Frank Dixon: Difference between revisions

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Dixon's father was a Baptist minister and lecturer and his uncle was Thomas Dixon, later author of ''The Clansman''. Though born in California, Dixon grew up in Virginia and was educated there and in Washington D.C. He matriculated from the Phillips Exeter Preparatory School in New Hampshire and earned his bachelor's degree at Columbia University in New York, New York and a law degree from the University of Virginia in [[1916]].
Dixon's father was a Baptist minister and lecturer and his uncle was Thomas Dixon, later author of ''The Clansman''. Though born in California, Dixon grew up in Virginia and was educated there and in Washington D.C. He matriculated from the Phillips Exeter Preparatory School in New Hampshire and earned his bachelor's degree at Columbia University in New York, New York and a law degree from the University of Virginia in [[1916]].


After graduating, Dixon took a position with [[Frank White]]'s law firm in [[Birmingham]] and married Greene County native [[Juliet Dixon|Juliet Perry]].
After graduating, Dixon took a position with [[Frank White]]'s law firm in [[Birmingham]] and married Greene County native [[Juliet Dixon|Juliet Perry]]. He managed White's successful campaign for a U.S. Senate seat before resigning at the outbreak of [[World War I]] to volunteer for the Royal Canadian Air Corps.


<!--successfully managed White's run for the U.S. Senate. At the outbreak of World War I, Dixon resigned from the firm and volunteered with the Royal Canadian Air Corps. He was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the French escadrilles as an aerial observer and machine gunner. In July 1918, the enemy shot down Dixon's plane over Soissons, France, and he was seriously wounded, requiring doctors to amputate his right leg. The French government awarded him the Croix de Guerre with palm, made him a chevalier of the French Foreign Legion, and promoted him to major. During the 1920s, Dixon helped organize the American Legion in Alabama and served as its state commander and twice as Birmingham's chapter post commander, service that earned him the loyalty of veterans across the state.
During the war, Dixon was assigned to the French escadrilles as a 2nd Lieutenant, serving as an aerial observer and machine gunner. His plane was shot down over Soissons in July [[1918]], resulting in the loss of his right leg. He was promoted to Major, awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm and made a chevalier of the French Foreign Legion. After his return to Alabama he helped organized the [[American Legion in Alabama]] and served as its commander, as well as post commander for [[Birmingham]].


Alfred E. Smith When he returned to Birmingham, Dixon formed his own law partnership, Bowers and Dixon, and became a successful corporate lawyer. He served as assistant solicitor of Jefferson County from 1919 to 1923 and wrote a legal treatise titled "The Local Laws of Birmingham." He became more involved in politics during the 1920s, taking an active role in winning Alabama's electoral votes for the controversial 1928 Democratic candidate for president, New York governor Al Smith. Like so many other Democratic loyalists in this event, Dixon warned that "bolting" the party to vote for Republican Herbert Hoover would threaten white supremacy and in effect reconstitute Reconstruction.
Professionally, Dixon entered a partnership with [[Stephen Bowers]], taking primarily corporate clients. He served as an assistant solicitor for [[Jefferson County]] until [[1923]] and authored a treatise entitled ''[[The Local Laws of Birmingham]]''. During the 1920s he labored to shore up support for the national Democratic Party and helped win Alabama for presidential candidate Al Smith who challenged Herbert Hoover in the [[1928 general election|1928 election]] on grounds that Republicans threatened white supremacy in the South. His ties to corporate interests kept him, however, from becoming involved in the populist [[Ku Klux Klan]], which was dominated by the working classes.  


Although Dixon was an open advocate of white supremacy, he and other Birmingham executives joined planters in the state in opposing the 1920s' version of the Ku Klux Klan as a political force. The Klan represented a populist challenge to the hegemony of the Birmingham industrialists and their allies in the Black Belt. Along with the terror and intolerance of many Klansmen, the organization allied itself with the aspirations of union supporters and other working-class Alabamians.
Dixon ran for Governor in [[1934 primary elections|1934]], but lost to progressive [[Bibb Graves]] who was swept into a second term, despite powerful opposition from the "Big Mules". He easily defeated [[Chauncey Sparks]] to win the office in [[1938 primary elections|1938]], promising to end poll taxes and streamline the state government at a time when President Roosevelt's "[[New Deal]]" expansion of government was polarizing the public.


