:James K. Vardaman

Vardaman was born in July 1861 in Jackson County, Texas, while it was under the control of the Confederate States of America, a fact he often remembered.{{cite web |title=Vardaman, James Kimble (1861–1930) |url=https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=V000070 |website=Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress |access-date=8 September 2023 |archive-date=November 25, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201125001836/https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=V000070 |url-status=live }} He moved to Mississippi, where he studied law and passed the bar. Hernando Money was a cousin and political ally.Gatewood, Willard B. “A Republican President and Democratic State Politics: Theodore Roosevelt in the Mississippi Primary of 1903.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 3, 1984, p. 430. {{JSTOR|27550103}}. Accessed 5 Feb. 2024. He settled in Greenwood, Mississippi, becoming editor of The Greenwood Commonwealth.{{cite web |title=James Vardaman |url=https://www.nga.org/governor/james-vardaman/ |website=National Governors Association |access-date=8 September 2023 |date=10 January 2012 |archive-date=March 16, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230316030220/https://www.nga.org/governor/james-vardaman/ |url-status=live }}

As a Democrat, Vardaman served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1890 to 1896 and was elected as its speaker in 1894.{{cite web |title=1890 House |url=http://msstate-exhibits.libraryhost.com/items/show/1098#page-5 |website=Mississippi State University Libraries |access-date=12 September 2023 |archive-date=September 28, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220928220950/http://msstate-exhibits.libraryhost.com/items/show/1098#page-5 |url-status=live }}{{cite web |title=1894 House |url=http://msstate-exhibits.libraryhost.com/items/show/1099#page-1 |website=Mississippi State University Libraries |access-date=12 September 2023 |archive-date=September 13, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230913052638/http://msstate-exhibits.libraryhost.com/items/show/1099#page-1 |url-status=live }} He was known for his populist appeal to the everyday person. State Democrats took action to ensure that they did not lose power again. After having gained control of the legislature by suppressing the black vote, they passed a new constitution in 1890 with provisions, such as a poll tax{{cite journal |last1=Williams |first1=Frank B. Jr. |title=The Poll Tax as a Suffrage Requirement in the South, 1870–1901 |journal=The Journal of Southern History |date=November 1952 |volume=18 |issue=4 |pages=469–496 |doi=10.2307/2955220 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2955220 |access-date=28 October 2020 |publisher=Southern Historical Association |location=Athens, Georgia |jstor=2955220 |issn=0022-4642 |archive-date=February 15, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230215023842/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2955220 |url-status=live }}{{Rp|471}} and literacy test,{{cite web |title=Nov. 1, 1890: Mississippi Constitution |url=https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/mississippi-constitution/ |website=Zinn Education Project |access-date=10 September 2023 |archive-date=August 20, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230820183333/https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/mississippi-constitution/ |url-status=live }} that raised barriers to voter registration and disenfranchised most blacks.{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/pss/1324271 | jstor=1324271 | title=The Latest Phase of Negro Disfranchisement | last1=Monnet | first1=Julien C. | journal=Harvard Law Review | date=1912 | volume=26 | issue=1 | pages=42–63 | doi=10.2307/1324271 | access-date=September 11, 2023 | archive-date=February 6, 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230206044041/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1324271 | url-status=live }}

Referring to the 1890 Mississippi state constitution, Vardaman said:

{{blockquote|There is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter.... Mississippi's constitutional convention of 1890 was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the nigger from politics. Not the 'ignorant and vicious', as some of the apologists would have you believe, but the nigger.... Let the world know it just as it is.... In Mississippi we have in our constitution legislated against the racial peculiarities of the Negro.... When that device fails, we will resort to something else.{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bIN1gR92_SIC&pg=PA41|title=Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow|pages=41–44|first=Neil R.|last=McMillen|chapter=The Politics of the Disfranchised|year=1989|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=978-0252061561|access-date=August 1, 2015|archive-date=September 8, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230908054541/https://books.google.com/books?id=bIN1gR92_SIC&pg=PA41|url-status=live}}}}

Vardaman was commissioned as a major in the U.S. Army during the Spanish–American War and served in Puerto Rico.{{cite web |title=Spanish-American War |url=https://senseofplace.mdah.ms.gov/tag/spanish-american-war/ |website=A Sense of Place |access-date=8 September 2023 |archive-date=December 6, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221206003519/http://senseofplace.mdah.ms.gov/tag/spanish-american-war/ |url-status=live }}

