RE: [Cubs63:13920] Mr Crump keeps the National Guard out of Memphis >>>> link to article
Robert Coker
This is the article Dean was referring to in the Daily Memphian.
Robert
How Boss Crump stared down a governor’s threat to send the National Guard to Memphis
By Robert Dean Pope and Justin Pope, Guest ColumnistPublished: October 15, 2025 4:00 AM CT
National Guardsmen and Memphis Police patrol downtown around the Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid and Riverside Drive. (Mark Weber/The Daily Memphian)
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Guest Columnist
Robert Dean Pope
Robert Dean Pope is a historian by training and a former journalist. He and his son Justin Pope are writing a forthcoming biography of E.H. Crump for the University of Virginia Press. They have been conducting archival research on Crump for several years.
Guest Columnist
Justin Pope
Justin Pope is a historian by training and a former journalist. He and his father Robert Dean Pope are writing a forthcoming biography of E.H. Crump for the University of Virginia Press. They have been conducting archival research on Crump for several years.
The Tennessee National Guard has begun to deploy in Memphis — a step, the governor insists, necessary to bring order to a lawless city.
Only in this case, Memphis has a resourceful and sharp-tongued political boss who pushes back — and even rallies to the cause voters across the state who weren’t naturally sympathetic with the Bluff City.
It happened, in 1938, under circumstances different in important ways from the National Guard deployment now underway. Memphians and their elected leaders clearly have a range of opinions about current events. And those who remember E.H. Crump at all have complex views about his legacy.
Whatever those views, Memphians may be intrigued to learn what happened that year — in a world where Memphis stood largely united against a deployment, behind a self-assured leader with a powerful political organization and friends in Washington, D.C.
Tennessee’s governor was Gordon Browning, who was first elected governor in 1936 when, thanks to Crump’s endorsement, he received almost 60,000 votes from the obedient citizens of Memphis and the rest of Shelby County in the Democratic Primary. In those days, the primary was the real election; his opponent won just 825 votes.
But as Browning prepared to run for re-election in 1938, he turned ferociously against “Mr. Crump,” whose political organization dominated Memphis politics.
Rural and more conservative Tennessee had always distrusted iniquitous Memphis and did not like Crump — his tolerance of liquor in the city, his fight for Tennessee’s urban areas to get their fair share from the state, and his use of Black voters to bulk up the influence of Shelby County in statewide races. Every election year, Tennessee newspapers were filled with stories of Crump’s machine “herding” voters to the polls.
Crump had stuffed a few ballot boxes early in his career. But by 1938 his machine could effectively counter such accusations with evidence he simply ran a superb get-out-the-vote operation that brought to the polls thousands of locals who were satisfied with how Crump ran Memphis.
The Memphis Boss was a racial paternalist and, of course, a segregationist. But almost uniquely in the South, he brought Black voters into a multi-ethnic, multi-racial coalition. He allowed, encouraged and definitely manipulated Black voting — but also delivered on bargains with local Black leaders, provided services, and gave Black voters reason to support him.
In 1923, Crump’s machine took off the gloves in a bare-knuckled election that narrowly prevented the Ku Klux Klan from taking over city government. In 1932 he derailed repeated efforts by his enemies in the state Democratic Party to implement a whites-only primary — a step that would have reduced Crump’s influence, while also making Tennessee much more like Mississippi when it came to shutting down Black voting.
Once elected in 1936, Browning believed he was sufficiently popular outside Memphis to destroy Crump.
The governor declared all-out political war on Memphis, purging Crump supporters from state positions and seizing control of the Shelby County election process from locals. Browning’s most spectacular power grab rammed through the legislature a “county unit” voting law which would have disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters in Shelby (and a few other densely populated areas) in favor of rural areas by functionally capping the number of votes a county could contribute to statewide totals. Crump’s top-notch lawyers successfully challenged it before the Tennessee Supreme Court.
“The planned mission was not to address crime or general disorder — the justification given for the current deployment — but to patrol polling places and head off alleged plans for election fraud.”
Crump backed Prentice Cooper against Browning for the Democratic nomination in 1938. As the campaign grew heated, the governor threatened that armed supervision was necessary to prevent Crump from stealing the election. Browning prepared to deploy 1,200 National Guardsmen to Memphis to oversee the August primary vote. So, the planned mission was not to address crime or general disorder — the justification given for the current deployment — but to patrol polling places and head off alleged plans for election fraud.
Crump was a master of political attack, with a knack for verbal zingers. He would have been great on social media. He filled notebooks with insults about the governor and had lists of them typed up and distributed to newspapers. Among them: Browning was a “beastly ingrate,” “full of hate” and a “cold blooded dishonest man” who “would milk his neighbor’s cow through a crack in the fence.” Crump accused the governor of trying “to divert the public’s attention from his many, many horrible misdeeds by hitting Memphis” and hoping to provoke an incident.
Crump also appealed to Memphis pride. “Only the hands of our own people can pull this city down,” he said. “No fence, horse high, bull strong or hog-proof, can keep the people of Shelby County from going to the polls” to defeat Browning.
