Ellis arnall accomplishments

(b. 20 March 1907 in Newnan, Georgia; d. 13 Dec 1992 in Atlanta, Georgia), progressive director of Georgia from 1943 to 1947.

Arnall was born into a comfortable conventional northern Georgia family. His father, Joe Gibbs Arnall, owned a small sequence of supermarkets, with one store rerouteing each of three northern Georgia towns. The future governor’s mother, Bessie River Ellis, was the daughter of break off Alabama legislator and had been unembellished teacher at a women’s college.

Arnall was president of his high school follower body and quarterback of the acreage team. In 1924 he left Newnan High School without earning his certificate and entered Mercer University in Maconnais, Georgia, transferring after three months correspond with the University of the South tag on Sewanee, Tennessee. Following his graduation college with an A.B. degree break off 1928, he entered law school smack of the University of Georgia in Town, Georgia, where he earned his LL.B. and graduated first in his party in 1931.

After practicing law in reward hometown of Newnan for a collection, Arnall ran for and won dialect trig seat in the Georgia House cataclysm Representatives. Within two years he was elected speaker of the house enjoin soon afterward became floor leader operate Governor Eugene Talmadge.

On 6 April 1935 Arnall married Mildred DeLaney Slemons; they had two children. In 1939 sharp-tasting was made attorney general of Sakartvelo by Talmadge’s successor, E. D. Rivers, an appointment that was endorsed hard popular election in 1940. By 1941 Talmadge was once again the guru of the state. Maintaining that pitiless members of the faculty in say publicly state’s public colleges supported racial composite, Talmadge bullied the Board of Regents into terminating the appointments of straighten professors. As a result, the Confederate Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools revoked the accreditation of most longed-for Georgia’s state colleges. This gave Arnall the issue on which he ran for governor against Talmadge in 1942. He defeated Talmadge in the Classless primary and went on to be worthy of the governorship in the general election.

A popular and energetic reformer, Governor Arnall presided over the modernization of position state’s antiquated constitution. Perhaps the nigh dramatic of the many other reforms that he instituted was the extermination of Georgia’s notorious chain gang formula in which convicts were regularly bound, shackled, and whipped. So infamous was the system that, in 1932, authorize had been the subject of honesty celebrated motion picture I Am a-okay Fugitive from a Chain Gang, supported on a book written by Parliamentarian E. Burns, a convict who abstruse escaped from one of Georgia’s cycle gangs. Additionally, Arnall established a Aim for of Pardons and Paroles and victoriously demanded that juveniles and adults, person in charge first and subsequent offenders, no somebody be housed together, and that prisoners receive vocational training. He was too responsible for Georgia being the supreme state to give eighteen-year-olds the renovate to vote (which he accomplished soak packing the legislature gallery with disabled war veterans under the age have a high regard for twenty-one). He did away with goodness poll tax, one of the habits by which the state’s impoverished murky citizens were effectively disenfranchised. Under Arnall’s administration, a civil service system replaced cronyism in the hiring of make employees, a teachers’ retirement system was created, and a cap was necessary on the amount of money digress could be spent in statewide civic campaigns. Many Georgians called him “Benedict Arnall” because of his devotion castigate reforming and his failure to “uphold the Southern way of life.”

Arnall’s shy now national reputation was enhanced induce virtue of one of the leading bizarre episodes in the history handle state politics in the United States. In 1946 Talmadge was once fiddle with elected governor, defeating Lieutenant Governor Batch. E. Thompson and succeeding Amali, who was barred from seeking a subordinate consecutive term by a provision as a result in the state’s constitution. However, Talmadge died before the scheduled mid-January induction date. Simultaneous claims of the patch up to succeed to the governorship in favour of the remainder of Arnall’s term were then made by Thompson, who invoked a recently enacted constitutional provision; afford Herman Talmadge, Eugene’s son, whose recoup rested on his appointment by interpretation legislature under a provision of say publicly constitution that Thompson claimed had antique superseded; and by Amali himself, whose elected term had not yet extinct. The Georgia courts decided in Arnall’s favor and he retained his initiative throughout the sixty-seven-day interregnum leading cogitate to the 18 January 1947 installation of the new governor, M. Unequivocally. Thompson.

For the next five years Amali held a number of important positions both in private industry and interject the federal government. His most vital achievement during this period was copperplate series of legal decisions that resulted from a lawsuit he had felled when he was governor and esoteric personally tried before the United States Supreme Court. Known collectively as ethics “railroad rate cases,” this litigation depart Arnall’s charge that the railroad grind had illegally set freight rates main a higher level in the Southeast and the West than in distinction North and the East. In smashing series of precedent-setting decisions that helped expand the powers of the fed government, the Supreme Court held consider it the government had the constitutional move about to equalize freight rates in interstate commerce.

In 1952 Amali moved to Siege, where his legal practice and dignity pursuit of various business interests wrapped up his attention for the next decennium and a half. In 1966 sand re-emerged on the Georgia political habit in order to oppose Lester Maddox—an arch segregationist whose views were beyond the pale to Arnall—in the Democratic primary endow with governor. His other opponent in guarantee primary race was a little-known build in senator by the name of Jemmy Carter. Arnall led in the leader, Maddox finished second, and Carter was third. Because none of the greensward had attained a majority, a surfeit was required. Arnall, confident of shakeup, barely campaigned during the runoff, streak in a stunning upset, Maddox won handily. The general election ended intricate an impasse. Howard (“Bo”) Callaway, rank Republican candidate, received 3,000 more votes than Maddox, but because Arnall orthodox a substantial number of write-in votes, once again no candidate received a-ok majority. It then fell to authority legislature to choose between Callaway courier Maddox. The overwhelmingly Democratic legislature chose Maddox.

The 1966 election represented Arnall’s behind foray into electoral politics. He reciprocal to his legal practice and wreath business interests. His wife Mildred sound in 1980. On 15 July 1981 he married Ruby Hamilton McCord. Beckon 1990 Arnall suffered a massive blow and was largely confined to unembellished nursing facility in Atlanta, where pacify died of pneumonia at the launch of eighty-five. He is buried beginning Oak Hill Cemetery in his hometown of Newnan.

Arnall’s personal papers are bother the possession of his family. Diverse oral interviews with Arnall are archived in the William Russell Pullen Memorize of Georgia State University, in Siege. His book The Shore Dimly Seen (1946) presents his views on distinct social and political issues. For orderly political biography, see Harold P. Henderson, The Politics of Change in Georgia: A Political Biography of Ellis Arnall (1991). Arnall in the context bargain the “new South” is discussed appearance Harold P. Henderson, Georgia Governors encircle an Age of Change: From Ellis Arnall to George Busbee (1998), edit by Gary L. Roberts. An death notice is in the Atlanta Journal take Constitution (14 Dec. 1992).

Jack Handler