File:J.P. Vardaman LCCN2014682823 Trim.jpg

Vardaman ran twice in Democratic primaries for governor, in 1895 and 1899, but was unsuccessful. The state was virtually one-party, and winning the Democratic primary was tantamount to victory in the general election for any office. In 1903 Vardaman won the primary and the general elections for governor, serving one four-year term (1904–1908). In the election, he said that "a vote for Vardaman is a vote for white supremacy, a vote for the quelling of the arrogant spirit that has been aroused in the blacks by Roosevelt and his henchmen, ...a vote for the safety of the home and the protection of our women and children."{{cite news|title=How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror|first=Charles M.|last=Blow|author-link=Charles M. Blow|newspaper=New York Times|date=May 27, 2020|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/opinion/racism-white-women.html|access-date=May 29, 2020|archive-date=May 28, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200528023029/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/opinion/racism-white-women.html|url-status=live}}

In late December 1906, he went to Scooba, in rural Kemper County, with the Mississippi National Guard, to ensure that control was established. Whites had rioted against blacks there and in Wahalak and feared retaliation; in total, two white men were killed and 13 blacks. The events were covered by the Associated Press and the New York Times, among other newspapers.{{cite web |title=Whites in Race War Kill Blacks Blindly |url=https://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/race/122606race-ra.html |website=New York Times |access-date=8 September 2023 |archive-date=December 2, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151202050652/http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/race/122606race-ra.html |url-status=live }}{{cite journal |title=Situation in Scooba Is Now Under Full Control |journal=The Pensacola Journal |url=https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00075911/00546/1x |access-date=8 September 2023 |archive-date=May 18, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230518001410/https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00075911/00546/1x |url-status=live }} During his term as governor, he called out the National Guard eleven times to prevent lynchings.Dougherty Kevin. Weapons of Mississippi. University Press of Mississippi 2010. pp. 168 f. {{ISBN|9781604734515}}.

By 1910, his political coalition of chiefly poor white farmers and industrial workers began to identify proudly as "rednecks." They began to wear red neckerchiefs to political rallies and picnics.{{cite book |first=Albert D. |last=Kirwan |title=Revolt of the Rednecks: Mississippi Politics 1876–1925 |publisher=University of Kentucky Press |year=1951 |page=212 |oclc=3371463 }} Vardaman advocated a policy of state-sponsored racism against blacks and said that he supported lynching to maintain white supremacy. From 1877 to 1950, Mississippi had the highest number of lynchings in the nation.{{cite web |title=Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror |url=https://eji.org/ |website=Equal Justice Initiative |access-date=8 September 2023 |archive-date=March 20, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170320183933/http://eji.org/ |url-status=live }} He was known as the "Great White Chief."{{cite book |last=Mullins |first=Philip |title=The Ancestors Of George & Hazel Mullins |publisher=University of Texas at Austin |chapter=The Revolt of the Rednecks |chapter-url=http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~pmullins/chapter14.htm |access-date=September 21, 2008 |archive-date=February 12, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120212191814/http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~pmullins/chapter14.htm |url-status=dead }} Several reforms were also carried out during his time as governor.Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race Mississippi After Reconstruction, 1877-1917 by Stephen Cresswell, 2021, P.198The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine by James Landers, 2010, P.162[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433009075031&seq=7 Laws of the state of Mississippi 1906, P.100-101][https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Mississippi_Government_and_Politics/ygMQDdnlH6cC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=In+a+Democratic+primary+election+in+1911,+Vardaman+was+able+to+unseat+Percy&pg=PA33&printsec=frontcover Mississippi Government and Politics Modernizers Versus Traditionalists

By Dale Krane and Stephen Daryl Shaffer, 1992, P.33][https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t9s182j8n&seq=13 Biographical sketches of James Kimble Vardaman by A.S. Coody, 1922, P.345][https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x000607619&seq=11 Revolt of the rednecks: Mississippi politics, 1876-1925 by Albert Dennis Kirwan, 1951, P.175][https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t9s182j8n&seq=13 Biographical sketches of James Kimble Vardaman by A.S. Coody, 1922, P.34-35]

File:Senator Vardaman LCCN2016821748 Trim.jpg

Vardaman was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1912 in the first popular election of the state's senators by defeating the incumbent LeRoy Percy, a member of the planter elite, in the Democratic primary. He ran on a platform of repealing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment, which gave blacks the vote and other rights. He was unopposed in the general election. Vardaman served one term, from 1913 until 1919. He voted against the U.S. declaration of war on Germany and the entry into World War I, only five other senators voted with him.{{cite web |title=TO PASS S.J. RES. 1,(40 STAT-1)M DECKARUBG WAR ON GERMANY … -- Senate Vote #2 -- Apr 4, 1917 |url=https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/65-1/s2 |website=GovTrack |access-date=8 September 2023 |language=en |archive-date=November 26, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221126195122/https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/65-1/s2 |url-status=live }} He was defeated in his primary re-election bid in 1918.{{cite book |last1=Rowland |first1=Dunbar |title=The Official and statistical register of the state of Mississippi. |date=1904 |page=345 |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015074697163&view=1up&seq=355&skin=2021 |access-date=10 September 2023 |archive-date=September 10, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230910140000/https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015074697163&view=1up&seq=355&skin=2021 |url-status=live }}

