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Mike Foster (American politician)

American politician (1930-2020)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ880111 ↗
Source-derived summary

Murphy James "Mike" Foster Jr. (July 11, 1930 – October 4, 2020) was an American businessman and politician who served as the 53rd governor of Louisiana from 1996 to 2004.

Early life and career

Murphy James Foster Jr. was born on 11 July 1930 in Franklin, the seat of government of St. Mary Parish. His father, also named Murphy James Foster, was an area sugar planter and owner of oil and natural gas lands, whose own father was Murphy J. Foster Sr., who was Louisiana governor from 1892 to 1900 and a U.S. Senator from 1901 to 1913.

Foster attended public high school in Franklin, graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1952 with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry, and Southern University Law Center with a Juris Doctor in 2004, the year he left the governorship. He became an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America in 1946 and was a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Zeta Zeta chapter) and The Friars. He joined the Air Force and served in the Korean War.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mike Foster (American politician)” is american politician (1930-2020). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mike, Foster and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1930, 2020, 1996, 2004—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1930-07-11. For this dossier, Mike, Foster and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american politician (1930-2020)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q880111. VIAF identifies the subject as 513154501848039210005. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1930, 2020, 1996 and 2004.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mike Foster (American politician)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mike Foster (American politician) primary sources, Mike Foster (American politician) archive and Mike research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mike Foster (American politician)”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Mike Foster (American politician)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.