Elliot D. Coleman

Elliot d'Evereaux Coleman I (May 1, 1881 – May 26, 1963), was a cotton planter and law-enforcement officer who served from 1936 to 1960 as the sheriff of Tensas Parish in northeastern Louisiana. Earlier, he had been a state police bodyguard of U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, Jr., on September 8, 1935, the night of Long's assassination.

Early life

Coleman was born to Elliot D. Coleman and the Lou Ellen Pollard on the Live Oak Plantation in Waterproof in southern Tensas Parish. He was educated in the Waterproof public schools, which have since closed. Youngsters in Tensas Parish now attend school in the parish seat of St. Joseph.

Career in law enforcement

At the age of seventeen, Coleman became a deputy sheriff under W. C. Young, the sheriff from 1880 to 1905 and Coleman's future father-in-law. Coleman served as a justice of the peace and was a member of the Tensas Parish Police Jury, the parish governing body akin to county commissions in other states. He was a delegate to the 1921 Louisiana Constitutional Convention, subsequently superseded by the conclave that met in Baton Rouge in 1973.