Vardaman ran in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in 1922 but was defeated in the primary runoff by U.S. Representative Hubert Stephens by 9,000 votes.{{Cite web|url=https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=377234|title=Our Campaigns – MS US Senate – D Runoff Race – Sep 05, 1922|access-date=September 8, 2023|archive-date=August 3, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220803162907/https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=377234|url-status=live}}

While serving as senator in Congress, Vardaman supported at the national level many reforms he advocated in Mississippi including higher tax surcharges on high incomes, government ownership of coal mines, shipping companies, telephone lines and railroads, and also long-term credit for farmers. In addition, he advocated guaranteed government pensions for the elderly.[https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/467036/1/809039.pdf Populism in the White Southern Democratic Party With Reference to Alabama and Mississippi by William Sheward, 2001, P.233]

File:Sen. James Kimble Vardaman, James Thomas Heflin, Ollie James between ca. 1910 and ca. 1915.jpg and Ollie Murray James in 1912.]]

Vardaman was known for his provocative speeches and quotes and once called Theodore Roosevelt a "little, mean, coon-flavored miscegenationist."{{cite news |title=Theodore Roosevelt and Civil Rights |url=http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/Civil%20Rights.htm |publisher=Theodore Roosevelt Association |access-date=2008-09-21 |archive-date=December 19, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081219081314/http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/Civil%20Rights.htm |url-status=live }} About the education of black children, he remarked, "The only effect of Negro education is to spoil a good field hand and make an insolent cook."{{cite book |last1=Wilkerson |first1=Isabel |title=The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration |date=2010 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-679-60407-5 |page=40 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y03WKII5m7QC |language=en |access-date=September 8, 2023 |archive-date=September 8, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230908062019/https://books.google.com.tw/books/about/The_Warmth_of_Other_Suns.html?id=Y03WKII5m7QC&redir_esc=y |url-status=live }} "The knowledge of books does not seem to produce any good substantial result with the Negro, but serves to sharpen his cunning, breeds hopes that cannot be fulfilled, creates an inclination to avoid labor, promotes indolence, and in turn leads to crime."{{cite journal

|title=The Earliest Black Graduates of the Nation's Highest-Ranked Liberal Arts Colleges|journal=Journal of Blacks in Higher Education|number=38|year=2002|pages=104–109|doi=10.2307/3134222|jstor=3134222}}{{rp|105}}

After the president of Tuskegee University, Booker T. Washington, had dined with Roosevelt, Vardaman said that the White House was "so saturated with the odor of the nigger that the rats have taken refuge in the stable."{{cite news |first=DeWayne |last=Wickham |title=Book fails to strip meaning of 'N' word |url=https://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnists/wickham/2002-02-15-wickham.htm |newspaper=USA Today |quote=It is as noxious today as in 1901 when Mississippi Sen. James Vardaman said after Booker T. Washington had dined with President Theodore Roosevelt that the White House was "so saturated with the odor of the nigger that the rats have taken refuge in the stable." |date=February 14, 2002 |access-date=September 1, 2017 |archive-date=January 6, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120106024422/http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnists/wickham/2002-02-15-wickham.htm |url-status=live }} Regarding Washington's role in politics, Vardaman said: "I am opposed to the nigger's voting, it matters not what his advertised moral and mental qualifications may be. I am just as much opposed to Booker Washington, with all his Anglo-Saxon reenforcement, voting, as I am to voting by the coconut-headed, chocolate-colored typical little coon, Andy Dotson, who blacks my shoes every morning. Neither one is fit to perform the supreme functions of citizenship."{{cite magazine |title=The Authentic Voice |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,824107-2,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100311061113/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,824107-2,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=March 11, 2010 |magazine=Time |date=March 26, 1956}}{{cite web |last1=Morrell |first1=Edward DeVeaux |title=Negro suffrage : should the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments be repealed? |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/91898529/ |website=Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. |access-date=8 September 2023 |archive-date=November 8, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221108000703/https://www.loc.gov/item/91898529/ |url-status=live }}

