James Elisha "Big Jim" Folsom (9 October 1908 – 21 November 1987) was the Democratic Governor of Alabama from 20 January 1947 to 15 January 1951 (succeeding Chauncey Sparks and preceding Gordon Persons) and from 17 January 1957 to 19 January 1959 (succeeding Persons and preceding John M. Patterson).
Biography[]
James Elisha Folsom was born in Coffee County, Alabama in 1908, and he served in the US Army during World War II before becoming an insurance salesman. He was a progressive Democrat who supported keeping Henry A. Wallace as Franklin D. Roosevelt's running mate in 1944, and he was elected Governor in 1946 on a New Deal platform, attacking corporate interests and the wealthy and pledging to clean up corruption with a broom. He was a moderate integrationist and supporter of Black civil rights, declaring, "As long as the Negroes are held down by deprivation and lack of opportunity, the other poor people will be held down alongside them." He returned to office from 1957 to 1959, but he was defeated by the segregationist George Wallace in the 1962 gubernatorial race, as Folsom had been known to engage in graft, and had embarrassed himself by appearing on a television special while drunk, causing him to forget his children's names. He failed in his 1966 bid for governor, and he went blind and nearly deaf by 1976 and died in 1987. His son Jim Folsom Jr. later followed him into politics.