Part Four: America's First Fascist Governor
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What's confused my me? Because I just watched a video of the new Tesla event where they are releasing what appears to be an Art Deco brick that is designed as a van. That is an insult to Art Deco. Careful. I would agree. It is an insult to Art Deco, but nonetheless, that is what it looks like. The new Tesla van. It looks like a toaster.

It doesn't look like a rolling toaster. Yeah, it's... What I don't understand is how it's supposed... Like, there's no clearance on it. Like, zero. It's just flat to the ground. Um...

I guess there he's trying to replace city buses, but I feel like, yeah, it's a bus for rich people. It's a bus for rich people. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bus that will exist in San Francisco and nowhere else. Maybe it's so that you don't have to ride with the poor is like, that's all. Yeah. I think I'm guessing this is just a, something they're trying to get off the ground with their, uh, uh, uh,

self-driving shit. It is funny that they've gone from like everyone's Tesla will be able to work independently as a profit making cab when they're not driving it to we have this brick that that you can sit in with 19 other people.

I don't know. I don't know why you want this as opposed to any other kind of bus, but I don't. They also had all of the Tesla robots out, and apparently these $20,000 robots that can hand you bags of goodies at a party are going to solve poverty. So I'm excited to see how that works out. Revolutionary. Yeah. This is the biggest step forward for mankind since we invented robots.

I don't know, hitting kids. Garrison, speaking of children. Speaking of hitting kids, actually. Yeah. Eugene Talmadge. I'm glad we're getting to that. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. Me too. Also, this is Behind the Bastards. You know that. You listen to this show. This is part four. You're not jumping in on part four. Yeah. Yeah. Start back with part one if you haven't seen the other parts.

Or do a reverse listen. If you have come unstuck in time and can only process human lives going backwards to forwards like a Benjamin Button kind of deal, you know, then maybe it makes sense. College degrees are pricey, but with low tuition and our $2,500 back-to-school scholarship, WGU makes it possible to earn your degree at a price you can afford. Apply today at wgu.edu.

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Sometimes where a crime took place leads you to answer why the crime happened in the first place. Hi, I'm Sloane Glass, host of the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. In this series, we'll examine some of the country's most infamous and mysterious murders and learn how the location of the crime becomes a character in the story.

Listen to American Homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, we're Tim Benenbrook. Tim, what would you say our goal is every morning? Number one, it's to get here with all of our clothes on. Number two, it's simply to wake people up, get you where you're going with a smile on your face, singing along to your favorite country song. Start your day off right. Listen in Phoenix, clothes optional on 1025 KNIX or wherever you are on the iHeartRadio app.

So last episode, the people of Georgia rejected Eugene Talmadge as the representative in the U.S. Senate. But as World War II loomed over the country, they welcomed him back to the governor's office as Gene signified the comfort of the past. So we're now in the early 1940s and the first cracks in the Jim Crow South are starting to appear.

Since Gene lost his battle against the New Deal, all that was left of the Old South for Gene to defend was its white supremacy. As Southerners grew to accept and enjoy New Deal liberalism, the incongruity of the racial divisions began to manifest itself. And now, just like how the manufactured uproar over critical race theory a few years ago kind of put racism back into our political conversation...

The education system would be the target for Gene's new distinct focus on racism and white supremacy. This is going to be one of these other overlaps between what Gene pioneered and how this carries over to this modern dictatorial conservative strategy. I'm going to quote from William Anderson, Gene's biographer, quote,

Georgia remained a segregationist society in 1941, and Gene Talmadge remained its greatest advocate. Prior to 1941, he had not made racism a major part of his politics, because he had no reason to. Practically every white Georgian was racist to some degree. Every candidate could be expected to treat the black about the same, which was poorly, and any issue of race had been previously overwritten by the New Deal or personality.

Racism had been a part of his career, but it was far from crucial until the 1940s.

So during this time, schools in Georgia were undergoing badly needed reforms, and the University of Georgia hired an admin named Walter D. Cocking to improve the College of Education. So there you go. Yes, get him out now, Dr. Cocking. I'm going to say it a lot. Dr. Walter D. Cocking, we're going to say it a lot. You can get it out now. You had to put the, you had to, does he,

The D in there is... The D feels like you put that in there, Gare. The D is in there. The D is in. But you know what can I say? The D is always there. It's all about that D to me. Well, that's...

for our audience. What can I say? I don't know. I don't know. But I feel like you 100% could have omitted the D. No, no, no. That would have, I would have fired them on the spot. The D is in the historical record. Oh.

I have the duty to include the D. Yeah. Sophie, this is this is journalistic ethics 101. I always include the D. I guess the D the D is the D is it? Uh huh. Uh huh. That's why I'm coming out with a blockbuster piece of journalism in the next couple of weeks. That's just every photo I found of Hunter Biden's cock.

No text at all. Just many such cases over and over again. The New York Times is putting it up front page. Very excited. Robert. No, Garrison, please. Please. The Georgia Board of Regents commissioned multiple studies from Dr. Cocking and his faculty on how to fix the education system, the results of which recommended more funding for black schools and partial integration of certain facilities.

Graduate students were informing Talmadge that there were rumors of integration, and a disgruntled former high school teacher at a school ran by the university blamed Dr. Cocking for her firing, so she sent Talmadge reports on the Black Studies programs. A Talmadge supporter in Athens spread a rumor about Dr. Cocking having an affair with a Black cook that grew to such prominence that the university president investigated and disproved the claim.

Now, things all came to a head in a May 1942 Board of Regents meeting where Talmadge singled out another progressive educator for removal, the president of the Georgia Teachers College, Dr. Marvin Pittman. Gene accused him of being engaged in local partisan politics.

Jean then attacked Dr. Cocking, calling him to be fired as a dean, saying that Dr. Cocking, quote, made a statement that he wanted to see the time when a school for Negroes would be established at Athens so that Negroes and white boys could associate together, unquote.

OK, Gene then promised to remove any person in the university system advocating communism or racial equality. Oh, good. This motion passed. So that is a very classic tactics here. Yeah, that is that is an important thing to understand. American politics is that up to the present day, racial equality and communism are synonyms for about a third of the country.

Well, I mean, we even we even see this with like the whole critical race theory thing. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. Like they're trying to inject cultural Marxism and they're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All this stuff that we've talked about for years. It's been going on for longer than either of us has been alive. But yeah, that's that's important to know.

Now, the president of the University of Georgia, Herman Caldwell, was furious about his staff being fired and submitted his own resignation in protest of Cocking's termination.

In response, on June 16th, the board held a hearing in Gene's office reassessing the firing of Dr. Cocking. The office was packed with faculty in support of Cocking. The only ones there against him were Talmadge and this former high school teacher that Gene brought to complain that Dr. Cocking was trying to integrate Georgia.

