B. B. Comer
Encyclopedia
Braxton Bragg Comer was an American
Democratic politician
who was the 33rd Governor of Alabama
from 1907 to 1911.
, the fourth son of John Fletcher and Catherine Drewry Comer. 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 then enrolled at the University of Georgia
in Athens
where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society
, and attended for several years before transferring to Emory and Henry College
in Virginia
. In 1869, Comer graduated from Emory and Henry with AB and AM degrees.
. His Barbour County plantation enterprise continued to operate after he moved his family to Anniston in 1885.
, but continued to actively run the family owned plantation in Barbour County. The Comer Plantation operations continued to use bonded forced convict labor, which amounted essentially to slavery, throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Comer Plantation leased African American convicts from the State of Alabama for use as forced labor. After a visit to the Barbour County Comer Plantation in the early 1880s Alabama's Prison Inspector Richard Dawson wrote: "Things in bad order. No fireplace in cell. No arrangements for washing. No Hospital. Everything filthy- privy terrible- convicts ragged many barefooted- very heavily ironed."
Although hailed in the mid twentieth century as one of the leading families of Alabama there is now little doubt that the Comer Family legacy and a portion of the family wealth was built on the entrapment and enslavement of African Americans, before, and after, the civil war.
At this time Barbour County, the origin of much of the Comer family wealth, was notorious for the entrapment, and selling into bondage, of African Americans, for the purpose of exploiting their labor to rebuild the post-Civil War wealth of Alabama's leading families. Attorney General Knox, of the Roosevelt administration assigned Warren Reese and Julius Stern to investigate these charges of slavery. More than forty such cases in Coffee, Geneva, Covington, and Barbour Counties were investigated by these Federal Agents in 1903.
The peonage scheme in use throughout the State of Alabama, and put into place in various Comer Family enterprises, depended on the entrapment and conviction of African Americans on trumped up charges such as vagrancy, insulting behavior, rudeness to white women, or gambling. By the 1880s the attractiveness of this scheme was apparent to both local and state officials. Local officials would arrest African Americans, convict them of these trumped up charges, and then fine them for their actions plus court costs. Most cash strapped African Americans could not pay these fines. The state then leased them to industry and planters for the amount of the fines (usually for $50– $100). They had to then to work off the amount they owed to the state through forced labor on farms, plantations, mills and mines. These illiterate men and women were forced to sign contracts including stipulations that they would be subject to the same conditions as other prisoners, which meant leg irons, being unable to leave their place of work without being subject to punishment and further extension of contracts. There is evidence that these debts could never be worked off with the bondsmen being charged for food and medical care. The result was that on plantations, mines, and mills, owned by Alabama families such as the Comers, black tenant farmers and share croppers, during the 1880s and 90s, were turned into convict labor. Once convicted these citizens were subject to imprisonment, shackles, and the lash and worked in the same fields where a few weeks earlier they had been independent, free men.
In Anniston, Comer invested the income from his plantation to expand his business pursuits and joined with S.B. Trapp to open Comer & Trapp, a grocery store. He remained in Anniston for five years before "selling his interest in the firm" and relocating to Birmingham where he continued to be involved in successful business pursuits, including cornmeal, flour, and textile mills and serving as the president of City National Bank. "Later, he liquidated the bank" to focus on his other business pursuits.
rule." This quote from Comer signaled his implicit support for post reconstruction elimination of political participation by African Americans by physical and mental intimidation, use of the onerous poll tax, literacy tests, and other coercive methods. White Americans in the 1880s had literacy rates slightly better than African Americans- but men with the right to vote prior to 1865 (and their descendants) were grandfathered and exempted from these requirements in Alabama. This exemption for whites resulted in African Americans being excluded as a class from politics post reconstruction and, ultimately, the demise of liberal Republicanism in Alabama. Thus his wish to "redeem his county from Republican Party" rule was realized to the detriment of Alabama's African American citizens freed by the 13th and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Comer's one term as Governor reinforced this racist and discriminatory view of African American political participation and his support for the re-enslavement of African Americans via Alabama's peonage-convict system.
