Governor of Georgia
As governor, Vandiver cleaned up the corruption and mismanagement associated with the Griffin administration. He had pledged to defend segregation, using the campaign motto, "No, not one," meaning not one black child in a white school. In March 1960, Vandiver called "An Appeal for Human Rights", an article published in the Atlanta Constitution by black students at Spelman College, "an anti-American document" that "does not sound like it was written in this country".
Under Vandiver's administration, a United States District Court ordered the admission of two African-American students, Hamilton E. Holmes and Charlayne Hunter, to the University of Georgia. Despite his past support for segregation, Governor Vandiver did not resist the court order. He hence spared the University of Georgia from the national publicity associated with the opposition stands taken in 1962 by Governor Ross Barnett at the University of Mississippi and in 1963 Governor George C. Wallace at the University of Alabama. After the desegregation of the University of Georgia, Vandiver successfully urged the Georgia General Assembly to repeal a recently-passed law barring state funding to integrated schools. He also appointed banker John A. Sibley to head a state commission designed to prepare for the court-ordered school desegregation.
Though he had been pledged to maintain the County Unit System, a type of electoral college that had been employed to elect Georgia governors, Vandiver was trumped by the United States Supreme Court, which struck down the system as unconstitutional. He hence ordered the Democratic State Central Committee to conduct the 1962 primary by popular vote.
Vandiver efficiency in running state government permitted a building program and the expansion of state services without tax increases. The state expanded its ports, encouraged tourism, promoted business and industry, expanded vocational-technical education, and authorized programs for the mentally ill.
One of Vandiver's aides was Griffin Bell, later a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the United States Attorney General under U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Read more about this topic: Ernest Vandiver
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