Furnifold McLendel Simmons (January 20,1854 –April 30,1940) was an American politicians who served as a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from March 4,1887 to March 4,1889 and U.S. senator from the state of North Carolina between March 4,1901 and March 4,1931. He served as chairman of the powerful Committee on Finance from March 4,1913 to March 4,1919. He was an unsuccessful contender for the 1920 Democratic Party nomination for president. Simmons was a staunch segregationist and white supremacist,and a leading perpetrator of the Wilmington insurrection of 1898.
Simmons was born in Pollocksville,North Carolina,the son of Mary McLendel (Jerman) and Furnifold Greene Simmons. [1] [2] After Republicans won control of the North Carolina legislature in 1894,Simmons led efforts to disenfranchise black voters and return Democrats to power across the state. He allied with white supremacist newspapers to stoke fears of black men as predators of white women and too incompetent to be trusted as office holders or voters. Simmons also set up hundreds of "White Government Unions," which aimed to "announce on all occasions that they would succeed if they had to shoot every negro in the city." [3] As a result,Democrats swept the 1898 election,and the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 broke out the following day.
In 1901 Simmons won the Democratic nomination for the US Senate. From his Senate seat,he then ran a powerful political machine,using A. D. Watts "to keep the machine oiled back home," in the words of one journalist. [4] Simmons remained in office for the next thirty years.
Senator Simmons refused to endorse Al Smith,the Democratic nominee for president in 1928 and the first Catholic nominated by a major party,winning him praise from members of the Ku Klux Klan. [5] Still,rejecting the Democratic nominee in 1928,together with the Great Depression,led to Simmons being defeated in the 1930 Democratic primary by Josiah W. Bailey,who was backed by Governor O. Max Gardner.
Rebecca Ann Felton was an American writer,lecturer,feminist,suffragist,reformer,slave owner,and politician who was the first woman to serve in the United States Senate,although she served for only one day.
Josephus Daniels was an American newspaper editor and publisher from the 1880s until his death,who controlled Raleigh's News &Observer,at the time North Carolina's largest newspaper,for decades. A Democrat,he was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to serve as Secretary of the Navy during World War I. He became a close friend and supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt,who served as his Assistant Secretary of the Navy and later was elected as United States president. Roosevelt appointed Daniels as his U.S. Ambassador to Mexico,serving from 1933 to 1941. Daniels was a vehement white supremacist and segregationist. Along with Charles Brantley Aycock and Furnifold McLendel Simmons,he was a leading perpetrator of the Wilmington insurrection of 1898.
Daniel Lindsay Russell Jr. was the 49th Governor of North Carolina,serving from 1897 to 1901. An attorney,judge,and politician,he had also been elected as state representative and to the United States Congress,serving 1879–1881. Although he fought with the Confederacy during the Civil War,Russell and his father were both Unionists. After the war,Russell joined the Republican Party in North Carolina,which was an unusual affiliation for one of the planter class. In the postwar period he served as a state judge,as well as in the state and national legislatures.
Marion Butler was an American politician,farmer,and lawyer. He represented North Carolina in the United States Senate for one term,serving between 1895 and 1901. At the time,he was a leader of the North Carolina Populist Party,and also affiliated with the Democratic Party and the Republican Party at different points in his career. He was the older brother of George Edwin Butler.
Josiah William Bailey was an American politician who served as a U.S. senator from the state of North Carolina from 1931 to 1946.
Jeter Connelly Pritchard was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and of the United States Circuit Courts for the Fourth Circuit and previously was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia.
Cameron A. Morrison was an American politician and the 55th governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1921 to 1925.
Southern Democrats,historically sometimes known colloquially as Dixiecrats,are members of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the Southern United States. Southern Democrats were generally much more conservative than Northern Democrats with most of them voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by holding the longest filibuster in the American Senate history while Democrats in non-Southern states supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964. After 1994 the Republicans typically won most elections in the South.
Alfred Moore Waddell was an American politician and white supremacist. A member of the Democratic Party,he served as a U.S. representative from North Carolina between 1871 and 1879 and as mayor of Wilmington,North Carolina from 1898 to 1906.
John Dillard Bellamy Jr. was a Democratic U.S. Congressman from North Carolina between 1899 and 1903.
Claude Kitchin was an American politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from the state of North Carolina from 1901 until his death in 1923. A lifelong member of the Democratic Party,he was elected House majority leader for the 64th and 65th congresses (1915–1919),and minority leader during the 67th Congress (1921–1923).
In the 1912–13 United States Senate elections,Democrats gained control of the Senate from the Republicans. Of the 32 seats up for election,17 were won by Democrats,thereby gaining 4 seats from the Republicans. Two seats were unfilled by state legislators who failed to elect a new senator on time. They were the last Senate elections held before ratification of the 17th Amendment,which established direct elections for all seats in the Senate.
The Wilmington insurrection of 1898,also known as the Wilmington massacre of 1898 or the Wilmington coup of 1898,was a coup d'état and massacre carried out by white supremacists in Wilmington,North Carolina,United States,on Thursday,November 10,1898. The white press in Wilmington originally described the event as a race riot caused by black people. Since the late 20th century and further study,the event has been characterized as a violent overthrow of a duly elected government by a group of white supremacists. It is the only such incident in the history of the United States.
The North Carolina Democratic Party (NCDP) is the North Carolina affiliate of the Democratic Party. It is headquartered in the historic Goodwin House,located in Raleigh.
Henry Plummer Cheatham was an educator,farmer and politician,elected as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1889 to 1893 from North Carolina. He was one of only five African Americans elected to Congress from the South in the Jim Crow era of the last decade of the nineteenth century,as disfranchisement reduced black voting. After that,no African Americans would be elected from the South until 1972 and none from North Carolina until 1992.
The Red Shirts or Redshirts of the Southern United States were white supremacist paramilitary terrorist groups that were active in the late 19th century in the last years of,and after the end of,the Reconstruction era of the United States. Red Shirt groups originated in Mississippi in 1875,when anti-Reconstruction private terror units adopted red shirts to make themselves more visible and threatening to Southern Republicans,both whites and freedmen. Similar groups in the Carolinas also adopted red shirts.
David Cheston Rouzer is an American politician who is the U.S. representative for North Carolina's 7th congressional district. Previously he was a Republican member of the North Carolina General Assembly,representing Johnston County and Wayne County in the 12th district of the North Carolina Senate.
SS Furnifold M. Simmons was a Liberty ship built in the United States during World War II. She was named after Furnifold McLendel Simmons,a politician from North Carolina responsible for the disenfranchisement of African-American voters in that state,as well as head of a Democratic Party political machine until his death in 1940.
The 1928 United States presidential election in North Carolina was held on November 6,1928. North Carolina voters chose twelve electors to the Electoral College,who voted for president and vice president.
Senator Simmons may refer to:
This article incorporates public domain material from the