TENNESSEE: City & County Crowd

Last June the Democratic National Committeeman from Tennessee, Edward Hull Crump of Memphis, failed to attend the Democratic National Convention. Soon thereafter Tennessee’s senior Senator, bumbling old Kenneth McKellar, hotfooted it to Memphis to see Boss Crump, conferred for a week with one of the South’s most remarkable politicians.

More than 20 years ago Mr. Crump was Mayor of Memphis. In 1930 he was elected to Congress, served two quiet, unpretentious terms, gracefully retired. Now a jaunty, strapping six-footer of 60 with an unruly shock of hair, he controls all offices in Tennessee’s largest city. The Crump dynasty is supposed to be financed by various forms of “protection money” from bootleggers, gamblers, et al. Be that as it may, Boss Crump keeps taxes low, picks good competent men for public office and—unusual in the South—cultivates and delivers a solid block of Negro votes.* Result of this system is that in 30 years of bossdom Edward Crump has had a record of 60 electoral victories, no defeats in Memphis and Shelby County. Since Boss Crump controls some 50,000 votes, more than a quarter of the total necessary to win a Democratic primary in Tennessee where a Democratic nomination is as good as an election, it was not surprising that Senator McKellar should confer at length with this fountain of political fortune.

What was surprising was that, after the Memphis conferences, Senator McKellar one morning in mid-July announced that his candidate for the Democratic nomination for Governor was Burgin Estel Dossett, East Tennessee schoolteacher. Dossett was also the candidate of the present State Administration headed by Governor Hill McAlister, whom Boss Crump helped to elect. Six hours later Boss Crump announced: “We, what is generally known as the city and county crowd, will support Gordon Browning for Governor believing he is honestly the best man.”

Excited newshawks besieged Boss Crump to know whether he and Senator McKellar had had a break. “A break?” asked he. “No. We are still good friends. . . . We just differ on the Governor’s race.”

Said Senator McKellar: “Mr. Crump and I have been friends for 25 years. He has supported me all during that time. I haven’t anything on earth but the kindest words and thoughts concerning him and shall not have.”

Seeking a cause for this breach between Memphis’ Boss and the Nashville Administration, quidnunes recalled that the McAlister organization had grievously disappointed Crump by failing to repeal Tennessee’s prohibition law. Gordon Browning, a hefty, thick-thatched, loose-lipped A. E. F. artillery captain who served twelve years (1923-35) in the House of Representatives, is personally andpolitically Dry, but promised to advocate a State referendum on liquor.

The ability of Boss Crump to achieve his political ends became apparent last week. His friend Senator McKellar and others who value Boss Crump’s votes failed to put up a real fight for Candidate Dossett.In Shelby County the vote was: Browning 60,302; Dossett 872. When the ballots were counted in Tennessee, Candidate Browning had won the Democratic nomination by better than 2-to-1.

*Negro William Christopher Handy, “Father of the Blues,” was hired to write a song booming the first Crump mayoral campaign (TIME, May 25).