
Fielding Lewis Wright (16 May 1895-4 May 1956) was the Democratic Governor of Mississippi from 2 November 1946 to 22 November 1952, succeeding Thomas L. Bailey and preceding Hugh L. White.
Biography[]
Fielding Lewis Wright was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi in 1895, and he became a lawyer in 1916 and served as a captain in the US Army during World War I, serving with a machine-gun unit on the Western Front. Afterwards, he served in the state National Guard, on his hometown's Board of Aldermen, in the State Senate from 1928 to 1932, in the State House from 1932 to 1940, as Lieutenant Governor from 1944 to 1946, and as Governor from 1946 to 1952. In his 1948 inaugural address, he called for Southern Democrats to abandon the national Democratic Party due to its anti-lynching, anti-poll tax, and pro-civil rights stances, and he served as Strom Thurmond's running mate on the Dixiecrat ticket that same year, winning Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, but losing the election. He went on to become a lawyer in Jackson and failed in his 1955 comeback bid, and he died in 1956.