GEORGIA: The Red Galluses

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Outside the Capitol at Atlanta on an eventful night in 1947, the January landscape lay wet with rain, and a low mist wreathed the statue of Freedom topping the limestone building. Inside, the Georgia legislature commenced the final act of a political drama opened 25 days earlier when gallus-snapping Gene Talmadge, after 20 years of politics and prejudice, died on the eve of his fourth gubernatorial term. Aware that Gene was seriously ill on election day, some supporters had cast write-in votes for his son, gone out to marshal dead voters whose names could shoot his total higher. Now as the rain pattered outside, and shouting, drinking countrymen watched from the gallery, the legislature considered the two men eligible to succeed the departed Gene. With smug solemnity and a 161-87 vote, it chose Herman Talmadge, 34.

After the crowd howled approval, Herman took the oath, pledged himself to strengthen the white primary and Georgia’s county unit-voting system. Flanked by family and advisers, he marched one flight down to the governor’s office, where outgoing Governor Ellis Arnall awaited the legislature’s decision. Said Herman: “I have come to take over.” Snapped Arnall: “I consider you a pretender. Get out.” Herman got, was back in seven hours, after state troopers had changed the locks on the doors. Herman Talmadge held the Capitol and the governor’s mansion until the State Supreme Court 67 days later ruled that he had taken office illegally. But even as he yielded, Georgians understood that a new comet was brilliant in their political sky.

Horns & Tail. Next January, when the U.S. Senate convenes for the first session of the 85th Congress, the same Southern comet will rise over the national horizon as strapping (6 ft., 196 lbs.) Herman Eugene Talmadge, 43, segregationist and isolationist, takes the seat of one of the U.S.’s great senatorial statesmen, aging (78) and respected Walter George. To outward appearances, Herman has progressed not only beyond his father’s viciousness and venom but beyond the uncertainties that haunted the brash youth who seized the governorship in Atlanta that rainy night nearly ten years ago. Smooth and suave as an actor, Herman in his “tel-lee-vision” (as he calls it) appearances has convinced Georgians “that a Talmadge doesn’t have horns and a tail, and that he wears shoes.” He has abandoned his father’s blatant white-supremacy tactics, instead speaks airily of constitutional government and the people’s right to rule.

Abetted by the Southern propensity for returning Senators and Congressmen to Washington term after term (which gives the South a stranglehold on 34 different House and Senate committees in a Democratic Congress). Herman Talmadge is prepared to enjoy the privilege and power of Senate seniority for a long, long time. Predicts one Georgia political expert: “The man who will beat Herman is still a teen-ager.”

The Senators among whom Herman will take his confident place will find this new colleague a jack of many trades. He owns 4,000 fertile acres of farmland, chairmans booming young insurance and investment companies, has built a $40,000-a-year law practice, dabbles profitably in real estate, markets Georgia-cured hams. He edits a weekly newspaper that ranges in content from economic evaluations of the changing Georgia scene to muck-slinging racist propaganda in campaign seasons. Recently he became an author: his You and Segregation is being snatched up by the Citizens’ Councils of the South.

The Status Quo. These outward evidences of well-being and well-meaning are deceiving. Respectability and temperance are the coats that hide the flaming red galluses and the flaming passions of Herman’s father. Says a Georgia lawyer who has watched Gene and Herman Talmadge operate through the years: “The Talmadges have always maintained a fundamental disrespect for the law.”

A fine, flaring disrespect for the outside world, coupled with a profound understanding of Georgia and its politics, carried both Talmadges to the governor’s mansion. As governor, Herman inherited and refined his father’s credo: keep down the cities, hold the Negro to his proper place in God’s order. But today, city and Negro are both restless in the boom that is sweeping Georgia from its mountains and red-clay hills to its plains and coast. Cities outpace the struggling counties, the Negro vote leaps upward, cattle are becoming more valuable than cotton, industry outproduces the farmer, even Republicans are running candidates. Against this gathering avalanche Herman intends to maintain the Bible-shouting, “Anglo-Saxon,” segregated status quo he has always enjoyed. He believes firmly that he can halt the pulsing pistons of political progress. He believes because, reared on politics, he has found that the processes of Georgia government can be manipulated to achieve the things the Talmadges want and that old Georgia wants. If they cannot be had within the law, they can be had around and under the law.

