Waterproof

History

Jim Crow rules were strong through the segregation era, and the Ku Klux Klan was active in southwest Louisiana through the late 20th century. Although there were 7,000 black citizens living in the parish in 1964, none had been registered to vote. The 4,000 whites controlled parish and city politics for decades. The first 15 black citizens were registered to vote in 1964, after passage of national civil rights legislation. As of 1990, Waterproof hosted "a general store, a grocery, two gas stations, two banks and the Western Auto franchise". The village has the Tensas Parish Detention Center South. This prison facility holds inmates sentenced in Waterproof and Tensas Parish courts and courts of other cities in the Tensas Parish area. It has recently been used to detain undocumented immigrants. The listed address of Tensas Parish Detention Center South is 8606 Highway 65. On December 8, 2018, the village elected its youngest mayor in history, Jarrod Randell Bottley, an African American male. He was 31 years old at the time and serves the town on a full-time basis. In September 2006 Bobby D. Higginbotham was elected as mayor of Waterproof. After taking office, he hired Miles Jenkins as chief of police. Both native to Waterproof, the two African-American men had also lived and worked for years in other cities, including New Orleans. Jenkins had a 30-year career in the US military and earned a master's degree in public administration from Troy University in Alabama. He started to professionalize the small town police department. In the 2007 primary, Jones defeated Higginbotham, 2,188 votes (77.6 percent) to 631 votes (22.4 percent). Jones and District Attorney James E. Paxton of the Louisiana 6th Judicial District, who was elected in 2008, recognized Caldwell A. Flood…

Race & ethnicity