Braxton Bragg Comer (November 7, 1848 – August 15, 1927) was an American politician who served as the 33rd governor of Alabama from 1907 to 1911, and a United States senator in 1920. As governor, Comer presided over several reformsActs of the General Assembly of the state of Alabama 1907 Gen.Alabama legislative acts, 1909 (general and local, special session)History of Alabama by Albert Burton Moore, Ph.D., 1951, P.671-672Gov. Braxton Bragg Comer biographyMESSAGE OF GOV. BRAXTON BRAGG COMER TO THE MEMBERS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE such as railroad regulation and the lowering of business rates in Alabama to make them more competitive with other states. He also increased funding for the public school system, resulting in more rural schools and high schools in each county for white students and a rise in the state's literacy rate.
Comer was a planter and businessman before and after entering politics as a Democrat. He inherited the Comer family plantation, which was devoted to corn and cotton production. He had an interest in the Comer mines near Birmingham known as the Eureka Mines. In 1897 he invested $10,000 with the Trainer family, who intended to develop textile mills in the state, and he was appointed president of Avondale Mills, which he developed in Birmingham, serving in that role until he died in 1927.
Early life and education
Comer was born on November 7, 1848, in Spring Hill, Alabama. He was the fourth son of John Fletcher and Catharine (Drewry) Comer.Comer Family Papers, 1860-1864 - UNC Libraries As planters, Comer's parents had built their wealth based on enslaved labor for their cotton plantation. B. B. Comer began his education at the age of ten under the tutelage of E. N. Brown.
In 1864 Comer went to the University of Alabama, but in April 1865, was forced to leave when General John T. Croxton's troops burned the university. He enrolled at the University of Georgia in Athens, where he joined the Phi Kappa Literary Society. He transferred to Emory and Henry College in Virginia, where he graduated in 1869 with AB and AM degrees.
Marriage and family In 1872, Comer married Eva Jane Harris of Cuthbert, Georgia. He built a large house for them at Comer Station, Barbour County. He and his wife remained married until her passing on March 6, 1920, the day after he had been appointed Senator by Governor Kilby.
Early business career Following graduation, Comer returned to Spring Hill and helped to manage the family plantation. He primarily grew corn and cotton on what became a plantation."Braxton Bragg Comer", Alabama Department of Archives and History, accessed 27 August 2012 He continued to operate his Barbour County plantation, with his brother John managing it, after he moved his family to Anniston in east central Alabama in 1885. Comer's brother, J.W. Comer, operated the family's plantation in Barbour County. An important source of wealth for John Comer, B. B. Comer's brother, was the development of the Eureka Mines.
Avondale Mills
Another of Comer's enterprises was Avondale Mills, which, with his sons' help, became one of the largest textile companies in Alabama. The Trainer family, who had a textile business in Chester, Pennsylvania, planned to expand its business into the South through the new and growing industrial city of Birmingham. It offered stock to business leaders, such as Frederick Mitchell Jackson Sr., who agreed to commit $150,000 to bring the mills to Birmingham. Jackson, president of Birmingham's Commercial Club, a forerunner of the Birmingham Area Chamber of Commerce, pledged "to help give employment to those badly in need of it in the young and struggling city of Birmingham." B. B. Comer's son, James McDonald Comer, later recalled that his father was motivated to participate in the new business by "feeling that Birmingham needed an industry which could employ women as well as men."Hall, Like a Family: the Making of a Southern Cotton Mill, p. 61 (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina 1987)
Accepting the businessman's pledges of financial participation, the Trainers sought a local investor to assume the presidency of the mill. In 1897, they approached Braxton Bragg Comer.Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, p. 70 (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009) The future governor accepted the offer and invested $10,000 into the enterprise. From 1897 until 1927, he served as president of Avondale Mills, directing continued expansion to new sites.
In 1897, Comer built the first mill in Avondale, an area that would become part of Birmingham. During the first year of its operation, Avondale Mills used 4,000 bales of cotton. By 1898, Avondale Mills employed 436 laborers and generated $15,000 in profit. By the time B. B. Comer became governor of Alabama in 1907, Avondale Mills had declared $55,000 in profit and produced almost 8,000,000 yards of material. By the turn of the century, Avondale Mills had set the course for future development.
Avondale Mills began with 30,000 spindles in the first mill in Birmingham and grew over the next thirty years to include ten mills in seven communities, totaling 282,160 spindles. The mills [included]: Eva Jane, the Central, the Sally B, and the Catherine in Sylacauga; the Alexander City Cotton Mills, the Sycamore Mills, Mignon, and Bevelle Mill, and the Pell City Manufacturing Company.Mock, "Braxton Bragg Comer, Birmingham, Alabama" , Textile History
As cotton prices fell, poor white farmers lost their land and turned to sharecrop and tenancy.
