Part Four: America's First Fascist Governor

Garrison is joined by Robert to conclude the story of Eugene Talmadge and how his campaign for a White Supremacist Georgia lead to his death.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media. What's confused my me because I just watched
a video of the new Tesla event where they are
releasing what appears to be an Art Deco brick that
is designed as.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
An insult to Art Deco. It looks I would agree.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
It is an insult to art Deco, but nonetheless, that
is what it looks like.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
No, it looks like a toaster. It does look like
a rolling toaster.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah, it's it's what I don't understand is how it's
like there's no clearance on it, like zero, it's just
flat to the ground. I guess there he's trying to
replace city buses. But I feel like, yeah, it's a
bus for rich people. It's a bus for rich people. Yeah, yeah,
it's a bus that will exist in San Francisco and

(00:54):
nowhere else.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Maybe so then you don't have to ride with the poors,
Like that's all.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yeah. I think I'm guessing this is just something they're
trying to get off the ground with their self driving shit.
It is funny that they've gone from like everyone's Tesla
will be able to work independently as a profit making
cab when they're not driving it too. We have this

(01:19):
brick that you can sit in with nineteen other people.
I don't know, I don't know why you want this
as opposed to any other kind of bus. But they
also had all of the Tesla robots out and he
apparently these twenty thousand dollars robots that can hand you
bags of goodies at a party are going to solve poverty.

(01:40):
So I'm excited to see how that works out.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Revolutionary.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah, this is the biggest, the biggest step forward for
mankind since we invented I don't know, hitting kids. Garrison
speaking of children.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Speak of hitting kids.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Actually, yeah, YouTube, I'm glad we're getting to that.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, me too, me too.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Also, this is behind the Bastards. You know that you
listen to this show.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
This is part four. You're not jumping in on part four,
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah, yeah, start back with part one if you haven't
seen the other parts, or do a reverse listen. If
you have come unstuck in time and can only process
human lives going backwards to forwards like a Benjamin Button
kind of deal, you know, then maybe it makes sense.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
So last episode, the people of Georgia rejected Eugene Talmage
as the representative in the US Senate, but as World
War Two loomed over the country, they welcomed him back
to the governor's office, as Gene signified the comfort of
the past. So we're now in the early nineteen forties
and the first cracks in the Jim Crow South are
starting to appear. Since Jane lost his battle against the

(02:55):
New Deal, all that was left of the Old South
for Gene to defend was its white supremacy. As Southerners
grew to accept and enjoy new deoliberalism, the incongruity of
the racial divisions began to manifest itself. And now, just
like how the manufactured uproar over like a critical race
theory a few years ago, kind of put racism back

(03:17):
into our political conversation, the education system would be the
target for Jean's new distinct focus on racism and white supremacy.
Is because this is going to be one of these
other like overlaps between what Gene pioneered and how this
kind of carries over to like this modern like dictatorial
conservative strategy. I'm going to quote from William Anderson, Jane's biographer, quote,

(03:41):
Georgia remained a secreationist society in nineteen forty one, and
Gene Talmadge remained its greatest advocate. Prior to nineteen forty one,
he had not made racism a major part of his
politics because he had no reason to. Practically every white
Georgian was racist to some degree. Every candidate could be
expected to treat the black of the same, which was poorly,

(04:02):
and any issue of race had been previously overwritten by
the New Deal or personality. Racism had been a part
of his career, but it was far from crucial until
the nineteen forties. So during this time, schools in Georgia
were undergoing badly needed reforms, and the University of Georgia
hired an admin named Walter D. Cocking to improve the

(04:22):
College of Education. So there you go, Yes, get it
out now, doctor Khaki. I'm going to say it a lot.
To say it a lot, Walter, Doctor Walter d Kky,
We're gonna say it a lot. You can get it
out now, did he go?

Speaker 3 (04:42):
The D feels like you put that in there, gear.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
The d's in there. The D is in but you
is always there. It's all about that D.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
To me, Well, that's.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Audience. Can I what can I say? I don't know,
I know, but I feel like you one could have
omitted the D. The D.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
No, No, that would have I would have fired them
on the spot. The D is in the historical record.
I have the duty to include the D. Yeah, Sophie,
this is this is journalistic ethics, one oh one. I
always include the D.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
I guess the D.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
The D is in the D? Is it?

Speaker 1 (05:21):
I guess? Huh uh huh. That's why I'm coming out
with a blockbuster piece of journalism in the next couple
of weeks. That's just every photo I found of Hunter
Biden's cock uh, no text at all, just many stitch
pass over and over again. The New York Times is
putting it up front.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Paid very excited, Robert no Garrison, please.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Please. The Georgia Boardive Regions commissioned multiple studies from doctor
Cocking and his faculty on how to fix the education system,
the results of which recommended more funding for black schools
and partial integration of certain facilities. Graduate students were in
forming Talmage that there were rumors of integration, and a

(06:03):
disgruntled former high school teacher at a school ran by
the university blamed doctor Cocking for her firing, so she
sent Talmich reports on the black studies programs. A Talmwich
supporter in Athens its pread of rumor about doctor Cocking
having an affair with a black cook that grew to
such prominence that the university president investigated and disproved the claim. Now,

(06:23):
things all came to a head in a May nineteen
forty two Board of Regents meeting where Talmadge singled out
another progressive educator for removal the president of the Georgia
Teachers College, doctor Marvin Pittman Gene accused him of being
engaged in local partisan politics. Jane then attacked doctor Cocking,
calling him to be fired as dean, saying that doctor

(06:44):
Cocking quote made a statement that he wanted to see
the time when a school for negroes would be established
at Athens so that negroes and white boys could associate
together unquote okay. Jane then promised to remove any person
in the university system advocating communism or racial equality. Oh,
this motion passed, so that we see very classic tactics here.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah. That is. That is an important thing to understand
American politics is that up to the present day, racial
equality and communism are synonyms for about a third of
the country.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Well, I mean we even we even see this with
like the whole critical race theory thing. Yeah, they're trying
to what I'm saying, yeah, yeah, like they're trying to
inject cultural Marxism and they're like blah blah blah blah blah.
All this that we talked about for years.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
It's been going on for longer than either of us
has been alive. But yeah, that's that's important to know now.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
The president of the University of Georgia, Hermann Caldwell, was
furious about his staff being fired and submitted his own
resignation in protest of Cocking's termination. In response, on June sixteenth,
the board held a hearing in Jean's office reassessing the
firing of doctor Cocking. The office was packed with faculty
in support of Cocking. The only ones there against him

(08:02):
were Talmadge and this former high school teacher that Jane
brought to complain that doctor Cocking was trying to integrate Georgia.
Cocking was reinstated in a seven to eight vote. Jeene
whined about this affair in The Statesman, writing quote, I'm
not going to put up with social equality. We don't
need no n words and white people taught together unquote.