Ezekial Archey, a prisoner leased to the Comer backed enterprise at Eureka, wrote that the convicts lived in a stockade "filled with filth and vermin. Gunpowder cans were used to hold human waste that would fill up and 'run all over our beds where prisoners were shackled hand and foot for the night". Later he wrote to a Roosevelt Administration Investigator that "[JW]Comer {the Governor’s brother and manager of the mine} is a hard man. I have seen men come to him with their shirts a solid scab on their backs and he would let the hide grow on and take it off again. I have seen him hit men 100 to 160 times with a ten prong strop and then say thay was not whipped. He would go off after an escaped man come one day with him and dig his grave the same day." Between 1878 and 1880 twenty five bonded convict’s whose contracts were sold to the Comer backed Eureka mines died and their bodies were dumped into shallow earthen pits on the edge of the mine site. Further testimony to the nature of this Comer backed enterprise was given by Jonathan Good to the Joint Commission instigated by the Roosevelt Administration to investigate the use of peonage in Alabaman enterprises. Good testified that J.W. Comer, the brother of the Governor and manager of the Eureka mines, " ordered a captured black escapee to lie on the ground and the dogs were biting him. He begged piteously to have the dogs taken off of him, but Comer refused to allow it. Comer...stripped him naked took a stirrup strap, doubled it, wet it,, bucked him and whipped him, unmercifully whipped him, over half and hour. The Negro begged them to take a gun and kill him.They left him in a Negro cabin where...he died within a few hours."
Whatever the motivation—an attempt to insinuate eastern textile business into the South or to provide employment opportunities for Birmingham’s women, or the attractiveness of cheap child labor—the Trainer family accepted the pledge of financial assistance and sought an Alabamian to invest $10,000 in the project and assume presidency of the mill. In 1897, they approached Braxton Bragg Comer, owner of a plantation that used forced peonage labor, investor in various businesses, including the notorious Eureka mines, and future governor of Alabama. Comer accepted the offer, invested in the enterprise and, from 1897 until his death in 1927, B.B. Comer served as president of Avondale Mills.
In 1897 Comer built the first mill in Avondale, land that would become part of Birmingham, Alabama; hence the name Avondale Mills. During the first year of its operation, Avondale Mills used 4,000 bales of cotton and 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 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 he next thirty years to include ten mills in seven communities, with a total of 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."
One of the drivers for the incredible growth in production at Avondale Mills, of which Comer was President, was exposed in 1910 by Lewis Hines, an American sociologist and photographer whose works were instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States
As cotton prices fell, poor white farmers were forced to turn to sharecropping and tenancy; some of those were willing to give up farming and move to town. One white mill worker said, we "made good money compared with the farm." Another white sharecropper said it this way, "Mebbe we ain’t got much, but we sure has got more." And at least one white ex-farmer remembered the move with considerable enthusiasm: "Yeah! Oh we just thought we had almost come to heaven when we got up here. We didn’t have to pick cotton, chop cotton, like that. Just go to work and come back and nothing else to do. And we really had it made when we come here."
Hine's visits and photographs during 1910, however, revealed another darker side of Avondale Mills and the its subsidiaries throughout Alabama. Hine's photographs and interviews in 1910 showed that numerous children were employed at Avondale Mills with "mere weeks of education if any." The children were not at first "officially" employed but had to assist their parents in completing strenuous twelve hour shifts in the mill.
In Avondale Mills Hines noted numerous examples of child labor and abuse of children including that of fourteen and fifteen year old Mary and Miller Gilliam. Their father, according to Hines, removed them from school to work at Avondale Mills. Hines noted that the father had no job at the time.
Hines recorded, as he snapped photographs of children lined up at Avondale Mills owned locations, that "none of the children would admit to being younger than twelve years of age ". He wrote the "The Mill bosses...arrived at school anytime during the day to remove children to work at the Mill.". When demand for textiles was low the children were allowed to return to school- making the children a ready made, cheap source of flexible labor.
At twelve years of age children could begin work at Avondale Mills as "doffers". This was a fast paced job that required dexterity but little technical skill. The room the children would change bobbins in would be filled with lint and would leave the lungs of the child "doffers" full of debris leading to brown lung disease later in life.".
Comer's reaction to Hines' exposure of the terrible conditions under which these children employed was that the children were working at the insistence of their parents and neither that he, nor the state, had any right to interfere. Stopping the exploitation of child labor might have undermined much of the financial success of Avondale Mills. Cotton Mills in the south were successful fundamentally, not because of the decline in farming incomes, nor the decline in artisanship, but because of the abundance of flexible,willing, and cheap child labor.
The inexpensive shelter provided by coton mills such as Avondale Mills encouraged families to become deeply entrenched in the mill, and as long as the family occupied the dwellings, the tenants were obligated to work in the mill and supply labor. There was another price to pay for using Avondale Mills' housing. If a worker missed church or drank alcohol they faced discipline and possible loss of their home and employment.
Russell M. Cunningham of Birmingham, did not support the progressive railroad reform that had led Comer to seek the governorship. Not surprisingly, the railroads supported Cunningham. However, "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." The Barbour County native then 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 progressive reform of the railroads as well as in other areas such as education appeared a strong possibility due to the progressives constituting a majority in the newly elected state legislature.
