Some of the People Who Ate My Barbecue Didn't Vote for Me: The Life of Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin

Preface

ix Preface “Hold still, little catfish; all I’m gonna do is gut you.” This line from Marvin Griffin summarizes how I feel about the journey of writing this book. My initial interest in Governor Griffin stems from my master’s thesis, which examined the 1962 Georgia gubernatorial primary, Griffin’s last political hurrah. My initial exposure to Griffin came from anecdotes told to me by my father, Edward Buchanan. From those stories, I found myself drawn to Griffin’s humor. Thus, my interest was sparked to write a biography of the man who served as governor of Georgia during a turbulent time in the state’s history. Along the way, I have found that much of what I thought about Griffin was correct and some incorrect. I am reminded of a line once used to introduce him to a crowd: “the man who has had more lies told about him than anyone else in Georgia.” My primary purpose in this book is to chronicle Marvin Griffin’s political career and show how dramatically Georgia politics has changed over the past half century. To accomplish that goal, I relied on both primary and secondary sources. Governor Griffin’s papers, such as they are, reside in the Marvin Griffin Collection at Bainbridge College. Unfortunately, the governor did not keep the most comprehensive records, and I harbor strong suspicions that the Griffin papers were highly sanitized as well. On one visit, I found a folder labeled “Illegal Liquor Fund.” When I opened the folder, nothing was there. What records I did find were quite helpful in gaining insights into the more personal side of Griffin. Other sources of primary documents included the Georgia Archives, the Georgia Government Documentation Project at Georgia State University, Georgia’s Political Heritage at the University of West Georgia, the Georgia National Guard Archives, and the Fred Hand Collection at the Troup County Archives in LaGrange. x “Some of the People Who Ate My Barbecue Didn’t Vote for Me” The real fun of this research, though, lay in another of the primary sources: the interviews. I had the rare opportunity to talk with many of the participants in this story, some of whom have since died. Among those I interviewed were Griffin Bell, John Sammons Bell, Jimmy Bentley, Garland Byrd, Paul Cadenhead, Johnnie Caldwell, Bo Callaway, Cathy Cox, Frank Eldridge Jr., Jack Flynt, Cheney Griffin, Denmark Groover, Michael Herndon, George Hooks, Tommy Irvin, Jamie MacKay, Donald Mees, Reg Murphy, Jack Nelson, Emory Parrish, Bobby Rowan, Bill Shipp, J. R. Smith, Jim Stone, Herman Talmadge, Jimmy Hodge Timmons , Ernest Vandiver, Ben Wiggins, and Jimmy Wiggins. All of these individuals gave me a perspective (and stories) about Governor Griffin that secondary sources simply would not have supplied. Special thanks go to both former governor Carl Sanders and former Georgia legislator Jimmy Rhodes of Baker County. Governor Sanders unselfishly gave of his time to answer my questions about his early political career and his relationship to Griffin. Very patiently, Governor Sanders allowed me two personal interviews and a number of telephone interviews dating back to 1994. Mr. Rhodes’s storytelling ability regarding Griffin gave me a much deeper understanding of the Governor in his latter years than I would ever have had otherwise. At times, I could almost hear Griffin speaking, given Mr. Rhodes’s knack for relaying a story. Newspaper articles make up the major portion of secondary sources. Most articles come from the Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution. I faced a challenge here in that Griffin never had the best relationship with the Atlanta newspapers, and he was often treated harshly by the news coverage . Sometimes that treatment was warranted; other times it was not. I also tried to neutralize this bias by taking a gander at the other major daily newspapers around the state. In many cases, the perspective of the smaller dailies was much less critical than the Atlanta papers. Another way that I got to “know” Governor Griffin was through his weekly columns in the Bainbridge Post-Searchlight. In the end, though, any interpretations—both accurate and mistaken—are my responsibility alone. This book would not have been possible without the help of others. The pictures in this book were harder to come by than I expected. Most of them are from the collection of the Georgia Archives. I would like to especially thank Gale M. DeLoach of the Georgia Archives for her assistance in tracking down images of the Griffin era. Eli Bortz at...