Rawhide Justice. Herman was 13 when his father first began to feel his way around in politics. The family lived in little (pop. 1,904) McCrae, 168 miles southeast of Atlanta, where Mattie Talmadge operated a 1,000-acre farm while her husband practiced law and became gradually disgruntled at the rarity with which McCrae needed lawyers. As a country boy, Herman fished and swam in nearby Sugar Creek, hunted, drove the family’s 15 cows to milking, cleaned the dirty kerosene-lamp chimneys (“I don’t know anything more disgusting”).

Three times on Sunday Herman and his sisters attended service at the Baptist Church in McCrae. At home he listened while Gene Talmadge read the Bible or talked politics. When he forgot his chores, Herman felt his father’s swift justice: a whipping administered with the stinging end of a plowline. On the farm, too, he gradually learned a special discipline: that he and the small sons of the Negro field hands with whom he played must eventually go their separate, segregated ways.

Ballots & Boll Weevils. Gene Talmadge had long followed the career of Georgia’s mellifluous, rabble-rousing Senator Tom Watson. Gene approved of Watson’s Populist movement and its appeal to country voters, and set out along the Watson trail to accomplish similar triumphs. The Georgia farmers of the 1920s were being battered by the boll weevil, would soon be battered harder by the Depression. Gene established himself as their champion. He filed for state commissioner of agriculture in the 1926 election, swept out a corrupt incumbent. When he could spare time, Herman helped by tacking up posters and distributing handbills. But the boy was busy with his own politicking for vice president of his ninth-grade class. He also won, likes to brag: “I’ve never lost an election since then.”

In addition to classroom politics, Herman was fond of history, biography and a study of the U.S. Constitution. Other pleasures: Greek and Roman classics, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. He stayed late only if the class was debating. Other days he went home to his chores. One afternoon in 1930, while Herman was picking turnips, the house caught fire and burned to the ground (with one casualty, a German shepherd dog named Al Smith). Gene, who was spending weekdays in Atlanta as agriculture commissioner and only weekends at home as a father, took advantage of the fire to move the family to Atlanta. Herman entered Druid Hills School, found himself better grounded in his subjects than the city boys.

The BMOC. Graduating as salutatorian of his class, he argued against Gene’s suggestion that he work his way through Georgia Tech. Herman got his own way: studying law at the University of Georgia as his father had done. With a car and more spending money than the average student, Herman became a big man on campus. He got Bs with little book-cracking, loafed, played poker, dated coeds. Remembers one: “He was pretty forward, but he was good company.” Pledged to Sigma Nu, his father’s fraternity, Herman helped guide a revolt by smaller fraternities against the big three—Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Chi Phi and Kappa Alpha—that traditionally controlled the university’s Pan Hellenic Society. For his politicking, Herman won some patronage: the Pan Hellenic presidency in his senior year. Like his father, he joined the Phi Kappa debating society, but there was a difference in their styles. Campus audiences remembered Gene’s chewing tobacco while he declaimed, pausing periodically to spit with wondrous accuracy into a nearby potbellied stove. They remember Herman because he always brought along a claque to touch off appropriate applause for his important points.

While Herman was debating airily on the campus, his father was speaking in earnest on the hustings. Running for governor, Gene was charged with dishonesty during his term as commissioner of agriculture; he had once shipped Georgia hogs to Chicago to find a higher price, wasted $11,000 in state funds. Gene laughed off the criticism in his speeches to rural voters: “Sure, I stole it, but I stole it for you.” The explanation delighted the hard-pressed countrymen. They rolled up the Talmadge vote. The Talmadges moved into the ugly stone governor’s mansion in Atlanta’s posh Ansley Park. Because Gene and Mattie (known to two generations of Georgians as “Miss Mitt”) wanted to give the mansion a homey atmosphere, they shocked neighbors by tethering a cow on the lawn.