In addition to railroad regulation, 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 statues in federal court. The disagreement between the state government and railroad continued after Comer had left office, however his initial goal "to give the state increased regulatory power over railroad freight rates" was achieved.
In mid August 1908 a delegation of prominent Birmingham citizens visited leaders of the striking miners still encamped outside of Alabama coal mines and issued an explicit threat. They stated that unless the strike ended Birmingham would "make Springfield (where twelve thousand whites had burned to the ground the African American section of the city) look like six cents". Governor Comer then issued this statement:"We are outraged at the attempts to establish social equality between black and white miners." He added he would "not tolerate eight or nine thousand idle niggers in the state of Alabama."
in Auburn
, the nine agricultural schools, the normal school
s, and the Girl's Technical School at Montevallo
. In addition, the state took control of the Alabama Boy’s Industrial School. Comer’s educational reforms continue to affect the state’s educational system over a century later.
It is important to note, however, that over twenty five percent of the state's revenue in 1910 was funded by the leasing of convicted African American back to private enterprise under the peonage system. In essence many of the improvements in the state's infrastructure during Comer's term as Governor was funded by the slave labor of African Americans for the benefit of the state's white citizens. For white students the curriculum level was raised and literacy increased, but not for African Americans who suffered under Jim Crow laws
and the separate but equal
doctrine. Comer did invest into education- but the amount of money per capita spent on African American children was approximately one seventh that of White Children. Literacy climbed dramatically as a result for whites but lagged for blacks (less than 50% for African Americans by 1920) because of the dismal state of education for African American citizens.
He helped to establish a tuberculosis sanatorium as part of his use of state funds to improve public health.
He strengthened insurance laws.
"When President Theodore Roosevelt suggested that the nation’s governors should join him in conserving the country’s natural resources, Comer and the legislature established the Alabama Soil Conservation Department to oversee a public park system in Alabama."
He increased transportation funding to improve roads.
In the spring of 1920, Governor Thomas Kilby appointed Comer to serve the remaining months of the late John H. Bankhead’s term in the United States Senate. He did not seek election when the term expired. Following his short time in the Senate, Comer spent the remainder of his life following his pre-political business pursuits.
B.B. died on August 15, 1927. His wife, Eva Jane, preceded him in death, having died on March 6, 1920 while he was serving in the Senate. He and his wife were survived by their eight children Sally Bailey, John Fletcher, James McDonald, Eva Mignon, Catherine, Braxton Bevelle, Eva, Braxton Bragg, Jr., and Hugh M. Comer. He was buried in Birmingham's Elmwood Cemetery
.
His laudable attempts at improving Alabama's educational systems also fell short for African Americans during his term as governor. Although literacy rates for whites increased during his reign as governor and afterwards there was little affect on the literacy rates for African Americans . This was due to Comer and the State of Alabama's disenfranchisement of African Americans and the refusal of both to fund education for non whites.
However laudable Comer's record with respect to reforms within the state his one term as Governor reinforced the disenfranchisement of African Americans in Alabama. Backed by the power of the State of Alabama he was successful in turning back the peonage investigation into the false imprisonment and selling into bondage of African Americans.
B.B. Comer Hall at the University of Alabama houses the Department of Modern Languages.
The federal building in Birmingham.
Braxton Bragg Comer Hall at Auburn University houses offices and labs for the School of Agriculture.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Democratic politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
who was the 33rd Governor of Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
from 1907 to 1911.
Early Life and Education
Comer was born at old Spring Hill, Barbour County, AlabamaBarbour County, Alabama
Barbour County, Alabama is a county of the U.S. state of Alabama. Its name is in honor of James Barbour, who served as Governor of Virginia. As of 2010 the population was 27,457. Its county seat is Clayton.-History:...
, the fourth son of John Fletcher and Catherine Drewry Comer. 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
University of Alabama
The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....
, but in April 1865 was forced to leave when General John T. Croxton
John T. Croxton
John Thomas Croxton was an attorney, a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and a postbellum U.S. diplomat.-Early life and career:...
's troops burned the university. He then enrolled at the University of Georgia
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...
in Athens
Athens, Georgia
Athens-Clarke County is a consolidated city–county in U.S. state of Georgia, in the northeastern part of the state, comprising the former City of Athens proper and Clarke County. The University of Georgia is located in this college town and is responsible for the initial growth of the city...
where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society
Phi Kappa Literary Society
The Phi Kappa Literary Society is a college literary society, located at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia.The Society was founded in 1820 by Joseph Henry Lumpkin, later to become the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia and eponym for the , and by William Crabbe, Edwin...