Now, cocking was reinstated in a seven to eight vote. Gene whined about this affair in The Statesman, writing, quote, I'm not going to put up with social equality. We don't need no N-words and white people taught together, unquote. A hearing for Dr. Pittman was scheduled for July 14th, but this time in public at the General Assembly instead of the privacy of the governor's office.

Talmadge instructed Dr. Cocking to attend this hearing as well, promising to present new evidence. This evidence focused on the Rosenwald Fund, which financed one of Cocking's studies. You can see where this is going, right? I think I know where we're headed here. The word Rosenwald is really all the hints I needed. So this was a philanthropy foundation from the North that sought to improve the conditions of Southern schools.

Gene referred to this fund as, quote, Jew money for N-words. Hey, you know what? At least he picked the J word and not the K word, right? He could have doubled down on the slurs. Yeah, put two of them in there. That makes him woke by that decade's standards. Woke Talmadge. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, you can see Gene's kind of previous like decades, decades long attacks on like bankers is kind of as is coded in anti-Semitism, certainly. And like his main political inspiration, Tom Watson, was rabidly anti-Semitic. And we start to see more of the anti-Semitism come out during Gene's kind of last brush with politics because Gene just got increased increasingly like openly racist because he had.

like nothing else to like basis politics on as liberalism progressed in the South. So Talmadge also ordered the Statesboro College Library to search for books containing quote communism or anything except Americanism unquote to use as evidence against the men in the hearings. Again, very similar to all of like the attacks on school and education that we've seen the past few years here in the United States.

Before the hearing, Gene pressured two oppositional members of the Board of Regents to resign. One was a lifelong friend and classmate. The other was an editor at the Constitution, the newspaper. Now, friends and political advisors to Gene strongly discouraged him from doing this as he didn't need to make more enemies at the Constitution. But more importantly, this whole affair and Gene's increased meddling in Georgia's education system was actually going to threaten the accreditation of Georgia's universities.

Now, I'm going to quote from William Anderson as he discusses the hearing. Quote, prior to the hearing, Gene began mounting a public campaign that painted the two men as communists financed by Jews and bent on destroying Georgia's culture. The public hearing was a public spectacle. The hall was packed, mostly with Talmadge people, and down front center stage, white suited, smoking a huge cigar and wearing a 10-gallon hat, sat Gene.

It was all show. Flashbulbs sparked the air, people cheered, police swarmed, and the show opened by reading excerpts from Brown America. The book, written by Rosenwald chief Edwin Embry, had been found in the Statesboro College Library. Board regent member James S. Peters said, Throughout this book, the thought runs, erase the feeling of superiority of the white man. They want...

They want them to put the white man down and draw the races together. They want them to use the same schools, ride the same trains. It means they want intermarriage. That's what it means. Oh, man. Yeah, there we go. There we go. Yeah. Some good old... I mean, this does show you slightly where some of the progress has been because...

You're still angry about the same things today, but you can't say that your issue is intermarriage. We're still it's still bad to complain about race mixing, although they're working on that one. So they sure they sure are working to bring that back. Yeah, we'll see if we'll see how far they get. The fact that like this, like great replacement stuff was like a cringe Lauren Southern posting in 2017 and is now like a mainstream Republican talking point. I'm not optimistic. Yeah, very worrying. Yeah.

Yeah. So as James Peters talked about how they want intermarriage, Gene shouted in response, they won't do it.

And the galley and the galleys rocked with laughter and applause. Now, you can you can see these tactics are the exact same that people are using now, like reading books found in school libraries to like paint the to paint these people as like radical and like trying to destroy America or trying to destroy Georgia. This is the same stuff that's happening now.

To continue from Anderson, quote,

The galley shouted, Yankee teacher, unquote. Yeah, that makes that that's I mean, that's what I would shout at any of my teachers who were born north of the Mason Dixon. So I get it.

The new Talmadge-approved Board of Regents voted 10-5 to fire Dr. Cocking once again. President Pittman was next on the chopping block. They read from another book on race titled Calling America, and a disgruntled professor testified that five black men from the Tuskegee Institute toured Statesboro College and ate in the cafeteria while no white people were on campus.

This was Jean's single witness against the educator. Meanwhile, Pittman had 36 witnesses, but the board voted once again 10 to 5 to terminate Dr. Pittman.

This whole incident caused a degree of uproar, and Jean responded by writing, quote, Dr. Cocking favored the teaching of white and Negro children in the same classrooms. My God, I am opposed to social equality. And as long as I am the governor of Georgia, no such teaching will be permitted in our school system.

Dr. Cocking, as you know, was reared in Iowa, where white and colored are taught in the same classroom. Scandalous. His conduct since being in Georgia is proof of the fact that he retains the views and ideas gained to him in the state of Iowa.

I am not in favor of such foreign ideas being taught in our university system, unquote. You know, there's no nice way to say this. So I'm just going to say it straight out because I just read an article this morning about like all the death threats meteorologists are getting because Republicans have decided that like you can just threaten to kill people if they say that there's going to be a hurricane. Yeah.

that's, you know, and that's inconvenient to your belief system because hurricanes are clearly getting worse and you've denied climate change for years. Like all of this shit, you know, the current push against any kind of like integration, all of the fucking white genocide panics, like,

Back in the day, in Talmadge's day, when you had all of these fucking freaks complaining about the idea of black and white kids going to school together, the only thing that overcame their disinformation and paranoia and bigotry was sending men with machine guns in and saying, we will fucking kill you if you don't integrate these schools. That's what the government had to do. Anyway, food for thought.

So after this second hearing, the Southern Accrediting Commission on Institutions of Higher Education announced that it was investigating the governor's interference in the state's education system. Jean responded to panicked parents concerned that the universities might lose their accreditation by saying, we credit our own schools down here.

Which is also similar to some of Trump's Agenda 47 plans to improve the university system. He's just offering them what they've wanted forever. Yeah. Now, this apparently didn't help calm things down. Shocking. As Gene was forced to give a radio address defending his racist actions, which he signed off by saying, the good Negroes don't want any co-mixing of the races. Yeah.

Not great. Again, like when Eugene Talmadge is forced to defend his own racism on radio in 1942. Sure.

That that shows how bad he is, because at this point, everyone is racist. Like people in the university, in the university system aren't actually calling for like mass integration like that. That's not what they're doing. Gene is just so like fucked up and racist that he thinks any any small step that might eventually lead to lead to that outcome has to be like fundamentally opposed. But like Dr. Cocking isn't actually calling for all the schools to be integrated. Like that's like he's like.