(08:23):
A hearing for doctor Pittman was scheduled for July fourteenth,
but this time in public at the General Assembly instead
of the privacy of the Governor's office. Talmadge instructed doctor
Cocking to attend this hearing as well, promising to present
new evidence. This evidence focused on the Rosenwald Fund, which
financed one of Cocking's studies. Yeah, you can see where

(08:45):
this is not right.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
I think I know where we're headed here. The word
Rosenwald is really all the all the id.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
So this was a philag the prefoundation from the north
that sought to improve the conditions of southern schools. Gene
referred to this fund as quote jew money for n words.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
Hey, you know what, at least he picked the J
word and not the K word, right, he could have
doubled down on the slurs and he is, Yeah, but
two of that it makes him, that makes him woke
by these that decade's standards.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Who woke? Talmach No, I mean you can see Gene's
kind of previous, like decades decades long attacks on like
bankers is kind of as is coded in anti Semitism, certainly,
and like his main political inspiration, Tom Watson was rapidly
anti Semitic, and we're we start to see more of
that anti semitism come out during Gene's kind of last

(09:38):
brush with politics, because Gene just got increased increasingly like
openly racist, because he had like nothing else to like
base his politics on as liberalism progressed in this South.
So Talmadge also ordered the Statesboro College Library to search
for books containing quote communism or anything except Americanism unquote

(09:59):
to use as evidence against the men in the hearings.
Again very similar to all of the attacks on school
and education that we've seen the past few years here
in the United States. Before the hearing, Gene pressured two
oppositional members of the Board of Regents to resign. One
was a lifelong friend and classmate, the other was an
editor at the Constitution, the newspaper now. Friends and political

(10:22):
advisors to Jene strongly discouraged him from doing this, as
he didn't need to make more enemies at the Constitution.
But more importantly, this whole affair, in Gene's increased meddling
in Georgie's education system was actually going to threaten the
accreditation of George's universities. Now I'm going to quote from
William Anderson as he discusses the hearing. Quote. Prior to

(10:44):
the hearing, Gene began mounting a public campaign that painted
the two men as communists, financed by Jews and bent
on destroying George's culture. The public hearing was a public spectacle.
The hall was packed mostly with Tallemich people, and down
front center stage, white suited, smoking a huge cigar and
wearing a ten gallon hat, sat Jean. It was all show.

(11:08):
Flash bulbs sparked the air, people cheered, police swarmed, and
the show opened by reading excerpts from Brown America, The
book written by Rosenwald chief Edwin Embry, had been found
in the Statesboro College Library. Board regent member James S.
Peters said, throughout this book, the thought runs erase the

(11:28):
feeling of superiority of the white man. They want them,
they want them to put the white men down and
draw the races together. They want them to use the
same schools, right, the same trains. It means they want intermarriage.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
That's what it means. Yeah, there we go, there we go. Yeah,
so some good old fing. I mean this does show
you slightly where some of the progress has been because
you're still angry about the same things today, but you
can't say that your issue is intermarriage. We're still it's
still bad to complain about race mixing, although they're working
on that one.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
So they sure are working to bring that back.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, we'll see if we'll see how far they get.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
The fact that like this like great replacement stuff was
like a cringe Lauren Southern posting in twenty seventeen yea,
and is now like a mainstream Republican talking point.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
By not optimistic. Yeah, very worrying.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, So as as h as James Peters talked about
how they want intermarriage, Jean shouted in response, they won't
do it, and the galley and the galley's rocked with
laughter and applause. Now you can you can see these
tactics are the exact same that people are using now,

(12:38):
like reading books found in school libraries to like paint
the to paint these people as like radical and like
trying to destroy America or trying to destroy Georgia. This
is the same stuff that's happening now. To continue from
Anderson quote, the purpose of reading the book was to
find doctor Cocking and Pittman guilty by association with the

(12:58):
Rosenwald Fund. Shocking A. Rose gave a brief denial of
the charges and noted his shock at this circus hearing,
saying that such tactics should be employed in any count
draw on Earth is hard to believe that they are
employed in Georgia. Has all the earmarks of a terrific nightmare.
The galley shouted Yankee teacher quote.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, that's I mean, that's what I would shouted any
of my teachers who were born north of the Mason Dixon,
So I get it.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
The new Talmaged approved Board of Regents voted ten to
five to fire doctor Cocking once again. President Pittman was
next on the chopping block. They read from another book
on race titled Calling America, and a disgruntled professor testified
that five black men from the Tuskegee Institute toured Statesboro
College and eight in the cafeteria while no white people

(13:50):
were on campus. This was Jane's single witness against the educator. Meanwhile,
Pittman had thirty six witnesses, but the board voted once
again ten to five to terminate doctor Pittman. This whole
incident caused a degree of uproar, and Gene responded by writing, quote,
doctor Cocking favored the teaching of white and Negro children

(14:12):
in the same classrooms. My god, I am opposed to
social equality, and as long as I am the governor
of Georgia, no such teaching will be permitted in our
school system. Doctor Cocking, as you know, was reared into Iowa,
where white and colored are taught in this same classroom.
His conducts, his conduct since being in Georgia is proof

(14:33):
of the fact that he retains the views and ideas
gained to him in the state of Iowa. I am
not in favor of such foreign ideas being taught in
our university system. Unquote.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
You know, there's no nice way to say this, so
I'm just going to say it straight out, because I
just read an article this morning about like all the
death threats meteorologists to getting because Republicans have decided that,
like you need just threaten to kill people if they
say that there's going to be a hurricane. That's you know,
and that's inconvenient to your belief system because hurricanes are
clearly getting worse, and you've denied climate change for years,

(15:06):
Like all of this shit you know, the current push
against any kind of like integration, all of the fucking
white genocide panics. Like back in the day, in Talmadge's day,
when you had all of these fucking freaks complaining about
the idea of black and white kids going to school together.
The only thing that overcame their disinformation and paranoia and

(15:27):
bigotry was sending men with machine guns in and saying,
we will fucking kill you if you don't integrate these schools.
That's what the government had to do. Anyway, food for thought.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
So after this second hearing, the Southern Accrediting Commission on
Institutions of Higher Education announced that it was investigating the
governor's interference in the state's education system. Gene responded to
panicked parents concerned that the universities might lose their accreditation
by saying, we credit our own schools down here, which

(16:01):
is also similar to some of Trump's Agenda forty seven
plans to improve the university system.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
He's just offering them what they've wanted forever. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Now, this apparently didn't help calm things down as was,
as Gene was forced to give a radio address defending
his racist actions, which he signed off by saying the
good Negroes don't want any co mixing of the races.
Not great again. Like when Eugene Talmadge is forced to

(16:33):
defend his own racism on radio in nineteen forty two,
Sure that shows how bad he is, because at this
point everyone is racist, Like people in the university in
the university system aren't actually calling for like mass integration
like that, that's not what they're doing. Gene is just
so like fucked up on racist that he thinks any

(16:54):
any small step that might eventually lead to lead to
that outcome has to be like fundamentally opposed. But like
doctor Cocking isn't actually calling for all the schools to
be integrated, like that's like he's like, that's that's simply
not what's happening right now.

Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
Now, the Attorney General, a guy named Ellis Arnold, who
was previously like a longtime Chalage supporter, that he was
worried that Jane's forced resignation of the Board of Regents
was actually just illegal. Gina knew that the AG was concerned,
so when Arnold was out of town for a few days,
Gene instructed the AGI's office to write an opinion affirming

(17:29):
the governor's actions, and then when the AGI returned, he
had to countermand this opinion and announced that he would
be running for governor against Gene to secure academic freedom.
Henry Sperlin, one of Jean's longest friends, did claim that
Gene actually tried to have the ag arrested while he
was vacationing in Florida, just to bring him back to

(17:50):
Atlanta during the legislative session to affirm his actions. Although
I think I think Arnold denies this. There's there's some
some conflicting reports over whether Gene tried to have the
h arrested.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Great now.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
In September, the Southern Accrediting Commission suspended ten of Georgia's
white schools for quote unprecedented and unjustifiable political interference quote.
The next month, the Southern University Conference dropped the University
of Georgia from its membership. Jane told the Board of
Regents that they could undo some of his meddling to
protect the system. However, he was canceling meetings to ratify

(18:27):
an agreement between the regions and the accreditation Committee. Jane
also refused to sign a letter stating that he did
not have complete control over the entire university system, saying quote,
I think it's a mistake for the governor to write
any letter which might limit his authority as the governor. Quote.
One of Jean's allies on the board begged him to reconsider,
warning that if the accreditation issue did not get resolved soon,

(18:50):
it could turn thousands of families and students against Jane.
His wife and his advisors also wanted him to back down,
but fan mail from racist to support told him otherwise.
Not fan mail. Gene received so much fan mail from
like racist like I've sure rule supporters, and he listened
to that way more than he listened to any of

(19:11):
his like actual political advisors, because like this was this
is this is what, this is what the people were
actually wanting. He really, he really enjoyed reading through his
fan mail. This is like a really this was really
important to the way Gene operated as.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
An em that's an a's evidence that you're unhinged because
as someone who gets a lot of fan mail, I
appreciate all of the fans, but reading through fan mail
is at best a mixed experience, right, because for every
person who is like really nice and giving you like
honest you know, it's like, oh, this is great, I'm
glad I've had a positive impact on this person. There's

(19:45):
someone who will like message you with something that is
so that is evidence that like that they're they're having
a problem, right, Like that happens a lot when you're
a contactable person with any level of fame, and it's
deeply upsetting. It's it's not I'm not complaining, it's just like, oh,
you are messaging me because you think that I have

(20:05):
some sort of special inform like knowledge that can help
you when you're like very serious problem. And that is
like every fifth letter you get you when you're famous,
and it's it's not fun.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
It doesn't. I mean, I don't think that matters to Gene,
because gen doesn't actually care about helping people.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
When he just likes that they're reaching out.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah, ways to maximize his racism. That's that's his primary motivation. Yeah,
and a lot of this fan mail affirms his racism,
so he greatly enjoys it. To quote Anderson quote, he
did not believe that the voters wanted integration. He did
not believe that they gave a damn about the accreditation association.
He believed that their opposition to racial equality was so

(20:48):
strong that they would risk almost to any loss. Jeane
felt the implications and the threat were of a far
greater magnitude than even the New Deal, though he saw
them both as a common conspiracy by outside to take
over the lives of Georgians unquote. So, after attempts at
an agreement between the regions and the Accreditlation Committee failed,

(21:09):
finally in December, they've they voted to end the accreditation
of all of Georgie's state schools. The Saint Louis Dispatch wrote, quote,
here in the heart of Dixie has developed a prize
of specimen of full blown American fascism. The dictatorship is
just as effective and just as vicious as the Huey
Long dictatorship. Unquote.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
Okay, very very brave.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
You don't have the New York Times saying saying such
stuff now, full full blown American fascism.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yeah, well, what other kind of American fashions being going
to have? Garrison? You don't, you know, you don't want
half blown American fascism.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
So this, this whole instant is called the Cocking Affair.
I just think that's a really good name. Wow, you
just you just said half blown and that reminded me, anyway,
we should take it break, Yeah, speaking should Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
Anyway, here you go, awful, Ah, we're back. Ah, good stuff.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
And what a cocking affair it was.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
What a cocking affair it was.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
So the next election would be framed as choosing education
or racism, though this wasn't like really truly the case
because again both candidates Talmadge and Arnell were were segregationists.
One just preferred to not shut down the entire school
system to exert personal power over two academics whom he
personally disliked. Right like that That is the main difference

(22:42):
between between Talmadge's racism and Arnold's racism. Sure Anderson notes Arnell,
emerging as Jen's only opponent, said that the issue was
not the black man, not the mixing of races, but
whether George's children would be denied quality education unquote. Now
to Arnold's success was that this election only be a
two man race, and he successfully convinced others not to

(23:06):
run as it would split the county and vote, giving
Gene an almost automatic victory. Arnell knew that a large
number of people would vote for racism and that he
was not equipped to beat Gene in a quote unquote
n word hating contest. Education remained the only remaining vector
of attack against Gene. Now, on top of fixing the
school crisis, Arnell also called to put more limits on

(23:28):
the governor's individual power. In campaign speeches, Arnell called Talmadge
George's own version of Hitler, and he called for Georgians
to quote awaken to the dangerous trend in our state government.
Unquote Yeah, that would be nice, That would be nice
if people, Oh.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
I think George is going to turn it around. Now.
I don't know where this story ends, Garrison, but I
got a good feeling.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
This story has a mixed ed dig but yeah, yeah, Now.
Jeane's nineteen forty two reelection campaign was riddled with unforced
errors and self sabotaging betrayals. He turned his old friend
and political ally Tom Linder against him by refusing to
return a political favors once again. This is a continued

(24:15):
trend that throughout his career, and he even sabotaged Linder's
post as Agricultural Commissioner, which pissed off Linder so much
that he began campaigning against Gene to quote Anderson quote.
The Atlanta Journal noted that Jeane's candidacy had soured because
of too much racism. Old friends seemed to be leaving
him in droves, and it became a part of every

(24:36):
Arnol speech to have ex Talmach people turn in their
red suspenders. Students protested, rallies chanting to hell with Talmage. Unquote,
Dick Chady has come out against Eugene Talmage. All of
Talmadge's former cabinet has come out against Euchene Talmage. Great,

(25:00):
all these guys had also sucker, Like, yeah, Gen sucks
a little.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
It's not entirely and pot like inconceivable that Dick Cheney
would have been around, and that's true. Needing to give
a comment back then.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yeah, a little like five year old Dick Cheney.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, yeah, a little five year old Dick Cheney shooting
a man in the face and then gives a quote
on Eugene Talmadge.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Scary, scary thought.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah, yeah he was. He was a hard drinker at
five too, So yeah, I believe that.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
That is different, dis unbelievable. So was Talmadge. Uh, Talmadge
was drinking a lot later in his life and throw
this whole race. His health was his health was plummeting.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, that's that's probably for the best.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
No. University of Georgia students were putting on anti Talmadge
skits at football games and canvassed for the Arnold campaign
in large numbers, because like, this guy had just taken
away their education and at this point in like Georgia history,
this kind of marked the turn point where education wasn't
just like a luxury for the super rich, it was
finally becoming like something that regular people could afford to enjoy,

(26:08):
and like specifically, it marked a path to escape from
this like endless cycle of like crop farming that your
family and your parents, your grandparents, their grandparents had all
been doing for their entire lives. Like education was their
way out, was their way out of this system, and
Gene was stealing it from them. So massive, massive student