Although a common practice at the time, the mills used child labor. See Avondale Mills.
Railroad Commission Comer was a vocal advocate for railroad reform. Alabama business owners were at a disadvantage when competing for business with companies based in Georgia due to that state's lower freight rates. The Birmingham Commercial Club and the Birmingham Freight Bureau, organizations in which Comer had significant roles, found evidence of railroad rate discrimination. Comer believed giving more power to the state's Railroad Commission was the best way to end the discrimination and lower rates to a level allowing Alabama companies to compete with those in Georgia. But, the state legislature and delegates to the 1901 Constitutional Convention did not strengthen the commission's power.
When the Railroad Commission did not change rates after two more years, Comer switched tactics to run for a seat on the commission, which had recently been converted to an electoral office. He campaigned to limit the power of the railroads in favor of shipping. In 1904, he was elected commission president but quickly realized he had little power due to the other two commissioners siding with the railroads. Three years into his term as president, Comer concluded that he could only enact railroad reform by becoming governor.Harris, "Braxton Bragg Comer (1901-11)" , Encyclopedia of Alabama
Political Background
Eufaula Massacre of 1874 and Political Intimidation Comer played a part in the 1870s white supremacist campaign of terrorism that led to the disenfranchisement of Blacks. He and his brother, Wallace, led a Spring Hill, Alabama, mob that carried out the Eufaula Massacre of 1874. On Election Day, Comer led the White League to disrupt the election and ambushed a group of around 1,000 Black men going to the polls. The mob massacred at least seven Blacks, shot at least seventy more, and prevented the rest of the crowd from voting. That evening some of Comer's mob stormed an office where ballots were being counted, burned the ballots so the white candidate could declare victory, and murdered the 16-year-old son of an elections supervisor. When a witness named Comer as a leader of the mob, the witness was falsely charged with perjury, intimidating others from coming forward.
The disfranchisement of blacks by the 1901 constitution and suffrage amendment had reduced the Republican Party as an active force in the state. For more than 60 years, until federal civil rights legislation was passed to enforce the constitutional rights of African Americans in the mid-1960s, Alabama was essentially a one-party state, with elections won in the Democratic primaries.
Gubernatorial Campaign of 1908 The 1906 gubernatorial campaign in the Democratic primary...was notable as the party "dropped the word 'Conservative' from its formal name, demonstrating that it was comfortable with a more progressive platform." The party's gubernatorial candidates were progressive on almost every topic. However, as Lieutenant Governor Russell M. Cunningham of Birmingham did not support railroad reform on rates, he gained support from the industry.
Comer was criticized because of his known opposition to child labor laws; he said families should be the ones to decide about their children. Comer was "a better campaigner and orator than Cunningham, and his verbal attacks on the railroads so aroused Alabama audiences that he won the primary with 61 percent of the vote and the November election with more than 85 percent." Comer, representing the planter elite and rising businessmen, easily defeated Asa E. Stratton of the Republican Party and J. N. Abbott of the Socialist Party of America in the November 1906 election. Comer's plan to enact reform of the railroads, as well as in other areas such as education, appeared a strong possibility as progressive Democrats favoring reform constituted a majority in the newly elected, Democratic-dominated state legislature.
Comer's administration
Railroad reform Comer "devoted most of his inaugural address to the issue of railroad reform and requested the legislature pass 20 separate laws to give the railroad commission strong rate-making and enforcement powers." The like-minded legislature passed his railroad reforms with only a few changes. Through these new laws, Comer finally achieved lowering the rates to enable Alabama businesses to better compete with their counterparts in neighboring states.
The state legislature "added a provision that would revoke the state business license of any corporation bringing suit in federal court on any issue already before a state court." L&N Railroad and other railroads challenged the new railroad statutes in federal court. The disagreement between the state government and the railroad continued after Comer had left office. Still, he achieved his goal "to give the state increased regulatory power over railroad freight rates."
Response to 1908 miners' strike In 1908, 7,000 (mostly white) miners went on strike at the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad (TCIRR) and other mining operations in Alabama. They were joined by 500 African-American convicts leased from the state. Company officials petitioned the state to break up the strike with state militia. To keep operating, TCIRR officials pushed the African-American convicts to work extremely long hours.Blackmon (2009), Slavery By Another Name, p. 321 White foremen brought in additional bonded African Americans as convict labor as well.Kelly, Race Class and Power in the Alabama Coal Field, pp. 1-8 (Urbana, 2001) William Millin, a prominent African-American union leader, protested these conditions and was arrested. A mob took him from jail and lynched him. Another African-American organizer was hanged in a lynching a week later. Governor Comer issued orders mobilizing the state militia to break up the strikers and their organized camps.Atlanta Constitution, 6 August 1908, p. 2