Talmadge II

Just eight days after Louisiana sent Huey Long's snub-faced son Russell to the U.S. Senate, Georgia voters triumphantly revived a political dynasty of their own. Trooping to the polls under a sizzling sun, they elected tobacco-chewing, red-gallused Herman ("Hummon") Talmadge, 35, to fill the last two years of tobacco-chewing, red-gallused Ol' Gene's term as governor. It was like old times again.

On election night drunken wool-hatters and their blowzy, sweating women careened down the corridors of Atlanta's Ansley Hotel, howling and whooping. In Room 723, Hummon and his handsome second wife, Betty, listened to the returns. As the results from the back counties came in, they told the story. By midnight Hummon had an unbeatable lead over Acting Governor Melvin Thompson (who had prevented Hummon from taking over by force 19 months ago).

Grabbing up his seersucker coat and panama hat, Talmadge II limped forth for his victory address, leaning on the cane he has used since his auto accident with a blonde ex-secretary in July. Then he hustled over to the Atlanta Journal to repeat his message over Station WSB:

"The most significant thing about my victory is that it demonstrates to the people of the world that Georgia does not look with favor on civil rights and proves that Georgia is not a testing ground for Communistic ideologies."

Even before the final returns were in, Hummon seemed headed for almost as resounding a victory as Ol' Gene had ever managed. He had topped Thompson in the popular vote by 354,000 to 309,000, and piled up a landslide lead of 312 to 98 under Georgia's county unit system (roughly similar to the national electoral college). Governor Thompson promptly agreed to install Hummon in the Governor's Mansion as soon as the formality of the November general election was over; there was no point in waiting until Inauguration Day in January. Said Thompson, a Baptist: "The people giveth, the people taketh away. Blessed be the name of the people."

Many Georgians were less blasphemous and less easily resigned. Said one discouraged voter: "Pore ol' Georgia--first Sherman, then Herman."

In the face of Hummon's ominous white-supremacy shouting, Georgia's Negro voters did not exactly rush to the polls. In Melvin Thompson's home town of Valdosta, Klansmen hoisted a fiery cross after his election-eve speech. In Bulloch County, Klansmen deposited a coffin on the doorstep of one Negro. In the piney woods area of Montgomery County, a 28-year-old Negro named Isaiah Nixon asked if he could vote. He was warned not to, the sheriff said, but voted anyhow. That night two men appeared at his house, shot him dead in front of his wife and six children.

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