
Burnet Rhett Maybank (7 March 1899-1 September 1954) was the Democratic Mayor of Charleston from 14 December 1931 to 27 December 1938 (succeeding Thomas Porcher Stoney and preceding Henry Whilden Lockwood), Governor of South Carolina from 17 January 1939 to 4 November 1941 (succeeding Olin D. Johnston and preceding Joseph Emile Harley), and a US Senator from 5 November 1941 to 1 September 1954 (succeeding Roger C. Peace and preceding Charles E. Daniel).
Biography[]
Burnet Rhett Maybank was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1899, a direct descendant of Governors Thomas Smith, Rawlins Lowndes, Robert Gibbes, James Moore, and William Aiken Jr.. He served in the US Navy during World War I, and he worked as a cotton exporter from 1920 to 1938. He served as Mayor of Charleston from 1931 to 1938, as Governor from 1939 to 1941, and in the US Senate from 1941 to 1954, and he was a staunch ally of Franklin D. Roosevelt and an opponent of the Ku Klux Klan who expanded economic opportunities for Black people and supported the funding of Black schools. He died in 1954 and was succeeded by the staunch white supremacist Strom Thurmond.