James Vinson Carmichael (October 2, 1910 – November 28, 1972) was member of the Georgia General Assembly, an attorney, business executive, and candidate for Governor of Georgia. [1]
James Vinson Carmichael (October 2, 1910 – November 28, 1972) was member of the Georgia General Assembly, an attorney, business executive, and candidate for Governor of Georgia. [1]
Carmichael was born, in Cobb County, Georgia to parents Emma Mae Nolan and John Vinson Carmichael. His parents owned a country store outside of Smyrna. Just before he turned sixteen, his spinal cord was almost completely severed when he ran out in front of a car. He was able to return to Marietta High School, after a year of medical care, but still in a wheelchair. He re-learned how to walk but could only do so for short distances with a cane. He endured intense pain for the rest of his life. [2]
Overcoming his disability, Carmichael graduated in 1933 from the Emory University School of Law. While attending Emory he was a member of Sigma Pi fraternity and Delta Theta Phi law fraternity. [3]
After receiving his law degree, he partnered with Mayor Leon M. "Rip" Blair in Marietta to form a practice. In 1938 he married Frances Elizabeth McDonald, and had three children: Mary Emma, James Jr., and Frances Elizabeth. [2]
Carmichael was elected to two terms as a Georgia legislator (1935–1940) [1] without opposition. [2] Carmichael served in the Georgia House of Representatives. [4] He decided not to seek a third term when his law firm took on a major client that did business with the state to avoid potential conflicts of interest. [2]
In 1943, Governor Ellis Arnall appointed him as executive director of the Georgia Department of Revenue and later placed him on the committee that wrote the 1945 Georgia Constitution. [2]
Carmichael also served as one of Georgia's delegates to the 1952 Democratic National Convention. [5]
As Cobb County attorney, Carmichael teamed with Mayor Blair and Commissioner George McMillan to build an airport in 1941, called Rickenbacker Field (later part of Dobbins Air Reserve Base). When Pearl Harbor was attacked, the group was able to bring a base of the United States Army Air Corps to the site, and a branch of the Bell Aircraft Corporation. Carmichael was named attorney for Bell's Georgia division and in November 1944, he was promoted to general manager of the 28,000-employee plant, which had become known as United States Air Force Plant 6. When the war ended Bell had sold the military some 663 B-29 Superfortresses on schedule and without a single crash. [2]
When the war ended the government cancelled its B-29 contract and Marietta's Bell plant closed. Gov. Arnall encouraged Carmichael to run against two former governors in the 1946 Democratic primary, Eugene Talmadge and Eurith D. Rivers. [2]
Carmichael was not as liberal as Arnall but far more so than Talmadge or Rivers. He was skeptical of the New Deal labor and welfare programs but represented a progressive business philosophy that championed moderation in race relations, improved public schools and roads, and attracting major companies to Georgia. [2]
Carmichael won the popular vote 313,389 to Talmadge's 297,245, however, because of a unique Georgia law known as the "county unit system" he lost the election. The rule favored rural Georgia over metropolitan areas in a take on the electoral college system, thus making Talmadge the winner of the Democratic primary. [6]
With the closing of the Bell plant Carmichael became a partner in several local industrial ventures. In 1947, he assumed the presidency of the Scripto pen company in downtown Atlanta. Under his leadership it expanded overseas and became the largest manufacturer of writing instruments in the world. [2]
At the start of the war, the U.S. Air Force chose the Lockheed Corporation to reopen Marietta's assembly plant. Lockheed took advantage of Carmichael's expertise and asked him to serve as general manager with the assistance of senior Lockheed executive, Daniel J. Haughton. He ran the Georgia division from 1951 to 1953, [1] supervising the refurbishing of 120 B-29s and the start of the B-47 Stratojet project. He then turned the division over to Haughton and returned to Scripto. However, he remained on Lockheed's board of directors until 1972. [2]
Carmichael was courted by Robert W. Woodruff to take the presidency of The Coca-Cola Company in the early 1950s, but the pain from his back injury wouldn't allow it. [2]
Carmichael always championed the need for a two-party system in politics whether this meant "Democrats and Republicans [or] Democrats and Loyal Democrats." In mid-century Georgia this statement risked political suicide to a politician with statewide aspirations. However, in 1960, he introduced Richard Nixon at his campaign event in Atlanta.
His management philosophies was the subject of a story in the journal Management Methods in September 1958. He remained president at Scripto until 1964, when he was forced out by falling profits and a strike by the International Chemical Workers Union. [7]
In 1964, he was the first president of the Atlanta Arts Alliance and a trustee of Emory University and Atlanta University. [1] He was on the boards of the Interdenominational Theological Center, the Atlanta School of Art, and the University System of Georgia, and a governor in the Kiwanis International. [2] He was also on the board of directors for the Trust Company of Georgia, the Southern Company, and Georgia International Life Insurance. That same year he was a speaker at Vanderbilt University's IMPACT symposium. [8]
In 1965, he was awarded the Georgia Medal for Distinguished Service. [8]
He died in Marietta at age sixty-two, on November 28, 1972.
The Carmichael Student Center at Kennesaw State University is named for him. [9] [10]
Cobb County is a county in the U.S. state of Georgia, located in the Atlanta metropolitan area in the north central portion of the state. As of 2020 Census, the population was 766,149. It is the state's third most populous county, after Fulton and Gwinnett counties. Its county seat is Marietta; its largest city is Mableton.
