Fielding Lewis Wright (May 16, 1895May 4, 1956) was an American politician who served as the 25th lieutenant governor and 49th and 50th governor of Mississippi. During the 1948 presidential election he served as the vice presidential nominee of the States' Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrats) alongside presidential nominee Strom Thurmond. During his political career he fought to maintain racial segregation, fighting with President Harry S. Truman over civil rights legislation, and holding other racist views.

Wright grew up in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, where he was educated and later attended Gardner–Webb University and the University of Alabama. During World War I he was sent to France as a captain. Wright served in the 149th Machine Gun Battalion and the 105th Engineer Combat Battalion before being honorably discharged in 1919. Following his service in the United States Army, he joined the Mississippi National Guard.

After entering politics in the 1920s, Wright was elected to the state legislature, where he served in the late 1920s and through the 1930s. Following the death of Speaker Horace Stansel, he rose to the speakership of the state House of Representatives. After a brief absence from politics, Wright was elected as Mississippi's lieutenant governor and served until he ascended to the governorship following the death of Thomas L. Bailey on November 2, 1946. During his gubernatorial tenure he made efforts to maintain racial segregation and supported Senator Theodore G. Bilbo, a member of the Ku Klux Klan and segregationist, in his attempt to maintain his seat in the United States Senate. Over the two decades prior to his becoming governor, Wright had (according to one observer) “been acclaimed for his progressive legislative record in transportation, education, tax policy, industrial development, natural resource conservation, public health, old-age pensions, and welfare.”The Journal of Mississippi History Volume LXXXI Spring/Summer 2019 No. 1 and No. 2, P.61

Wright was elected to a term in his own right in the 1947 election. In his inaugural address, he voiced opposition to Truman's support of civil rights and called for Southern Democrats to leave the Democratic Party. He served as a leader of the States' Rights Democratic Party, declining offers to run for the presidential nomination, although he later accepted the vice-presidential nomination. In the presidential election, Thurmond and Wright won multiple Southern states, but failed to prevent Truman from winning the presidential election. Wright completed his gubernatorial term on January 22, 1952, and retired from public service. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in the 1955 Mississippi gubernatorial election, and died on May 4, 1956.

Early life and education

Fielding Lewis Wright was born on May 16, 1895, in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, to Frances Foote Clements and Henry James Wright and was named after his uncle, Colonel Fielding Lewis. In 1901, he entered elementary school and graduated in 1911, as a member of the school's second graduating class. Wright attended Gardner–Webb University and the University of Alabama, graduating with a law degree and was later admitted to the legal bar in September 1916. On July 16, 1917, he married Nan Kelly, with whom he had two children.

Military

In April 1918, Wright enlisted into the United States Army and was given the rank of private at Camp Shelby. He served as a member of the 149th Machine Gun Battalion inside the 38th Infantry Division. He later served as the commander of the 105th Engineer Combat Battalion. During World War I he participated in the battles of Belleau Wood and Château-Thierry before being honorably discharged on August 31, 1919. After leaving the army he organized a unit of the Mississippi National Guard in Rolling Fork and was selected to serve as its first captain where he would lead the unit through the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

Career Local politics

During the 1920s Wright served two terms on the Rolling Fork Board of Alderman. In 1927, he was elected to represent the Twentieth district in the state senate and served until 1932. In 1929 he authored a paved highway bill, but it was vetoed by Governor Theodore G. Bilbo due to disputes over the program's implementation. In 1930, he was appointed to serve as the assistant director of the state tax commission to aid in the enforcement and administration of the tax laws.

Mississippi House of Representatives

In 1932, Wright was elected to the state House of Representatives and served until 1940. In 1932, he was appointed to serve as the chairman of the House Committee on Highways and Highway Financing. In 1936, he was appointed to serve as the chairman of the House Rules Committee and was also appointed onto the Levees committee and the Joint Committee on Executive Contingent Fund. On March 19, 1936, he introduced a resolution proposing a state constitutional amendment that would allow for the election of highway commission members starting in the 1938 elections, but the resolution failed. Facing opposition from House and statewide leadership for his highway reforms, he helped organize the removal of Speaker Thomas L. Bailey and his replacement by a fellow highway advocate, Horace Stansel. Stansel made Wright chairman of the House Rules Committee.

Speaker of the House

In February 1936, Speaker Stansel requested for Wright to be designated as the acting Speaker of the House and the request was accepted. On April 4, Stansel died from a heart attack while Wright was still serving as the acting Speaker and Wright participated in the planning of Stansel's funeral.

