1. Jim Folsom was the first Governor of Alabama born in the 20th century.
24 Facts About Jim Folsom
1. 2.
Jim Folsom attended the University of Alabama, Samford University in Birmingham, and George Washington University in Washington, DC, but he never obtained a college degree.
3.
Jim Folsom was a strong supporter of keeping US Vice President Henry A Wallace on the ticket, rather than replacing him with Harry S Truman of Missouri, which occurred.
4.
Jim Folsom was elected governor for the first time in 1946 on a New Deal liberal platform attacking corporate interests and the wealthy.
5.
Jim Folsom waged a colorful campaign with a hillbilly band, brandishing a mop and bucket that he said would "clean out" the Capitol.
6.
Jim Folsom was among the first Southern governors to advocate a moderate position on racial integration and improvement of civil rights for African Americans.
7.
On March 3,1948, Jim Folsom's name was in headlines across the nation when the 30-year-old Christine Putman Johnston, who had met Jim Folsom in late 1944 while she was working as a cashier at the Tutwiler Hotel in Birmingham, filed a paternity suit against the governor by alleging that he was the father of her 22-month-old son.
8.
Undaunted, Jim Folsom appeared nine days after the suit was filed outside the Barbizon Modeling School in New York City, where he kissed a hundred pretty models who had voted him "The Nation's Number One Leap Year Bachelor," attracting a crowd of 2,500 onlookers and causing a traffic jam.
9.
On May 5,1948, without prior publicity, Jim Folsom married the 20-year-old Jamelle Moore, a secretary at the state Highway Department, whom he had met during his 1946 campaign and had been dating and seeing "almost daily" since then.
10.
In 1958, Folsom commuted a death sentence imposed on James E Wilson, an African American sentenced to death for a violent robbery.
11.
Jim Folsom did not intervene in every controversial case; Jeremiah Reeves, accused of raping a white woman, was electrocuted the same year, which sparked protests.
12.
Jim Folsom later confessed that his silence was due solely to political reasons, arguing that he "just couldn't" commute the death sentence of a black man in such as case, since it would destroy him politically.
13.
In 1962, Folsom again ran for governor against his one-time protege George C Wallace but was defeated.
14.
Jim Folsom's campaign was damaged by a television appearance in which he appeared seriously intoxicated and unable to remember his children's names.
15.
Jim Folsom ran again for governor in 1966 and faced three other leading Democrats in the primary, former US Representative Carl Elliott, former Governor John Malcolm Patterson, and Attorney General Richmond Flowers Sr.
16.
Jim Folsom would continue to run for governor in 1970,1974,1978, and 1982, but he was never taken seriously by his opponents.
17.
Jim Folsom was plagued by ill health in the last years of his life.
18.
Jim Folsom married teacher and social welfare worker Sarah Carnley in 1936.
19.
Jim Folsom died in 1944 at age 36 due to pregnancy complications.
20.
Jim Folsom settled the suit, and later admitted that he was the child's father.
21.
In 1948, Jim Folsom eloped with his second wife, Jamelle Jim Folsom, nee Jamelle Moore.
22.
Jim Folsom had ten children: two by his first wife, Sarah; one by Christine Putman Johnston; and seven by his second wife, Jamelle.
23.
Jim Folsom served as lieutenant governor of Alabama from 1987 to 1993.
24.
Jim Folsom assumed the governor's office when Republican Governor Guy Hunt convicted of state ethics law violations and removed from office.