by Scott S. Ellis, July 2025
Robert James Kellogg, known professionally as R. James Kellogg, was a New
Orleans civil rights attorney whose practice helped many people, in New Orleans,
Louisiana and beyond.
Born in Shreveport in 1951, he graduated from LSU and Columbia School of Law.
His first professional employment was with the ACLU, working to relieve
overcrowding in thirteen Louisiana prisons.
Moving to New Orleans in 1976, Jim became the senior staff attorney at the
Louisiana Center for the Public Interest. In the 1980s, his office was at the corner
of Gov. Nicholls and Dauphine. I lived a few doors away and would sometimes
join Jim and his secretary for an after-work cocktail. He restored a house on
Congress street in the Bywater, at a time when that area was an urban frontier.
In the early 1980s, homophobia was strong in the city government and NOPD;
people even perceived as “queer’ were arrested on the all-purpose charge of
“blocking the sidewalk.” Jim’s practice of civil rights law was of a most direct
and consequential kind, meeting with sometimes hostile, homophobic officials and
police officers. The New Orleans LGBT community benefitted from Jim’s
intercessions with city administrators and police, at a time when many officials
saw visible gays and lesbians as a threat to tourism, and did not want to meet with
“gay activists.”
In preparation for the World’s Fair of 1984, the NOPD harassed gays and lesbians
in the Quarter spotlighting them from police cars and arresting some on the
“blocking the sidewalk” charge. Kellogg and others organized a sidewalk blockade
outside of Jewel’s bar on Decatur street, leading to about 100 arrests. The resulting
furor led to a meeting between Kellogg and other gay rights leaders with then-
Superintendent Henry Morris, whose suggested that gays and lesbians confine
themselves to no more than two or three per Vieux Carre block. This queer quota
system didn’t fly with the community and eventually the police backed off.
In 1987 Jim moved to New York City to work for Lambda Legal Defense Fund. A going-away party was held at the Mint bar on Decatur, where Jim was honored by
many local LGBT organizations and the NO/AIDS Task Force, now Crescent
Care. Within a year, he was back in New Orleans, taking on more legal cases of
AIDS-impacted people. In 1993, the Louisiana State Bar Association gave him its
Pro Bono Publico award for help he gave clients at no charge. HIV positive and
thinking he might have only a few years left, Jim retired in 1993. However, new
therapies lengthened his horizons considerably; and Jim, his partner, and thousands
of other people living with AIDS gradually realized they were going to live,
possibly even a normal life span.
Jim spent the next nineteen years traveling; researching European cathedrals;
working on a book about his ancestor William Pitt Kellogg, and in 2000, moving
to San Francisco. In 2011 he was diagnosed with colon cancer. He fought it as he’d
fought his civil rights cases, with passion, courage and a refusal to give up. He
went to Tahiti in the last months of his life, and died on December 30, 2012 in San
Francisco.
In our grieving for Jim, we keep in mind that we were privileged to have known
him, to be our advocate in court, and to be a trusted counselor as we navigated homophobia in our personal and professional lives. In a world where anti-gay
hostility could intrude on our lives at work or in the Quarter, Jim was a steadfast,
reassuring presence. Truly, one of the Good Guys.
