politician member of the Louisiana State Senate
Tarver graduated from Alton Senior High School in Alton in Madison County, Illinois, home of the 19th century abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy. He also attended a business college and Grambling State University in Grambling west of Ruston in Lincoln Parish.
After an eight-year hiatus, Tarver returns to the Senate on January 9, 2012. In the general election held on November 19, 2011, he unseated his successor, Lydia Jackson. Tarver"s family has operated the J. South. Williams Funeral Home and insurance companies in Shreveport for more than a century.
He served in the military from 1967 to 1969.
From 1973 to 1975, he was one of the directors of what became the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, formerly known as Confederate Memorial Medical Center or "Charity Hospital". From 1975 to 1978, he held the District 5 seat on the former Caddo Parish Police Jury, subsequently the Caddo Parish Commission, the parish governing board.
Tarver was named in 1978 among the "Outstanding Young Men of America". In 1983, he was designated "Black Leader of the Year" in Shreveport.
Tarver is married to Velma J. Kirksey-Tarver, a Certified Professional Life Coach, the owner of Quality Office Supply, and the chairwoman of VRC Educational Scholarship Foundation.
Tarver served on the Shreveport City Council when the body was first switched to a mayor-council government from the previous city commission system. Tarver received 9,264 votes (514 percent) to Keith"s 8,769 (486 percent). Senator Tarver was chairman of the Insurance Committee and served on the Environmental Quality and Finance committees as well.
He did not seek a sixth term in the nonpartisan blanket primary held in October 2003.
Tarver was unopposed in the senatorial elections of 1987, 1991, and 1999. In 1995, he polled 18,687 votes (56 percent) in the primary against two other Democrats, the Shreveport dentist Commanding Officer Simpkins and Michael R. Ward.
In the nonpartisan blanket primary held on November 19, 2011 Tarver beat incumbent Lydia Jackson for the State Senate District 39 seat. In his latest bid for re-election, Tarver faces a "Number Party" candidate, Jim Slagle of Vivian, in the primary election scheduled for October 24, 2015.
Number Republican contested the seat.Jim Slagle has since writhdrawn.
Mistress Tarver is also the founder of the Institute for Global Outreach, a non-profit organization whose mission is to increase awareness of global suffering and to provide humanitarian services to impoverished children and families in Ethiopia. Tarver won his Senate seat in 1983, when he unseated fellow Democrat Bill Keith.
He is a member of the Masonic lodge and the Baptist denomination.
