Representative Edwin Edward Willis

Edwin Edward Willis (October 2, 1904 – October 24, 1972) was an American attorney and Democratic politician from Louisiana who rose from local legal practice to become a prominent member of the United States House of Representatives and a key figure in the Long political faction. He was born in Arnaudville, Louisiana, the youngest of eleven children of Joseph Olinder Willis and Julia Marie Hardy, and was of Cajun French descent. Raised in a large family in rural south Louisiana, his background in a predominantly French-speaking, Catholic community helped shape his political identity and his later alignment with the populist Long organization that dominated much of Louisiana politics in the mid‑twentieth century.

Willis pursued higher education in New Orleans, where he studied law at Loyola University. He received his law degree from Loyola University in 1926 and was admitted to the bar that same year. Almost immediately after his admission, he began combining legal practice with academic work, serving as a law lecturer from 1926 to 1936. This early period in his career established his professional reputation as an attorney and legal educator and provided the foundation for his subsequent entry into public life. His legal training and teaching experience would later inform his work on legislative and investigative committees in both state and federal government.

Before his election to Congress, Willis became active in Louisiana politics as part of the Long political faction, which supported the legacy and policies of Huey P. Long and, later, Earl K. Long. In 1948, he was elected to the Louisiana State Senate, marking his formal entry into elective office. His service in the state senate, though brief, coincided with a period of intense factional struggle within Louisiana’s Democratic Party and helped position him for higher office. As a state legislator, he aligned with the Long organization’s populist and pro–New Deal orientation, which appealed to many voters in his largely rural south Louisiana constituency.

In 1948, Willis successfully sought election to the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat from Louisiana, beginning a congressional career that would span ten consecutive terms. He entered Congress on January 3, 1949, and served until January 3, 1969, representing his Louisiana district during a transformative era in American history that included the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and the early stages of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Throughout these twenty years, he participated in the legislative process and represented the interests of his constituents, maintaining his ties to the Long faction and the Democratic Party’s Southern wing. His papers from his years in Congress, covering 1949 to 1969, are conserved at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, providing a documentary record of his legislative and investigative work.

Willis became best known nationally for his service on the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), on which he served from 1957 to 1968. Following the death of Representative Francis E. Walter in 1963, Willis became chair of HUAC, a position he held during a critical period in the committee’s history as it shifted some of its focus from alleged Communist subversion to investigations of extremist and racist organizations. As chair, he directed high-profile inquiries that reflected the broader national concerns of the 1960s regarding internal security, civil rights, and political violence.

One of Willis’s most notable undertakings as HUAC chair was the committee’s investigation of the Ku Klux Klan in 1965 and 1966. Under his leadership, HUAC conducted extensive inquiries into Klan activities, culminating in the citation of seven Klan leaders, including Robert Shelton of the United Klans of America, for Contempt of Congress. Shelton was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison and fined $1,000. Three other Klan leaders—Robert Scoggin, Bob Jones, and Calvin Craig—pleaded guilty; Scoggin and Jones were each sentenced to one year in prison, while Craig was fined $1,000. The charges against the remaining cited individuals were later dropped. These proceedings highlighted Willis’s role in using congressional investigative powers against violent white supremacist organizations during the height of the civil rights era.

Willis also became involved, in his capacity as HUAC chair, in controversies related to the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. On February 27, 1964, at Willis’s direction, the director of HUAC sent a letter to Representative Gerald Ford, who was serving on the Warren Commission, alleging that two figures associated with the broader public inquiry into the assassination—attorney Norman Redlich and advocate Mark Lane—were affiliated with Communist organizations. In 1965, during the ongoing Klan investigations, the attorney for Robert Shelton met with Willis and relayed a claim that, two weeks before the 1963 assassination, Shelton had been offered the services of Lee Harvey Oswald and that Oswald had already been involved in bombings in Alabama. After an FBI investigation of these assertions, Assistant Director Cartha “Deke” DeLoach informed Willis that the Bureau had determined the information was not factual, citing testimony from an FBI informant named by Shelton as having been present at the alleged meeting, who stated that no such meeting had occurred.

In 1966, Willis suffered a series of strokes that significantly impaired his health and political effectiveness. These health problems contributed to his defeat in the 1968 Democratic primary by Patrick Caffery, who would succeed him in representing the district. Willis’s congressional service concluded on January 3, 1969, ending a twenty‑year tenure in the House of Representatives during which he had been a consistent Democratic voice from Louisiana and a central figure in some of the most controversial investigative activities of the era.

After leaving office, Willis returned to Louisiana, where he lived quietly in his native region. He died in St. Martinville, Louisiana, on October 24, 1972. He was interred in St. Martin of Tours Catholic Cemetery in St. Martinville, reflecting his lifelong ties to the Catholic, Cajun communities of south Louisiana.