Key to Power. When Gene campaigned for a second term, 21-year-old Herman made a rousing maiden political speech at Rebecca, Ga., helped his father carry every county but three. As governor, Gene booted out his motor vehicles commissioner for refusing to cut prices on automobile licenses to $3 on Gene’s say-so. When the public-service commission would not lower utility rates, Gene ordered the commissioners to trial before him, found them guilty of using railroad passes, as punishment replaced them with his own men. His most outrageous move came after the state treasurer refused to dole out funds until the legislature appropriated them. Gene called out the militia, had militiamen carry the treasurer out of his office, brought in locksmiths to open the treasury vaults. At the close of his second term Gene reached for a higher goal: Richard Russell’s Senate seat. But a new kind of patronage was in the wind that Gene had underestimated. Russell campaigned on New Deal achievements in Georgia, and won easily.

Retiring to private practice after his second term, Gene was joined by Herman, just out of the University of Georgia law school. Says Herman: “We just about starved. I didn’t know any law and he didn’t know much about practicing.” Yearning to match Huey Long and Theodore Bilbo in the Senate, Gene laid his plans carefully for 1938, when Walter George would run again. As with all Talmadge political plans, they revolved around intensive cultivation of Georgia’s farmers, for under Georgia’s unit-vote system, it is the farmers who hold the balance of power.

The unit system decides primaries (the only real elections in one-party Georgia) by counties instead of total popular vote. The eight largest counties cast six votes each, the 30 next-largest four votes, and the remaining 121 counties two votes. Designed to prevent city voters from overpowering the farmer, the system achieves an opposite effect: the farmers overpower the cities. Example: the total of 1,996 voters registered in Chattahoochee, Quitman and Echols Counties, at two unit votes per county, can offset 125,000 in six-vote Fulton County (Atlanta). Since candidates can win by carrying 103 small counties, the wisest ignore the cities, woo the rural voters.

Defeat Without Herman. In his campaign for the Democratic senatorial nomination, Gene Talmadge wooed them 5,000 at a time, drawing a crowd from a dozen counties. He spread fried fish, followed the mullet with gospel singers, band music and flaming oratory. Traveling with him as campaign manager: Herman, The younger Talmadge set speaking schedules, wrote speeches, handled publicity and advertising. But once again the careful Talmadge plans were upset by an event beyond their control. Angry with Walter George for opposing his attempt to pack the Supreme Court, Franklin Roosevelt marched into Georgia, demanded that the voters throw George out. Resenting the intrusion even by Frequent Visitor Roosevelt (Warm Springs), the voters put Walter George right back in office. Gene went back to his law practice, settled for another term as governor in 1941.

In 1941 young Herman joined the Navy, left for duty aboard an evacuation transport in the South Pacific. While Ensign Talmadge was at sea, his father lost the governorship to Reformer Ellis Arnall, confided sadly to friends: “Herman’s being away made the difference between my being elected and losing.” War over, Herman hurried home to provide the difference. Father and son pitched into yet another gubernatorial campaign, this one against more liberal Jimmy Carmichael.

Campaign Tactics. Casting about for a new appeal, Herman drew up Gene’s first formal platform in 20 years of campaigning. Gene, reading in the newspapers about his planks for better schools, more roads and increased welfare benefits, protested: “Son, you’re taking me pretty fast ain’t you?” Replied Herman: “Poppa I got to take you fast if we’re going to win this one.” They won it, but Gene was never inaugurated. Taken ill with hemolytic jaundice and cirrhosis of the liver, he died Dec. 21, 1946. Herman served his abortive 67 days, left the capital under Supreme Court edict, set about mustering support for the 1948 election and evening up old scores.

Stumping Georgia without his father, Herman attacked Incumbent Melvm Thompson for vetoing a white-primary bill that Herman himself had introduced. His newspaper, The Statesman (Editor: The People. Associate Editor: Herman Talmadge), lashed Thompson for receiving a Negro at the executive mansion. Part of the time he campaigned on crutches-he had cracked up his automobile, was pulled out of the wreckage in company with a blonde ex-secretary. (Official explanation: they were returning from a political meeting.) Herman won by 45,000 votes and a 3-1 unit-vote majority at 35 became Georgia’s 75th governor.* Commented a sad voter: “Pore ole Georgia—first Sherman, then Herman.”