File:University of Mississippi Vardaman Hall.jpg

Vardaman married Anna Burleson Robinson. Their son, James K. Vardaman, Jr., later was appointed as a governor of the Federal Reserve System, serving from 1946 to 1958.{{Cite web |url=http://www.federalreservehistory.org/People/DetailView/55 |title=James K. Vardaman, Jr.: Governor (Board of Governors): 1946–1958 |access-date=April 3, 2015 |archive-date=April 4, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150404094704/http://www.federalreservehistory.org/People/DetailView/55 |url-status=dead }} Vardaman died on June 25, 1930, at the age of 68, at Birmingham Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama.{{cite news |title=J. K. Vardaman, Ex-senator, Dies. Mississippian Succumbs to Long Illness in a Birmingham Hospital. Was a governor. One of Six Senators Who Voted Against War With Germany. Lawyer and Editor. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1930/06/26/archives/jk-vardaman-exsenator-dies-mississippian-succumbs-to-long-illness.html |quote=James Kimball Vardaman, former Governor of Mississippi and a United States Senator from that State, familiarly known to thousands as 'the White Chief,' died at a hospital here today after a lengthy illness. His age was 68. |work=New York Times |date=June 26, 1930 |access-date=2010-03-23 |archive-date=July 23, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180723093514/https://www.nytimes.com/1930/06/26/archives/jk-vardaman-exsenator-dies-mississippian-succumbs-to-long-illness.html |url-status=live }}

The town of Vardaman, Mississippi is named after him. There is also a Vardaman Hall at the University of Mississippi, which has borne his name since it was built in 1929. In July 2017, the University of Mississippi announced that Vardaman's name would be removed from the building, but it still has not been removed as of September 2023.{{cite news|title=University of Mississippi to post sign recognizing slave labor on campus|date=July 6, 2017|newspaper=CBS News|access-date=December 10, 2018|url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ole-miss-recognizes-slave-labor-campus-buildings-university-of-mississippi-pre-civil-war/|archive-date=November 5, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181105172630/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ole-miss-recognizes-slave-labor-campus-buildings-university-of-mississippi-pre-civil-war/|url-status=live

}}{{cite news |last1=Lawton |first1=Jack |title=Vardaman Hall Name Change Recommended By Committee For Contextualization |url=http://hottytoddy.com/2017/03/07/vardaman-hall-name-change-recommended-committee-contextualization/ |access-date=8 September 2023 |work=HottyToddy |date=7 March 2017 |archive-date=March 13, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170313103004/http://hottytoddy.com/2017/03/07/vardaman-hall-name-change-recommended-committee-contextualization/ |url-status=live }}{{cite web |url=https://hottytoddy.com/2019/10/24/sasi-calls-to-remove-names-ingrained-in-white-supremacy-from-campus-buildings/ |title=SASI Calls to Remove Names Ingrained in White Supremacy from Campus Buildings |publisher=HottyToddy |date=October 24, 2019 |accessdate=2022-04-11 |archive-date=August 19, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819110701/https://hottytoddy.com/2019/10/24/sasi-calls-to-remove-names-ingrained-in-white-supremacy-from-campus-buildings/ |url-status=live }}

In William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying, a character in the Bundren family is named after the governor, presumably because the Bundrens are a family of poor, rural whites, one of Governor Vardaman's key constituencies. And in another of Faulkner's novel Flags in the Dust, Gov. Vardaman was mentioned twice; both characters who mention him express admiration for his moral views and politics.{{cite web |title=James Vardaman |url=https://faulkner.drupal.shanti.virginia.edu/content/james-vardaman |website=The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project |access-date=11 September 2023 |archive-date=March 29, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230329101710/https://faulkner.drupal.shanti.virginia.edu/content/james-vardaman |url-status=live }}

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book |title= The White Chief: James Kimble Vardaman |last= Holmes |first= William F. |year= 1970 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |location= Baton Rouge |isbn= 0807109312 }}
• {{Cite book |last=Osborn |first=George Coleman |title=James Kimble Vardaman, Southern Commoner |publisher=G.C. Osborn |year=1981 |author-link=George C. Osborn}}

{{commons category}}

• {{cite web |url=http://www.hhtc.org/vw/ |title=Vardaman's Weekly Online |access-date=April 21, 2010 |archive-date=October 6, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091006025652/http://www.hhtc.org/vw/ |url-status=dead }}
• {{Find a Grave|8004391|James Kimble Vardaman}}
• {{Congbio|V000070}}

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{{Lynching in the United States}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Vardaman, James K.}}

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