, and attended for several years before transferring to Emory and Henry College
Emory and Henry College
Emory & Henry College, known as E&H, Emory, or the College, is a private liberal arts college located in Emory, Virginia, United States. The campus comprises of Washington County, Virginia, which is part of the mountain region of Southwest Virginia...
in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
. In 1869, Comer graduated from Emory and Henry with AB and AM degrees.
Early Business Career
Following graduation, Comer returned to Spring Hill and helped to manage the family property. In 1872 he married Eva Jane Harris of Cuthbert, Georgia. He then built a large home at Comer Station, Barbour County, Alabama, and continued his plantation and general store business. He grew corn and cotton primarily on what became a 30000 acres (121.4 km²) plantationPlantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
. His Barbour County plantation enterprise continued to operate after he moved his family to Anniston in 1885.
Sources of the Comer Family Wealth Pre and Post Antebellum
In 1885 Comer moved his family to AnnistonAnniston, Alabama
Anniston is a city in Calhoun County in the state of Alabama, United States.As of the 2000 census, the population of the city is 24,276. According to the 2005 U.S. Census estimates, the city had a population of 23,741...
, but continued to actively run the family owned plantation in Barbour County. The Comer Plantation operations continued to use bonded forced convict labor, which amounted essentially to slavery, throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Comer Plantation leased African American convicts from the State of Alabama for use as forced labor. After a visit to the Barbour County Comer Plantation in the early 1880s Alabama's Prison Inspector Richard Dawson wrote: "Things in bad order. No fireplace in cell. No arrangements for washing. No Hospital. Everything filthy- privy terrible- convicts ragged many barefooted- very heavily ironed."
Although hailed in the mid twentieth century as one of the leading families of Alabama there is now little doubt that the Comer Family legacy and a portion of the family wealth was built on the entrapment and enslavement of African Americans, before, and after, the civil war.
At this time Barbour County, the origin of much of the Comer family wealth, was notorious for the entrapment, and selling into bondage, of African Americans, for the purpose of exploiting their labor to rebuild the post-Civil War wealth of Alabama's leading families. Attorney General Knox, of the Roosevelt administration assigned Warren Reese and Julius Stern to investigate these charges of slavery. More than forty such cases in Coffee, Geneva, Covington, and Barbour Counties were investigated by these Federal Agents in 1903.
The peonage scheme in use throughout the State of Alabama, and put into place in various Comer Family enterprises, depended on the entrapment and conviction of African Americans on trumped up charges such as vagrancy, insulting behavior, rudeness to white women, or gambling. By the 1880s the attractiveness of this scheme was apparent to both local and state officials. Local officials would arrest African Americans, convict them of these trumped up charges, and then fine them for their actions plus court costs. Most cash strapped African Americans could not pay these fines. The state then leased them to industry and planters for the amount of the fines (usually for $50– $100). They had to then to work off the amount they owed to the state through forced labor on farms, plantations, mills and mines. These illiterate men and women were forced to sign contracts including stipulations that they would be subject to the same conditions as other prisoners, which meant leg irons, being unable to leave their place of work without being subject to punishment and further extension of contracts. There is evidence that these debts could never be worked off with the bondsmen being charged for food and medical care. The result was that on plantations, mines, and mills, owned by Alabama families such as the Comers, black tenant farmers and share croppers, during the 1880s and 90s, were turned into convict labor. Once convicted these citizens were subject to imprisonment, shackles, and the lash and worked in the same fields where a few weeks earlier they had been independent, free men.
In Anniston, Comer invested the income from his plantation to expand his business pursuits and joined with S.B. Trapp to open Comer & Trapp, a grocery store. He remained in Anniston for five years before "selling his interest in the firm" and relocating to Birmingham where he continued to be involved in successful business pursuits, including cornmeal, flour, and textile mills and serving as the president of City National Bank. "Later, he liquidated the bank" to focus on his other business pursuits.
Comer's Role in the Post Reconstruction Disenfranchisement of African Americans
While living in Spring Hill, Comer served on the Barbour County Commissioners Court from 1874–1880, helping to "redeem that county from Republican PartyRepublican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
rule." This quote from Comer signaled his implicit support for post reconstruction elimination of political participation by African Americans by physical and mental intimidation, use of the onerous poll tax, literacy tests, and other coercive methods. White Americans in the 1880s had literacy rates slightly better than African Americans- but men with the right to vote prior to 1865 (and their descendants) were grandfathered and exempted from these requirements in Alabama. This exemption for whites resulted in African Americans being excluded as a class from politics post reconstruction and, ultimately, the demise of liberal Republicanism in Alabama. Thus his wish to "redeem his county from Republican Party" rule was realized to the detriment of Alabama's African American citizens freed by the 13th and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Comer's one term as Governor reinforced this racist and discriminatory view of African American political participation and his support for the re-enslavement of African Americans via Alabama's peonage-convict system.
