James Kimble Vardaman (July 26, 1861 – June 25, 1930) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Mississippi. A Democrat, he served as the Governor of Mississippi from 1904 to 1908 and then represented Mississippi in the United States Senate from 1913 to 1919.
Known as "The Great White Chief", Vardaman had gained electoral support for his advocacy of populism and white supremacy, saying: "If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy."[1] Aligning with economically left-wing populists and favoring progressive reforms in railing against banks, railroads, and tariffs,[2] he appealed to the poorer whites, yeomen farmers, and factory workers. Vardaman's tenure as Governor of Mississippi was marked by his advocacy of regulating corporations, enacting child labor laws, segregating streetcars, ending educational opportunities for African Americans, and defending lynching.[3] After completing his term as governor, he defeated Democratic incumbent LeRoy Percy, a member of the planter elite, in the primary for the 1912 U.S. Senate election,[4] and was then elected unopposed in the general election.[5]
As a Democrat, Vardaman served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1890 to 1896 and was elected as its speaker in 1894.[9][10] He was known for his populist appeal to the everyday person. State Democrats took action to ensure that they did not lose power again. After having gained control of the legislature by suppressing the black vote, they passed a new constitution in 1890 with provisions, such as a poll tax[11]: 471 and literacy test,[12] that raised barriers to voter registration and disenfranchised most blacks.[13]
There is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter.... Mississippi's constitutional convention of 1890 was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the nigger from politics. Not the 'ignorant and vicious', as some of the apologists would have you believe, but the nigger.... Let the world know it just as it is.... In Mississippi we have in our constitution legislated against the racial peculiarities of the Negro.... When that device fails, we will resort to something else.[14]
Vardaman ran twice in Democratic primaries for governor, in 1895 and 1899, but was unsuccessful. The state was virtually one-party, and winning the Democratic primary was tantamount to victory in the general election for any office. In 1903 Vardaman won the primary and the general elections for governor, serving one four-year term (1904–1908). In the election, he said that "a vote for Vardaman is a vote for white supremacy, a vote for the quelling of the arrogant spirit that has been aroused in the blacks by Roosevelt and his henchmen, ...a vote for the safety of the home and the protection of our women and children."[16]
In late December 1906, he went to Scooba, in rural Kemper County, with the Mississippi National Guard, to ensure that control was established. Whites had rioted against blacks there and in Wahalak and feared retaliation; in total, two white men were killed and 13 blacks. The events were covered by the Associated Press and the New York Times, among other newspapers.[17][18] During his term as governor, he called out the National Guard eleven times to prevent lynchings.[19]
By 1910, his political coalition of chiefly poor white farmers and industrial workers began to identify proudly as "rednecks." They began to wear red neckerchiefs to political rallies and picnics.[20] Vardaman advocated a policy of state-sponsored racism against blacks and said that he supported lynching to maintain white supremacy.[1] From 1877 to 1950, Mississippi had the highest number of lynchings in the nation.[21] He was known as the "Great White Chief."[22] Several reforms were also carried out during his time as governor.[23][24][25][26][27][28][29]
U.S. Senate
Vardaman during his time as a U.S. senator
Vardaman was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1912 in the first popular election of the state's senators by defeating the incumbent LeRoy Percy, a member of the planter elite, in the Democratic primary.[4] He ran on a platform of repealing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment, which gave blacks the vote and other rights. He was unopposed in the general election. Vardaman served one term, from 1913 until 1919. He voted against the U.S. declaration of war on Germany and the entry into World War I, only five other senators voted with him.[30] He was defeated in his primary re-election bid in 1918.[31]
Vardaman ran in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in 1922 but was defeated in the primary runoff by U.S. Representative Hubert Stephens by 9,000 votes.[32]
Rhetoric
Vardaman was known for his provocative speeches and quotes and once called Theodore Roosevelt a "little, mean, coon-flavored miscegenationist."[33] About the education of black children, he remarked, "The only effect of Negro education is to spoil a good field hand and make an insolent cook."[34] "The knowledge of books does not seem to produce any good substantial result with the Negro, but serves to sharpen his cunning, breeds hopes that cannot be fulfilled, creates an inclination to avoid labor, promotes indolence, and in turn leads to crime."[35]: 105
After the president of Tuskegee University, Booker T. Washington, had dined with Roosevelt, Vardaman said that the White House was "so saturated with the odor of the nigger that the rats have taken refuge in the stable."[36] Regarding Washington's role in politics, Vardaman said: "I am opposed to the nigger's voting, it matters not what his advertised moral and mental qualifications may be. I am just as much opposed to Booker Washington, with all his Anglo-Saxon reenforcement, voting, as I am to voting by the coconut-headed, chocolate-colored typical little coon, Andy Dotson, who blacks my shoes every morning. Neither one is fit to perform the supreme functions of citizenship."[37][38]
The town of Vardaman, Mississippi is named after him. There is also a Vardaman Hall at the University of Mississippi, which has borne his name since it was built in 1929. In July 2017, the University of Mississippi announced that Vardaman's name would be removed from the building, but it still has not been removed as of September 2023.[41][42][43]
In popular culture
In William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying, a character in the Bundren family is named after the governor, presumably because the Bundrens are a family of poor, rural whites, one of Governor Vardaman's key constituencies. And in another of Faulkner's novel Flags in the Dust, Gov. Vardaman was mentioned twice; both characters who mention him express admiration for his moral views and politics.[44]
^Gatewood, Willard B. “A Republican President and Democratic State Politics: Theodore Roosevelt in the Mississippi Primary of 1903.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 3, 1984, p. 430. JSTOR27550103. Accessed 5 Feb. 2024.
^"James Vardaman". National Governors Association. January 10, 2012. Archived from the original on March 16, 2023. Retrieved September 8, 2023.
^"1890 House". Mississippi State University Libraries. Archived from the original on September 28, 2022. Retrieved September 12, 2023.
^"1894 House". Mississippi State University Libraries. Archived from the original on September 13, 2023. Retrieved September 12, 2023.
^McMillen, Neil R. (1989). "The Politics of the Disfranchised". Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow. University of Illinois Press. pp. 41–44. ISBN978-0252061561. Archived from the original on September 8, 2023. Retrieved August 1, 2015.
^Wickham, DeWayne (February 14, 2002). "Book fails to strip meaning of 'N' word". USA Today. Archived from the original on January 6, 2012. Retrieved September 1, 2017. It is as noxious today as in 1901 when Mississippi Sen. James Vardaman said after Booker T. Washington had dined with President Theodore Roosevelt that the White House was "so saturated with the odor of the nigger that the rats have taken refuge in the stable."
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