Benjamin Meek Miller (1864-1944) served as governor of Alabama during the worst years of the Great Depression. A large, bespectacled, dignified man, Miller had a long legal career before and after his term as governor of a state that was among the most severely affected by the Depression. In that difficult era, the man and the times did not perfectly meet, as he approved tax legislation relieving the burden on the poor but also backed business interests, using the state militia against striking coal, iron, and textile workers.



Miller declared himself a candidate for governor in the Democratic primary and made opposition to the waning Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and its "loose-spending" governor, Bibb Graves, the centerpiece of his campaign. He promised fiscal responsibility and the firing of state employees known to have KKK associations. Miller's opposition to the Klan, like that of other wealthy white supremacists, had little to do with racial tolerance and more to do with maintaining political power. The planter-industrialist, or Black Belt-Big Mule, coalition, of which Miller was a part, eventually rejected the 1920s version of the Klan because it represented a direct threat to their power over poorer and middle-class whites. Many Alabama Klansmen participated in violence and terror during the decade, but the Klan also made itself influential by forming political coalitions with farmers, prohibitionists, women, and unions. These alliances threatened the control that planter-industrialists had exercised in Alabama politics.
The 66-year-old Miller also used his vaunted personal and political frugality as a campaign issue and was not at all embarrassed when it became widely known that he still used oil lamps instead of electricity on his Wilcox plantation in order to save money. A staunch prohibitionist, Miller was fond of quoting Proverbs as an argument against repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. Editor Grover C. Hall swung the Montgomery Advertiser's full weight behind Miller with a glowing editorial. Miller promised no new taxes, better roads, improved public health, and added child welfare, all within the vital pledge of strict fiscal responsibility. In August 1930, Miller narrowly defeated a field of five other candidates to win the Democratic primary.
For the first time since the Populist revolt of the 1890s, the Democratic primary did not end the gubernatorial campaign. The general election featured some of the dirtiest campaigning since that era. Even the dignified Miller found himself getting down in the political dirt of 1930. He accused his opponents of favoring alcohol, being tools of the Klan, and benefiting from graft and corruption in Graves's administration. Miller easily defeated his third-party opponent, Locke, in a general election that drew more voters than usual to the polls.

Nonetheless, after campaigning against Graves's propensity for debt, Miller immediately borrowed $500,000 to keep the state's social service agencies functioning, and he advocated raising the state's borrowing limits. The governor coupled new debt with a commission of the Brookings Institution to study Alabama's finances and governmental systems. The study called for an almost complete overhaul of state government and recommended increased property taxes to meet a state debt the institution estimated to be in excess of $18 million. During Miller's tenure, however, the legislature refused to adopt various reform measures drawn from this study.
In an attempt to balance the state's budget, Miller eliminated hundreds of state jobs and limited the use of state automobiles. His no new taxes pledge soon evaporated in the arid financial climate of the Great Depression. He sought a two-cent hike in the gasoline tax, which eventually passed as a one-cent increase. To the surprise of many, Miller opposed a sales tax because it was regressive and would harm poorer consumers. His opposition to this form of taxation demonstrated that the governor was not the absolute tool of the conservative Democratic oligarchy that had put him into office.

In the midst of Miller's term, Alabama Democrats reunited to help elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt president in 1932. Even before FDR's New Deal economic recovery program was put into action, Miller had reduced the salaries of state employees and was paying teachers in state paper (IOUs) known as "scrip," which many landlords, grocers, and others were unwilling to accept in lieu of money. County schools moved to shorter terms, and some closed altogether.
As with his predecessors, Miller's administration was charged with cronyism. The governor rewarded newspaper editor Grover Hall for his vocal support by appointing him probate judge of Montgomery County. Even Julian Hall, Grover's nephew and editor of the Dothan Eagle, published a "Shame Sheet of Alabama" listing the most prominent beneficiaries of Miller's largesse, including the Dothan editor's own future bride. Another black eye for Miller was his administration's laxness in dealing with vigilantism. Although he intervened to prevent two lynchings in 1931, Miller allowed a particularly gruesome event to occur in 1934. With police connivance, public approbation, and official approval, an interstate mob tortured and lynched Claude Neal, a black man accused of rape who was moved from Pensacola, Florida, to Brewton, Baldwin County, for safety's sake. Newspapers advertised the intention to carry out the lynching for several days in advance, yet neither Miller nor his Florida counterpart sent militia to prevent the torture and murder. Instead, Miller sent the state guard to Brewton to quash black protests over the incident. In another case that drew negative national attention to the state, the governor repeatedly denied state protection to the various Communist attorneys representing the wrongfully accused black defendants in the Scottsboro Trials, despite mob hysteria surrounding the courthouse. He and his successor, Bibb Graves, refused to commute the sentences of the men because of the involvement of Communists who supported them.

Miller returned to his law practice at the end of his term as governor. Ten years later, on February 6, he died at his daughter's home in Selma, Dallas County, and was buried at Camden Cemetery. Miller's legacy as governor is one shared by many of the state's governors. He was unable to see that the same consumers he defended in his fight against a state sales tax might be equally hurt by an unyielding fiscal conservatism that did not adequately value or fund social services and programs. Nor did he understand that his unyielding opposition to trade unionism denied ordinary citizens a tool to counter the power of big business. The conservative ideal of fiscal responsibility and corporate profit at the expense of virtually all else places Miller's administration among those of numerous like-minded Alabama governors.
Note: This entry was adapted with permission from Alabama Governors: A Political History of the State, edited by Samuel L. Webb and Margaret Armbrester (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001).
Additional Resources
Dobbins, Charles C. "Alabama Governors and Editors, 1930–1955: A Memoir." Alabama Review 29 (April 1976): 135-54.
Feldman, Glenn. From Demagogue to Dixiecrat: Horace Wilkinson and the Politics of Race. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1995
Flynt, Wayne. "The New Deal and Southern Labor." In The New Deal and the South, edited by James C. Cobb and Michael V. Namorato, 63-96. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1984.
Moore, Albert B. History of Alabama. 1934. Reprint, Tuscaloosa: Alabama Book Store, 1951.