Mike Foster (American politician)
American politician (1930-2020)

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.
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.
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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.
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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.