John Austin Darden (2 April 1879-7 June 1942) was a Democratic state representative and state senator from Alabama.
Biography[]
John Austin Darden was born in Bentleyville, Coosa County, Alabama in 1879; he was descended from a family of slave owners who had come to Alabama from Georgia, and one of his ancestors served in the 4th Virginia Regiment during the American Revolutionary War. He became a lawyer in Goodwater in 1903, joining the Knights of Pythias, the Democratic Party, and the Baptist church and being elected to the State House in 1915 and later to the State Senate. He fathered several children, including a daughter, Sallye Margarite Bell, with a Black woman in an extramarital affair; Sallye was the mother of Black Power activist Angela Davis. Darden died in 1942.