Eureka Mines: Another Source of Comer Family Wealth
An important source of Comer family wealth was their investment in the development of the notorious Eureka mines in Shelby County, south of Birmingham. The manager of the labor force was none other than J.W. Comer, the brother of Governor B. B. Comer. The Eureka complex consisted of two mines, one mined by free miners, and the other by convicts bonded under the peonage system. The vast majority of forced laborers were African American negroes who were convicted at a rate of four times that of white citizens. This important Comer backed enterprise thrived on a mix of "primitive excavations techniques and relentless, atavistic physical force."Ezekial Archey, a prisoner leased to the Comer backed enterprise at Eureka, wrote that the convicts lived in a stockade "filled with filth and vermin. Gunpowder cans were used to hold human waste that would fill up and 'run all over our beds where prisoners were shackled hand and foot for the night". Later he wrote to a Roosevelt Administration Investigator that "[JW]Comer {the Governor’s brother and manager of the mine} is a hard man. I have seen men come to him with their shirts a solid scab on their backs and he would let the hide grow on and take it off again. I have seen him hit men 100 to 160 times with a ten prong strop and then say thay was not whipped. He would go off after an escaped man come one day with him and dig his grave the same day." Between 1878 and 1880 twenty five bonded convict’s whose contracts were sold to the Comer backed Eureka mines died and their bodies were dumped into shallow earthen pits on the edge of the mine site. Further testimony to the nature of this Comer backed enterprise was given by Jonathan Good to the Joint Commission instigated by the Roosevelt Administration to investigate the use of peonage in Alabaman enterprises. Good testified that J.W. Comer, the brother of the Governor and manager of the Eureka mines, " ordered a captured black escapee to lie on the ground and the dogs were biting him. He begged piteously to have the dogs taken off of him, but Comer refused to allow it. Comer...stripped him naked took a stirrup strap, doubled it, wet it,, bucked him and whipped him, unmercifully whipped him, over half and hour. The Negro begged them to take a gun and kill him.They left him in a Negro cabin where...he died within a few hours."
Avondale Mills; Exploiting Child Labor
Another enterprise Comer championed was that of Avondale Mills. The Trainer Family—a family in the textile business in Chester, Pennsylvania—envisioned a plan to expand its business into the South by way of the new and growing industrial city, Birmingham, Alabama. In exchange for stock in the company, Frederick Mitchell Jackson, Sr., and other Birmingham civic leaders, agreed to commit $150,000 to help the Trainer family fulfill its plan. Jackson, president of Birmingham’s Commercial Club, a forerunner of the Birmingham Area Chamber of Commerce, pledged his help in order "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 also motivated by the "feeling that Birmingham needed an industry which could employ women as well as men." Despite the sentiments voiced by Comer's son that this investment by Comer was for the good of the common weal it is now apparent that one of the main reasons for the early financial success of Avondale Mills was its profligate use of inexpensive, and flexible, child labor.Whatever the motivation—an attempt to insinuate eastern textile business into the South or to provide employment opportunities for Birmingham’s women, or the attractiveness of cheap child labor—the Trainer family accepted the pledge of financial assistance and sought an Alabamian to invest $10,000 in the project and assume presidency of the mill. In 1897, they approached Braxton Bragg Comer, owner of a plantation that used forced peonage labor, investor in various businesses, including the notorious Eureka mines, and future governor of Alabama. Comer accepted the offer, invested in the enterprise and, from 1897 until his death in 1927, B.B. Comer served as president of Avondale Mills.
In 1897 Comer built the first mill in Avondale, land that would become part of Birmingham, Alabama; hence the name Avondale Mills. During the first year of its operation, Avondale Mills used 4,000 bales of cotton and 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 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 he next thirty years to include ten mills in seven communities, with a total of 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."
One of the drivers for the incredible growth in production at Avondale Mills, of which Comer was President, was exposed in 1910 by Lewis Hines, an American sociologist and photographer whose works were instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States
As cotton prices fell, poor white farmers were forced to turn to sharecropping and tenancy; some of those were willing to give up farming and move to town. One white mill worker said, we "made good money compared with the farm." Another white sharecropper said it this way, "Mebbe we ain’t got much, but we sure has got more." And at least one white ex-farmer remembered the move with considerable enthusiasm: "Yeah! Oh we just thought we had almost come to heaven when we got up here. We didn’t have to pick cotton, chop cotton, like that. Just go to work and come back and nothing else to do. And we really had it made when we come here."