Mayor Watkins Overton echoed the attack, calling the governor’s plan “an insult to every Tennessean,” saying:
Tennesseans have been known thru the years for their love of liberty and American ideal of democracy…. Browning in his lust for power would burn the city if he could. He would kill us if he could; but we of Memphis who love liberty and cherish our freedom will go to the polls on August 4 and join with all Tennessee in repudiating a man who seeks to perpetuate himself in power at the point of a bayonet.
Crump had powerful allies in Washington, especially the very senior Democrat, Sen. Kenneth McKellar, who intervened with the War and Justice Departments. Unlike today, the federal administration was eager not to get drawn in; officials conveyed to McKellar that Browning probably had the legal right to deploy the Guard but worked to turn down the temperature.
Crump also turned to the federal judiciary, securing an injunction ordering Browning not to deploy the Guard from Judge John Martin, who called the governor a “tyrannical despot” and even began directing federal marshals to prepare to “repel the invasion.” Martin happened to be Crump’s cousin.
“I am chief executive of a sovereign state and know exactly what my rights are,” Browning responded. He also insulted the judge and called for his impeachment.
But no troops were sent.
Browning claimed he backed down because “it is not the American way to use force except as a last resort,” and because once re-elected he could “liberate those people in Shelby County” from the “ruthless persecution” of the Crump organization.
In fact, he had lost the battle for public opinion — not just in Memphis, but across Tennessee.
The Memphis Press-Scimitar had dropped its usual anti-Crump line to call Browning a dictator who must be defeated by the voters. So too did the Crump-hating Nashville Tennessean. The Chattanooga Daily Times lamented “it is impossible for the ordinary taxpayer to be assured of a government by law” if a governor can “disregard the law to serve his own political interests.” The Nashville Banner thought Judge Martin had overstepped his authority, but declared Browning had turned his back on the Constitution — and dishonored the state’s militia, writing:
The National Guard was created to maintain peace, not to threaten it, to serve the state, not to shame it; to make proof to the nation of jealous regard for the sovereignty of the commonwealth, not to be used by an inflamed executive to brand the state as the abode of defiant lawlessness at the bar of the national judgment.
The election was peaceful, and the ballot boxes across Tennessee gave Crump a resounding victory. Crump took Senator McKellar’s advice to conduct a squeaky-clean vote, so the margin was not as dominant as it had been, in Browning’s favor, two years before. But Shelby still delivered almost 48,000 net votes against Browning. The surprise was how easily Cooper carried the rest of the state. The final result: 237,852 to 158,854.
E.H. Crump (The Daily Memphian files)
Crump was a complex figure — a brilliant political manager, a puritan in personal habits, and often utterly ruthless. In the last chapters of his career he failed to grasp how Memphis, the South and the country were changing, complicating the positive aspects of his legacy.
By 1938 there were some early signs of what would become a wider fracture with Black Memphis voters, beginning to grow impatient, demanding greater justice and fairness, and not merely a bargain that had granted them better treatment and services than in most of the Jim Crow South.
But even most of Crump’s enemies acknowledged his personal honesty and delivery of efficient, corruption-free local government. And few doubted his devotion to Memphis, promoting it tirelessly and fruitfully.
Crump’s ability to produce huge majorities from populous Shelby County for his favored candidates produced bargaining power in Nashville and poured a flood of federal New Deal funding into Memphis. Both allies and enemies knew that if threatened, Crump could unleash colorful verbal barrages and brilliant political warfare.
The lessons of history are elusive — but they can inform discussion of the present. Whatever their views of current events, Memphians should know that in a bygone era the City and County united behind Crump -- and exercised influence they have now lacked for decades.
That was how Boss Crump kept the National Guard out of Memphis.
From: cub...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cub...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Dean Pope
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2025 8:21 AM
To: cub...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [Cubs63:13920] Mr Crump keeps the National Guard out of Memphis
Raymond
There is now on the Daily Memphian web site an article by two guys named Pope on how Mr. Crump kept Gordon Browning from sending the National Guard to Memphis in 1938. Compared to Crump the current leadership in the city and country appears —- lilliputian. It helps of course if the local federal judge is your cousin.
Dean
Sent from my iPad
On Sep 9, 2025, at 7:59 PM, phs...@gmail.com wrote:
Last year Ben, I, and my Memphis second cousin Carolyn Jenkins Carter visited the region of southwest England where Carolyn and my g-grandfather Jenkins came from. It’s very peaceful and hasn’t changed much in 50+ years.
I love the peace and beauty of “England’s Green and Pleasant Land”.
The last two photos are from my first trip to England in 1975 to do Roman archaeology in the Cotswolds. I’m pointing to rusted-out iron bolts that held together turves that formed the rampart around the camp of the XIV Roman Legion.
Sorry for being so blunt about London, but big cities are not my cup of tea. Perhaps Julie, Tina, and Dean have photos that show what they enjoy about Roman Londinium.
Paul
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Paul Sisco
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Christina Winter
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