That's simply not what's happening right now. Yeah. Now, the attorney general, a guy named Ellis Arnold, who was previously like a longtime Talmadge supporter, he was worried that Gene's forced resignation of the Board of Regents was actually just illegal.

And Gina knew that the AG was concerned. So when Arnold was out of town for a few days, Gene instructed the AG's office to write an opinion affirming the governor's actions. And then when the AG returned, he had to countermand this opinion and announced that he would be running for governor against Gene to secure academic freedom.

Henry Sperlin, one of Gene's longest friends, did claim that Gene actually tried to have the AG arrested while he was vacationing in Florida just to bring him back to Atlanta during the legislative session to affirm his actions. Although I think Arnold denies this. There's some conflicting reports over whether Gene tried to have the AG arrested. Yeah, great. Now...

In September, the Southern Accrediting Commission suspended 10 of Georgia's white schools for, quote, unprecedented and unjustifiable political interference, unquote.

The next month, the Southern University Conference dropped the University of Georgia from its membership. Gene told the Board of Regents that they could undo some of his meddling to protect the system. However, he was canceling meetings to ratify an agreement between the regents and the Accreditation Committee. Gene also refused to sign a letter stating that he did not have complete control over the entire university system, saying, quote, I think it's a mistake for the governor to write any letter which might limit his authority as the governor, unquote.

One of Gene's allies on the board begged him to reconsider, warning that if the accreditation issue did not get resolved soon, it could turn thousands of families and students against Gene. His wife and his advisors also wanted him to back down, but fan mail from racist supporters told him otherwise. Not fan mail.

Gene received so much fan mail from like racist, like I'm sure supporters. And he listened to that way more than he listened to any of his like actual political advisors, because like this was this is this is what this is what the people were actually wanting. He he he really he really enjoyed reading through his fan mail. This is like a really this was really important to the way Gene operated as that's an evidence that you're unhinged because as someone who gets a lot of fan mail, I appreciate all of the fans.

But reading through fan mail is at best a mixed experience, right? Because for every person who's like really nice and giving you like honest, you know, it's like, oh, this is great. I'm glad I've had a positive impact on this person. There's someone who will like message you with something that is so good.

That is evidence that like they're having a problem, right? Like that happens a lot when you're a contactable person with any level of fame. And it's deeply upsetting. It's not – I'm not complaining. It's just like, oh, you are messaging me because you think that I have some sort of special like knowledge that can help you when you're like very serious problem. And that is like every fifth letter you get when you're famous. And it's –

Not fun. It doesn't. I mean, I don't think that matters to Gene because he doesn't actually care about helping people. He just likes that they're reaching out. Yeah. Ways to maximize his racism. That's that's that's his primary motivation. Yeah. And a lot of this fan mail affirms his racism. So he greatly enjoys it. To quote Anderson, quote,

He did not believe that the voters wanted integration. He did not believe that they gave a damn about the Accreditation Association. He believed that their opposition to racial equality was so strong that they would risk almost any loss. Gene felt the implications and the threat were of a far greater magnitude than even the New Deal, though he saw them both as a common conspiracy by outsiders to take over the lives of Georgians, unquote.

After attempts at an agreement between the regions and the Accreditation Committee failed, finally in December, they voted to end the accreditation of all of Georgia's state schools. The St. Louis Dispatch wrote, quote, Here in the heart of Dixie has developed a prize specimen of full-blown American fascism. The dictatorship is just as effective and just as vicious as the Huey Long dictatorship, unquote. Okay.

Very, very brave. You don't have the New York Times saying such stuff now. Full blown American fascism. Yeah. Well, what other kind of American fascism are you going to have, Garrison? You don't want half blown American fascism.

So this this whole incident is called the cocking affair. I just think that's a really good name Wow, you just you just said half-blown and that Reminded me anyway, we should take it out of break Yeah, anyway, there you go awful

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Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to mind. Who did this and why? And sometimes the answer to those questions can be found in the where. Where the crime happened.

I'm journalist Sloane Glass, and I host the new podcast, American Homicide. Each week, we'll explore some of this country's most infamous and mysterious murders. And you'll learn how the location of the crime became a character in the story. On American Homicide, we'll go coast to coast and visit places like the wide open New Mexico desert, the swampy Louisiana bayou,

and the frozen Alaska wilderness. And we'll learn how each region of the country holds deadly secrets. So join me, Sloan Glass, on the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. Listen to American Homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back.

Ah, good stuff. And what a cocking affair it was. What a cocking affair it was.

So the next election would be framed as choosing education or racism. Though this wasn't like really truly the case because, again, both candidates, Talmadge and Arnell, were segregationists. One just preferred to not shut down the entire school system to exert personal power over two academics who he personally disliked. Right. Like that is the main difference. Right. Between Talmadge's racism and Arnell's racism. Sure. Yeah.

Anderson notes, Arnell, emerging as Jean's only opponent, said that the issue was not the black man, not the mixing of races, but whether George's children would be denied quality education, unquote.

Now, crucial to Arnall's success was that this election only be a two man race, and he successfully convinced others not to run as it would split the county unit vote, giving Gene an almost automatic victory. Arnall knew that a large number of people would vote for racism and that he was not equipped to beat Gene in a quote unquote N-word hating contest.

Education remained the only remaining vector of attack against Jean. Now, on top of fixing the school crisis, Arnell also called to put more limits on the governor's individual power. In campaign speeches, Arnell called Talmadge Georgia's own version of Hitler, and he called for Georgians to, quote, awaken to the dangerous trend in our state government, unquote.

Yeah, that would be nice. That would be nice if people. I think George is going to turn it around now. I don't know where this story ends, Garrison, but I got a good feeling. This story has a mixed ending, but yeah. Yeah.

Now, Gene's 1942 re-election campaign was riddled with unforced errors and self-sabotaging betrayals. He turned his old friend and political ally Tom Linder against him by refusing to return political favors. Once again, this is a continued trend throughout his career. And he even sabotaged Linder's post as agricultural commissioner, which pissed off Linder so much that he began campaigning against Gene.

To quote Anderson, quote, the Atlanta Journal noted that Gene's candidacy had soured because of too much racism. Old friends seemed to be leaving him in droves, and it became a part of every Arnold speech to have ex-Talmadge people turn in their red suspenders. Students protested rallies, chanting, to hell with Talmadge, unquote. Dick Cheney has come out against Eugene Talmadge. All of Talmadge's former cabinet has come out against Eugene Talmadge.