(26:29):
organizing happened against Gene Talmadge during during this race, so
much so that Talmage supporters in Athens, where the University
of Georgia is thought it would be too dangerous for
a Gene to speak in town while school was still
in session, and instead he was advised to hold rallies
in surrounding towns, and at Statesboro College, Gene's driver and

(26:52):
sometimes bodyguard teargast a group of student protesters while Gens
spoke instance like this bolstered arnold'sttacks on Gene as a
dictatorial strong man, saying that Governor Talmadge was quote carrying
a bunch of strong arm runts and and plug ugly
is ready to use a mustard gas on children.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
Plug, well, we all do like mustard gasing children.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
I am glad. I do not associate with machine gun operators.
I am glad. I do not live in fear of friends.
I have double crossed unquote again, I think there actually
is a way for Arnel to solve some of these
problems by getting a little friendly with some machine gun operators.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Hey it historically, it's the only thing that works.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
So violence continued at Talmage rallies. He's now tear gassing students.
The Atlantic Journal commented on why violence seems to often
accompany Jean's campaign, quoting quoting from the Atlantic Journal, quote Talmagism,
by its very nature, tends to produce this sort of thing.
It means bullying, browbeating, dictatorship. Its resilience is not on reason,

(28:04):
but on arbitrary force. Its appropriate emblems are a gas
attack and a blackjack unquote. Now, this was either slang
meaning a police baton or like coercion via threats.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Now.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
On his way to his traditional Fourth of July speech,
Jean had his driver stop at a farm just outside
of town to use the outhouse. This was an old
Gene tactic, just to win another rule voter. Now, this
was a rainy and overcast day, a first in his
series of Fourth of July speeches. Jane returned from the
outhouse in pain, rubbing his butt and exclaimed, the driver

(28:41):
a goddamn black widow spider bit me on the ass.
Oh no, they found a doctor in town. Gene was
given medication and told to cancel the speech, which, of course,
he refused to do so. He began his our long
speech suffering from great pain and not in and not

(29:05):
long into the speech, torrential downpour caused most of the
audience to abandon Jane, leaving only a handful of attendees
in the rain and a few others listening from their cars.
I'm gonna read from Anderson quote. The rain pelted Jean's
lonely figure slightly bent with pain, but he kept talking
hard and loud, so that those in their cars could hear.

(29:27):
The water pounded in the paper bunting, washing its fragile red,
white and blues all over the pine planking in gashes
of color. It drenched Jean's suit and plastered his hair
against his head, but he still went on, wet to
the bone, alone and herding badly from the bite. After
twenty five minutes he could give no more. He hobbled
dejectedly from the platform to the applause of honking car horns.

(29:50):
Only one prompter had remained with them, and when he asked,
what about the Negroes going to our schools? Jean Talma responded,
Before godfriend, the n words will never go to a
school which is white. While I am governor, he blamed
the whole mess on carpetbaggers, communists, and the newspapers.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
That's that's the one similarity is that I also do
blame all of my problems on carpetbaggers.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
You live in Oregon, what do you do?

Speaker 1 (30:18):
I know they're all carpet baggers here, Garrison. That's why
you got to really watch out.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
You're the carpet bagger.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
No, no, no, No, I'm through a cat. I'm pulling
up carpets and throwing them in the trash. Baby, I
got a wood floor. Uh huh, Sophy, I called you
a carpetbagger the other day because I had to wake
up at eleven thirty.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
I'm okay with that.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
Imm hmm, Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Jean was right in the way that, like the extremely
isolated rule Georgians didn't much care for the educational issue,
as like it hardly affected them, and instead they saw
the vague spe of racial integration as a much more
frightening threat, and to his credit, William Anderson does discuss
like the hypocritical nature of this election, how Talmadge was

(31:11):
widely framed as the racist candidate while his pro education
liberal opponents could could get away with making very similar statements.
For example, at one of his rallies, Elis Arnold stated quote,
why if a negro ever tried to get into a
white school in the section where I live, the sun
would not set on his head? Unquote good Lord Jesus Christ.

(31:33):
So yeah, like everyone's bad. During a radio appearance, while
Arnell thought he was off mike, he was accidentally broadcast
saying quote any n word who tried to enter the
university would not be in existence the next day.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
Jesus.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
We don't need a governor or a sheriff to take
care of that situation, unquote. And like that's the difference, right,
is that like Talmadge wants this to be like like
a part of like state law. He wants this to
be like he wants to be like pre eminently making
sure this this, this, this never happens, while Arnell is

(32:10):
just comfortable and like the racism of his general constituency
will be like no, like we don't need the government
to do that. We'll have like regular white people kill
the like it's we'll just have the regular white people
like kill black people if they try to get into
the schools like that. Like that that that's that's where
what's That's where the line comes down. It's like it's
the it's the specific it's the specific focus that the

(32:31):
racial issue is framed in their politics. That shows like
the difference between the two candidates, even though both are
like kind of raging, murderous racist Georgians in the nineteen.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
That's just who's that. Yeah, I mean that's always going
to be the case.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
Now like everyone rallying against Jean were we're very racist
and pro segregation. They just didn't want to sacrifice privileges
enjoyed by white Georgians for Jane's quest for personal power
and his idealistic commitment toward its supremacy, even when it
was politically inconvenient. Ultimately, Arnell beat Jane by fifty thousand
in the popular vote and by over one hundred points

(33:10):
in the county unit vote. This year there was low
voter turnout, with over one hundred thousand less votes than
just a few years ago. The New Deal elections just
drew out much more enthusiasm and a greater number of votes,
and World War II was certainly a contributing factor to
there being less votes this year. Now. Unlike his last defeat,
this time there was no stop this Deal, and Gene

(33:33):
admitted that the university accreditation issue lost him the election. Still,
the vast, vast majority of Georgians were still incredibly racist,
Elis Rnel among them, but all he had to do
was present his prejudice in a more responsible way. I'm
going to quote from Anderson quote. Gene's defeat did not
mean that Georgians were ready to embrace black people or

(33:53):
allow integrated schools. But the vote was a significant statement
which testified to the profound changes that had occurred in
the white Georgian's mind. They had faced the racial issue,
and for the first time in history, they had blinked
thereby showing a flexibility. Not much, but some the voters
did show that they valued something more than white supremacy.

(34:14):
Probably few other issues would have caused such a vote,
but the fact that one issue did cause the white
reaction was historically significant. Jean had misread Georgian's willingness to
reject the old way for a second time. He had
shown again how his personality politics could not withstand a
confrontation with great issues. Reality had again defeated idealism. So

(34:37):
that's the situation in nineteen forty two. Now after the election,
Jean's race controversies continued. In the last month of office,
it was learned that for two years Jeane had been
receiving monthly food deliveries of vegetables and meat grown and
processed by inmates at the state prison farm. The slave
labor deliveries were sent both to his house in Atlanta

(34:59):
and his farm in MCA. When questioned about this, Jean
seemed proud, saying I didn't pay for a penny of it.
I'd advise the next governor to try the same plan.
It helps keep expenses down. Rumors also circulated that Mitt,
Jean's wife, was using prison labor to help keep the
farm up and running, with an old neighbor saying quote,

(35:19):
Mitt worked the cheapest nwords she could find. That's one
of the reasons that she made such good money out
on the farm unquote. And then after the election, our
old journalist's friend, Ralph McGill reported that Jean had been
spotted at a KKK meeting, a claim that Jane did
not dispute, instead writing to McGill, Ralph, I don't hate anyone.

