 S. Ernest Vandiver, Jr. Papers
Collection DescriptionBiographical NoteSamuel Ernest Vandiver was born to Samuel Ernest and Vanna Bowers Vandiver in Canon, Franklin County, Georgia, on July 3, 1918. He attended Lavonia High School and Darlington School in Rome before attending and graduating from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) in history in 1940 and a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) in 1942. While a student at the university, Vandiver was the president of numerous campus organizations, including Phi Delta Theta fraternity, Blue Key leadership fraternity, Phi Kappa Literary Society, and the Pan-Hellenic Council. He was also the president of his freshman law class, as well as a member of the Sphinx Honor Society, Omicron Delta Kappa, the Gridiron Society, the Pelican Club, and Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity. After graduation, Vandiver enlisted as a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Force and received a second lieutenant commission in March 1944. Health complications prevented him from continuing service as a pilot, and he was reassigned as defense counsel for the Air Force in Arizona and later, as a legal advisor to individual airmen. By 1945 and the end of his military obligation, Vandiver left the Air Force at the rank of captain. Upon return to Lavonia, Vandiver ran for city mayor and won the election unopposed in November 1945. In addition to his mayoral duties, in December 1946, Vandiver passed the Georgia Bar and joined Joseph D. Quillian's law firm in Winder, which then became Quillian and Vandiver in May 1947. On September 3, 1947, he married Sybil Elizabeth (Betty) Russell, niece of Senator Richard B. Russell. In 1948, newly-elected Governor Herman Talmadge appointed Vandiver his adjutant general. Only thirty years old, Vandiver was the youngest adjutant general in the nation. In 1952, he took a leave of absence from his post as director of the Selective Service of Georgia to assist in Senator Richard B. Russell's 1952 presidential campaign. In 1954, Vandiver was elected lieutenant governor and served under Governor S. Marvin Griffin, Sr. from 1955 to 1959. In the most remarkable gubernatorial election landslide in recent Georgia history, Vandiver won the Democratic primary on September 10, 1958. He carried 156 counties, 400 county unit votes, and 499,477 popular votes compared to his two opponents' (William Bodenhamer and Lee Roy Abernathy) total of 120,929 votes. Due to the functions of Georgia's county unit system, Vandiver's primary win meant that he had also won the gubernatorial seat. Vandiver was the last Georgia governor elected under this system, which was abolished in 1963 with the decision of Gray v. Sanders in the U.S. Supreme Court. When Vandiver came to office in 1959, it was in the midst of a spending scandal throughout Georgia's state departments. He immediately ordered most of the state departments and agencies to reduce their expenditures by ten percent, implemented efficient business practices, and appointed competent directors to the most troubled departments. No further fiscal scandal plagued his administration. Segregation, described by Vandiver as "the most over-riding internal problem ever to confront the people of Georgia in our lifetime," was his next major challenge. Under his administration, the University of Georgia was integrated in 1961, ending 175 years of segregated education. In an effort to enforce the federal court order directing Atlanta to desegregate its public schools by September 1961, Vandiver oversaw the entrance of nine black students to formerly all-white high schools. The Vandiver administration also oversaw the transfer of Georgia's neglected historical records to a new seventeen-story building constructed in Atlanta to house the archives. He also influenced the Georgia General Assembly to increase appropriations and federal assistance to the Milledgeville hospital for the mentally ill. After his term as governor, Vandiver returned to practicing law in Atlanta, but eventually moved his business back to Lavonia. He again ran for governor in 1966, but was forced to withdraw from the race due to a heart attack. In 1971, he served under Governor Jimmy Carter as adjutant general. In 1972, he ran unsuccessfully for Georgia's senatorial seat left vacant at the death of Senator Russell. Vandiver received twenty percent of the vote in the fifteen-man senatorial race, but ultimately lost to Sam Nunn. Vandiver was active in civic and business endeavors in Lavonia and the state. In Lavonia, he served as chairman of the board of directors of the Northeast Georgia Bank of Lavonia, president of the board of directors of the Lavonia Development Corporation, and deacon in the First Baptist Church. He also served as president of the Georgia Seed Company and the Independent Bankers of Georgia from 1976 to 1977, and he was a member of the "President's Club" of the University of Georgia. The Vandivers lived in Lavonia and have three children: S. Ernest "Chip" Vandiver III, Vanna Elizabeth Vandiver, and Jane Brevard Kidd. Vandiver died in 2005. Scope and ContentThe S. Ernest Vandiver, Jr. Papers consist of office files and personal papers including correspondence, speeches, press releases, reports from state agencies, news stories, editorials, photographs, and scrapbooks from Vandiver's career as governor of Georgia (1959-1963), lieutenant governor of Georgia (1955-1958), lawyer, and from his post-career years. There are also materials related to Vandiver's campaign activities, including his campaign for governor of Georgia in 1966 and for the United States Senate in 1972. Series I. Governor's Office Files, 1959-1962, contains Vandiver's unofficial papers. His official gubernatorial papers are located at the Georgia Department of Archives and History in Morrow, Georgia. Organization and ArrangementThe collection is organized in seven series: I. Governor's Office Files; II. Lieutenant Governor's Office Files; III. Campaigns; IV. Speech and Press; V. Legal Office Files; VI. Related Materials and VII. Post-Career. Administrative InformationPreferred CitationS. Ernest Vandiver, Jr. Papers Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, Georgia, 30602-1641. Processing NotesNewspaper clippings have been copied onto bond paper for protection of content. Photographs have been separated for preservation purposes and cataloged. The scrapbooks will be microfilmed. User RestrictionsLibrary acts as "fair use" reproduction agent. Copyright InformationBefore material from collections at the Richard B. Russell Library may be quoted in print, or otherwise reproduced, in whole or in part, in any publication, permission must be obtained from (1) the owner of the physical property, and (2) the holder of the copyright. It is the particular responsibility of the researcher to obtain both sets of permissions. Persons wishing to quote from materials in the Russell Library collection should consult the Director. Reproduction of any item must contain a complete citation to the original. Finding Aid PublicationFinding aid prepared on: 2007. Related Materials and SubjectsSubject TermsRelated Collections in this Repository
Richard B. Russell, Jr. Collection Richard B. Russell Oral History Collection Harold Paulk Henderson, Sr. Oral History Collection: Series II. S. Ernest Vandiver, Jr. Richard B. Russell Library Oral History Documentary Collection Related Collections in Other RepositoriesS. Marvin Griffin Papers, Bainbridge College Library Sam Nunn Papers, Emory University Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter Papers, Georgia Archives Georgia Government Documentation Project, Special Collections Department, William Russell Pullen Library, Georgia State University. Griffin Bell Papers, School of Law, Mercer University Peter Zack Geer Papers, Georgia Southern University | ||||||||||||||||||||