Although the majority of white Southerners were staunchly opposed to racial integration during the 1950 & 60s, there were a few mavericks who held a different point of view. One of these was Big Jim Folsom, who successfully ran for Governor of Alabama in 1946, and again in 1954. Gov. Folsom gained popularity by challenging the corruption and selfishness of the wealthy elites who dominated state politics. He became known for building roads & schools, and he created old-age pensions & worker protection laws. However, by the mid-50s, a different and uglier version of populism began sweeping the South, as white Southerners rallied against the push to give civil rights & voting rights to African-Americans. Folsom's popularity suffered because he was relatively progressive on racial issues, & said he would not defy the federal courts if they mandated integration. In 1962, Big Jim's racial tolerance, along with his many personal flaws & vices, caused him to lose the governor's race to George C. Wallace, a former Folsom supporter who had become a militant segregationist. Gov. Wallace went on to gain national fame as a far-right demagogue, while Big Jim & his form of economic populism faded from the Southern political scene.
Although the majority of white Southerners were staunchly opposed to racial integration during the 1950 & 60s, there were a few mavericks who held a different point of view. One of these was Big Jim Folsom, who successfully ran for Governor of Alabama in 1946, and again in 1954. Gov. Folsom gained popularity by challenging the corruption and selfishness of the wealthy elites who dominated state politics. He became known for building roads & schools, and he created old-age pensions & worker protection laws. However, by the mid-50s, a different and uglier version of populism began sweeping the South, as white Southerners rallied against the push to give civil rights & voting rights to African-Americans. Folsom's popularity suffered because he was relatively progressive on racial issues, & said he would not defy the federal courts if they mandated integration. In 1962, Big Jim's racial tolerance, along with his many personal flaws & vices, caused him to lose the governor's race to George C. Wallace, a former Folsom supporter who had become a militant segregationist. Gov. Wallace went on to gain national fame as a far-right demagogue, while Big Jim & his form of economic populism faded from the Southern political scene.
“From Boomers to Millennials” is a modern US history podcast, providing a fresh look at 20th Century America. Welcome to Episode 18C, also known as “Big Jim Folsom: 10 Minute Profile.” Back in Episode 18, we discussed the Freedom Riders’ journey through the South to racially integrate public facilities. When these civil rights activists arrived in the State of Alabama, they encountered furious & violent opposition from local segregationists. Such angry white Southerners usually serve as the main antagonists in tales of the civil rights movement. But, within any group, there are people who dissent from their community’s predominant cultural beliefs. In this month’s episode, we examine the story of one such person, a white Southern politician named James Elisha Folsom Senior, better known as “Big Jim” Folsom. The story of the rise & fall of Folsom’s political career is a case study in how the social changes of the 50s & 60s caused racial resentment to become the animating force in Southern politics, forcing economic populism to the margins of the political conversation.
James Folsom was born into a family of modest means in Coffee County, Alabama during the year 1908. His father died when he was only 10 years old. As he got older, his political ideas were influenced by an uncle who had been a member of the Populist Party that had challenged the conservative political establishment in the state back in the 1890s. By the time Folsom reached adulthood, everyone in his community started calling him “Big Jim,” because he stood at a towering height of 6-foot-8 & weighed 275 pounds. The young man took up work as an insurance salesman, travelling all around the South. He took classes at 3 different colleges along the way, but he never completed his degree at any of them.
Eventually, Big Jim put his nomadic days behind him & returned to Alabama, where in 1936 he married the daughter of a prominent local judge. During the Depression, Folsom got a job as an administrator of a local branch of a federal New Deal public works program. He also got involved in local politics. Now, it’s important to remember that in most Southern states at this time, the Republican Party was not competitive, because the GOP was still associated with the depredations that Southerners believed Lincoln, Grant, & Sherman had visited upon them during the Civil War. For instance, in 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won 86% of the vote in Alabama, & his Republican challenger only got 13%. However, many of these Alabama Democrats who voted for FDR were not progressives. In Alabama, the entire political spectrum, from New Deal liberals to “free enterprise” loving conservatives, were represented in factions within the Democratic Party. Big Jim happened to belong to the most progressive faction of Alabama Democrats.
