John Julian McKeithen

John McKeithen was born in Grayson, Caldwell Parish, on May 28, 1918, and after Army service he sat on the Public Service Commission. In 1964 he won the Democratic nomination and beat the Republican Charlton Lyons in the general election, taking office on May 12. He engineered a referendum that let Louisiana governors seek re-election, the first time that was allowed in the twentieth century. During the 1960s he called out the National Guard to protect civil rights marchers walking from Bogalusa to Baton Rouge. He died on June 4, 1999, in Columbia, Louisiana.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 0.8 mi
  New Orleans' oldest surviving city of the dead, opened in 1789 after the fire of 1788 and the burial place of Homer Plessy, reachable only on a guided tour since March 2015.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 1.0 mi
  A French Quarter museum and research center founded in 1966, whose 2015 Purchased Lives exhibition took on New Orleans' place as the largest slave market in antebellum America.
• Congo Square — 1.0 mi
  The 2.35-acre corner of Louis Armstrong Park where, from 1817, New Orleans confined Sunday dancing by enslaved people to one place, and where crowds of hundreds gathered to drum, dance and trade.
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — 1.0 mi
  A National Park Service unit created in 1994 to tell where jazz came from, with free programs and a visitor center in the French Quarter and park land inside Louis Armstrong Park.

More markers nearby

• Rebirth (Steve Gleason's Blocked Punt) — steps away
• The Pythian Temple — 0.4 mi
• Jazz (Loyola Avenue) — 0.4 mi
• Hurricane Katrina Memorial — 0.4 mi