William D. Jelks

William D. Jelks
32nd Governor of Alabama
In office
June 11, 1901  January 14, 1907
Lieutenant Vacant
Russell M. Cunningham
Preceded by William J. Samford
Succeeded by B. B. Comer
Personal details
Born (1855-11-07)November 7, 1855
Warriorstand, Macon County, Alabama[1]
Died December 13, 1931(1931-12-13) (aged 76)
Eufaula, Alabama
Political party Democratic

William Dorsey Jelks (November 7, 1855 – December 13, 1931) was an American Democratic politician who was the 32nd Governor of Alabama from 1901 to 1907; he had been a newspaper publisher and editor. He also served as acting governor between December 1 and December 26, 1900 when governor William J. Samford was out-of-state seeking medical treatment (Alabama law at the time required the governor to relinquish authority of the office if he left the state for any reason for more than 20 days). When Samford died on June 11, 1901, Jelks became governor. In 1904, Jelks fell ill and left the state for treatment; Russell Cunningham acted as governor in Jelk's absence from April 25, 1904 to March 5, 1905.

Early life and education

Jelks, an Alabama native, graduated in 1876 from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. In 1879, Jelks acquired a substantial interest in the Union Springs Herald; later that year he bought and became the editor of the Eufaula Times. During his residence in Eufaula, Alabama, Jelks served on the board and as superintendent of education for the city schools.

Political career

Elected to the Alabama Senate from Barbour County, Alabama in 1898, Jelks served as chairman of the Committee on Constitution, Constitutional Revision and Amendment. In 1900, he was elected President of the Senate. Alabama did not have an office of lieutenant governor under the State Constitution of 1875, thus, Jelks, by virtue of his position as President of the Senate, served as acting-governor during the temporary incapacitation of Governor William J. Samford from December 1–26, 1900, and succeeded to the office on June 11, 1901, after Samford died.

As governor, Jelks played an active role in securing the ratification of the State Constitution of 1901. The new constitution reinstated the office of lieutenant governor and established the term of office of governor as four years. Developed according to the Mississippi model, it established requirements for voter registration that effectively disfranchised most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites.[2][3] Blacks were disfranchised for more than 60 years, until after passage in the mid-1960s of federal civil rights legislation. Elected to his first full term in 1902, Jelks was the first Alabama governor elected to serve a four-year term.

Significant accomplishments during Jelks' administration include the passage of legislation limiting and regulating child labor; the establishment of the State Textbook Commission; the reforms of the State Railroad Commission and the convict lease system; the renovation and expansion of the State Capitol, and the creation of Houston County.

Jelks strongly advocated white supremacy; he played a key role in adoption of constitutional provisions that disenfranchised blacks and poor whites, following brief political gains by the Populist Party (United States nineteenth century). He supported lynchings, stating that lynching black men accused of rape was justified. Briefly during his governorship he opposed lynching, preferring the judicial process. It usually resulted in death sentences as, unable to vote, blacks were excluded from serving on juries. They were also excluded from local offices. Jelks opposed education for blacks, believing that it took them from their "labors in the field" and led to idleness, vagrancy, and crime.[4]

When Jelks left office in 1907, he had served longer than any governor before him. He left a cash balance in the treasury of $1.8 million, which he recommended be spent on education. Later he organized the Protective Life Insurance Company in Birmingham, Alabama and served as its first president. He was a delegate to the 1912 Democratic Convention in Baltimore, Maryland that nominated Woodrow Wilson to the presidency. Jelks died on December 13, 1931, early in the Great Depression.

References

  1. "Alabama Governor William Dorsey Jelks". National Governors Association. Retrieved Aug 28, 2013.
  2. J. Morgan Kousser. The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974
  3. Michael Perman, Struggle for Mastery: Disenfranchisement (sic) in the South, 1888-1908, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001
  4. , Encyclopedia of Alabama

External links

Political offices
Preceded by
William J. Samford
Governor of Alabama
1901–1907
Succeeded by
B. B. Comer
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