investigation. In 1983, it was discovered that $80 million in oil royalties had been paid to Delta Development Co., which Perez secretly owned. After Perez's death, the parish government sued his heirs, seeking restitution of $82 million in government funds. In 1987, the lawsuit was settled for $12 million. Segregationist In the 1950s and 1960s, Perez gained attention as a nationally prominent opponent of desegregation, taking a leadership role in the southern Massive Resistance to change, particularly following the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. Perez helped organize the White Citizens' Councils, white supremacist "front organizations for the Ku Klux Klan", among them the Citizens' Council of Greater New Orleans. Perez researched and wrote much of the legislation sponsored by Louisiana's Joint Legislative Committee on Segregation. Perez tried to control the activities of civil rights workers by prohibiting outsiders from entering Plaquemines Parish via the bayou ferries, which were the chief way to cross rivers and enter the jurisdiction. In 1960, while opposing desegregation of New Orleans public schools, Perez spoke provocatively at a rally in the city. His speech is credited with catalyzing a mob assault on the school administration building by some 2,000 white men, who were fought off by police using fire hoses. The mob ran through the city and attacked African Americans on the streets. When the schools were reopened, Perez organized a boycott by white residents. His group made threats to whites who allowed their children to attend desegregated schools. Perez arranged for poor whites to attend a segregated private school without charge, and he helped to establish a new whites-only private school in New Orleans. The Roman Catholic Church supported desegregation, and integrated its parochial schools. The bishop of New Orleans excommunicated Perez for his overt opposition to the church's teachings. His legislative ally, E. W. Gravolet of Pointe à la Hache, tried without success to pass grants-in-aid bills to provide state assistance to private schools that were founded to avoid desegregation, known as segregation academies. Civil rights activists tried to work through the barriers to register African-American voters and enable them to vote. In the summer of 1963, from July through August, activists of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) came to Plaquemines Parish to run a voter registration drive for African Americans. About 45 members, both black and