From June 23 to 27, 1936, Governor Hugh L. White was outside of Mississippi to attend the Democratic national convention causing Lieutenant Governor Jacob Buehler Snider to become the acting governor. When Snider left the state, John Culkin, President pro tempore of the Senate, was elevated to acting governor. If Culkin had left the state the Speaker of the House would have become the acting governor, but Wright was not eligible as he was in an acting role. However, Culkin did not leave the state which prevented a constitutional crisis over the succession of acting governor.

On September 14, 1936, he was nominated by Pearl Stansel and the House of Representatives voted by acclamation, as he faced no opposition despite statements made by John Armstrong and Ira L. Morgan about being interested in running, to formally appoint Wright as the Speaker of the House.

After being appointed to the speakership Wright appointed Hilton Waits to replace him as the chairman of the House Rules committee and appointed R. E. Lee to replace him as the chairman of the Highways and Highway Financing House committee. Waits resigned shortly after being appointed as chairman of the House Rules Committee and Joe Owen was selected by Wright to replace him. Wright would continue to serve as Speaker of the House until 1940.

On March 24, 1938, the House of Representatives voted twenty-one to nineteen in favor of drafting articles of impeachment against Land Commissioner R. D. Moore. Wright appointed a five-man committee of Walter Sillers, John T. Armstrong, Gerald Chatham, Guy B. Mitchell, and Sam Lumpkin to draft the articles of impeachment. Moore criticized the committee as being "stacked" against his favor by Wright.

Interlude

Although it was speculated that Wright would run in the lieutenant gubernatorial election in 1939, he announced on July 19, 1938, that he would not seek another term in the House of Representatives and would not seek election to another office.

After leaving the state house he started working for the law firm of John Brunini and Sons in Rolling Fork. In 1942, he represented the Union Producing company at a House Ways and Means committee to argue for Mississippi to place flat taxes on oil producers rather than multiple severance and sales taxes. After the United States entered World War II Wright attempted to rejoin the army, but was rejected due to his poor eyesight.

Lieutenant gubernatorial

On November 19, 1942, Wright met with friends in Jackson, Mississippi, and stated that he would be a candidate in the lieutenant gubernatorial election. In January 1943, he formally announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the lieutenant gubernatorial election. Walter D. Davis, a former member of the state House of Representatives and attorney in the Department of War, was appointed to serve as his campaign manager.

In the initial primary he won with a plurality of the vote ahead of Paul Spearman and Charles G. Hamilton, who were eliminated, and John Lumpkin, who would continue onto the runoff primary. Wright defeated Lumpkin in the runoff with 155,265 to 108,661 votes winning the Democratic nomination. In the general election he and gubernatorial nominee Thomas L. Bailey faced no opposition.

The state House and Senate passed a resolution allowing for Wright to be inaugurated one day before Bailey and Wright was inaugurated as the Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi on January 17, 1944. On March 21, 1944, he gave his first tie breaking vote, in which he voted in favor, when the state Senate voted nineteen in favor to nineteen against on a bill authorizing chancery clerks to use photostat machines in recording records. In April 1944, Wright became acting governor when Governor Bailey went to Kansas City to attend the Methodist general conference as one of Mississippi's two delegates.

In 1946, he attempted to call another session of the state legislature to have the state's election laws changed to prevent black voters from participating in the 1947 primaries. In June 1946, he refused to authorize the extradition of George Johnson, a black man facing charges of child abandonment, back to California and refused to commute the death sentence of James Leo Williams, a 25 year old black man convicted for murder, while serving as acting governor. On August 1, 1946, he was made aware of plans by the Department of Justice to investigate the activities of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. Wright claimed that he did not know of any activities conducted by the Ku Klux Klan and that the organization had not existed in the state since 1923.

Gubernatorial

First term

On October 30, 1946, Governor Bailey suffered a stroke and was in poor health for the next four days until he died from a spinal tumor on November 2. Wright was supposed to leave the state for a physical checkup, but remained in Mississippi due to Bailey's poor health and succeeded him following his death to fulfill the remainder of his term as the 49th governor. On November 7, he was formally inaugurated by Chief Justice Sydney M. Smith without a ceremony.

The United States Senate, controlled by a Republican majority, refused to seat Senator Theodore G. Bilbo at the request of Senator Glen H. Taylor. Wright threatened to appoint Bilbo to serve as an interim senator if he was not allowed to be seated, for which the Harrison County affiliate of the Bilbo Campaign Committee passed a resolution praising Wright. The issue was resolved when it was proposed that Bilbo's credentials remain on the table while he returned home to Mississippi to seek medical treatment for oral cancer. When Bilbo died on August 21, 1947, Wright stated that "He was a long and faithful servant of the state. He was an outstanding official whose loss will be felt by Mississippi."