Great. All these guys that also suck are like, yeah, Gene just sucks a little too much. It's not entirely inconceivable that Dick Cheney would have been around and needing to give a comment back then. Yeah. Little like five-year-old Dick Cheney. Yeah. Yeah. Little five-year-old Dick Cheney shoots a man in the face and then gives a quote on Eugene Talmadge. Scary thought. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, he was a hard drinker at five, too. I believe that. That is 100% believable. So was Talmadge. Talmadge was drinking a lot later in his life. And throughout this whole race, his health was plummeting. Yeah, that's probably for the best. University of Georgia students were putting on anti-Talmadge skits at football games and canvassed for the Arnold campaign in large numbers.

Because like this guy just like taking away their education. And at this point in like Georgia history, this kind of marked the turning point where education wasn't just like a luxury for the super rich. It was finally becoming like something that regular people could afford to enjoy.

And like specifically, it marked a path to escape from this like endless cycle of like crop farming that your family and your parents, your grandparents, their grandparents had all been doing for their entire lives. Like education was their way out, was their way out of this system. And Gene was stealing it from them. So the massive, massive student organizing happened against Gene Talmadge during during this race.

So much so that Talmadge supporters in Athens, where the University of Georgia is, thought it would be too dangerous for Gene to speak in town while school was still in session. And instead, he was advised to hold rallies in surrounding towns.

At Statesboro College, Gene's driver and sometimes bodyguard tear gassed a group of student protesters while Gene spoke. Incidents like this bolstered Arnold's attacks on Gene as a dictatorial strongman, saying that Governor Talmadge was, quote, carrying a bunch of strong arm runts and...

And Plug Ugly is ready to use mustard gas on children. Well, we all do like mustard gas in children. I am glad I do not associate with machine gun operators. I am glad I do not live in fear of friends I have double-crossed. Unquote.

Again, I think there actually is a way for Arnell to solve some of these problems by getting a little friendly with some machine gun operators. Hey, historically, it's the only thing that works. So violence continued at Talmadge rallies. He's now tear gassing students. The Atlanta Journal commented on why violence seems to often accompany Gene's campaign. Quoting from the Atlanta Journal, quote,

Talmudism, by its very nature, tends to produce this sort of thing. It means bullying, browbeating, dictatorship. Its resilience is not on reason, but on arbitrary force. Its appropriate emblems are a gas attack and a blackjack, unquote. Now, this was either slang, meaning a police baton, or just or like coercion via threats, right?

Now, on his way to his traditional 4th of July speech, Gene had his driver stop at a farm just outside of town to use the outhouse. This was an old Gene tactic just to win another rural voter. Now, this was a rainy and overcast day, a first in his series of 4th of July speeches. Gene returned from the outhouse in pain, rubbing his butt and exclaimed to the driver, a goddamn black widow spider bit me on the ass. Oh, no.

They found a doctor in town. Gene was given medication and told to cancel the speech, which of course he refused to do.

So he began his hour-long speech suffering from great pain, and not long into the speech, torrential downpour caused most of the audience to abandon Gene, leaving only a handful of attendees in the rain, and a few others listening from their cars. I'm going to read from Anderson, quote,

The rain pelted Gene's lonely figure, slightly bent with pain, but he kept talking hard and loud so that those in their cars could hear. The water pounded in the paper bunting, washing its fragile red, white, and blues all over the pine planking in gashes of color. It drenched Gene's suit and plastered his hair against his head, but he still went on, wet to the bone, alone and hurting badly from the bite.

After 25 minutes, he could give no more. He hobbled dejectedly from the platform to the applause of honking car horns. Only one prompter had remained with them, and when he asked, "'What about the Negroes going to our schools, Gene?' Talmadge responded, "'Before God, friend, the N-words will never go to a school which is white while I am governor.'"

Good Lord. He blamed the whole mess on carpetbaggers, communists and the newspapers. That's that's the one similarity is that I also do blame all of my problems on carpetbaggers. You you live in Oregon. What do you know? I know. I know. They're all carpetbaggers here, Garrison. That's why you got to really watch out.

You're the carpet breaker. No, no, no, no. I'm the reverse of a carpet bagger. I'm pulling up carpets and throwing them in the trash, baby. I got a wood floor. Uh-huh. Sophie, I called you a carpet bagger the other day because I had to wake up at 1130. I'm okay with that. I'll take that L. Yeah, that's right.

Jean was right in the way that like the extremely isolated rural Georgians didn't much care for the educational issue as like it hardly affected them. And instead, they saw the vague specter of racial integration as a much more frightening threat.

And to his credit, William Anderson does discuss like the hypocritical nature of this election, how Talmadge was widely framed as the racist candidate, while his pro-education liberal opponents could could get away with making very similar statements. For example, at one of his rallies, Ellis Arnold stated, quote, Why, if a Negro ever tried to get into a white school in the section where I live, the sun would not set on his head. Unquote. Good Lord. Jesus Christ.

So, yeah, like like everyone's bad during a radio appearance. While Arnell thought he was off mic, he was accidentally broadcast saying, quote, any N-word who tried to enter the university would not be in existence the next day. Jesus, we don't need a governor or a sheriff to take care of that situation, unquote. And like that's the difference, right? Is that like.

Talmadge wants this to be like a part of state law. He wants this to be like pre-eminently making sure this never happens. While Arnell is just comfortable in the racism of his general constituency. No, we don't need the government to do that. We'll have regular white people kill the... It's...

We'll just have the regular white people kill black people if they try to get into the schools. That's where the line comes down. It's the specific focus that the racial issue is framed in their politics that shows the difference between the two candidates, even though both are kind of raging, murderous, racist Georgians in the 1940s. Well, that's just who's – yeah, I mean that's always going to be the case. Yeah.

Now, like everyone rallying against Gene were very racist and pro-segregation. They just didn't want to sacrifice privileges enjoyed by white Georgians for Gene's quest for personal power and his idealistic commitment to white supremacy, even when it was politically inconvenient. Ultimately, Arnell beat Gene by 50,000 in the popular vote and by over 100 points in the county unit vote. This year, there was low voter turnout with over 100,000 less votes than just a few years ago.

The New Deal elections just drew out much more enthusiasm and a greater number of votes. And World War II was certainly a contributing factor to there being less votes this year. Now, unlike his last defeat, this time there was no stop this deal. And Gene admitted that the university accreditation issue lost him the election. Still, the vast, vast majority of Georgians were still incredibly racist, Ellis Arnell among them. But all he had to do was present his prejudice in a more responsible way.

I'm going to quote from Anderson. Quote,

The voters did show that they valued something more than white supremacy. Probably few other issues would have caused such a vote, but the fact that one issue did cause the white reaction was historically significant. Gene had misread Georgian's willingness to reject the old way for a second time. He had shown again how his personality politics could not withstand a confrontation with great issues. Reality had again defeated idealism."