(35:42):
I know that hatred dwarfs the man who carries it
in his soul and does not affect the one whom
he hates at all. Everyone had a great time, and
I wish, Ralph that you could have been there unquote.
So this is what g was getting up to in
his semi retirement.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Sure you know, amongst us.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Me, I've never been to a KKK rally.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Oh wow, okay, okay, I mean I've been to a
KKK rally. But but I have eaten at a Sizzler
and those are not dissimilar experience. No, yeah, yeah, it's
like the KKK rally of restaurants.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, Sophie, is that true.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
My only memory of Sizzler is that my brother really
liked the commercials when we were younger and begged my
mom to take us there, and then he was really
disappointed because the food was terrible.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
It's got awful.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
I'm sorry to Sizzler, but I've never been to I've
never been to Clan rallies for like, not for work.
Me and Robert have attended a great number. Racist rally
is for work.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
I will say, going to like any of the restaurants
that exclusively cater to elderly people on Sundays and like
North Texas is a similar experience. You're going to hear slurs.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
So as as Gene was now in semi retirement, he
still ran a law office, but he didn't have like
imminent plans to run for election and no longer having
to appeal to voters. Jean moved further to the right
and attacked Roosevelt for using the war to globalize the
New Deal in further in furtherance of a quote unquote

(37:28):
world regimentation. The Jene's primary objection to the war was
that it would lead to calls for more black civil
rights and compromise the segregationist South. A headline in Jean's
newspaper The Statesman read a quote election of Roosevelt means
promoting negroes in Georgia unquote, I mean and great. So

(37:50):
like after the war, certainly there was that there were
more calls for black civil rights because a whole bunch
of black people had just like fought for the United
States overseas. And it's like Gene knew that that was
gonna happen, and that was one of his primary objections
to the war, as well as this like proto Illuminati
conspiracy theory that that Roosevelt was like specifically getting into

(38:13):
the war so that he could spread like a globalized
new deal. That was so like we can see little
seeds again of talking points that that will become more common,
you know, once we got to like the John Birch
Society like a decade or so later. Now as a
last fuck you from FDR all the way back in
nineteen thirty five, when Gene was eyeing up the presidency,

(38:36):
Roosevelt sent the IRS to investigate Gene's finances, and after
a fruitless ten year search, the IRS came to Jean's
law office and gave him a three thousand dollars bill
for all of the work that they had done. I
don't know that's how the IRS is supposed to work.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
That doesn't sound like the way it's supposed to work.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
But critical support to the IRS for billing Gene for
them investigating his finances for ten years.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, honestly, like I could use a
little bit more of that energy in the modern era.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
Yes, Now, after World War Two, society had essentially like
progressed passed the need for a Eugene Talmage. The war
accelerated liberal progress and Georgia was dragged into the modern era.
But by the end of the war, when the men
came home, a reactionary spirit was growing to comfort those
who found themselves in an unfamiliar, changing world. Unable to

(39:36):
completely undo all the vast reforms that had been done
in the FDR years, the last vestige of the past
to fall back on was again racism. In spring of
nineteen forty six, the Supreme Court ruled that the whites
only primary elections were unconstitutional and that black citizens must
be allowed to vote in primaries. This sent shockwaves through

(39:57):
the South. In response to the court ruling, Gene called
for the state's primary election laws to be completely abolished,
leaving the primary regulations up to the party. Then the
Democratic Party could decide on having an all white primary.
That no serious politician like this plan, as it would
mean an end to the county unit system and all

(40:18):
the legal safeguards against election fraud. Basically, Gene's idea would
seriously jeopardize Georgia's ability to function as a legitimate state. Okay,
this is this is in line with like his whole
thing during the Cocking affair, right, Like he's able, like
he is willing to jeopardize the legitimacy of the government
and end of the state just to ensure white supremacy,

(40:41):
and like this is what separates him from the other politicians.
Right the other politicians are like, no, we still need
to have like a working state, Like we still need to,
we still need to, we still need to be able
to function. And Jan's willing to like sabotage like the
state's own ability to operate, just to ensure his white
supremacist like ideology is going to be intact after his death.

(41:02):
So like, regardless of whatever Gene was up to, Governor
Arnold refused to call for a session to alter voting laws,
taking the somewhat bold stance of requesting that the good
people of Georgia let black people vote in their primary.
This was actually like pretty progressive for the time, especially

(41:22):
for a governor in the South. For all of Arnold's
racism that we've already discussed, this was like one of
the better things he did, and this kind of helped
to improve his legacy as a governor, the fact that
he did not oppose black people voting in party primaries.
So unable to abolish or change primary law, Gene decided

(41:43):
to give the governor's race one last shot in a
campaign to save the white primary. Gene was now sixty
one and was getting increasingly ill. He drank too much
and he barely ate. Friends and family, including his wife,
Met pleaded with genea not to run, worry that the
campaign might literally kill him. But Jene thought there was
no one else more qualified to run a white supremacist
campaign than himself. Anderson says, quote Jane considered the Negro

(42:08):
the vulnerable spot in the liberals armor. His son, Herman,
now back from the Navy, and a number of other
astute advisors, were in disagreement with Gene over the degree
of emphasis that should be placed on the racial issue.
Hermann had seen his father ride race to defeat in
nineteen forty two, and while Georgia was still very much racist,
she had allowed her attitudes towards Black Americans to suffer erosion,

(42:30):
not by very much, but there had been movement. The
Supreme Court decision provided Gene with some badly needed angles
on the racial issue, which needed some substantiation. It had
generally been felt that the black cause had advanced, but
there had been comfort in knowing that the advancement had
been more myth than reality. The court ruling changed all
that and thrust the Negro into the foreground as an issue.

(42:53):
It also sent a shudder through George's liberal establishment, for
very few of them favored social integration. It would cost
them their reressive credibility to join the chorus against Black Americans.
But worse than that, they feel that an outburst of
white supremacy would obliterate them at the polls. Unquote, So
Gene equated this post war period with the reconstruction right

(43:14):
in his main campaign platform was to ensure quote a
democratic white primary unfettered and unhampered by radical communism and
alien forces unquote. Jean's son, Herman, was heavily involved in
the nineteen forty six selection campaign and wrote the rest
of his platform. Hermann tried to soften some of his father's,
like Harsher ultra conservative edges. The first draft of Herman's

(43:37):
platform shocked Gene, saying, good God Almighty, who wrote this stuff?
But Gene eventually agreed. The strategy was to please the
predominantly racist white Georgians as well as attract Talmadge skeptic
liberals with Herman's economics. The results saw Gene call for
quote social reforms to be protected and maintained, and we

(43:59):
must protect the news grow from the communist influence unquote.
That was his basic like combined platform. He was kind
of embracing some of the more liberal economics that he
had spent his whole career deriding, while doubling down on
like the race issue. Jene formally started his campaign in May,
for going the typical barbecue cookout and his rallies were

(44:22):
smaller and more docile than usual. Crowd sizes across the state,
across all campaigns were smaller than they used to be.
This is attributed to a number of factors of like
the mass adoption of home radio, less bountiful food post war,
and for this summer especially, people were staying home out
of fears of like a so called race riot now

