Miriam: The Southern Belle
Who Became the First Woman Governor of Texas
by May Nelson Paulissen
and Carl McQuery
Eakin Press, $27.95 hard Goosebumps seized
the flesh of the governor of Texas as she hid out in her daughter and
son-in-law’s mansion on Rio Grande Street. But this wasn’t Ann ducking the
pursuit of Claytie on a beer-crazed “honey hunt” or the tracking of a
popcorn-frenzied George W., intent on revenging the “jerk” jab. We’re talking
circa late August 1932, and Miriam Amanda Ferguson is preparing to slip out of
town to avoid the Travis County Sheriff armed with a search warrant and an
injunction brought by defeated candidate Ross Sterling. Something about a
little matter of 55,000 illegal votes in the Democratic primary.
The story of gubernatorial tag team Miriam and James Ferguson, better known as
“Ma and Pa,” has long been one of the more intriguing chapters of Texas’
political folklore. The pair occupied the Governor’s Mansion intermittently
from 1914 to 1934, and the power of “Fergusonism” affected politics as late as
1948.
“Farmer Jim,” as former Temple bank president James Ferguson was called for
his populist support of tenant farmers’ rights, became in 1917 the only Texas
governor to be impeached. Pa had run afoul of the University of Texas for
vetoing its appropriation, and he was charged with fraudulent use of
gubernatorial accounts.
Seven years later, in one of the more bizarre twists of American political
history, Jim decided that if he couldn’t be governor, his wife would. Though
Miriam Ferguson had been anti-suffragist earlier in the decade, she consented
to become governor to rehabilitate the family name and to stick a fork in her
husband’s enemies. When giving stump speeches for his wife, Pa often promised
voters the bargain of “Two Governors for the Price of One.”
Most previous accounts of their peculiar reign have recounted the standard
notion that Ma’s terms in office (1924-26, 1932-34) were served in name only.
Governor Jim, historians agree, was running the show. Somehow it comes as no
surprise that the first full-length biography of Miriam Ferguson reveals that
perception to have been only partly true. After digging beneath her trademark
bonnet, authors May Paulissen and Carl McQuery separate myth from reality,
while acknowledging that the myth is a lot of fun, and conclude that Governor
Ma was very much her own woman.
Part of the problem with past decodings of Fergusonism has been the relative
paucity of source material. It was fairly well known that Ma slam-dunked the
Klan in ’24, that the teetotaling couple resisted Prohibition with the strength
of politicians funded by the liquor lobby, and that Ma and Pa pardoned a great
many prison inmates. But for their entertaining account, Paulissen and McQuery
tracked down descendants, interviewed the few surviving Ferguson friends and
staffers, and explored a virginal archive of Fergusonia. In 1991, McQuery
engineered the acquisition of Ferguson family papers, photos, and artifacts for
the fledgling Bell County Museum — the valuable archive had nearly gone to the
Farmer Jim’s old nemesis, the University of Texas.
Fortunately, Ma and Pa’s descendants encouraged the authors to “tell it like
it was,” and the governors’ warts and glories are equally revealed. While the
pair worked for legitimate prison reform, they also pardoned dangerous
criminals, whose relatives brought to the governor’s capitol office stacks of
cash that Jim placed in a safe. And where did LBJ learn the esoteric
manipulation of the South Texas voting booth? Farmer Jim engineered Johnson’s
only political defeat in the special Senate election of 1941 by ensuring that
votes swung to Pappy O’Daniel, to get the flour-peddling radio star out of the
state, where he would be less annoying, and so that Coke Stevenson could become
governor. Seven years later, after Jim had died without a visit from Stevenson,
Miriam called upon Fergusonites to choose Lyndon over “Calculatin’ Coke” in the
’48 Senate race.
Like much in politics today, the Ferguson legacy seems a contradictory mix of
noble deeds and dirty tricks. Still, the authors sustain an affectionate tone
in a style that is engaging, lively, and dramatic. The heavily illustrated
portrait breaks much new ground in Miriamana and provides a vivid picture of
its subject’s life and times. n
This article appears in February 9 • 1996 and February 9 • 1996 (Cover).