Robert Ellis "Bob" Powell Sr. (January 14, 1923 – July 26, 1997),[1] was a Democrat who served for more than seventeen years as the mayor of Monroe in Ouachita Parish in northeastern Louisiana.
[2] Powell, who was the owner of KMLB-AM and KWEZ-FM radio stations, won a special election in April 1979 to succeed the interim mayor, William Derwood Cann Jr., a businessman and former World War II lieutenant colonel.
In 1996, he was unseated by his former political ally, Abe E. Pierce, III, the president of the Ouachita Parish Police Jury and the first African American to fill the mayoralty in Monroe.
[3] Between Christmas 1982 and New Year's Day 1983, Monroe and the surrounding area, including portions of Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas, was flooded with up to eighteen inches of rainfall.
In 1990, Powell formed an alliance with the African-American clergyman Roosevelt Wright of the New Tabernacle Baptist Church to establish the "African American Heritage Drama" presented each February during Black History Month.
He was the first Monroe mayor to appoint blacks to important positions in municipal government, including public works director, prosecuting attorney, and chairman of the city Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
[9] Consistent with his outreach to African Americans, Powell in 1990 was a donor to the committee to elect the African-American Marc Morial to Louisiana's 2nd congressional district seat, based about New Orleans.