Wilcox County native Benjamin Meek Miller (1864-1944) was Benjamin M. MillerIn 1934 Dixon attempted to succeed the conservative Benjamin Meek Miller as governor. Despite solid support from the planter-industrialist coalition and charges of Klan affiliation against his opponent, Dixon lost the primary election to former governor Bibb Graves. Four years later, in a process that repeated itself regularly during this era of Alabama politics, Dixon profited from the constitutional mandate that forbade a governor from succeeding himself in office and easily defeated Chauncey Sparks to become governor of the state. Ironically, Dixon attracted union leaders, younger voters, and other progressive Alabamians to his side by pledging to abolish the poll tax, to push for reapportionment of the legislature, and to reorganize state government.
Dixon proved adept at the business of governing and sought broad-based support for his agenda before bringing it to the legislature, which was stocked with allies in key leadership positions. He had studied governmental reform efforts in Virginia and sought advice from [[University of Alabama]] professor [[Roscoe Martin]] . Focusing on eliminating waste and redundancy, he eliminated 27 state agencies through combination, such as folding the [[Alabama Department of Labor|Department of Labor]] into the [[Alabama Department of Industrial Relations|Department of Industrial Relations]]. He appointed his own department heads to take the place of independent commissions and fired hundreds of state employees, including all those hired between his nomination and inauguration. He successfully lobbied for a comprehensive state civil service system and a teacher's tenure law, as well as a [[Retirement Systems of Alabama|retirement system]].


Dixon's success as governor was not accidental; he prepared for his term as few others have. In the months between his election and his inauguration, Dixon met with departing governor Graves, traveled to Washington, D.C., to secure the advice of public administration experts and even President Franklin Roosevelt on his plans for changes in state government, and skillfully courted the press in Alabama. To secure legislative support for his programs, he held closed-door, pre-session conferences with groups of 20 lawmakers at a time to hear their views on his plans for administrative reform. He also placed his supporters in key leadership posts in both the state house and senate.
Dixon also pushed for tax reforms, including a measure that made county property assessment boards more accountable, resulting in more reliable funding for public education.


Dixon launched a program to streamline Alabama's government, basing his actions on a successful program implemented in Virginia and the advice of University of Alabama political scientist Roscoe C. Martin, an expert in the field of administrative and civil service reform. In his effort to rid the state of waste, inefficiency, duplication, and excess, Dixon eliminated 27 state agencies, largely by consolidating related and overlapping duties within one department. For example, the Department of Finance oversaw fiscal affairs by assuming the full duties of four agencies and the partial duties of six others. A new Department of Corrections replaced two older agencies; a single Department of Industrial Relations replaced six agencies, including Bibb Graves' Department of Labor; the Conservation Department subsumed the functions of five agencies; and the Commerce Department took over those of three more.
The onset of [[World War II]] led to an expansion of industry in the [[Birmingham District]], as well as increases in farm production, shipbuilding and port activity. The mass enlistment of soldiers opened up jobs for the formerly unemployed and expanded Alabama's middle class significantly.


Agencies under the leadership of committees were placed under a single individual accountable to the governor, thus centralizing power in the office of the governor. Dixon terminated all state employees who were added to state payrolls after May 3, 1938, the date he was nominated for governor, as well as every employee who had no specific and clearly assigned duties. In significant milestones for public school teachers, he helped push through a teachers' retirement system and a teacher tenure law. Dixon's most visible accomplishment was the establishment of a state civil service system requiring merit-based hiring of state employees. He was the first, and the last, twentieth-century governor to make an effort to eliminate duplication, inefficiency, and waste in the state's bureaucracy.
<!--For all his achievements Dixon was said to be "cold and inaccessible" in his style, conservative in his appointments, and given his pro-business stance, was fiercely anti-New Deal. The governor openly opposed Franklin Roosevelt's third and fourth presidential campaigns and made opposition to Roosevelt's 1942 Fair Employment Practices Committee and other pro-labor New Deal measures a notable feature of his administration. Dixon was a member of "Christian Americans," thought by progressives to be a semi-fascist, anti-labor KKK group. Beyond his antilabor stance, Dixon also joined newspaper editor Grover Hall and others in Alabama to oppose a federal anti-lynching bill that called for steep fines and jail terms for policemen who lost their prisoners to mobs, additional fines against counties that hosted lynchings, and long sentences for county officials who conspired in such actions. The governor opposed it as "dangerous, unwarranted, and unwise." When Fort Deposit whites lynched a black man for arguing with his white employer in early 1942, Dixon turned a blind eye and warned that the Klan might ride again if the federal government did not allow southern states a free hand in controlling their black populations.
 