(44:43):
adding to the racist focus in the campaign. In June,
Gene announced that if elected, he would cease all interstate
bus travel through Georgia in response to a new federal
ruling that declared that black people have the right to
sit anywhere they wanted on a bus crossing state lines.
To maintain segregated seating, Gene proposed a system where to
enter or exit the state, passengers would have to leave

(45:06):
their bus on the state line and get a special
ticket for travel within Georgia. This was the length he
was willing to go. H just a completely ludicrous, a
completely ludicrous system. Or you have to get off the bus,
get a special ticket, re enter the bus with segregated seating.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Yeah, now I love that. It's it's this is always
the way these things go, right. It's like the same
with most of the fair evasion things, where it's like, hmmm,
like what what can we do? Like how do we
solve this problem that we have largely created as a problem.
Let's just make the whole thing worse for everybody.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
It's emblematic of what all of his solutions end up being.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
Like, yeah, and I haven't really thought through the problem,
let alone like what the solution will do.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
It's all theater.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
It's it's it's it's all invented. I invented an issue,
or at least like my can sticks invented an issue.
I probably know that it's bullshit, but I'm just gonna
make things. I guess there's some intelligence there, because like,
if your response to all my racist voters are angry
about integration and your solution to deal with integration in

(46:15):
public transit is to make public transit worse, everyone will
get angrier. And as a general rule, the primary resource
you have as a guy like Talmage is the anger
of life, the anger of your regular dumb people. Right,
Like that's it. So yeah, I guess it all makes
sense in the end. Make everything worse. Yeah, So other
Republican Party works today, sure.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
In parallels to our current situation. In the past decade,
Jean played a sort of cat and most game with
the big Atlanta newspapers. Reporters would gleefully follow the Talmadge
campaign trail, and though both parties were critical of each other,
they relied on each other right like the Talamage helped
the newspapers because he helped them sell a whole bunch of papers,

(46:57):
and Talmage needed papers to cover himself. But in the
forty sixth race, this dynamic fully tipped over into open hostility,
with each side now viewing the other as legitimately dangerous
and no longer useful. As the papers attacked Gene, reporters
received threats and harassment from his supporters and had to
go undercover at campaign rallies. At one small kind of

(47:20):
backwater town, Jean spotted a talmidch critical reporter whom he
banned from visiting his office, hiding in the crowd, and
he started ranting about them lying Atlanta newspapers. And then
he pointed to the lone reporter, thar he is, now,
I do love that it is spelled t haar. The

(47:41):
reporter braced for like a gang assault, but Gene ordered
his boys to let him up on stage. As he
climbed on the platform, Gene whispered in his ear, I
know you're a pretty good fella, you just right that
way unquote. Well, so that is the situation in the
uh in the campaign at this point in time. Do

(48:06):
you know what we also think are pretty good fellas? Sometimes?

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Yeah, I mean, I'm This podcast is sponsored by all
of the guys who survived Goodfellas. So thank god we
remain free of Leonardo DiCaprio spoilers for Goodfellas.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
All right, we are we are back for our last section,
looking at Eugene Talmage and by god, it gets worse.
Oh good now. This entire summer the campaign was marked
by escalating racist violence and intimidation. On May ninth, a
massive cross burning and KKK recruitment rally promising a quote
unquote rebirth of the Clan was held on Stone Mountain,

(48:51):
overlooking Atlanta. The second iteration of the Clan, started thirty
years prior, was also founded on Stone Mountain, and Stone
Mountain is currently the largest Confederate monument in the country,
and it's still often home to white nationalist rallies. To
quote William Anderson quote, rumors of the affair swept the state,
causing near hysteria and giving Gene most of the credit

(49:14):
for bringing the Klan back to life with his demagogery.
The event itself was a comical ragtag affair, which embarrassed
its leaders because they kept running out of sheets to
give to new members. Many of them were forced to
wrap themselves in paper and handkerchiefs. They were psychologically impoverished
of the new age, the cultural laggers, the indebted, the uneducated,

(49:35):
the scared, the have nots, in the age of the Halves.
They grasped the clan in desperation. It was the only
club in town that invited them. Its mysterious sounding rights
and verbiage, its hoods and ornaments, and its history of
resistance to the blacks, and its dedication to the past
gave them a feeling of power and belonging unquote. Now,

(49:58):
I kind of disagree with some of Anderson's characterization of
this rally. Anderson writes that like those gathered on Stone
Mountain were like a sad, pathetic lot who had been
left behind by changing society. And it's not that they
were left behind, it'said they were like stubborn, cruel and cowardly,
like they refused to join society. Like Anderson, both discounts

(50:22):
their agency and the threat of violence they posed, saying
it was high irony that society would look at the
souls with such fear and dread, as though they were
a well disciplined horder that could sweep from the mountain
and destroy at will unquote, and like, I get what
Anderson's saying here. I don't want to give them too
much credit. I don't want to give like, like you know,

(50:42):
current day white supremacists too much credit for being like
a well organized faction that can destroy democracy at like,
at any moment.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
Right.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
But on the other hand, it is wrong to downplay
the violent potential of racial extremism. Yes, this is evidenced
by the Moore's Ford lynching that happened later that summer.
On July twenty fifth outside Monroe, Georgia, while two black
couples were on their way home, a lynch mob forced
their car to pull over, and the mob dragged them

(51:13):
out of the vehicle, broke the girl's arms, tied them
to a tree, and shot all of them until their
bodies could no longer be recognized. Over over sixty shots Jesus.
One of the victims was seven months pregnant, and she
sorted that the unborn baby was cut out of the
mother's body by the mob.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Oh my, oh my god.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
It's one of the most brutal lynchings. And this is
considered the last quote unquote like mass lynching.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yeah, now, I.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
Would say there's incidents that have happened since then, which
certainly qualifies lynchings. But also this is historically like the
final of like the Jim Crow lynchings.

Speaker 1 (51:51):
I would also add that, like in World War One,
when the Western Powers were trying to build up like
hate and a justification to really we have to destroy
Imperial Germany, they told stories of German soldiers cutting babies
out of women's wombs, like one of the things that
was largely used as as like this is why the

(52:11):
Empire of Japan is so evil, as stories of them
doing that in China, and like, I don't disagree that
that's pretty much the ultimate evil, but like that does
kind of bring to mind, well, then if this was
something that a lot of people in the White South
were fine with doing, what should we have done in
this period to the White South anyway?

