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William Monroe Rainach, Sr., known as Willie Rainach (July 13, 1913 – January 26, 1978), was a state legislator from rural Summerfield in Claiborne Parish who led Louisiana's "Massive Resistance" to desegregation during the last half of the 1950s. He served Claiborne and neighboring Bienville Parish in north Louisiana for three terms in the Louisiana State Senate from 1948 to 1960. Earlier, he represented Claiborne Parish in the state Louisiana House of Representatives from 1940 to 1948. When he left the House, the seat was taken by John Sidney Garrett of Haynesville, in northern Claiborne Parish, who twenty years later would serve a term as Speaker. In 1959, Rainach unsuccessfully sought the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, then equivalent to election in Louisiana at a time when few Republicans bothered to contest elections. ==Adoption and early years== Rainach was born as William Odom in Kentwood, a rural town in Tangipahoa Parish, east of Baton Rouge. His mother died in the influenza epidemic of 1917, when Rainach was four. His father placed Rainach and three other sons in the Baptist orphanage in Lake Charles. He and a foster sister, Leona Aron Rainach, were then adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Albert M. Rainach of Summerfield. He was such an excellent primary student that he completed grades one through four in two years. He graduated from Summerfield High School and attended from 1932 to 1933 Southern Arkansas University (then Southern State College) in Magnolia in Columbia County, Arkansas. He attended Strayer's Business College in Washington, D.C., from 1935 to 1936, when he also worked for the United States government. Thereafter, he attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, but there is no record in ''A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography'' as to whether he graduated. Rainach wanted to be a baseball player, but in 1924, he was struck by a bat and later lost his sight in one eye because of the injury. Coincidentally, one of his 1959 political rivals, Bill Dodd, did achieve his own goal of playing semi-professional baseball for a time. In 1939, Rainach organized the Claiborne Electric Cooperative, Inc., based in Homer, which brought the first electricity to farms in northwest Louisiana. He founded Claiborne Butane in Homer in 1945 and was the company president from 1948 to 1977. In 1967, he became the president of the Arcadia Butane Co., Inc., in Arcadia, the seat of government of Bienville Parish. The Rainachs lived on a farm near Summerfield. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「William M. Rainach」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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