Background
Glenn, Robert Brodnax was born on August 11, 1854 in in Rockingham Company, North Carolina, United States. Son of Chalmers L. and Annie S. (Dodge) Glenn.
Governor of North Carolina lawyer politician
Glenn, Robert Brodnax was born on August 11, 1854 in in Rockingham Company, North Carolina, United States. Son of Chalmers L. and Annie S. (Dodge) Glenn.
He graduated from Davidson College in 1874(?), then attended the University of Virginia law school for a year then studied law under Chief Justice Richmond Mumford Pearson.
He began practicing law in Stokes County before moving to Winston-Salem, where he joined the law firm of Glenn, Manly & Henderson, a predecessor firm to the modern-day Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice Professional Limited Liability Company. In 1885, he became prosecuting attorney for the state"s ninth district. From 1893 until 1897, he served as United States Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. Glenn was elected to the North Carolina Senate in 1898.
Glenn was known as the "Prohibition " for his successful 1908 campaign to ban liquor statewide.
In 1906, a mob in Salisbury, North Carolina lynched five black men who were accused of murdering a white family. Glenn ordered three companies of state militia to the scene, but only after hearing from the Judge, who waited, literally, until the eleventh hour to call for help.
Before the companies left their railroad stations, Glenn received word that it was too late. The five were already dead.
The next day, Glenn, at the sheriff"s request, sent the military companies to Salisbury to guard the jail now holding one alleged lyncher.
Glenn went to Salisbury himself two days later to testify in the trial of the soon to be convicted lynching "leader," George Hall. Eventually, the lynch mob leader was tried and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, the first such conviction for lynching in North Carolina history. Hall, however, was pardoned by Kitchin before serving the full term.
Public outcry over the lynching and concern about its negative effect on North Carolina"s business prospects, prompted Glenn to send out an executive order to all county sheriffs and all state militia companies to inform him immediately of any rumor of a lynching in the future, and to shoot to kill if necessary to guard prisoners threatened by mob violence.
Glenn was a resident of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. lieutenant was precisely one century until another Winston-Salem resident was elected to statewide office (when Richard Burr was elected to the United States Senate in 2004).
Robert B. Glenn High School in Kernersville, North Carolina is named after the former governor. His boyhood home, Lower Sauratown Plantation, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
Member legislature, 1881.
Married Nina Deaderick, January 8, 1878.