So that's the situation in 1942. Now, after the election, Gene's race controversies continued. In the last month of office, it was learned that for two years, Gene had been receiving monthly food deliveries of vegetables and meat grown and processed by inmates at the state prison farm. The slave labor deliveries were sent both to his house in Atlanta and his farm in McRae. When questioned about this, Gene seemed proud, saying...

Rumors also circulated that Mitt, Gene's wife, was using prison labor to help keep the farm up and running. With an old neighbor saying, quote, unquote.

And then after the election, our old journalist friend, Ralph McGill, reported that Gene had been spotted at a KKK meeting. A claim that Gene did not dispute. Instead, writing to McGill, Ralph, I don't hate anyone. I know that hatred dwarves the man who carries it in his soul and does not affect the one whom he hates at all. Everyone had a great time, and I wish, Ralph, that you could have been there."

So this is what G was getting up to in his semi-retirement. Sure. You know, who amongst us? Me, I've never been to a KKK rally. Same. Oh, wow. Okay, okay. Same Zs. I've been to a KKK rally, but I have eaten at a Sizzler. And those are not dissimilar experiences. Have you ever had Sizzler? No. Yeah. Yeah, it's like the KKK rally of restaurants.

Yeah. Sophie, is that true? It's kind of true. My only memory of Sizzler is that my brother really liked the commercials when we were younger and begged my mom to take us there. And then he was really disappointed because the food was terrible. It's god awful. It's a hate crime. I'm sorry to Sizzler, but I do feel like... I've never been to... I've never been to Klan rallies...

For like, not for work. Yeah. Me and Robert have attended a great number of racist rallies for work. I will say going to like any of the restaurants that exclusively cater to elderly people on Sundays in like North Texas is a similar experience. You're going to hear slurs. So...

As as Gene was now in semi-retirement, he still ran a law office, but he didn't have like imminent plans to run for election and no longer having to appeal to voters. Gene moved further to the right and attacked Roosevelt for using the war to globalize the New Deal in further in furtherance of a, quote unquote, world regimentation.

The genes primary objection to the war was that it would lead to calls for more black civil rights and compromise the segregationist south. A headline in jeans newspaper, the statesman read a quote election of Roosevelt means promoting Negroes in Georgia, unquote. I mean, great.

So, like, after the war, certainly there were more calls for black civil rights because a whole bunch of black people had just, like, fought for the United States overseas. And it's like Gene knew that that was going to happen, and that was one of his primary objections to the war, as well as this, like, proto-Illuminati conspiracy theory that Roosevelt was, like, specifically getting into the war so that he could spread, like, a globalized New Deal. That was...

So like we can see little seeds of again of talking points that that'll become more common, you know, once we once we get to like the John Birch Society, like a decade or so later.

Now, as a last fuck you from FDR, all the way back in 1935, when Gene was eyeing up the presidency, Roosevelt sent the IRS to investigate Gene's finances. And after a fruitless 10 year search, the IRS came to Gene's law office and gave him a $3,000 bill for all of the work that they had done.

I don't know if that's how the IRS is supposed to work. That doesn't sound like the way it's supposed to work. But critical support to the IRS for billing Gene for them investigating his finances for 10 years. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I could use a little bit more of that energy in the modern era. Yes.

Now, after World War Two, society had essentially like progressed past the need for a Eugene Talmadge. The war accelerated liberal progress and Georgia was dragged into the modern era. But by the end of the war, when the men came home, a reactionary spirit was growing to comfort those who found themselves in an unfamiliar changing world.

Unable to completely undo all the vast reforms that had been done in the FDR years, the last vestige of the past to fall back on was again racism. In spring of 1946, the Supreme Court ruled that the whites only primary elections were unconstitutional and that black citizens must be allowed to vote in primaries.

This sent shockwaves through the South. In response to the court ruling, Jean called for the state's primary election laws to be completely abolished, leaving the primary regulations up to the party. Then the Democratic Party could decide on having an all-white primary. Now, no serious politician liked this plan, as it would mean an end to the county unit system and all the legal safeguards against election fraud.

Basically, Gene's idea would seriously jeopardize Georgia's ability to function as a legitimate state. Okay. This is in line with his whole thing during the cocking affair, right? He's able... He is willing to jeopardize the legitimacy of the government and of the state just to ensure white supremacy. And this is what separates him from the other politicians, right? The other politicians are like, no, we still need to have...

A working state like we still need to we still need to be we still need to be able to function and Gene's willing to like sabotage like the state's own ability to operate just to ensure his white supremacist like ideology is going to be like intact after his death.

So, like, regardless of whatever Gene was up to, Governor Arnall refused to call for a session to alter voting laws, taking the somewhat bold stance of requesting that the good people of Georgia let black people vote in their primary.

This was actually like pretty progressive for the time, especially for a governor in the South. For all of Arnold's racism that we've already discussed, this was like one of the better things he did. And this kind of helped to improve his legacy as a governor. The fact that he like did not oppose like black people voting in party primaries.

So, unable to abolish or change primary law, Gene decided to give the governor's race one last shot in a campaign to save the white primary. Gene was now 61 and was getting increasingly ill. He drank too much and he barely ate. Friends and family, including his wife, Mitt, pleaded with Gene not to run, worried that the campaign might literally kill him. But Gene thought there was no one else more qualified to run a white supremacist campaign than himself.

Anderson says, quote,

The Supreme Court decision provided Jean with some badly needed angles on the racial issue, which needed some substantiation. It had generally been felt that the black cause had advanced, but there had been comfort in knowing that the advancement had been more myth than reality.

The court ruling changed all that and thrust the Negro into the foreground as an issue. It also sent a shudder through Georgia's liberal establishment for very few of them favored social integration. It would cost them their progressive credibility to join the chorus against black Americans. But worse than that, they feel that an outburst of white supremacy would obliterate them at the polls, unquote.

So Gene equated this post-war period with the reconstruction, right? His main campaign platform was to ensure, quote, a democratic white primary unfettered and unhampered by radical communism and alien forces, unquote.

Gene's son Herman was heavily involved in the 1946 election campaign and wrote the rest of his platform. Herman tried to soften some of his father's harsher, ultra-conservative edges. The first draft of Herman's platform shocked Gene, saying, "'Good God Almighty, who wrote this stuff?'

But Gene eventually agreed. The strategy was to please the predominantly racist white Georgians, as well as attract Talmadge skeptic liberals with Herman's economics. The result saw Gene call for, quote, social reforms to be protected and maintained, and we must protect the Negro from the communist influence, unquote. That was that was his basic combined platform.

He was kind of embracing some of the more liberal economics that he had spent his whole career deriding while doubling down on the race issue.