Hine's visits and photographs during 1910, however, revealed another darker side of Avondale Mills and the its subsidiaries throughout Alabama. Hine's photographs and interviews in 1910 showed that numerous children were employed at Avondale Mills with "mere weeks of education if any." The children were not at first "officially" employed but had to assist their parents in completing strenuous twelve hour shifts in the mill.
In Avondale Mills Hines noted numerous examples of child labor and abuse of children including that of fourteen and fifteen year old Mary and Miller Gilliam. Their father, according to Hines, removed them from school to work at Avondale Mills. Hines noted that the father had no job at the time.
Hines recorded, as he snapped photographs of children lined up at Avondale Mills owned locations, that "none of the children would admit to being younger than twelve years of age ". He wrote the "The Mill bosses...arrived at school anytime during the day to remove children to work at the Mill.". When demand for textiles was low the children were allowed to return to school- making the children a ready made, cheap source of flexible labor.
At twelve years of age children could begin work at Avondale Mills as "doffers". This was a fast paced job that required dexterity but little technical skill. The room the children would change bobbins in would be filled with lint and would leave the lungs of the child "doffers" full of debris leading to brown lung disease later in life.".
Comer's reaction to Hines' exposure of the terrible conditions under which these children employed was that the children were working at the insistence of their parents and neither that he, nor the state, had any right to interfere. Stopping the exploitation of child labor might have undermined much of the financial success of Avondale Mills. Cotton Mills in the south were successful fundamentally, not because of the decline in farming incomes, nor the decline in artisanship, but because of the abundance of flexible,willing, and cheap child labor.
The inexpensive shelter provided by coton mills such as Avondale Mills encouraged families to become deeply entrenched in the mill, and as long as the family occupied the dwellings, the tenants were obligated to work in the mill and supply labor. There was another price to pay for using Avondale Mills' housing. If a worker missed church or drank alcohol they faced discipline and possible loss of their home and employment.
Railroad Commission
Even before Comer became president of Avondale Mills, he was a vocal advocate for railroad reform but not for organized labor. Alabama businessmen were at a disadvantage when competing for business with companies based in Georgia due to that state’s lower freight rates. Investigations by the Birmingham Commercial Club and the Birmingham Freight Bureau, organizations in which Comer had major roles, found evidence of discrimination by the railroads. 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 that would allow Alabama companies to compete with those in Georgia. However, the state legislature and delegates to the 1901 Constitutional Convention did not strengthen the commission’s power. Nevertheless, the new 1901 Constitution did indirectly aid Comer’s push for railroad reform. The disenfranchisement of African Americans and poor whites reduced the chance of an electoral challenge to railroad reforms such as those Comer supported. When the Railroad Commission did not change rates after two more years had passed, Comer switched his tactics from being a vocal critic to running for a seat on the commission, which had recently become an elected position. His campaign called for limiting the power of the railroads in favor of shipping. In 1904, his successful election over incumbent John V. Smith gave him the presidency of the commission but he quickly realized he had little power due to the other two commissioners siding with the railroads. Three years into his term as president, he came to the conclusion that the only way for him to have enough power to enact true railroad reform was to become governor.Gubernatorial Campaign
"The 1906 gubernatorial campaign in the Democratic primary…was one of the most memorable in Alabama’s history. The Democratic Party dropped the word ‘Conservative’ from its formal name, demonstrating that it was now comfortable with a more progressive platform." Both of the party’s gubernatorial candidates were staunchly progressive on almost every topic. Unlike Comer, the other candidate, Lieutenant GovernorLieutenant governor
A lieutenant governor or lieutenant-governor is a high officer of state, whose precise role and rank vary by jurisdiction, but is often the deputy or lieutenant to or ranking under a governor — a "second-in-command"...
Russell M. Cunningham of Birmingham, did not support the progressive railroad reform that had led Comer to seek the governorship. Not surprisingly, the railroads supported Cunningham. However, "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." The Barbour County native then defeated Asa E. Stratton of the Republican Party and J.N. Abbott of the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
in the November 1906 election. Comer’s plan to enact progressive reform of the railroads as well as in other areas such as education appeared a strong possibility due to the progressives constituting a majority in the newly elected state legislature.
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 the railroad reform he had so long desired. The rates were lowered to a level similar those to Georgia and other southern states, thus allowing Alabama businesses to better compete with their counterparts in neighboring states.In addition to railroad regulation, 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 statues in federal court. The disagreement between the state government and railroad continued after Comer had left office, however his initial goal "to give the state increased regulatory power over railroad freight rates" was achieved.
