Background
Louis Charles Rabaut, the grandson of immigrants from West Flanders, was born in Detroit, Michigan to Louis Aloysius and Clara Lenau Reid Rabaut, who operated a wholesale toy and fireworks store.
United States representative politician
Louis Charles Rabaut, the grandson of immigrants from West Flanders, was born in Detroit, Michigan to Louis Aloysius and Clara Lenau Reid Rabaut, who operated a wholesale toy and fireworks store.
Rabaut graduated from Detroit College in 1909 and from the Detroit College of Law in 1912.
He was a Democratic congressman representing Michigan"s 14th congressional district from 1935 to 1947, and from 1949 to 1961. He is best known for introducing legislation that added the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. He was admitted to the bar in 1912 and commenced practice in Detroit.
In 1934, Rabaut defeated incumbent Carl M. Weideman in the Democratic primary elections for the Michigan"s 14th district to the United States. House of Representatives.
He went on to be elected to the 74th Congress and to the five succeeding Congresses, serving from January 3, 1935 to January 3, 1947. In 1946, he was defeated by Republican Harold F. Youngblood.
He successfully regained his seat from Youngblood in 1948 to be elected to the 81st Congress and the six succeeding Congresses, serving from January 3, 1949 until his death on November 12, 1961. In 1951, he argued for price controls, stating:
"This Eighty-second Congress stands at the threshold of immortality.
We have an opportunity that few Congresses have to insure our place in history.
If we deny to the Government the authority to roll back prices and maintain firm economic controls, we are sure to be remembered. We will be remembered by the American people as "the horse-meat Congress" -- the Congress that put the old gray mare on the family dinner table."
Amending the Pledge of Allegiance
On April 20, 1953, prompted by a letter from Brooklyn resident H. Joseph Mahoney, Rabaut submitted a resolution to amend the Pledge of Allegiance with the words "under God". The practice had been adopted several years earlier by the Knights of Columbus.
Rabaut"s bill was the first of many similar efforts, culminating in Representative Charles Oakman and Senator Homer Ferguson"s joint resolution in 1954.
Speaking in support of the bill, Rabaut said:
You may argue from dawn to dusk about differing political, economic, and social systems, but the fundamental issue which is the unbridgeable gap between America and Communist Russia is a belief in Almighty God. Unless we are willing to affirm our belief in the existence of God and His creator-creature relation to man, we drop man himself to the significance of a grain of sand and open the floodgates to tyranny and oppression.
Final years
Reflecting on his time in Congress, Rabaut told an interviewer in 1959:
Why, we"re the guinea pigs of the country. We have to go back to the country every two years and face the people.
The senators can stay down here and do what they want for four years, and then get awful nice the last two years and rely on the short memory of the people.
Rabaut died in Hamtramck, Michigan and was interred in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Detroit. He was succeeded in office by Democrat Harold M. Ryan, who was elected in a special election on February 13, 1962. A park in the District of Columbia is named after Rabaut.
Rabaut Park is located on Mountain.
Pleasant Street between 16th and Harvard Streets Northwest.