Wake
Friday Dec 13th
5pm – 8pm
Fondel Funeral Home
832 N Lyons St, Lake Charles, LA 70601
Funeral
Sat Dec 14th
1pm
Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church
2031 Opelousas St, Lake Charles, LA 70601
Albert Lanny Roy
Raised in Southwest Louisiana by Acadiana Creoles, hard-working poor parents, his mother said that she worked from sunup to sundown in the fields like a man for a dollar a day. Lanny became employed as a “fire fighter” who was hired to put out the fires in numerous petro-chemical plants in the Lake Charles area. This gave him access to integrate all of their lunchrooms, bathrooms and break rooms. As a result of this conflict at PPG, he was given a faulty suit, and along with another co-fighter was exposed to a tank of chlorine gas. After 30 minutes, they called the ambulance, and he survived with only one functioning lung, His coworker didn’t make it. This became a turning point for Roy as he was permanently disabled and started organizing in his community with ACORN and the NAACP. He was the volunteer leader and organizer for Lake Charles A Community Voice and leader of the state operation. Campaigns he has led have created institutional change in banks in redlining fights.
But that was the tip of the iceberg because Lanny had brought so much more to the fray to the fabric of life in southwest Louisiana, so much so that he was called upon to visit small rural areas where sheriffs ran the towns and roads like they owned them, and harassed black women, a lot. This includes sexual oppression. They called Lanny to stop this nonsense and he did. And more than once.
He rode to Deridder and stopped a racist owner from stealing back a home purchased by a black family there; he negotiated a landmark agreement with the Sheriff’s office in Calcasieu to end police brutality; he negotiated with racist bankers who didn’t want to lend to blacks but then they did.
Mr. Roy has also directed and won several major Fair Housing lawsuits and discrimination cases that altered illegal real estate and lending practices. Some of the community campaigns he has won are as diverse as preventing a railroad from cutting off his neighborhood to forcing a radio station to continue to air local gospel music and not canned soft rock – and many other victories, too many to enumerate. He was a southwest Louisiana legend and community hero.
Lanny enjoyed the support of the members all across Louisiana and had held the presidency for decades of Louisiana ACORN and then A Community Voice until his death.
He knew the best and the brightest of the organizing members and he joined the top of their ranks by the vote of the members.
There is never a time when one would consider a discussion of the history of ACORN and its cousin A Community Voice without discussing the hero organizer leader from Lake Charles, child of strong Louisianans who knew how to stand up, organize and fight.
Rest in Power Lanny Roy!
