Thomas Hale Boggs was an American lawyer and politician. He was a member of the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy from 1963 to 1964.
Background
Thomas Boggs was born on February 15, 1914, in Long Beach, Mississippi, United States, one of six children of William Robertson Boggs, a bank cashier, and Claire Josephine Hale. When he was five his family moved to the New Orleans suburb of Gretna.
Education
Thomas was educated in the public and parochial schools of Jefferson Parish. Entering Tulane University on an honor scholarship in 1931, he worked part-time with a local newspaper while pursuing his studies in journalism. After receiving his B. A. degree with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1935, he entered Tulane Law School, from which he received his LL. B. degree in 1937.
Career
Admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1937, Boggs began practicing civil law in New Orleans, specializing in gas and oil matters. In 1939, when the "Louisiana Hayride" scandals were shaking state government, he became leader of a small reform organization, the People's League, that temporarily broke the power of the old Huey P. Long political machine. In 1940 Boggs declared himself a Democratic candidate for Congress from the Second Louisiana District, which included most of New Orleans and four adjacent parishes. In a hard-hitting campaign in which he employed a booming oratory that became his political hallmark, Boggs linked the incumbent candidate to the corrupt Long machine and became, at age twenty-six, the youngest member of Congress. In 1942 the machine rallied and defeated Boggs in his bid for reelection. He returned to private practice, enlisted in the naval reserve, was commissioned an officer, and served with the Potomac River Naval Command and the United States Maritime Service until 1946.
Returning to politics after World War II, Boggs won back his congressional seat, this time for keeps. Befriended in Washington by powerful House Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas, Boggs received choice committee appointments, first to Banking and Currency and, after 1949, to the key Ways and Means Committee. From the outset of his career the witty and urbane Boggs, more liberal at heart than most of his southern congressional colleagues, evinced a strong interest in international affairs. In 1947 he sponsored a resolution calling for a united Europe under the United Nations. He supported the Marshall Plan and backed the Truman administration on Greek-Turkish aid. On Ways and Means, where he chaired subcommittees on tariffs and trade, he developed a scholar's understanding of the complex field of trade legislation and was an articulate and bipartisan spokesman for liberal foreign trade policies. In the period 1957-1958, amid rising protectionist sentiment, he ably led the Eisenhower administration's efforts in the House to reduce tariffs and renew the expiring Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act.
After an unsuccessful 1951 bid to become governor of Louisiana, Boggs concentrated on national politics. He rose steadily in the ranks of House leadership. In 1955 he became deputy whip, and from that post he rose to majority whip in 1962 and to majority leader in 1971. In the latter role he was next in line for the position of House Speaker. While Rayburn's friendship was important, merit and hard work were major factors in Boggs's rise to leadership. A masterful politician, he was an articulate and forceful debater, a skillful parliamentarian, a hardworking and competent committee man, and an adroit compromiser. A close friend of Lyndon B. Johnson, Boggs was instrumental in persuading the Texan to join the John F. Kennedy ticket as vice-president in 1960. Boggs was a member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy, and served in 1968 on the President's Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. Boggs worked behind the lines for the New Frontier and the Great Society domestic programs and helped to guide through Congress social legislation improving housing, education, and health care, including Medicare. He tried unsuccessfully to bring his more conservative southern colleagues into the mainstream of national politics, where he had clearly placed himself.
A committed party loyalist, Boggs was chairman of the Democratic National Committee between 1958 and 1972. In 1964 he was parliamentarian and in 1968 chairman of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where he presided over the drafting of an unusually liberal platform, one that alienated many white southerners, including many of his own constituents, and led to rioting in the streets. Although Boggs joined other southern congressmen in signing the 1956 "Southern Manifesto" opposing the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision and its 1955 sequel, Brown II, over time he moderated his stand on racial issues. Indeed, his rise in the Democratic party's national leadership was dependent on his willingness to do so. In 1965, urged on by his wife, Lindy, he broke with the conservative southern congressional bloc and supported the Voting Rights Act. Three years later he voted for the Open Housing Act. His support of these measures very nearly cost him his seat in 1968, when his Republican opponent, appealing to a conservative middle-class electorate, polled 49 percent of the Second District vote. Despite this narrow victory, Boggs was a great campaigner, a powerful orator and crowd pleaser whose ability to win over an audience made him popular with fellow Democrats facing tough reelections.
In 1972 Boggs, a sternly partisan Democrat who had his eye on the House speakership and who was unopposed at home, volunteered to campaign for colleagues in need of help. The plane Boggs was flying in from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska, on a campaign trip to assist Congressman Nick Begich in his reelection bid, disappeared over Portage Pass on October 16, 1972. The plane was never found, and Boggs, Begich, and two others were lost. Boggs officially served until January 3, 1973, when he was presumed dead pursuant to House Resolution 1 of the Ninety-third Congress. Boggs's wife, Lindy, who had long served ably as a key member of his staff, was elected to succeed him and was regularly reelected until her resignation in 1991.
Achievements
Politics
Boggs was a member of the Democratic party; the U. S. House of Representatives from Louisiana's 2nd district from 1941 to 1943 and 1947 to 1973.
Connections
On January 22, 1938, Boggs married Corinne ("Lindy") Morrison Claiborne, daughter of a wealthy Louisiana sugar planter. They had three children.