Furthermore, Dixon reformed the way in which property taxes were assessed throughout the state. He and others in the "good government" reform movement objected to the county appointment of property tax review boards, whose members, they maintained, deliberately kept assessments at low levels and thus provided inadequate support for school districts and municipal services. Dixon's reform bill mandated local boards be replaced by three-person boards appointed by the governor from a pool of names submitted by the county commission, the county board of education, and representatives of the county's largest municipality. Although this measure passed, a second bill calling for state funds to be tied to a county's willingness to increase its assessments was later withdrawn.
 
In 1939, as World War II began in Europe, prosperity began to slowly return to the nation and state. By 1942, more than one-half of the voluntary enlistments into the military for the entire country came from the South, putting formerly unemployed citizens to work. The governor oversaw a wartime reorganization of the Alabama State Docks at Mobile, resulting in a 400 percent increase in barge traffic. The war also brought a boom in the shipbuilding and ship repair industry to the Gulf Coast and the establishment of a major supply and repair post at the U.S. Army's Brookley Field. Alabama enjoyed tremendous economic benefits from the industrial and military buildup associated with the war, and military bases and industries brought full employment to the state and greatly expanded the middle-class.
 
For all his achievements Dixon was said to be "cold and inaccessible" in his style, conservative in his appointments, and given his pro-business stance, was fiercely anti-New Deal. The governor openly opposed Franklin Roosevelt's third and fourth presidential campaigns and made opposition to Roosevelt's 1942 Fair Employment Practices Committee and other pro-labor New Deal measures a notable feature of his administration. Dixon was a member of "Christian Americans," thought by progressives to be a semi-fascist, anti-labor KKK group. Beyond his antilabor stance, Dixon also joined newspaper editor Grover Hall and others in Alabama to oppose a federal anti-lynching bill that called for steep fines and jail terms for policemen who lost their prisoners to mobs, additional fines against counties that hosted lynchings, and long sentences for county officials who conspired in such actions. The governor opposed it as "dangerous, unwarranted, and unwise." When Fort Deposit whites lynched a black man for arguing with his white employer in early 1942, Dixon turned a blind eye and warned that the Klan might ride again if the federal government did not allow southern states a free hand in controlling their black populations.


The labor demands of the war era may have muted Dixon's fundamental racism, but his postwar role as one of the primary architects of the 1948 "Dixiecrat" revolt fully revealed his bigotry. Although Dixon declined to serve as the presidential candidate for the Dixiecrats, he delivered the keynote address at its national convention in Birmingham. The Dixiecrat or States' Rights Party organized in response to the civil rights package in the Democratic Party platform of 1948, which recommended four pieces of legislation: abolition of the poll tax, a federal antilynching law, desegregation, and a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission. President Harry S. Truman fully supported these goals, which promised the greatest federal intrusion into the South since Reconstruction, a frightening thought for those who shared Dixon's leanings. The party eventually polled more than a million votes and carried five states in the 1948 general election. Some scholars have suggested that Dixon and his confederates were attempting to restore the South to its former place of influence within the Democratic Party, a place lost after the 1936 repeal of the rule requiring that Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominees receive two-thirds of the delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention. These high-minded ends may have played into the actions of the governor and his associates, but their overarching goal was to guarantee and maintain the racial status quo in the South.
The labor demands of the war era may have muted Dixon's fundamental racism, but his postwar role as one of the primary architects of the 1948 "Dixiecrat" revolt fully revealed his bigotry. Although Dixon declined to serve as the presidential candidate for the Dixiecrats, he delivered the keynote address at its national convention in Birmingham. The Dixiecrat or States' Rights Party organized in response to the civil rights package in the Democratic Party platform of 1948, which recommended four pieces of legislation: abolition of the poll tax, a federal antilynching law, desegregation, and a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission. President Harry S. Truman fully supported these goals, which promised the greatest federal intrusion into the South since Reconstruction, a frightening thought for those who shared Dixon's leanings. The party eventually polled more than a million votes and carried five states in the 1948 general election. Some scholars have suggested that Dixon and his confederates were attempting to restore the South to its former place of influence within the Democratic Party, a place lost after the 1936 repeal of the rule requiring that Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominees receive two-thirds of the delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention. These high-minded ends may have played into the actions of the governor and his associates, but their overarching goal was to guarantee and maintain the racial status quo in the South.

