Albert Preston Brewer (October 26, 1928 – January 2, 2017) was an American lawyer and Democratic Party politician who served as the 47th governor of Alabama from 1968 to 1971. He previously served as the lieutenant governor of Alabama, the speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives, and as an Alabama state representative representing Morgan County from 1955 to 1967.

Early life

thumb|left|Brewer with his wife, Martha Farmer

Albert Preston Brewer was born on October 26, 1928, in Bethel Springs, Tennessee, United States, to Daniel A. Brewer, a farmer, and Clara Albert Brewer. While Albert was a child, the family moved to Decatur so his father could take a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Brewer stayed there and attended Lafayette Street School, Decatur Jr. High School, and Decatur High School, until he left for the University of Alabama in 1946 to study history and political science. He earned his law degree from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1952 and returned to Decatur to practice law. In 1954, the incumbent legislator serving Morgan County in the Alabama House of Representatives announced his retirement. Local community leaders recruited Brewer to run. and, facing no opposition in the general election, was seated the following year. He was reelected in 1958 and 1962. Under Brewer's leadership, the House was generally supportive of Wallace's goals. During the session, a bill to increase education spending, coupled with new tax increases, was introduced and passed through the legislature. Brewer, wary of Wallace's campaign promises to block tax increases, met with the governor to ask when he would veto the bill and send it back to the legislature. Wallace stated that he did not intend to veto the bill to preserve his campaign pledge, instead saying that he would "just yell nigger" to avoid scrutiny. After this, Brewer began to have doubts about Wallace's merits.

In 1964, Brewer and the future U.S. Senator James B. Allen, then the lieutenant governor, were among the unpledged presidential electors on the Alabama ballot. They lost to the Republican slate committed to Barry M. Goldwater. No electors pledged to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson were permitted on the Alabama ballot. While national Democrats balked over Johnson's exclusion, most supported the unpledged slate, which competed directly with the Republican electors. As The Tuscaloosa News explained, loyalist electors would have offered a clearer choice to voters than did the unpledged slate.

Lieutenant governor

In 1966 Brewer considered running for the office of governor, as incumbent Governor George Wallace was constitutionally restricted from seeking another term. The governor's wife, Lurleen Wallace, entered the race and Brewer, convinced a gubernatorial candidacy would be futile, decided to run for the office of lieutenant governor of Alabama. With a coalition of Wallace supporters, organized labor, and urbanites, he overwhelmingly defeated his opponent Lurleen Wallace also won and was inaugurated that month. As lieutenant governor, he convinced the legislature to create an Education Study Commission.

In early July 1967 Lurleen Wallace traveled to Texas for cancer treatment. State law stipulated that if the governor was out of state for 21 days, the lieutenant governor officially assumed their responsibilities as acting governor. This went into effect at the beginning of July 24, and Brewer served as acting governor for about 15 hours, meeting with some state officials, signing extradition papers, and appointing 25 honorary colonels, before Wallace was flown back to Alabama.

Governor

Executive action

thumb|right|Official portrait as [[Governor of Alabama| governor, 1971]]

Though aware of Lurleen Wallace's affliction with cancer, Brewer was not familiar with the severity of her condition until shortly before she died. Wallace succumbed on May 7, 1968, and, as stipulated in the constitution, Brewer succeeded to the office of governor. Brewer's 1970 gubernatorial campaign, however, was revolutionary in many respects. Although earlier in his political career he was regarded as a segregationist but not a race-baiter, Brewer refused to engage in racist rhetoric and courted newly registered black voters. He hoped to build a coalition of black people, educated middle-class whites, and working-class whites from northern Alabama, traditionally a more liberal part of the state. He unveiled a platform calling for more funding for education, an ethics commission and a commission to revise Alabama's 1901 state constitution, which had been deliberately framed to disenfranchise black people and poor whites.

Brewer led Wallace in the Democratic primary but failed to win an outright majority. He then faced Wallace in a runoff. Wallace, whose presidential ambitions would have been destroyed with a defeat, ran a very aggressive and dirty campaign using racist rhetoric while proposing few ideas of his own. The Wallace campaign aired TV ads with slogans such as "Do you want the black block electing your governor?" and circulated an ad showing a white girl surrounded by seven black boys, with the slogan "Wake Up Alabama! Blacks vow to take over Alabama." Wallace called Brewer a sissy and promised not to run for president a third time. Wallace narrowly won the Democratic runoff with 51.6 percent of the vote to Brewer's 48.4% and won the general election by a wide margin. He was succeeded by Wallace on January 18, 1971, after 987 days in office.

Later life

150px|thumb|Brewer speaking at Montevallo High School in 1976

After leaving office in January 1971, Brewer joined a law firm in Montgomery. He considered challenging Wallace again in the 1974 gubernatorial election, hoping that the salience of racial politics would decline by that point, but decided against it as Wallace's popularity persisted unabated after the 1972 assassination attempt on Wallace by Arthur Bremer. Instead, Brewer ran for governor again in 1978, but lost the Democratic primary, missing the runoff by almost 2 percentage points. When Wallace ran again in 1982, Brewer endorsed Republican Emory Folmar in the general election. In 1987 he became a professor of law and government at Samford University's Cumberland School of Law.

Legacy

Albert P. Brewer High School in eastern Morgan County is named in honor of Brewer. The school opened in 1972.

Historian Gordon E. Harvey wrote, "Brewer did more to improve education in Alabama than most of his predecessors and all but a few of his successors."

Electoral history

Notes

Works cited

  • Albert Brewer's biography from Cumberland School of Law website

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