The 2026 statewide election cycle already seems to be well upon us, and candidates are crisscrossing the state, making speeches, and amassing endorsements.
Today’s campaigns are often boring and staid affairs that focus upon television ads, direct mail appeals, and incessant robocalls and text messages seeking votes, so we long for the days in the mid-20th Century when political campaigns in Alabama were a form of entertainment – and no candidate was more entertaining than Gov. James E. “Big Jim” Folsom.
Even today, the political rallies he held in every small city, town, and crossroad across the state are legendary.
Traveling with a bluegrass band known as “The Strawberry Pickers,” who would perform to draw a crowd and warm them up, Folsom, who stood 6 feet 8 inches tall and wore size 16 shoes, had a pre-rally ritual during his successful 1946 gubernatorial campaign that was once described in a Montgomery Advertiser story which read:
“It has been his common practice upon arriving at a speaking location to announce that he is tired and will have to rest. Whereupon he removes his brogans and, taking care to show he wears no socks, extends himself on the bare ground. In due time the giant stirs, sits upright, studiously brushes dirt from his toes, puts on his shoes, and gets up for business.
“With a hearty handshake for every man, woman, and child in sight he is ready for his speech, which consists largely of praise for pretty women, thoughts of the old mule who was dear to him, and reminiscences of how his mother used to fix turnip greens.
“He voices disapproval of all the people and all the performances of Alabama’s present state government, promising that he will change both the people and the system and start everything right.”
Folsom once explained the routine of shoe removal by saying, “Can’t think when my feet hurt, so I took off the shoes. Helps my thinkin’ to be able to wiggle my toes.”
We also discovered a partial transcript of one of Folsom’s stump speeches that explains the mention of his reference to turnip greens. At one campaign rally, Folsom told a large gathered crowd:
“Turnip greens. I remember my mama who would be cookin’ turnip greens, and I’d see her hittin’ those turnip greens on her hand, put’em in water…Turnip greens! I remember my mama cookin’ those turnip greens.
“Folks, I didn’t know what she was hittin’ those turnip greens on her hand for until I turned 19 years old and I was in Atlanta, Georgia right across from the Langley Hotel where the University of Alabama football team was stayin’ and we was eatin’ turnip greens — the first store-bought turnip greens I ever ate in my life, and I got into the turnip greens and tastin’ sand, and right then I knew what ma was hittin’ those turnip greens on her hand for.
“Black eyed peas, cornbread, turnip greens, throw that in that black iron pot. They talkin’ about these fancy cooking pots advertisin’ as the greatest in the world — they keep the vitamins and they’ll do this — but mama’s old black iron pot didn’t do so bad.”
It’s hard to image a gubernatorial candidate in today’s 21st Century electronic age going on an extended soliloquy about how their mama cooked turnip greens…but, Lord, wouldn’t it be fun if they did.
This story originally appeared in The Art of Alabama Politics, an outlet dedicated to the the wild, weird, and wonderful history of Alabama politics.
