Jerry Summers
James Elisha Folsom, Sr. was born on October 9, 1908, and was one of the most colorful of the non-conventional politicians in the State of Alabama in the 1940’s-1970’s era.
In the era of segregation in the South, he was a rare Southern governor who supported a position of moderation on integration and improving the civil rights of blacks. Standing at 6’8” and weighing 250 pounds, he early on acquired the nickname “Big Jim Folsom” and in his first campaign for governor in 1946 he used the motto of “the little man’s big friend.” His only prior successful political experience was as a delegate to the 1944 Democratic National Convention where he opposed the replacement of Vice President Henry Wallace on the Franklin Roosevelt ticket with Harry S. Truman.
Mr. Folsom was first elected governor in 1946. His colorful campaign included a hillbilly band, the Strawberry Pickers, that entertained the crowds that came to hear him speak on the issues. Hank Williams had briefly been a member of the band. Another of his props was a mop and bucket that he brandished and promised to “clean out the Capitol in Montgomery.”
Mr. Folsom’s first term in office was not without controversy. Rumor of promiscuity and corruption became charges that did not adversely hamper his appeal to the electorate as his first wife Sarah Carnley Folsom, who bore him two daughters, had died in 1944 and he was a bachelor until he married Janelle Moore, a 20-year-old secretary at the state highway department, on May 5, 1948. She bore him seven children until her death in 1987.
Two months before, a 30-year-old cashier at the Tutwiler Hotel in Birmingham, Christine Johnson, filed a paternity suit against Big Jim claiming he was the father of her 22-month-old son. The suit was later dropped pursuant to a cash settlement and in later years Big Jim acknowledged in an interview that he was the father of the child.
Despite rumors of corruption, Mr. Folsom was elected governor in the 1954 campaign after sitting out the 1950 race because of the now repealed provision in the Alabama constitution that a governor could not succeed himself in office.
George C. Wallace had been a protégé of Big Jim. He would eventually marry Cornelia Ellis Snevely Folsom, daughter of Jim’s sister Ruby Folsom, who was with Wallace when he was badly injured in an assassination attempt on Laurel, Maryland, in 1972. Wallace would run against Mr. Folsom in the 1962 Alabama race on a segregation platform and one of the main accusations against Big Jim was his taking of graft. Wallace used the slogan “Something for everybody and a little bit for Big Jim.”
Mr. Folsom addressed the issue head on and on one occasion 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 it for you.”
Political supporters still contend that Big Jim would still have won the election except that he appeared intoxicated on a statewide television appearance. Although he kept the progressive integration and black vote he was defeated by the image conscious middle class electorate. Mr. Folsom contended he had been drugged but the damage had been done and he was defeated.
Big Jim ran again for governor in 1966 but lost in a crowded Democratic primary to Governor George Wallace’s first wife, Lurleen Burns Wallace, who ran as a surrogate candidate because of the antiquated Alabama non-succession constitutional provision.
The former giant later ran several times for public office but was never again considered a serious candidate. Legally blind he fought with his enemies in the Alabama legislature who first revoked his pension as governor but had it restored in a smaller amount by Republican governor Fob James (Baylor School graduate) that also provided him with a state car and chauffeur.
Big Jim Folsom died on November 21, 1987, in Cullman, Alabama, at the age of 79 thus ending the career of one of Alabama’s most colorful and controversial governors.
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Jerry Summers can be reached at jsummers@summersfirm.com
Jim Folsom