Vandiver, former Georgia governor, dies

By The Associated Press

Posted 10:36AM on Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Former Gov. S. Ernest Vandiver, who won office vowing that "no, not one" black child would sit in a Georgia classroom with whites yet went on to preside over the peaceful desegregation of public schools, has died at age 86.Death came Monday evening and followed a long illness, the family said through Gov. Sonny Perdue's office.Gov. from 1959 to 1963, Vandiver had been elected on an anti-integration platform but at a critical moment persuaded lawmakers to desegregate the state's schools rather than close them.His stand was credited with sparing the state the turbulence that swept much of the rest of the South in that period, but cost him political support.After leaving office in 1963 when his four-year term expired, his career was finished. Keeping the schools open was "my political suicide," he said years after leaving office.Vandiver will lay in state at the Georgia Capitol but details of that and other funeral arrangements still were being made.Survivors include his widow, Betty; a son, Samuel Ernest "Chip" Vandiver III; two daughters, state Rep. Jane Vandiver Kidd and Vanna Elizabeth Vandiver, and four grandchildren.A mild-mannered, courtly man with a distinctive drawl and wavy hair, Vandiver was a politically well connected man when he won his first statewide elected office _ lieutenant governor _ in 1954.A Democrat at a time the state was run entirely by that party, Vandiver was a close ally of then-Gov. Herman Talmadge, who had appointed him as the state's adjutant general.Vandiver's wife, Betty, also had political credentials. She was a niece of then-Sen. Richard B. Russell, one of the most powerful Southern politicians in Washington.Vandiver easily won the 1958 gubernatorial election over a weak field but the "no, not one" phrase would come back to haunt him. It was devised by his strategists to counter the liberal label which a Democratic opponent sought to hang on him after a speech in which Vandiver had said integration of Georgia's schools should "evolve."In later years, he acknowledged it was probably unnecessary, since he was virtually assured of election.Hoping to concentrate on correcting the abuses and alleged corruption of a previous administration, Vandiver quickly found himself facing an even bigger challenge when a series of federal court rulings forced the integration first of Atlanta public schools and then of the University of Georgia.Integration was inevitable, but that meant the schools would be closed, thanks to a 1955 statute that required state funds to be cut off to any college or school that admitted a black student.George Busbee, a young legislator at the time who later served as governor, told historians in a videotaped interview that it was an era of inflamed passions."If the people in Georgia could have voted at that time, they would've voted to close the schools," he said. "It was a time that people in the heat of passion would have voted just for the hell of it against the federal government, against the judiciary. They would've voted to close the schools down." Busbee died last July.Vandiver appointed Atlanta banker John Sibley to head a commission that held public hearings and forced angry parents to face facts: school integration was the law of the land. Eventually, the commission recommended that voters in each district be allowed to determine whether their schools would remain open.The Sibley commission had had the intended effect of providing a cooling-off period, Busbee said.In the meantime, Vandiver was stricken with a heart attack. While the Sibley Commission toured Georgia, he lay in a hospital bed and then in his bed at the governor's mansion.In January 1961, the integration issue shifted to the University of Georgia when a federal judge ordered that school to admit two black students.Vandiver, obeying state law, initially ordered the university to close but quietly convened a top-level meeting at the governor's mansion. While many recommended unyielding resistance, Vandiver came to the view that public schools have to remain open.Ten days later he called a special nighttime session of the Legislature and urged lawmakers to repeal the antidesegregation laws and to adopt the Sibley Commission's recommendation. With only a few dissenting votes the package passed.That was "my political suicide," he recalled later."I never thought the majority of the people fully supported our (open schools) position, but I figured I was through in politics anyway."Vandiver also was governor when the federal courts ordered the state to abandon its county unit system of voting, a variation of the electoral college system used in presidential elections.At the time, popular vote didn't matter. Instead, the candidate who won a majority in each county was awarded that county's unit votes _ anywhere from two to six. The courts held that violated the one person, one vote doctrine because the state's largest county was allowed only six unit votes while every county, no matter how small, got at least two votes.Vandiver and state lawmakers struggled to make changes to preserve the county unit system, which had enabled rural politicians to control the state for decade, but their efforts were overturned.Born in 1918 in Franklin County, Samuel Ernest Vandiver attended the University of Georgia, served as an Air Force pilot in World War II and then returned to the university to earn a law degree. He became mayor of Lavonia in 1946 and was named state adjutant general after managing Talmadge's gubernatorial campaign in 1948.After leaving the governor's office, Vandiver served as chairman of a Lavonia bank and farmed cattle in northeast Georgia. He and his wife lived at Twin Hollies, a two-story Lavonia mansion they purchased in 1952.He thought then-Gov. Jimmy Carter would appoint him to the U.S. Senate after Russell's death in 1971, but Carter appointed David Gambrell instead.Vandiver ran unsuccessfully for the Senate seat in 1972, and he blamed his "No, not one" statement for his defeat."I don't think blacks ever got over the statement I made in the 1958 gubernatorial race," he said. "Also, I had not made a race for 14 years. Another generation grows up, and the generation that supported you has died off."Vandiver had surgery in the early 1980s to clear a clogged artery in his leg, and again in 1990 to repair a major artery in his neck.He was honored in 1990 for purchasing Colonels Island near Brunswick for the state in 1962. The island is now used by the Georgia Ports Authority to import hundreds of thousands of automobiles each year.