Marietta is a city in and the county seat of Cobb County, Georgia, United States. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 60,972. The 2019 estimate was 60,867, making it one of Atlanta's largest suburbs. Marietta is the fourth largest of the principal cities by population of the Atlanta metropolitan area.
The Bell Aircraft Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer, a builder of several types of fighter aircraft for World War II but most famous for the Bell X-1, the first supersonic aircraft, and for the development and production of many important civilian and military helicopters. Bell also developed the Reaction Control System for the Mercury Spacecraft, North American X-15, and Bell Rocket Belt. The company was purchased in 1960 by Textron, and lives on as Bell Textron.
Herman Eugene Talmadge was an American politician who served as governor of Georgia in 1947 and from 1948 to 1955 and as a U.S. senator from Georgia from 1957 to 1981. A Democrat, Talmadge served during a time of political transition, both in Georgia and nationally. He began his career as a staunch segregationist known for his opposition to civil rights, ordering schools to be closed rather than desegregated. But by the later stages of his career, following the enactment of the Voting Rights Act, which gave substance to the Fifteenth Amendment enacted nearly one hundred years before, Talmadge, like many other Southern politicians of that period, had modified his views. His life eventually encapsulated the emergence of his native Georgia from entrenched white supremacy into a political culture where white voters regularly elect black members of Congress.
Eugene Talmadge was an attorney and American politician who served three terms as the 67th governor of Georgia, from 1933 to 1937, and then again from 1941 to 1943. Elected to a fourth term in November 1946, he died before his inauguration, scheduled for January 1947. Only Talmadge and Joe Brown, in the mid-19th century, have been elected four times as governor of Georgia.
Melvin Ernest Thompson was an American educator and politician from Millen in the U.S. state of Georgia. Generally known as M.E. Thompson during his political career, he served as the 70th Governor of Georgia from 1947 to 1948 and was elected as the first Lieutenant Governor of Georgia in 1946.
Ellis Gibbs Arnall was an American politician who served as the 69th Governor of Georgia from 1943 to 1947. A liberal Democrat, he helped lead efforts to abolish the poll tax and to reduce Georgia's voting age to 18. Following his departure from office, he became a highly successful attorney and businessman.
Samuel Ernest Vandiver Jr. was an American Democratic Party politician who was the 73rd governor of Georgia from 1959 to 1963.
Dobbins Air Reserve Base or Dobbins ARB is a United States Air Force reserve air base located in Marietta, Georgia, a suburb about 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Atlanta. Originally known as Dobbins Air Force Base, it was named in honor of Captain Charles M. Dobbins, a World War II C-47 pilot who died near Sicily.
Eurith Dickinson Rivers, commonly known as E. D. Rivers and informally as "Ed" Rivers, was an American politician from Lanier County, Georgia. A Democrat, he was the 68th Governor of Georgia, serving from 1937 to 1941.
James Lynwood Bentley, Jr., was from 1963 to 1971 the comptroller general of Georgia. Originally a Democrat, Bentley and four other constitutional officers in Georgia switched to the Republican Party in 1968 to protest the violence that shook the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois that year.
Carl N. Singer was an American businessman, investor and philanthropist. He specialized in trouble-shooting, identifying problems associated with business management, and restoring financial stability to business organizations.
The Moore's Ford lynchings, also known as the 1946 Georgia lynching, refers to the July 25, 1946, murders of four young African Americans by a mob of white men. Tradition says that the murders were committed on Moore's Ford Bridge in Walton and Oconee counties between Monroe and Watkinsville, but the four victims, two married couples, were shot and killed on a nearby dirt road.
The three governors controversy was a political crisis in the U.S. state of Georgia from 1946 to 1947. On December 21, 1946, Eugene Talmadge, the governor-elect of Georgia, died before taking office. The state constitution did not specify who would assume the governorship in such a situation, so three men made claims to the governorship: Ellis Arnall, the outgoing governor; Melvin E. Thompson, the lieutenant governor-elect; and Herman Talmadge, Eugene Talmadge's son. Eventually a ruling by the Supreme Court of Georgia settled the matter in favor of Thompson. Georgia's Secretary of State Ben Fortson hid the state seal in his wheelchair so no official business could be conducted until the controversy was settled.
Air Force Plant 6, known during World War II as the Bell Bomber Plant, is a government-owned, contractor-operated aerospace facility at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia, currently owned by the United States Air Force and operated by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. The plant, originally occupied by Bell Aircraft, began operation in April 1943 and was intended specifically to produce B-29 Superfortresses under license from Boeing. During the course of the War, the factory produced 668 B-29s for the United States Army Air Forces, and at its peak had a work force of approximately 28,000. After the War the factory was mothballed, but with the United States's entrance into the Korean War, in January 1951 the plant was turned over to Lockheed who began refurbishing B-29s. The plant remains in use today by Lockheed.
Bond Almand was a justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia from 1949 to 1969, and chief justice from 1969 to 1972.
Scripto is an American company founded in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1923 by Monie A. Ferst. At one time the largest producer of writing instruments in the world, it now produces butane lighters.
The 1946 Georgia gubernatorial election took place on November 5, 1946, in order to elect the Governor of Georgia.
Workers for the Scripto company in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, held a labor strike from November 27, 1964, to January 9, 1965. It ended when the company and union agreed to a three-year contract that included wage increases and improved employee benefits. The strike was an important event in the history of the civil rights movement, as both civil rights leaders and organized labor activists worked together to support the strike.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
