Alabama Governors: A Political History of the State

Benjamin M. Miller / Glenn A. Feldman 209

Benjamin M. Miller, 1931–1935 glenn A. feldMAn benjamin meek miller served as governor of Alabama during the worst years of the Great Depression. A large, bespectacled, dignified man, miller had a long legal career before and after his term as governor of a state that was among the most severely affected by the depression. in that difficult era, the man and the times did not perfectly meet. miller,called “meek”by his friends, was born in oak hill,Wilcox County, on march 13,1864,to sara miller and reformed Presbyterian minister John miller. he attended public schools at oak hill and Camden after his father took a pulpit there, which he held for thirty-one years. in 1884, at the age of twenty, miller was graduated with his bachelor of arts degree with class honors from erskine College in south Carolina and became a high school principal , a position that ideally suited his sober and dignified appearance if not his ambition. he left that position in 1887 to enter the University of Alabama school of law and earned his degree in 1889. While still a law student ,miller was elected to the Alabama house of representatives fromWilcox County and served from 1888 to 1889. Upon graduation, he established a law office in Camden, and in 1892 he married margaret otis, who bore him two children. For the better part of the next four decades, miller practiced law, served in various judicial capacities, and oversaw his family’s large land holdings in Wilcox County—holdings so vast that miller once boasted: “A man could 210 / benjamin m. miller 1931–1935 walk six miles in a straight line and never leave miller land!” miller won his second elective political office in 1904 when he was chosen judge of Alabama ’s Fourth Judicial Circuit.in 1920 he was elected to serve as associate justice of the Alabama supreme Court but was defeated for reelection in 1926. it was during the bitter and divisive 1928 presidential election between Protestant republican herbert hoover and Catholic Democrat Al smith that miller made his political name.newyork’s Governor smith was not miller’s choice, but bolting the Democratic Party jeopardized the solid hold Democrats had long held over the south. At the core of party regularity was the loyalist Democratic concern with maintaining white supremacy and political power. miller and other party loyalists invoked the race issue as they opposed the hoovercrat “bolt,” which was led in Alabama by U.s. senator Tom heflin and birmingham attorney and gubernatorial aspirant hugh locke. “There was not a seat for a [single] nigger at houston,” miller declared in a speech describing the Democratic national Convention. “no nigger helped nominate smith. he was nominated by more than 900 Anglo-saxons.” smith narrowly took the state, but fallout from the rancorous 1928 campaign haunted Alabama politics for a time.A fierce struggle within the state Democratic executive Committee for control of the party’s machinery in 1929 led to the ouster of senator heflin and Judge locke as retribution for their parts in leading the bolt.The expulsion movement was considered mandatory punishment for the two politicians whose action placed solid Democrat control and white supremacy at risk.locke and heflin were refused places on the 1930 Democratic primary ballot,so they joined others to form an independent movement and announced themselves for state office as Jeffersonian Democrats, a conscious attempt to rekindle Populist memories. miller declared himself a candidate for governor in the Democratic primary and made opposition to the waning Ku Klux Klan and its “loosespending ”governor,bibb Graves,the centerpiece of his campaign.he promised fiscal responsibility and the firing of state employees known to have KKK associations. “if you are satisfied with the rule of the Ku Klux Klan,” miller announced, “don’t vote for me.vote for any of my opponents.” miller ’s opposition to the Klan,like that of other wealthy white supremacists,had little to do with racial liberalism and more to do with maintaining political power.The planter-industrialist coalition, of which miller was a part, eventually rejected the 1920s version of the Klan because it represented a direct threat to their power over poorer and middle-class whites. many Alabama Klansmen participated in violence and terror during the decade,but the Klan also made itself influential by forming political coalitions with farmers, pro- benjamin m. miller 1931–1935...