Marvin Griffin served as the 72nd governor of Georgia from 1955 to 1959, where he supported educational segregation and opposed the integration of Georgia schools.
23 Facts About Marvin Griffin
2.
Marvin Griffin served on the college's board of directors and died from lung cancer in 1982.
3.
Marvin Griffin was born in Bainbridge, Georgia and graduated from The Citadel in 1929.
4.
At The Citadel, Marvin Griffin was a battalion commander and played on the baseball team.
5.
Marvin Griffin taught in Virginia for a short time before moving back to Bainbridge.
6.
Marvin Griffin owned the Bainbridge radio station, WMGR, which was established in the late 1940s.
7.
Marvin Griffin was a major for most of World War II and was honorably discharged as a lieutenant colonel in 1944.
8.
Marvin Griffin became the first Lieutenant Governor of Georgia to win office in a special election, in 1948.
9.
Marvin Griffin was seen as the successor to Governor Herman Talmadge, and he won the governorship in 1954 before runoff elections were required in Georgia.
10.
Marvin Griffin received a plurality of 36.3 percent of the ballots cast.
11.
In 1958, Marvin Griffin, who was a segregationist and accused of being racist, took advantage of the intense media coverage surrounding the Springhill mining disaster in Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada to promote tourism to his state by offering a group of survivors free vacations to Jekyll Island.
12.
However in December 1955, Griffin publicly sent a telegram to his state's Board of Regents in an attempt to pressure Georgia Tech's president Blake R Van Leer to pull out.
13.
Marvin Griffin implored teams from Georgia not to engage in racially integrated events which had black citizens either as participants or as spectators.
14.
In 1962, Marvin Griffin ran once more for governor but lost in the primary to a moderate candidate, Carl Sanders.
15.
Marvin Griffin received 332,746 votes to Sanders' 494,978.
16.
Part of the factor in Marvin Griffin's defeat was the abolishment of the county unit system, though one study found that Sanders would have won even if the county unit system had still been in place.
17.
Conversely, former Governor Ernest Vandiver, who as lieutenant governor from 1955 to 1959 had frequently quarreled with Governor Marvin Griffin, dismissed Maddox as "a pipsqueak" and endorsed Callaway.
18.
In 1968, Griffin was a stand-in candidate for Vice President of the United States on George C Wallace's American Independent Party ticket.
19.
Marvin Griffin helped to found Bainbridge College in 1970, where classes began in 1973.
20.
Marvin Griffin was a leading advocate and member of the college's board of directors.
21.
Marvin Griffin oversaw and directed the Decatur County Sesquicentennial in 1973, at which Georgia governor and future President Jimmy Carter was the honored guest.
22.
Marvin Griffin was heartbroken by the death of his second wife who died from lung cancer.
23.
Marvin Griffin died on June 13,1982, less than a week after his wife's death.