Gene formally started his campaign in May, foregoing the typical barbecue cookout. And his rallies were smaller and more docile than usual. Crowd sizes across the state, across all campaigns, were smaller than they used to be. This is attributed to a number of factors, like the mass adoption of home radio, less bountiful food post-war. And for this summer especially, people were staying home out of fears of a so-called race riot.

Now, adding to the racist focus in the campaign, in June, Gene announced that if elected, he would cease all interstate bus travel through Georgia in response to a new federal ruling that declared that black people have the right to sit anywhere they wanted on a bus crossing state lines. To maintain segregated seating, Gene proposed a system where to enter or exit the state, passengers would have to leave their bus on the state line and get a special ticket for travel within Georgia.

This was the lengths he was willing to go. Just a completely ludicrous system.

Or you have to get off the bus, get a special ticket, re-enter the bus with segregated seating. Yeah. No, I love that. This is always the way these things go, right? It's like the same with most of the fair evasion things where it's like, hmm, what can we do? How do we solve this problem that we have largely created as a problem? Let's just make the whole thing worse for everybody. It's emblematic of what all of his solutions end up being. Yeah. Yeah.

I haven't really thought through the problem, let alone like what the solution will do. It's all theater. Like it's, it's, it's, it's all theater. I invented an issue or at least like my constituents invented an issue. I probably know that it's bullshit, but I'm just going to make things. I guess there's some intelligence there. Cause like if your response to all my racist comments,

voters are angry about integration and your solution to deal with integration and public transit is to make public transit worse, everyone will get angrier. And as a general rule, the primary resource you have as a guy like Talmadge is the anger of like regular dumb people, right? Like that's it. So yeah, I guess it all makes sense in the end. Make everything worse. Yeah. That's how the Republican Party works today. Sure.

In parallels to our current situation, in the past decade, Gene played a sort of cat and mouse game with the big Atlanta newspapers. Reporters would gleefully follow the Talmadge campaign trail. And though both parties were critical of each other, they relied on each other, right? Like the Talmadge helped the newspapers because...

He helped them sell a whole bunch of papers and Talmadge needed papers to cover himself. But in the in the 46 race, this dynamic fully tipped over into open hostility with each side and now viewing the other as legitimately dangerous and no longer useful.

As the papers attacked Gene, reporters received threats and harassment from his supporters and had to go undercover at campaign rallies. At one small kind of backwater town, Gene spotted a Talmadge-critical reporter, whom he banned from visiting his office, hiding in the crowd. And he started ranting about them lying Atlanta newspapers. And then he pointed to the lone reporter. There he is now! Uh...

I do love that it is spelled T-H-A-R. Yeah. The reporter braced for like a gang assault, but Gene ordered his boys to let him up on stage. As he climbed on the platform, Gene whispered in his ear, I know you're a pretty good fella. You just write that way, unquote. Well,

So that is the situation in the campaign at this point in time. Great. Let's do it well. Do you know what we also think are pretty good fellas? Sometimes. Yeah. I mean, this podcast is sponsored by all of the guys who survived Goodfellas. So thank God we remain free of Leonardo DiCaprio. Spoilers for Goodfellas.

College degrees are pricey, but with low tuition and our $2,500 back-to-school scholarship, WGU makes it possible to earn your degree at a price you can afford. Apply today at wgu.edu. When you sign up at WorkMoney, you could win $50,000. With the average renter paying around $2,100 per month, that means you can have rent covered for a whole year and more. So you can be more. And when you're more, that means you get more.

And more. Ooh, but not so much of that. Sign up at WorkMoney. Get money-saving tips. Skip the rent. Get more rich. Sign up at WorkMoney.org slash MoreRichContest for your chance to win $50,000. Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to mind. Who did this and why? And sometimes the answer to those questions can be found in the where. Where the crime happened.

I'm journalist Sloane Glass, and I host the new podcast, American Homicide. Each week, we'll explore some of this country's most infamous and mysterious murders. And you'll learn how the location of the crime became a character in the story. On American Homicide, we'll go coast to coast and visit places like the wide open New Mexico desert, the swampy Louisiana bayou,

and the frozen Alaska wilderness. And we'll learn how each region of the country holds deadly secrets. So join me, Sloan Glass, on the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. Listen to American Homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back for our last section looking at Eugene Talmadge and

By God, it gets worse. Oh, good. Now, this entire summer, the campaign was marked by escalating racist violence and intimidation. On May 9th, a massive cross burning and KKK recruitment rally promising a quote unquote rebirth of the Klan was held on Stone Mountain overlooking Atlanta.

The second iteration of the Klan started 30 years prior, was also founded on Stone Mountain. And Stone Mountain is currently the largest Confederate monument in the country, and it's still often home to white nationalist rallies. To quote William Anderson, quote, "...rumors of the affair swept the state, causing near hysteria, and giving Gene most of the credit for bringing the Klan back to life with his demagoguery."

The event itself was a comical ragtag affair which embarrassed its leaders because they kept running out of sheets to give to new members. Many of them were forced to wrap themselves in paper and handkerchiefs.

Unquote.

Now, I kind of disagree with some of Anderson's characterization of this rally. Anderson writes that those gathered on Stone Mountain were like a sad, pathetic lot who had been left behind by changing society. And it's not that they were left behind. It's that they were stubborn, cruel, and cowardly. They refused to join society. Anderson both discounts their agency and the threat of violence they posed, saying...

It was high irony that society would look at the souls with such fear and dread as though they were a well-disciplined horror that could sweep from the mountain and destroy at will, unquote. And like I get what Anderson's saying here. I don't want to give them too much credit. I don't want to give like like, you know, current day white supremacists too much credit for being like a well-organized faction that can destroy democracy and at like at any moment. Right.

But on the other hand, it is wrong to downplay the violent potential of racial extremism. Yes. This is evidenced by the Morris Ford lynching that happened later that summer on July 25th outside Monroe, Georgia.

While two black couples were on their way home, a lynch mob forced their car to pull over and the mob dragged them out of the vehicle, broke the girl's arms, tied them to a tree and shot all of them until their bodies could no longer be recognized. Jesus. Over 60 shots. Jesus. One of the victims was seven months pregnant. Jesus. And it's reported that the unborn baby was cut out of the mother's body by the mob. Oh my God. Oh my God.

It's one of the most brutal lynchings, and this is considered the last, quote unquote, mass lynching. Now, I would say there's incidents that have happened since then, which certainly qualifies lynchings. I would also add— This is historically the final of the Jim Crow lynchings.

I would also add that like in World War One, when the Western powers were trying to build up like hate and a justification to really like we have to destroy imperial Germany. They told stories of German soldiers cutting babies out of women's wombs. Like one of the things that was largely used as a as like this is why the empire of Japan is so evil is stories of them doing that in China. And like.

