Jim Folsom

Born in Coffee County, Alabama, in 1908, Folsom was of English ancestry.[1][2]

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."[3]

Folsom was among the first Southern governors to advocate a moderate position on racial integration and improvement of civil rights for African Americans. 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."[4]

On March 3, 1948, Folsom's name was in headlines across the nation when the 30-year-old Christine Johnston, a widow 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.[5] 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. Johnston 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.[6]

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.[7]

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.”[8] The Alabama Constitution then forbade a governor from succeeding himself, a common provision in other southern states at the time. Folsom was 6 feet 8 inches or 203 centimetres 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.[9] 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.[9]

"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."[10][11][9]

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.[12] 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.”[13] In 1949 coal mine safety legislation was signed into law.[14] An Act of June 1949 related to workmen’s compensation introduced various changes such as the provision of full benefits for 550 weeks, instead of reduced benefits for weeks after 400, “in permanent total disability resulting from loss of both eyes or both arms, paralysis, or mental incapacity.”[15] An Act of July 1949 increased from 25% to 35% of employee’s weekly the death benefit payable to a dependent widower. [16] An Act of August 1957 raised from 60% to 75% “the amount of wages of a resident worker exempt from garnishment.” An Act from that same month specified (in relation to workmen’s compensation) “that in lump-sum payments, which are permitted with court approval, the court must be satisfied that such payment is in the best interest of the employee or his dependents.”[17] Another Act from August 1957 raised maximum medical benefits from $1,00 to $1,200, and extended the maximum period from 90 days to 6 months. [18] A farm-to-market roads program improved rural life while the establishment of an industrial development commission pleased business, while funding for health, welfare, education and old-age pensions was increased. [19]

In 1962, Folsom again ran for governor against his one-time protégé George C. Wallace but was defeated. A sardonic slogan that referred to Folsom's reputation for taking graft emerged during that campaign: "Something for everyone and a little bit for Big Jim." Folsom sometimes referred to "the emoluments of office" and once told a campaign crowd, "I plead guilty to stealing. That crowd I got it from, you had to steal it to get it.... I stole for you, and you, and you."[20]

Folsom's campaign was also damaged by a television appearance in which he appeared seriously intoxicated and unable to remember his children's names.[21] Both the appearance and the supposed "slogan" hurt him with the image-conscious middle class.

Folsom ran again for governor in 1966 and faced three other leading Democrats in the primary, former US Representative Carl Elliott, former Governor John Malcolm Patterson, and Attorney General Richmond Flowers Sr. However, the primary winner was none of those candidates but the surrogate for the outgoing Governor George Wallace: his first wife, Lurleen Burns Wallace. In the general election, Lurleen handily defeated the Republican nominee, James D. Martin, a one-term US representative from Gadsden.[22]

Folsom would continue to run for governor in 1970, 1974, 1978 and 1978, but he was never taken seriously by his opponents. In the 1970 gubernatorial race, Folsom expressed opposition to the Vietnam War, high taxes and race against race politics.[23]

Folsom was plagued by ill health in the last years of his life. A 1976 article in People magazine reported that he was legally blind, with only 5% vision, and nearly deaf.

Folsom died in 1987 in Cullman.[24] His niece, Cornelia Wallace, the daughter of his sister, Ruby Folsom Ellis, was from 1971 to 1978 the second wife of his former rival, George Wallace.

A documentary film about Folsom Big Jim Folsom: The Two Faces of Populism, was produced in 1996 by the Alabama filmmaker Robert Clem and won the 1997 International Documentary Association/ABCNews VideoSource Award and the Southeastern Filmmaker Award at the 1997 Atlanta Film Festival.

In the 1997 TNT film George Wallace, directed by John Frankenheimer, Jim Folsom is played by Joe Don Baker, who was nominated for a CableACE award for his performance. Gary Sinise played Wallace.

Folsom's son James E. Folsom Jr. (dubbed "Little Jim," he is physically large but called this because of his father's nickname) is also a noted Alabama politician. He served as lieutenant governor of Alabama from 1987 to 1993. He assumed the governor's office when Republican Governor Guy Hunt was removed from office after he had been convicted of state ethics law violations. Folsom Jr. ran for a full term as governor in 1994 but was defeated by Republican former Governor Fob James. He decided to re-enter state politics in 2006, qualified, and eventually won the lieutenant governor's position again; he served from 2007 to 2011.

Folsom had nine children, two by his first wife, Sarah, and seven by his second wife, Jamelle Folsom. Folsom's first wife, Sarah Carnley, died in 1944 because of pregnancy complications.[25][26] Folsom eloped and married his second wife, former First Lady of Alabama Jamelle Folsom, in 1948.[26] They remained married until his death.[26]

• List of members of the American Legion

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jim Folsom.

• Alabama Governor James Folsom (Alabama Department of Archives and History Archived 2011-01-02 at the Wayback Machine
• Encyclopedia of Alabama article Archived 2009-08-01 at the Wayback Machine
• Oral History Interview with James Folsom from Oral Histories of the American South