Prentice Cooper signed Woods’s bill into law on February 15, 1941, effective Republican opposition died in McMinn County. Of these seven, four were openly Cantrell men. Woods promptly introduced “An Act to Redistrict McMinn County.” It reduced the number of voting precincts from twenty-three to twelve and cut down the number of justices of the peace from fourteen to seven. The 1940 election sent George Woods, a plump and affable Etowah crony of Cantrell, to the state legislature. Opposition poll watchers were labeled as troublemakers and ejected from precinct houses. In subsequent elections, ballot boxes were collected from the precincts and the results tabulated in secret at McMinn County Jail in Athens. Prostitution, liquor, and gambling grew so prevalent that it became common knowledge in Tennessee that Athens was “wide open.”Įncouraged by his initial success, Cantrell began what would become a tenyear reign as the king of McMinn politics. They were not bothered, but the rest were subject to shakedowns. Cooperative owners would point out influential patrons. It was less troublesome to collect kickbacks for allowing roadhouses to operate openly. The fee system was profitable, but record-keeping was required, and the money could be traced. Deputies routinely boarded buses passing through and dragged sleepy-eyed passengers to the jail to pay their $16.50 fine for drunkenness, whether they were guilty or not. A voucher signed by the sheriff was all that was needed to collect the money from the courthouse. The sheriff and his deputies received a fee for every person they booked, incarcerated, and released the more human transactions, the more money they got. The laws of Tennessee provided an opportunity for the unscrupulous to prosper. Over the following months and years, however, those who questioned the election would see their suspicions vindicated. Cantrell, who came from a family of money and influence in nearby Etowah, tied his campaign closely to the popularity of the Roosevelt administration and rode FDR’s coattails to victory over his Republican opponent.įraud was suspected-to this day many Athens citizens firmly believe that ballot boxes were swapped-but there was no proof. In 1936 the system descended upon McMinn County in the person of one Paul Cantrell, the Democratic candidate for sheriff. In eastern Tennessee local and regional machines developed, which, lacking the sophistication and power of a Crump, relied on intimidation and violence to control their constituents. Crump eventually controlled most of Tennessee along with the governor’s office and a United States senator. Crump, the Memphis mayor who had been ousted during his term for failing to enforce Prohibition, fathered what would become the state’s most powerful political machine. Since the Civil War, political offices in McMinn County had gone to the Republicans, but in the 1930s Tennessee began to fall under the control of Democratic bosses.
Their newspaper, the Daily Post-Athenian, told them something of politics and war, but since it chose to avoid intrigue or scandal, a story that smacked of both could be found only in the conversations of the folks who milled about the courthouse lawn on Saturdays.
They learned about God from the family Bible and in tiny chapels along yellow-dust roads.
The land, their families, religion, politics, and the war dominated their talk and thoughts. The two “big” cities some fifty miles away had not yet begun their inevitable expansion, and the farmers’ lives were simple and essentially unaffected by what they would have called the “modern world.” Many of them were without electricity. There were barely seven thousand people in Athens, and many of its streets were still unpaved. Traveling along narrow roads planted with signs urging them to “See Rock City” and “Get Right with God,” they would gather on Saturdays beneath the courthouse elms to discuss politics and crops. This was the meeting place for farmers from all the surrounding communities. Highway 11, which wound its way through eastern Tennessee. Athens, the county seat, lay between Knoxville and Chattanooga along U.S. In McMinn County, Tennessee, in the early 1940s, the question was not if you farmed, but where you farmed.
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