Word: hummon
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Even the South had never seen anything quite like the Caesarean operation by which Hummon was jerked out of obscurity, blessed by the General Assembly, bathed in publicity, and installed in the governor's mansion in his pappy's place. Neither had it seen anything like the comic opera alarums & excursions which followed it. During the week Georgia had endured not one but three governors. Both retiring Governor Ellis Gibbs Arnall and Lieut. Governor Melvin E. Thompson, once Arnall's executive secretary, had set up governments-in-exile. And Georgia had been all but inundated...
...Question. In a sense, Hummon was the work of one Gibson Greer Ezell, an unknown storekeeper from little Monticello (pop. 1,746). One day just before last November's final election, Ezell ran a coony eye over the new Georgia constitution, discovered that it provided no clear answer to a question which had been bothering him and many other Georgians: "What if ailing Old Gene Talmadge died before he got inaugurated?" Ezell thought of an answer that suited him, and telephoned Hummon: "You better get some votes written in for yourself...
...Hummon got busy. On election day, 675 hastily coached Talmadge backers scratched Old Gene's name off their ballots and wrote in Hummon's. This placed him second to Gene's 143,279. When Old Gene died, Hummon and an ex-Georgia legislator named Roy V. Harris set out to parlay this handful of paper into the governorship. They put their faith in a line in the constitution which read: "If no person shall have [a] majority (of the total votes cast) then from the two persons having the highest number of votes . . . the General Assembly shall...
Spit V Image. But Hummon and Harris were undismayed. They sent a reassuring message to the Atlanta "interests" who had backed Old Gene and to the country "wool hat" boys, who had elected him. The message: Hummon was just like his pappy. He chewed corn pone, had Old Gene's cowlick, and stood foursquare for white supremacy and the white primary...
...headquarters on the 14th floor of the Henry Grady Hotel, began plying them with bourbon, cigars, veiled threats and glittering promises. Alarmed, the Arnall-Thompson forces followed suit, began an equally rough electioneering campaign. Wild rumors floated through the hotel lobby. The most titillating: blocks of six votes for Hummon were fetching...