During World War II, Folsom served briefly in the US Army, but was released due to his extreme height. This may sound strange, but the military has traditionally had limited use for those outside normal height & weight parameters due to the standardization of gear & the need to fit soldiers into vehicles & craft. After leaving the Army, Folsom then joined the Merchant Marines, helping facilitate delivery of materiel & supplies to the Allied powers during wartime. Upon returning home, Folsom experienced family tragedy, when his first wife Sarah passed away from pregnancy-related complications. Big Jim was left to raise their 2 daughters on his own, but that didn’t keep him from staying involved in politics. He served as a delegate to the national Democratic Party Convention in 1944, where he joined a group of left-wing delegates who opposed dropping controversial Vice-President Henry Wallace from the ticket. However, these Henry Wallace supporters were disappointed, because (as discussed in Episode 3) President Roosevelt had decided it was politically prudent to replace him with the more moderate Senator Harry S Truman as the party’s 1944 nominee for the vice-presidency.
Two years later, Big Jim Folsom ran as a candidate for Governor of Alabama within the Democratic primary during 1946. Folsom was considered a major underdog, but he was undaunted. He campaigned around the state with a bluegrass band in tow; this may sound like something out of the movie “O Brother Where Art Thou,” but in an era before candidates could appear on television, they often did whatever was necessary to get crowds out to see them in person. At campaign stops, Folsom gave folksy speeches denouncing the wealthy elites who controlled Alabama politics; he used a mop & bucket as a prop onstage, vowing to “clean up” the corrupt state government.
Big Jim surprised the Democratic establishment by capturing the largest plurality of votes in a 5-way primary race in ‘46. Folsom then had to compete in a head-to-head runoff election against Levan Handy Ellis, who was the conservative incumbent Lieutenant Governor of Alabama. Ellis accused Folsom of supporting (quote) “communist-backed labor unions,” & he warned crowds that Big Jim was insufficiently supportive of racial segregation. Despite these attacks, Folsom shocked his doubters by winning 58% of the vote in the Democratic runoff (& he faced virtually no opposition in the general election.) Big Jim now became Governor Folsom, and he would rattle the “respectable” state political establishment due to his unorthodox political views & his controversial personal behavior.
On the topic of his personal life, Governor Folsom was notorious for his love of whiskey & women. After the death of his wife, he proclaimed himself the state’s most eligible bachelor. At campaign events, he would greet pretty young women by kissing them on the forehead instead of shaking their hands. Big Jim was known to be popular with the ladies; with his swept-back black hair & his square jaw, he looked a little like an oversized version of Elvis Pressley, if you squinted your eyes just right. In March 1948, Folsom faced a scandal when a 30-year-old hotel cashier brought a paternity suit against him, claiming he was the father of her child. Big Jim settled the lawsuit, & later admitted that the woman’s claim was true. In May 1948, the governor suddenly got married to Jamelle Moore, a 20-year-old state government employee who was almost half his age. They would remain married for the remainder of Big Jim’s life.
Governor Folsom’s political views also disturbed local conservative elites. He had campaigned on the elimination of poll taxes & other voting restrictions, as well as on fairer apportionment of state legislative districts. However, these proposals were blocked by an Alabama legislature that was dominated by a conservative coalition known as the “Big Mules,” who represented the interests of wealthy business leaders & large plantation owners. Big Jim was nevertheless able to push through more funding for new highway construction, old-age pensions, & public education during his first term in office.
At this time, the State of Alabama had an unusual law that prevented incumbent governors from running for re-election. Folsom therefore had to leave office in 1950, but despite the controversies over his personal life & rumors of corruption, his political reform program had been popular, and many voters felt he had done more to help regular Alabamans than had prior politicians who mainly looked out for their donors & friends. Due to this legacy, Jim Folsom was able to successfully run for and win a second term as governor in 1954.
Early in his second term, Governor Folsom was able to get more progressive legislation passed than he had in his previous term, because the Big Mules’ grip on the state legislature had loosened since his prior term in office. As a result, the Folsom Administration was able to build more schools & highways around the state, and it passed laws protecting workers’ rights & safety. However, Big Jim’s popularity began to decline following the issuance of the Brown v. Board school desegregation decision by the U.S. Supreme Court (see Episode 8). As the civil rights movement began to grow during the 1950s, Folsom found himself out of step with a white electorate that was increasingly outraged by integrationists’ impositions upon the so-called “Southern way of life.”
