Tallapoosa Tragedy

For Grady Lafayette Evers, 38, pious, T-total Baptist storekeeper of Dadeville and candidate for tax collector of Tallapoosa County, Ala. the morning of March 23, 1938, was exciting. A candidate for Governor of Alabama was to speak in Dadeville, and Storekeeper Evers had thought of a way to advance his own candidacy. He ordered for distribution to the crowd 2,500 booklets of paper matches from Advance Match & Printing Corp. in Chicago. On each booklet he ordered printed:

G. L. EVERS candidate for TAX COLLECTOR.

I will greatly appreciate your vote and support.

HONEST AND ABLE

May you find me worthy of your support in the coming primaries.

Candidate Evers ran a poor third in the primaries. Last week he filed suit against Advance Match & Printing Co. for $125,000 damages, describing in his complaint the rally of March 23.

"The booklets of matches arrived just in time to be distributed to the milling crowds of politically excited citizens. . . . Midst the joyous shouting of the crowds and while flags were flying in the southern breeze, the Plaintiff and his loyal aides ambitiously distributed the match booklets to the spirited tempo of patriotic airs. . . . Gradually these staunch voters of Tallapoosa County so assembled had occasion to open their booklets of matches to light up their cheroots, and as each did so, the booklet was immediately and indignantly closed and concealed from the eyes of the womenfolk or younger persons thereabouts. . . .

"After about 1,000 of the said match booklets had been distributed in behalf of the Plaintiff, it was brought to his attention that the Defendant had printed on the inside of each and every booklet . . . in place of the words 'Paid political adv. by G. L. Evers, Dadeville, Ala.,' the ribald and obscene picture of a boy urinating in a stream of water, and with words of warning, printed thereunder, 'Don't drink water--drink beer.' "

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