Comer's Record with Regards to Organized Labor and Discrimination and Brutalization of African Americans During His Term as Governor
Seven thousand free (mostly white) miners went on strike at the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad and other mining operations in 1908. They were joined by five hundred African American convicts enslaved under the peonage system in place in Alabama. Company officials petitioned the state to break up the strike with state militia. To keep operating, TCIRR officials pushed the enslaved African American convicts, leased from the state and working only for food, to work long and excruciating hours. White foreman brought in from the country side other bonded African Americans, collected their wages, and worked them for food and water as well. A prominent African American union leader, William Millin, who protested these conditions, was arrested, then taken from jail lynched and burned. Another African American organizer was hanged from a tree a week later. Governor Comer then issued orders mobilizing the state militia to break up the strikers and their organized camps.In mid August 1908 a delegation of prominent Birmingham citizens visited leaders of the striking miners still encamped outside of Alabama coal mines and issued an explicit threat. They stated that unless the strike ended Birmingham would "make Springfield (where twelve thousand whites had burned to the ground the African American section of the city) look like six cents". Governor Comer then issued this statement:"We are outraged at the attempts to establish social equality between black and white miners." He added he would "not tolerate eight or nine thousand idle niggers in the state of Alabama."
Other Issues During Comer's Governorship
"Although B.B. Comer was accused of being a one-issue candidate [railroad reform], he actually supported a broad platform while governor." Two of the areas he is most remembered for are educational reform for whites and prohibition. He did little, however, to invest in the education of African Americans and the two tiered educational system continued throughout his term and beyond.Educational Reform-Comer Administration Uses Peonage to Increase State Revenues and increase Literacy for Whites While Underfunding African American Educational Institutions
Comer’s educational reforms to improve education for whites were funded by increases in revenues to the state. A State Board of Assessors was created "to equalize taxation by equalizing property values throughout the state and establishing franchise taxes for businesses." The reassessment of property values angered the large property owners who saw their property taxes increase. However the increases in state tax revenues came about not through taxation reforms (although this probably stabilized tax revenues) but through the increase revenues generated from convicts leased from the state to private enterprise. Regardless the increases in spending for education only benefited the white citizens of Alabama. The increase in the state funds allowed him to devote money to much needed educational reforms for whites including the building of rural schools and county high schools (at least one in each county) and increasing the appropriations made to the University of Alabama, the Alabama Polytechnic InstituteAuburn University
Auburn University is a public university located in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 25,000 students and 1,200 faculty members, it is one of the largest universities in the state. Auburn was chartered on February 7, 1856, as the East Alabama Male College, a private liberal arts...
in Auburn
Auburn, Alabama
Auburn is a city in Lee County, Alabama, United States. It is the largest city in eastern Alabama with a 2010 population of 53,380. It is a principal city of the Auburn-Opelika Metropolitan Area...
, the nine agricultural schools, the normal school
Normal school
A normal school is a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Its purpose is to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name...
s, and the Girl's Technical School at Montevallo
University of Montevallo
The University of Montevallo is a four-year public university located in Montevallo, Alabama, USA. Founded in 1896, it is Alabama's only public liberal arts college and a member of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges. Programs are offered through the Michael E...
. In addition, the state took control of the Alabama Boy’s Industrial School. Comer’s educational reforms continue to affect the state’s educational system over a century later.
It is important to note, however, that over twenty five percent of the state's revenue in 1910 was funded by the leasing of convicted African American back to private enterprise under the peonage system. In essence many of the improvements in the state's infrastructure during Comer's term as Governor was funded by the slave labor of African Americans for the benefit of the state's white citizens. For white students the curriculum level was raised and literacy increased, but not for African Americans who suffered under Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
and the separate but equal
Separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law that justified systems of segregation. Under this doctrine, services, facilities and public accommodations were allowed to be separated by race, on the condition that the quality of each group's public facilities was to...
doctrine. Comer did invest into education- but the amount of money per capita spent on African American children was approximately one seventh that of White Children. Literacy climbed dramatically as a result for whites but lagged for blacks (less than 50% for African Americans by 1920) because of the dismal state of education for African American citizens.