Big Jim was unusually moderate, at times even progressive, on racial issues for a white politician from the Deep South. In a Christmas radio address during 1949, Folsom advocated for more brotherhood across the color line, and warned that (quote) “as long as the black man was held down, the poor white people would be held down with him” (close quote). During his second term in office, Big Jim denounced the violence of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1958, he commuted the death sentence for a Black man who had been involved in a violent robbery, stating that he generally opposed the death penalty & would grant clemency (quote) “If I can find some excuse.” When New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, who was African-American, came to Montgomery to help black citizens who were trying to register to vote, Folsom outraged the majority of white Alabamans by inviting Representative Powell over to have a drink with him at the governor’s mansion.
Big Jim Folsom’s economic populism had been popular with working-class white Alabamans, but many of those voters became disillusioned by his advocacy of more participation of Black Alabamans in state politics. A different type of populist demagoguery began to gain momentum in the Deep South, one that denounced politicians like Folsom who were (quote-unquote) “soft” on the “race question.” When Big Jim’s second term came to an end, the 1958 Alabama gubernatorial election was won by John M. Patterson, who campaigned on a pro-segregation “law and order” platform. In Episode 18, we noted that Governor Patterson tried to stymie federal efforts to protect the integrationist Freedom Riders after they had been met with violent protests & attacks during their travels across the state.
When Big Jim’s popularity had plummeted during his second term due to his veto of pro-segregation bills, he had lost interest in governing, & found escape in excessive drinking & partying with sycophantic cronies. But by 1962, Folsom appeared to have sworn off alcohol, and he tried to recapture the populist magic by running for governor again in a campaign emphasizing the pensions, worker protections, & infrastructure that he had created to protect the common people of Alabama. That year, Big Jim’s main opponent was a former political ally, a prominent judge named George C. Wallace. Back in the 1940s, Wallace had been a state legislator who had supported Folsom’s political program, and after being elected as a judge, Wallace endorsed Folsom for governor in 1954. For a time, George Wallace viewed Folsom as something of a “political mentor.” However, during Big Jim’s second term, Wallace split with him over racial issues. George Wallace had previously held relatively moderate views on race by Southern standards, although he had never been as progressive as Folsom. Recognizing the popularity of Governor Patterson’s tough line against integration, Wallace hardened his rhetoric on race, & he campaigned for governor in 1962 as a staunch defender of Jim Crow.
The final nail in the coffin of Big Jim’s political career occurred during a 1962 televised campaign event. That night, Folsom appeared on camera to be heavily inebriated. His words were slurred & incoherent. He kept repeating himself, & he could not remember his sons’ names when he tried to introduce his family. The cause of this embarrassing incident is still debated. Jim Folsom insisted he had been drugged, & his family members in later years insinuated the Wallace campaign had put a sedative into Big Jim’s drink. In the years that followed, Folsom suffered a series of strokes, & his doctor speculated that he may have experienced one prior to the disastrous 1962 TV appearance. However, the vast majority of Alabamans simply believed Folsom had been incredibly drunk. The fact that Folsom had been known to be a heavy drinker who had once been arrested for drunk driving back in the ‘50s led credibility to this less favorable interpretation of the cause of his behavior that fateful night.
In later years, Big Jim faded into political obscurity, while his former protégé George Wallace gained nationwide fame as the most notorious race-baiting politician of the 1960s. We will discuss the career of Governor George Wallace in more detail during future episodes of this podcast. As for Big Jim, he struggled with health problems later in life, and he passed away in 1987. His widow Janelle Folsom remained actively involved in state politics until her death at age 85 in 2012. Their son James Folsom Junior went into the family business; he was known as “Little Jim” because he was much shorter than his father (although he still stood at a little over 6 feet tall). Folsom Junior was successfully elected as Lieutenant Governor of Alabama during the early 1990s. Unlike Big Jim, Little Jim ran as a moderate-to-conservative Democrat, and he gained support from the “Big Mules” & corporate leaders that his father had opposed. The changes that occurred in the US between the 1940s & the 1990s had caused voting to fracture along racial lines instead of class lines, which meant that there was no longer a plausible path to statewide victory for a progressive populist in the Deep South. However, the story of Governor Jim Folsom sheds light on a once plausible road not taken within Southern politics during the mid-20th Century.
Thank you for listening to this profile of a forgotten political figure from the civil rights era. Please let us know what you thought of this episode by emailing us at boomertomillennial@outlook.com, and please follow us on Instagram for more great US history content. Thank you for listening, and we hope you have a very Happy New Year.