I don't disagree that that's pretty much the ultimate evil, but like that does kind of bring to mind. Well, then if this was something that a lot of people in the white South were fine with doing, what should we have done in this period to the white South? Anyway, whatever. A Monroe local told a reporter, quote, this thing has got to be done to keep Mr. N-word in his place. Since the court said he could vote, there ain't been any holding him back, unquote.

President Truman called for an FBI investigation, but the town protected all of the assailants. The FBI also looked into Talmadge's possible involvement. Though rumors that he personally led the mob were certainly untrue, Gene did campaign in town shortly before the lynching, and witnesses reported that Gene spoke with one of the future suspects and offered impunity to anyone, quote-unquote, taking care of the Negro, unquote.

An FBI memo suggested that Talmadge may have sanctioned the killings in order to help win the badly needed rural county unit vote. Shortly after, the county did indeed go to Talmadge. At the very least, Jean's 1946 campaign rhetoric was widely blamed for prompting the brutally racist murders.

Later that summer, hooded KKK members held rallies at county courthouses to scare Black people away from voting, just like during Reconstruction. Anderson notes, quote, "Gene said it would be an accident if he got even one Black vote," unquote. The Liberal candidate, James Carmichael, did win the popular vote with 313,000 votes to Gene's 297,000, but Talmadge pulled through in the county unit vote by about 100 points.

Yeah.

That would have been the call, huh? That is something we are still working on. Perhaps we should have purged ourselves of the sickness from which they feed. 80 years later, we are still purging ourselves of the sickness. It's more that like 80 years ago, it was very clear to people like this that like,

We were eating, you know, we were consuming something rancid that had made us sick. And we just kind of doubled down like Homer Simpson with that old submarine sandwich and just kept on eating it.

After the votes were tallied, Gene said that winning the race must have cost him 10 years of his life, which might literally be true if he was meant to live to 72 instead of 62. May it happen to Trump. Yeah. He made almost 300 speeches this campaign. And by the end of the race, his health was in a dire state. And after the election, it did not improve.

At this point in his marriage, Mitt was refusing to cook him dinner, so he'd often have to eat at friends' houses. And while on vacation in Jacksonville, Gene collapsed unconscious onto the dinner table of one of his friends while eating stew. He was rushed to the hospital and treated for a ruptured vein in his stomach. Stew got him, huh? Comrade Stew. Look, ever since 2020, we've been saying that soup is antifa. That is true. This just really proves the case.

Gene was getting blood transfusions and upon awaking, Gene told a young reporter that snuck into the hospital, quote, it ain't nothing but an old bleeding vein, unquote. The doctors said that Gene wouldn't be able to attend the state convention. So Herman gave the speech in his place. And though Gene had an initial quick recovery, his friends and family started to doubt that he would survive his four year term.

Then in early December, Jean was rushed to the hospital again due to hemorrhaging. While in the hospital, Talmadge's team was still working on plans to save the white primary, this time by disqualifying all of the registered voters in the state. But by mid-December... But by mid-December... I mean, this is actually also like what the modern right is doing to affect the upcoming election, where they're doing like mass un-voter registrations. Again, like...

specifically targeting like black areas, especially in Texas. I know that they have that they have done this as well as well as in Georgia. Like this is this tactic of like of of disqualifying registered voters to sway elections is still being used. Now, by mid-December, Gene contracted acute hepatitis. And at this point, he knew he was dying.

I'm going to quote from the book Race and Racism in the United States. Quote, unquote.

Deathbed remarks. Yeah. Still the standard line on the right. Yeah. Anderson notes, quote, during his illness, a rather morbid joke circulated saying that Gene Talmadge was the only man in Georgia that could have the whole state praying at once. One half that he would die, the other half that he would live. Now, some of his last recorded words are on a phone call to his friend, Henry Sperlin, who was out buying cattle for Gene's farm.

And with Gene's dying breaths, he whispered over the phone, Spud, that was Sperling's nickname, Spud, don't buy no more cows, unquote. Tragic. Eugene Talmadge fell into a coma and died that next morning. That was December 21st, 1946. Well, that's my favorite movie he's made so far. Yeah. May all of his descendants follow him soon. Yeah.

This was just weeks before being sworn in as governor for the fourth time. As his coffin sat in the state capitol, it was decorated with a Ku Klux Klan wreath. And currently, a statue honoring Eugene Talmadge stands in front of the Georgia capitol. That probably shouldn't be there. Might want to pull that one down. And with that, that should be the end of the dictatorial reign of Eugene Talmadge. It should. And yet, somehow, it is not.

Cool. There's one more page. So with Gene dying before being sworn in as governor, the office should have been passed down to the lieutenant governor elect Melvin E. Thompson. As Thompson asserted his claim to the governor's office, Gene's son, Herman Talmadge, announced that he was instead going to take the governor's office.

So as Gene was dying, he was calling up political associates to ask that they help Herman pick up the baton from Gene after his death. And Herman himself had actually already prepared for this contingency.

Before the general election, a friend of Herman uncovered an old clause in the state constitution stipulating that if the governor-elect dies before taking office, the General Assembly could appoint whoever had the second most votes in the general election. Though Gene ran unopposed in the general, Herman suspected that the liberal candidate might receive write-in protest votes.

So for insurance, Herman launched a covert write-in campaign for himself and claimed to receive a thousand votes, beating the other write-in candidates. Governor Arnall rejected Herman's claim to the office and stated that he himself would remain governor indefinitely until the mess was sorted out. So there was now three men claiming to be the rightful governor of Georgia, all citing different clauses in the state constitution.

A joint assembly met on January 14th to decide who was governor. The assembly counted the write-in votes for Herman, and it appeared that there were far less than Talmadge proclaimed, with the official count losing Herman the write-in race.

This was, however, until a box of 58 additional votes mysteriously arrived from Telfair County, which was Herman's home county. And these spontaneously appearing extra votes gave Talmadge a small lead. Mysteriously appeared? We'll get to it. Cool. I'm going to quote from the AJC, quote,

As the vote neared, one of the weapons of choice was alcohol. Each side hoped the other might be too drunk to vote. I mean, that's what I'm hoping for. Herman Talmadge remembers, quote, some of our people were reacting strongly to Melvin Thompson's liquor.

A state senator of ours was found in the Capitol grounds passed out. The sheriff of Forsyth County came to our office with a Thompson man and the sheriff was about to kill him. The sheriff said he caught the Thompson man serving knockout drops. It was sort of like the date rape drug of today, apparently. So we had some of our friends organize a rehab hospital down in the public service commission in the Capitol where they would be where they would try to keep our people functioning, unquote.