Speaker 2 (52:32):
Whatever a Monroe local told a reporter, quote, this thing's
got to be done to keep mister Enward in his place.
Since the court said he could vote, there ain't been
any holding him back unquote. President Truman called for an
FBI investigation, but the town protected all of the assailants.
The FBI also looked into Talmadge's possible involvement, and though

(52:56):
rumors that he like personally led the mob were certainly untrue,
Jane did campaign in town shortly before the lynching, and
witnesses reported that Gene spoke with one of the futurest
suspects and offered impunity to anyone quote unquote taking care
of the Negro unquote. An FBI memmo suggested that Talmadge
may have sanctioned the killings in order to help win

(53:18):
the badly needed rule County unit vote shortly after. The
county did indeed go to Talmadge at the very least.
Jean's nineteen forty six campaign rhetoric was widely blamed for
prompting the brutally racist murders. Later that summer, hooded KKK
members held rallies at county courthouses to scare black people
away from voting just like during reconstruction. Anderson notes, quote

(53:43):
Gene said it would be an accident if he got
even one black vote. Unquote. The liberal candidate James Carmichael
did win the popular vote with three hundred and thirteen
thousand votes to Jean's two hundred and ninety seven thousand,
but Talmadge pulled through in the county unit vote by
about a hund undred points. The campaign of yester Year's

(54:03):
racism had won the state That summer, The Charlotte News wrote,
the South will one day be rid of its talmages,
but not until we have completed the long and painful
process of purging ourselves of the sickness upon which they feed.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
Yeah, that would have been that would have been the call.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
That is, I mean, that is something we are still.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Yeah, working, Perhaps we should have purged ourselves from of
the sickness from which they feed.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
Eighty years later, we are still purging ourselves of the sickness.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
It's more that, like eighty years ago, it was very
clear to people like this that like we were eating,
you know, we were consuming something rancid that had made
us sick, and we just kind of doubled down, like
Homer Simpson with that old submarine sandwich and just kept
on eating it.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
After the votes were tallied, Jean said that winning the
race must have cost him ten years of his life,
which might literally be true if he was meant to
live to seventy two instead of sixty two.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
May it happen to Trump? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (54:59):
He He made almost three hundred speeches this campaign, and
by the end of the race his health was in
a dire state, and after the election it did not improve.
At this point in his marriage, Mitt was refusing to
cook him dinner, so he'd often have to eat at friends' houses,
and while on vacation in Jacksonville, Jeane collapsed unconscious onto
the dinner table of one of his friends while eating stew.

(55:21):
He was rushed to the hospital and treated for a
ruptured vein in his stomach.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
Stu got him. Huh, comrade Stu. Look ever since, ever
since twenty twenty, we've been saying that soup is antifa.
That is true. This just really proves the case.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Jane was getting blood transfusions, and upon awaking, Jean told
a young reporter that stuck into the hospital quote, it
ain't nothing but an old bleeding vein. The doctors said
that Gene wouldn't be able to attend the state convention,
so Herman gave the speech in his place, and though
Jane had an initial quick recovery, his friends and fanily

(56:00):
started to doubt that he would survive his four year term.
Then in early December, Gene was rushed to the hospital
again due to hemorrhaging. While in the hospital, Talmuch's team
was still working on plans to save the White primary,
this time by disqualifying all of the registered voters in
the state. But by mid December. But by mid this,

(56:20):
I mean this is actually also like what the modern
right is doing to affect the upcoming election, where they're
doing like mass like unvoter registrations again like specifically targeting
like black areas, especially in Texas. I know that they
have that they have done this as well as well
as in Georgia. Like this is this tactic of like

(56:41):
of of disqualifying registered voters just to sway elections is
still being used now. By mid December, Gene contracted a
cute tepatitis and at this point he knew he was dying.
I'm going to quote from the book Race and Racism
in the United States, quote on his deathbed, he told
his Baptist preacher that the black race was created inferior

(57:02):
by God. He said the white race was on top,
the yellow race next, and then the brown and red races,
and at the very bottom the black race, who were
created to be servants to all other races. Unquote deathbed remarks.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
Yeah, and the standard line on the right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Anderson notes quote. During his illness, a rather morbid joke
circulated saying that Gene Talwich was the only man in
Georgia that could have the whole state, preying at once,
one half that he would die, the other half that
he would live. Now. Some of his last recorded words
are on a phone call to his friend Henry Sperlin,
who was out buying cattle for Jane's farm, and with

(57:45):
with Jean's dying breaths, he whispered over the phone, Spud's
that was Sperlin's nickname, Spud, don't buy no more cowsquote tragic.
Eugene Talwich fell into a coma and died that next morning,
That was December twenty one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
May all of his descendants follow him soon.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
This was just weeks before being sworn in as governor
for the fourth time as his coffin sat in the
state Capitol, it was decorated with a klu klux Klan
wreath and currently a statue honoring Eugene Talmadge stands in
front of the Georgia Capital. That that probably shouldn't be there.
Might want to pull that one down, and and with

(58:30):
that that should be the end of the dictatorial reign
of Eugene Chalmadge. It should, and yet somehow it is not.
There's one more pick. So with Jene dying before being
sworn in as governor, the office should have been passed
down to the Lieutenant governor elect, Melvin E. Thompson. As

(58:52):
Thompson asserted his claim to the governor's office, Jean's son,
Herman Talmadge, announced that he was instead going to take
the governor's office. So as Gene was dying, he was
calling up political associates to ask to ask that they
help Herman pick up the baton from Gene after his death,
and Herman himself had actually already prepared for this contingency

(59:14):
before the general election. A friend of Herman uncovered an
old clause in the state constitution stipulating that if the
governor elect dies before taking office, the General Assembly could
appoint whoever had the second most votes in the general election.
Though Jane ran unopposed in the general Hermann suspected that
the Liberal candidate might receive write in protest votes, so

(59:36):
for insurance, Hermann launched a covert write in campaign for
himself and claimed to receive a thousand votes, beating the
other right in candidates. Governor Arnold rejected Herman's claim to
the office and stated that he himself would remain governor
indefinitely until the mess was sorted out. So there was
now three men claiming to be the rightful governor of Georgia,

(59:58):
all citing different clauses in state constitution. A joint Assembly
met on January fourteenth to decide who was governor. The
Assembly counted the write in votes for Herman, and it
appeared that there were far less than Talmadge proclaimed, with
the official count losing Herman the right and race. This was, however,
until a box of fifty eight additional votes mysteriously arrived

(01:00:21):
from Telfair County, which was Herman's home county, and these
spontaneously appearing extra votes gave Talmadge a small lead. Mysteriously
appeared ah, well, we'll get to it cool. I'm going
to quote from the AJC quote. As the vote neared,
one of the weapons of choice was alcohol. Each side

(01:00:43):
hoped the other might be too drunk to vote.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
I mean, that's that's what I'm hoping for.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Herman Talmadge remembers, quote, some of our people were reacting
strongly to Melvin Thompson's liquor. A state senator of ours
was found in the Capitol grounds passed out. The sheriff
of vurstyinth County came to our office with the Thompson man,
and the sheriff was about to kill him. The sheriff
said he caught the Thompson man serving knockout drops. It

(01:01:09):
was sort of like the date rape drug of today, apparently.
So we had some of our friends organize a rehab
hospital down in the Public Service Commission in the Capitol
where they would be where they would try to keep
our people functioning unquote. So, after a series of fights,
offensively deployed alcohol and some sketchy political maneuvers, Herman was

(01:01:32):
voted governor by the legislature and sworn in at two am.
Eight to ten thousand Talmadge supporters broke into the capitol
and joined Herman as he went to take the governor's office.
Governor Arnold refused to leave. He saw Talmadge's ascension as
illegitimate and called Herman a pretender. A massive fistfight broke
out in the capitol. Furniture was smashed and Arnell's staffers