Herman leaned heavily on his father’s advisers, pushed through haphazard legislation, e.g., a re-registration bill aimed at disenfranchising Negro voters, which was repealed after Herman discovered Negroes were re-registering but his county white voters were not. Shortly before the 1950 election, in which he went after a full four-year term, Herman’s prestige was at an alltime low, but he squeaked to victory by 8,000 votes and a 295-115 unit count the poorest showing of his career.

Rule by Fear. The re-elected Herman displayed new-found confidence. He discarded advisers, took firm hold of his legislature, tacked to his office wall an honor roll of legislators who voted his way. Any who wavered in loyalty were summoned to the governor’s office to explain why. For voting even once against Herman’s bills, a legislator found his name stricken from the honor roll, his patronage lost, his county’s new roads refused.

Herman rammed through legislation authorizing the governor to choose the Democratic executive committee, and with that power was able to dictate which candidates he wanted on the ballot. Angry with the Atlanta press, he drew up a bill making newspapers subject to state regulation, dangled it as a threat. Occasionally he got his comeuppance. Twice he tried to extend the unit vote to general elections, saw both attempts defeated by city voters in referendums (in which the unit rule did not apply).

With an eye to the future, Herman added to his forestry bureau husky, hard-eyed Photographer Ed Friend, gave Friend a roving assignment: cover meetings where present or possible Talmadge foes might be snapped in conversation with Negroes. The photographs were circulated, often without caption or comment. Gubernatorial Aide Walter O. Brooks, for similar reasons, compiled dossiers on the words and deeds of prominent Georgians, won from newsmen a sobriquet: “The Goebbels of Georgia Politics.” One Government official most carefully watched: distinguished U.S. Senator Walter George. Chortled Herman recently: “My file could have put Senator George on either side of any issue.”

Though he twice campaigned against a sales tax, Herman in his second term introduced a sweeping 3 % levy. At the same time he cut ad valorem taxes, most of which were paid by corporations. The $100 million collected in sales tax each year went largely to school improvements. A priority project: additional “separate but equal” facilities for Negroes, which Herman carried through with genuine zeal. Alarmed by the Supreme Court’s integration decisions, the Talmadge administration passed a constitutional amendment allowing state-subsidized “private” schooling for all students.

Retreat with Dignity. More personable, more genial and more subtle as he grew secure in office, Herman began to build a core of support that even old Gene had never achieved. Businessmen who financed Georgia’s political campaigns liked Herman’s lower corporation taxes and found his conservative views comforting. The rank-and-file voters liked his lavish spending for public works (with no taint of corruption). And after the Supreme Court decisions, even Atlanta moderates found Herman’s segregation policies less offensive. So when Herman, in January 1955, turned over the governor’s office to hand-picked Marvin Griffin, Senator George and his friends knew that at last a Talmadge had a good chance of getting to the Senate. Four months before election came a panicky message from Georgia to George: the 78-year-old Senator’s supporters had canvassed the state, found Herman had ample campaign money and was pulling far ahead. Listening to his friends’ pleas, Walter George made a painful decision. He withdrew before the primary, accepted a post as Dwight Eisenhower’s ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Herman stomped over Old Foe Melvin Thompson with a 376,000 majority and a grand slam of the county unit votes.

In the Senate Herman will find opportunity to voice his outrage against the present Justices of the Supreme Court (“A little group of politicians [who have] not had enough experience to handle one chicken thief in Mitchell County”). Isolationist as well as segregationist, he will take a stand against what he regards as pressing evils today in the U.S., e.g., foreign aid, overseas alliances, low tariffs, the breadth of the President’s treaty-making powers. His views, his youthful vigor and his name will make Herman a new rallying point for the Democratic Party’s Southern wing. Says Georgia Political Leader Roy V. Harris: “He is the man we are going to organize the South for.”

Indeed, Herman will be an important figure not only to the South but as a regional spokesman in that all-embracing organization, the National Democratic Party. This was a point best brought out by Candidate Adlai Stevenson as he swung through the South last spring, drumming up support for his nomination. Said Stevenson of Talmadge, while a house guest at the executive mansion during Herman’s regime in Atlanta: “We can agree on a great many more things than we disagree on, and we need one another.”

* Gene and Herman Talmadge were the second father-and-son governors of Georgia. The first: Joseph E. Brown, elected 1858, and son Joseph M., elected 1908.