Revision as of 12:41, 5 December 2013

Frank Murray Dixon (born July 25, 1892 in Oakland, California; died October 11, 1965 in Birmingham) was Governor of Alabama from 1939 to 1943. An attorney allied with the "Big Mules", wealthy cotton planters and industrialists, Dixon favored business interests and opposed progressive politics. His opposition to the Democratic Party's national Civil Rights platform led him to help launch the States Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrats).

Dixon's father was a Baptist minister and lecturer and his uncle was Thomas Dixon, later author of The Clansman. Though born in California, Dixon grew up in Virginia and was educated there and in Washington D.C. He matriculated from the Phillips Exeter Preparatory School in New Hampshire and earned his bachelor's degree at Columbia University in New York, New York and a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1916.

After graduating, Dixon took a position with Frank White's law firm in Birmingham and married Greene County native Juliet Perry. He managed White's successful campaign for a U.S. Senate seat before resigning at the outbreak of World War I to volunteer for the Royal Canadian Air Corps.

During the war, Dixon was assigned to the French escadrilles as a 2nd Lieutenant, serving as an aerial observer and machine gunner. His plane was shot down over Soissons in July 1918, resulting in the loss of his right leg. He was promoted to Major, awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm and made a chevalier of the French Foreign Legion. After his return to Alabama he helped organized the American Legion in Alabama and served as its commander, as well as post commander for Birmingham.

Professionally, Dixon entered a partnership with Stephen Bowers, taking primarily corporate clients. He served as an assistant solicitor for Jefferson County until 1923 and authored a treatise entitled The Local Laws of Birmingham. During the 1920s he labored to shore up support for the national Democratic Party and helped win Alabama for presidential candidate Al Smith who challenged Herbert Hoover in the 1928 election on grounds that Republicans threatened white supremacy in the South. His ties to corporate interests kept him, however, from becoming involved in the populist Ku Klux Klan, which was dominated by the working classes.

Dixon ran for Governor in 1934, but lost to progressive Bibb Graves who was swept into a second term, despite powerful opposition from the "Big Mules". He easily defeated Chauncey Sparks to win the office in 1938, promising to end poll taxes and streamline the state government at a time when President Roosevelt's "New Deal" expansion of government was polarizing the public.

Dixon proved adept at the business of governing and sought broad-based support for his agenda before bringing it to the legislature, which was stocked with allies in key leadership positions. He had studied governmental reform efforts in Virginia and sought advice from University of Alabama professor Roscoe Martin . Focusing on eliminating waste and redundancy, he eliminated 27 state agencies through combination, such as folding the Department of Labor into the Department of Industrial Relations. He appointed his own department heads to take the place of independent commissions and fired hundreds of state employees, including all those hired between his nomination and inauguration. He successfully lobbied for a comprehensive state civil service system and a teacher's tenure law, as well as a retirement system.

Dixon also pushed for tax reforms, including a measure that made county property assessment boards more accountable, resulting in more reliable funding for public education.

The onset of World War II led to an expansion of industry in the Birmingham District, as well as increases in farm production, shipbuilding and port activity. The mass enlistment of soldiers opened up jobs for the formerly unemployed and expanded Alabama's middle class significantly.


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