(01:01:56):
were assaulted by the mob. Herman climbed onto a desk
to tell his orders to leave. Arnell was escorted out
of the Governor's office and Talmage had the locks changed.
Arnell was still asserting that he was acting governor. Instead
of leaving the capitol, he set up a desk in
the rotundra and tried to conduct business as usual. So
we had two men in the capital with separate desks,

(01:02:19):
both claiming to be governor now. The next day, Herman
carried a thirty eight caliber pistol to work, as he
did for the remainder of his term, scaring that he
might have to use it against an Arnold man.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
So okay.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Six weeks after Herman was sworn in, a journalist at
the Atlanta Journal named George Goodwin started to look into
those mysterious fifty eight extra votes from Telfair County. He
located the list of writing votes and noticed that thirty
four of them had apparently voted in alphabetical order, starting
with A and stopping with K. Finding this highly improbable,

(01:02:57):
Goodwin tried to track down these individuals voters, only to
discover that some of these people did not exist, others
had died before the election, and Moore had either moved
away prior to the election or abstained from voting. Goodwin
won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on this, and
seventeen days after his expose, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled

(01:03:18):
that the General Assembly exceeded their jurisdiction by electing Hermann
Talmadge and that the Lieutenant governor elect from the time
of Jean's death, Melvin Thompson, would indeed serve as governor.
So that that's how Jane tried to actually extend his
power past his death in the so called three governors controversy.

(01:03:40):
I mean, it's one of the basiest things.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
It's it's definitely like Trump, he could he might try
something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
I dont trouble Will for the reason that I don't
think Trump cares enough. It cares enough about either of
his oldest sons to ever do this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
No, well, yeah, maybe maybe maybe Barn maybe Baron.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
If he tries to put like seventeen year old Baron
into office, maybe I don't know. I don't know how
that will work. But no, I think the only thing
stopping Trump from trying like a similar like forced political
dynasty is the fact that he just does not like
either of his oldest sons nearly as much as a
Gene liked Herman. But now, this is one of the

(01:04:21):
crazier moments in Georgia history, when when you have three
people claiming to be governor of one of them. Herman
has never has never been elected. His only claim to
fame is that he's the son of Eugene Talmadge. That
I have, I I have one final kind of closing
note on Townwdge's rain over Georgia. So Talnwridge's intermittent rain

(01:04:44):
over the state arose during the start of substantial progress
in the South, and Gene was the reactionary embodiment of
resistance to change. He was the vessel for his Confederate
ancestors as the modern world invaded Georgia. Jean mastered the
politics of theater and white. Georgia was enthralled with his performance.
For two decades, people either loved or hated Jane. There

(01:05:04):
was very little in between. His core supporters were the
rich businessmen and the dirt poor little guy. Jane's economics
paved the way for the intense corporate control over Georgia
that continues to this day. Yeah and I will I
will finally close with with some of the some of
the words of the last page of Gene's biography quote,

(01:05:24):
if the businessman supplied the money, the poor farmer supplied
the court vote that gave Talmage his power. He had
no real solutions for these people. His solutions had all
been proven wrong by the very past he revered. He
served them as an emotional crutch when their consciousness was
being shattered by the catastrophic depression and the subsequent radicalism
of the New Deal. As long as he played by

(01:05:45):
their rules, they supported him. But when he tried to
take the new fruits away from them, or sought real
power by running for the Senate, they denied him. They
wanted him basically powerless, though they reveled in his power plays,
which was a prisoner of history. A culturalizlationist lost in
a time frame, that he was unable to leave on
his own, and that his supporters finally refused to help

(01:06:08):
him leave. Gene Talmadge strode the decade when Georgia got
up and went along. When she began to pull up stakes,
learned to say yes and became less preoccupied with self
and looking beyond, she lost something and gained something. Her
people had looked beyond the tall pines at the end
of the field and realized for the first time that
something better must be out there, and in doing so

(01:06:31):
they admitted defeat, admitted they could no longer go it
at their own. In nineteen ten, sixty sixty one percent
of all Georgians were rural farm dwellers. By nineteen forty
the figure it hit forty four percent. There is drama here,
There is preparation for profound change. And the drama of
Eugene Talmage is that he arrived in the dead middle
of this great physical and mental shift. The fact that

(01:06:52):
he was elected to state office four times during this
period does not indicate that the shifts were meaningless. To
the contrary, they illustrate the eg in the passion of
the move. These were people briefly awash. Having pushed off
from a safe shore and uncertain of the new ground
they were testing, eyes darted quickly back to the old place.

(01:07:13):
Hearts were touched instantly by its recollections. Hands formed on
the plow handles unconsciously grasped for worn grain. Geene was
the shore that they had left, and that was his
ultimate loss. I what do you think, Robert, I.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
Mean, I'm thinking actually of his ultimate victory, which is
the Georgia environmental official in Atlanta, who was like investigating
the biolab fire, which was the result of private of
this corporatism of private equity hollowing out a company that
operated this chemical facility, and so they didn't have proper
safeguards and used water to put out a fire that

(01:07:51):
water should not have been used on, and it blanketed
the entire city, or at least a large portion of
it in fucking chlorine gas fumes. The guy who was
investigating it for the state collapsed like while giving a
state or giving testimony about.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
Right fire right after giving testimony.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
Yeah, and people online, a whole bunch of them with
thousands of likes per person, are suggesting that he was
attacked by a CIA heart attack gun, because obviously that's
the only thing that could have done this. I see that,
as you know, the real triumph of Talmach's legacy is
that shit like that is not only the Norman Georgia,
but it's becoming the norm everywhere in this great country

(01:08:31):
because ultimately he and the people like him tend to win.
Because again we could talk about the men with machine guns.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
But yeah, yeah, I mean, and specifically, the corporate control
over Georgia that he helped established is like one of
the prime reasons why we now have copp City. The
way that Atlanta is completely controlled by like five corporations,
the way that they completely exert power over city Council,
the Atlanta Police Foundation, like all of that can be
traced back to Eugene Talmage. And yeah, in some ways,

(01:09:06):
although he lost the battle for segregation in the next
like ten twenty years, he really did kind of win
in the end in some ways. I mean, especially if
you look at how we've talked about these last four episodes,
how the template that he laid out is now being
followed by DeSantis, by Trump, by by by all of
these guys seeking power, and it works, and I think

(01:09:31):
it's not again, Like it is a travesty that Jeane
died before being sworn into office for a fourth time.
The fact that he died of like liver failure instead
of many other means, and or the fact that that
he died on his way to taking office once again
on an explicit platform of white supremacy shows that maybe

(01:09:52):
he actually did kind of win in the end. And
I think I am looking at him as like, like
he is like the last real like Southern den Democrat,
right he is. He's the last guy before the South
moves to being racist Republicans. Yeah, and like that that
is his legacy, is that this is that this is
that this Democrat party man actually paved the way for
Republicans to completely ruin the country and the states, uh

(01:10:16):
for the next like eighty years.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
And that's why he's my hero. Anyway, Well, there we go.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
That is a that is a story of a Eugene
Talmage and his dictorial reign over the state, over the
state of Georgia.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
Well, you know, everyone, all I got to say is
keep your fingers crossed. Soon we'll have a better dictator
in charge of Georgia. That's what I believe.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
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(01:11:01):
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