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, John Malcolm Duhé Jr. , of Iberia Parish. Dawn Hébert was the first woman president of the Greater Iberia Chamber of Commerce.