Jim Folsom

James Elisha Folsom Sr. (October 9, 1908 – November 21, 1987), commonly known as Jim Folsom or Big Jim Folsom, was an American politician who served as the 42nd governor of the U.S. state of Alabama, having served from 1947 to 1951, and again from 1955 to 1959.

He was the first Governor of Alabama born in the 20th century.

Born in Coffee County, Alabama, in 1908, Folsom was of English ancestry.

Before serving in the United States Army and United States Merchant Marine during World War II, Folsom had been an insurance salesman.

He attended the University of Alabama, Samford University in Birmingham, and George Washington University in Washington, D.C., but he never obtained a college degree.

Before his gubernatorial campaigns, he won a race only once as a delegate to the 1944 Democratic National Convention.

He was a strong supporter of keeping U.S. Vice President Henry A. Wallace on the ticket, rather than replacing him with Harry S. Truman of Missouri, which occurred.

Folsom was elected governor for the first time in 1946 on a New Deal liberal platform attacking corporate interests and the wealthy.

He waged a colorful campaign with a hillbilly band, brandishing a mop and bucket that he said would "clean out" the Capitol.

His opponent, Handy Ellis, attacked Folsom by saying his election would threaten segregation laws and encourage "communist-backed labor unions".

Historian Dan T. Carter summarized Folsom's democratic ideals thus: "(T)he three pillars of a democratic society were the Bill of Rights, an activist and compassionate government, and an absolute and unqualified democracy."

Folsom warned voters that, in the wake of World War II, which he said was fought "against hatred and violence," those sought to use mischaracterizations of political ideas to divide "race and race, class and class ... religion and religion."

Folsom was among the first Southern governors to advocate a moderate position on racial integration and improvement of civil rights for African Americans.

An Act of September 1947 raised the minimum age of employment of children from 14 to 16 for all occupations during school hours, "except in agriculture and domestic service, and for work in manufacturing establishments or canneries at any time."

The Act also reduced the maximum workweek for children from 48 to 40 hours.

Another Act from that same month provided for the establishment of a second injury fund "financed by payment by employer of $500 in death cases where there are no dependents."

On March 3, 1948, Folsom's name was in headlines across the nation when the 30-year-old Christine Putman Johnston, who had met Folsom in late 1944 while she was working as a cashier at the Tutwiler Hotel in Birmingham, filed a paternity suit against the governor by alleging that he was the father of her 22-month-old son.

Undaunted, nine days after the suit was filed Folsom appeared on the sidewalk in front of the Barbizon Modeling School in New York City, where he kissed a hundred pretty models who had voted him "The Nation's Number One Leap Year Bachelor," attracting a crowd of 2500 onlookers and causing a traffic jam.

The kissing stunt made national news but did nothing to stop the political damage being done by the suit.

When the paternity suit broke, Folsom was challenging president Truman for the Democratic nomination for President.

Because of the negative publicity surrounding the suit, Folsom lost his bid to represent Alabama as a favorite son candidate for president in an election held on May 4, 1948.

On May 5, 1948, without prior publicity, Folsom married the 20-year-old Jamelle Moore, a secretary at the state Highway Department, whom he had met during his 1946 campaign and had been dating and seeing "almost daily" since then.

Johnston subsequently dropped the suit in June for a cash settlement from Folsom; years later, he admitted to an interviewer that he was indeed the father of Johnston's child.

In his Christmas message on December 25, 1949, he said, "As long as the Negroes are held down by deprivation and lack of opportunity, the other poor people will be held down alongside them."

In 1949 coal mine safety legislation was signed into law.

However, despite the paternity suit and other scandals during his administration, he was easily elected to a second non-consecutive term in 1954.

During his campaign, Folsom denounced the Ku Klux Klan and promised free textbooks for children.

As noted by one study, Folsom brought to power "a legislative slate that gave him a working majority in both the House and Senate."

The Alabama Constitution then forbade a governor from succeeding himself, a common provision in other southern states at the time.

Folsom was 6 ft tall and employed the slogan "the little man's big friend."

In 1958, Folsom commuted a death sentence imposed on James E. Wilson, an African American sentenced to death for a violent robbery.

The Wilson case sparked international protests, but some segregationists called for Folsom not to commute the sentence.

Folsom opposed capital punishment, stating that he would always grant clemency in death penalty cases "if I can find some excuse."

He regularly paroled and pardoned black convicts, believing they had been unjustly convicted or punished due to their race.

However, Folsom did not intervene in another controversial case; Jeremiah Reeves was electrocuted the same year, which also sparked protests.

He later confessed that his silence was solely due to political reasons.

Folsom said he "just couldn't" commute the death sentence of a black man who had been convicted of raping a white woman, since it would destroy him politically.

"'I'd never get anything done for the rest of my term if I did that. Hell, things are getting so bad, they're even trying to take Black & White Scotch off the shelves.'"

A wide range of reforms were carried out during Folsom's two terms as governor.

An indigent care bill for hospitalization was passed, while unemployment compensation was stepped up.