Prohibition
Prohibition was one issue upon which progressives were not united. Some progressives believed prohibition should be a local issue, while others supported state laws against the sale of alcohol. During his gubernatorial campaign and first two years as governor, Comer viewed prohibition as a local matter. "By 1908…50 of the state’s 67 counties had voted for prohibition." Despite the majority of the counties being dry, the powerful Anti-Saloon League pushed for statewide prohibition. Other prohibition groups rallied to the League’s push for a statewide law, forcing Comer to call the legislature into special session to decide the matter. The 1909 special session enacted prohibition statewide, "but, not content with a mere statute, they also proposed a constitutional amendment to end the sale of liquor." Comer traveled the state to garner support for the proposed amendment but his and the Anti-Saloon League’s support of it was not enough to overcome opposition and the amendment failed to win the necessary votes.Other Areas of Reform
In addition to railroad and educational reform and prohibition, Comer also had success in the following areas.He helped to establish a tuberculosis sanatorium as part of his use of state funds to improve public health.
He strengthened insurance laws.
"When President Theodore Roosevelt suggested that the nation’s governors should join him in conserving the country’s natural resources, Comer and the legislature established the Alabama Soil Conservation Department to oversee a public park system in Alabama."
He increased transportation funding to improve roads.
Later Life and Death
State law prevented governors from running for successive terms, thus Comer was illegible for the 1910 gubernatorial election. "Comer ran for reelection in 1914 and was defeated by an unlikely coalition of railroads, organized labor, and supporters of local option [for prohibition]."In the spring of 1920, Governor Thomas Kilby appointed Comer to serve the remaining months of the late John H. Bankhead’s term in the United States Senate. He did not seek election when the term expired. Following his short time in the Senate, Comer spent the remainder of his life following his pre-political business pursuits.
B.B. died on August 15, 1927. His wife, Eva Jane, preceded him in death, having died on March 6, 1920 while he was serving in the Senate. He and his wife were survived by their eight children Sally Bailey, John Fletcher, James McDonald, Eva Mignon, Catherine, Braxton Bevelle, Eva, Braxton Bragg, Jr., and Hugh M. Comer. He was buried in Birmingham's Elmwood Cemetery
Elmwood Cemetery (Birmingham, Alabama)
Elmwood Cemetery is a cemetery established in 1900 in Birmingham, Alabama northwest of Homewood by a group of fraternal organizations. It was renamed in 1906 and gradually eclipsed Oak Hill Cemetery as the most prominent burial place in the city...
.
Legacy
By the mid Twentieth Century Comer was hailed as a reformer who brought Alabama's primary and secondary educational systems into the mainstream. He was also hailed as an enlightened business man for bringing Avondale Mills to Birmingham and Central Alabama. It is now clear that Comer was a product of his time: he was racist, discriminatory, and bigoted." The family wealth that Comer used for political purposes, and for expansion of the Comer business empire, was built through the use of forced convict labor of bonded African Americans, the exploited labor of underage children at Avondale Mills (and subsidiary plants), and through investments in the notorious Eureka Mines.His laudable attempts at improving Alabama's educational systems also fell short for African Americans during his term as governor. Although literacy rates for whites increased during his reign as governor and afterwards there was little affect on the literacy rates for African Americans . This was due to Comer and the State of Alabama's disenfranchisement of African Americans and the refusal of both to fund education for non whites.
However laudable Comer's record with respect to reforms within the state his one term as Governor reinforced the disenfranchisement of African Americans in Alabama. Backed by the power of the State of Alabama he was successful in turning back the peonage investigation into the false imprisonment and selling into bondage of African Americans.
Places Named for Comer
B.B. Comer Memorial High School, B.B. Comer Memorial Elementary School, and B.B. Comer Memorial Library, all in Sylacauga, once home to one of Avondale’s largest mills.B.B. Comer Hall at the University of Alabama houses the Department of Modern Languages.
The federal building in Birmingham.
Braxton Bragg Comer Hall at Auburn University houses offices and labs for the School of Agriculture.
External links
- Find-A-Grave profile for B. B. Comer
- Alabama State Archives B. B. Comer page
- Shadow of Slavery
- Race, Class and Power in the Alabama Coalfields 1908-1921
- 1903 New York Times Article on Peonage and African Americans in Alabama
- 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica Entry State of Alabama- references to peonage and disenfranchisement of African Americans
- The Southern South
- Extracts from Dothan Eagle 1909-10 Governor Comer seeks pardon for peonage convictions
- MIT Forum on Slavery and Reparations
- 50 Years of Peonage
- Excerpts from Chesnutt, Charles W. "Peonage, or the New Slavery." Voice of the Negro, 1 (Sept. 1904): 394-97.
- Article in The Washington Post Slavery Did Not End With The Civil War. One Man's Odyssey Into a Nation's Secret Shame. by Len Cooper Sunday, June 16 1996; Page F01
- Records of the National Negro Business League 1900-1919
- Braxton Bragg Comer entry in the Encyclopedia of Alabama
- Baker, Ray Following the Color Line 1908