So after a series of fights, offensively deployed alcohol and some sketchy political maneuvers, Herman was voted governor by the legislature and sworn in at 2 a.m. Eight to 10,000 Talmadge supporters broke into the Capitol and joined Herman as he went to take the governor's office. Governor Arnold refused to leave. He saw Talmadge's ascension as illegitimate and called Herman a pretender.

A massive fistfight broke out in the capital, furniture was smashed, and Arnel's staffers were assaulted by the mob. Herman climbed onto a desk to tell his supporters to leave. Arnel was escorted out of the governor's office, and Talmadge had the locks changed.

Arnell was still asserting that he was acting governor. And instead of leaving the Capitol, he set up a desk in the Rotundra and tried to conduct business as usual. So we had two men in the Capitol with separate desks, both claiming to be governor now. The next day, Herman carried a .38 caliber pistol to work, as he did for the remainder of his term. Scary that he might have to use it against an Arnold man. So six weeks after Herman was sworn in,

A journalist at the Atlanta Journal named George Goodwin started to look into those mysterious 58 extra votes from Telfair County.

He located the list of write-in votes and noticed that 34 of them had apparently voted in alphabetical order, starting with A and stopping with K. Finding this highly improbable, Goodwin tried to track down these individual voters, only to discover that some of these people did not exist. Others had died before the election, and more had either moved away prior to the election or abstained from voting.

Goodwin won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on this. And 17 days after his expose, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that the General Assembly exceeded their jurisdiction by electing Herman Talmadge and that the lieutenant governor elect from the time of Gene's death, Melvin Thompson, would indeed serve as a governor. So that's how Gene tried to actually extend his power past his death in the so-called three governors controversy. Yeah.

I mean, it's one of the craziest things. It's definitely like Trump. He could he might try something like that. I don't think Trump will for the reason that I don't think Trump cares enough. It cares enough about either of his oldest sons to ever do this. No. Well, yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe Barron, maybe Barron.

If he tries to put like 17 year old Baron into office, maybe I don't know. I don't know how that'll work. But no, I think the only thing stopping Trump from trying like a similar like forced political dynasty is the fact that he just does not like either of his oldest sons nearly as much as a gene like Herman. But no, this is one of the crazier moments in in Georgia history. When you have three people claiming to be governor, one of them

Herman has never has never been elected. His only claim to fame is that he's the son of Eugene Talmadge. Now, I have I have one I have one final kind of closing note on Talmadge's reign over Georgia. So Talmadge's intermittent reign over the state arose during the start of substantial progress in the South. And Gene was the reactionary embodiment of resistance to change.

He was the vessel for his confederate ancestors as the modern world invaded Georgia. Gene mastered the politics of theater and white Georgia was enthralled with his performance for two decades. People either loved or hated Gene. There was very little in between.

His core supporters were the rich businessman and the dirt poor little guy. Gene's economics paved the way for the intense corporate control over Georgia that continues to this day. And I will finally close with some of the words of the last page of Gene's biography. Quote, if the businessman supplied the money, the poor farmer supplied the court vote that gave Talmadge his power.

He had no real solutions for these people. His solutions had all been proven wrong by the very past he revered. He served them as an emotional crutch when their consciousness was being shattered by the catastrophic depression and the subsequent radicalism of the New Deal. As long as he played by their rules, they supported him. But when he tried to take the new fruits away from them or sought real power by running for the Senate, they denied him. They wanted him basically powerless, though they reveled in his power plays.

Talmadge was a prisoner of history, a cultural isolationist lost in a time frame that he was unable to leave on his own, and that his supporters finally refused to help him leave. Jean Talmadge strode the decade when Georgia got up and went along, when she began to pull up stakes, learned to say yes, and became less preoccupied with self.

In looking beyond, she lost something and gained something. Her people had looked beyond the tall pines at the end of the field and realized for the first time that something better must be out there. And in doing so, they admitted defeat, admitted they could no longer go it at their own.

In 1910, 61% of all Georgians were rural farm dwellers. By 1940, the figure had hit 44%. There is drama here. There is preparation for profound change. And the drama of Eugene Talmadge is that he arrived in the dead middle of this great physical and mental shift. The fact that he was elected to state office four times during this period does not indicate that the shifts were meaningless. To the contrary, they illustrate the agony in the passion of the move.

You know...

What do you think, Robert? I mean, I'm thinking actually of his ultimate victory, which is the Georgia environmental official in Atlanta who was like investigating the bio lab fire, which was a result of private of this corporatism of private equity hollowing out a company.

that operated this chemical facility. And so they didn't have proper safeguards and used water to put out a fire that water should not have been used on. And it blanketed the entire city or at least a large portion of it in fucking chlorine gas fumes. The guy who was investigating it for the state

like while giving a statement or giving testimony about the fire. Right after giving testimony? Yeah, and people online, a whole bunch of them with thousands of likes per person are suggesting that he was attacked by a CIA heart attack gun. Because obviously, that's the only thing that could have done this. I see that as, you know, the real triumph of Talmage's legacy is that...

Shit like that is not only the norm in Georgia, but it's becoming the norm everywhere in this great country because ultimately he and the people like him tend to win because...

Again, we could talk about the men with machine guns, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, and specifically the corporate control over Georgia that he helped established is like one of the prime reasons why we now have cop city. The way that Atlanta is completely controlled by like five corporations, the way that they completely exert power over city council, the Atlanta Police Foundation, like all of that can be traced back to Eugene Talmadge. And yeah,

I mean, yeah, in some ways, although he lost the battle for segregation in the next like 10, 20 years, he really did kind of win in the end in some ways. I mean, especially if you look at how we've talked about these last four episodes, how the template that he laid out is now being followed by DeSantis, by Trump, by all of these guys seeking power. And it works. And I think

Again, it is a travesty that Gene died before being sworn into office for a fourth time. The fact that he died of liver failure instead of many other means, or the fact that he died on his way to taking office once again on an explicit platform of white supremacy shows that maybe he actually did kind of win in the end. And I think I am looking at him as like,

Like he is like the last real like Southern Democrat, right? He is the last guy before the South moves to being racist Republicans. And that that is his legacy. Is that is that this is that this is that this Democrat Party man actually paved the way for Republicans to completely ruin the country and the states for the next like 80 years. And that's why he's my hero.

Anyway, well, there you go. That is a story of Eugene Talmadge and his dictatorial reign over the state of Georgia. Well, you know, everyone, all I got to say is keep your fingers crossed. Soon we'll have a better dictator in charge of Georgia. That's what I believe.

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

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Sometimes where a crime took place leads you to answer why the crime happened in the first place. Hi, I'm Sloane Glass, host of the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. In this series, we'll examine some of the country's most infamous and mysterious murders and learn how the location of the crime becomes a character in the story.

Listen to American Homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.