James Thomas Heflin was born on April 9, 1869 in Louina, Alabama, United States. He was the son of Wilson Lumpkin Heflin, a physician, and Lavicie Catherine Phillips. He was also the nephew of Robert Stell Heflin, a congressman from Alabama.
Heflin attended local public schools, and spent two years at Southern University in Greensboro, Alabama, and Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College in Auburn (later Auburn University) before completing his education by reading law under a judge in his home community.
Heflin was admitted to the Alabama bar in 1893. In 1896, after two years as mayor of Lafayette and register in chancery of Chambers County, Heflin was elected an Alabama state representative.
Heflin earned a seat on the important state Democratic executive committee and at the Alabama Constitutional Convention of 1901, where he favored a new constitution that was to disfranchise practically all black voters and one-fourth of the whites. Heflin was elected Alabama Secretary of State in 1902, but he resigned in 1904 to seek election to the United States House of Representatives from the Fifth District of Alabama, a seat he held for sixteen years by diligent adherence to the causes of prohibition, higher cotton prices, and white supremacy. In the House, Heflin earned the nicknames "Tom-Tom" (for his colorful oratory) and "Cotton Tom" (for the bills he introduced bearing on that crop).
After the death in 1920 of Senator John H. Bankhead, Sr. , Heflin won a special election to fill the vacancy. He was reelected in 1924.
In the 1928 presidential campaign Heflin led a coalition of Klansmen, prohibitionists, and fundamentalist Protestants in Alabama who opposed the Democratic nominee, Alfred E. Smith. Loyal Democrats managed to carry the state for Smith and punished Heflin for his defection. The state Democratic executive committee barred the senator from qualifying as a Democratic candidate for reelection in 1930.
Forced to run as an independent, Heflin lost by about 50, 000 votes to the Democratic nominee, John H. Bankhead, Jr. Contending that he had been illegally barred from the Democratic candidacy and that the election itself had been fraudulent, Heflin contested the outcome and persuaded the Senate to investigate. As the contest neared its close after eighteen months of hearings, Heflin delivered the most passionate oration of his political career, holding the Senate floor for more than five hours and entertaining packed crowds in the galleries. Although the gallery crowds applauded Heflin, the Senate voted sixty-four to eighteen to seat Bankhead, the majority acting in the belief that Bankhead had not been directly linked to any irregularities and that the number of votes in dispute would not have changed the outcome.
Campaigning as a Democrat, Heflin sought to regain a seat in the House or Senate in three more Alabama elections, but his failure to support Smith in 1928 had been the doom of his political career. In 1937 he was defeated by Lister Hill for the Senate seat vacated when Hugo Black was named to the Supreme Court.
A pathetic figure in his frayed political costume, Heflin spent his last years in LaFayette, Alabama, where he died.
Heflin was a critic of the Catholic Church.
Although Heflin spoke in the vernacular of the plain folk and came from an area where Populism was strong, he was a Democrat.
In general Heflin supported progressive measures, including lower tariffs and improved working conditions, but he opposed the constitutional amendment to legalize woman suffrage. In 1913 he sponsored the House resolution creating Mother's Day in recognition of the role that he evidently deemed more suitable for women.
When World War I enveloped Europe, Heflin supported President Woodrow Wilson's position that neutrals were entitled to freedom of the seas during wartime. But he urged preparedness and, after the United States entered the war, strongly backed mobilization measures.
As a member of the farm bloc, he advocated that surplus crops be marketed abroad and federal credit be provided for farmers. On the issue of completing the government's nitrate plants at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, for the production of fertilizer, Heflin initially favored that this be done by a public agency, then by Henry Ford, but eventually espoused the proposal of Senator George Norris that the Tennessee River be developed through a multi-use government program.
During the 1920s, Heflin repeatedly sounded the theme that a privileged class was growing rich during Republican ascendancy while the poor were suffering.
In the dispute over Mexican oil policies, Heflin opposed intervention by the United States on behalf of American investors and charged the Knights of Columbus with seeking to involve the United States in an internal dispute between church and state in Mexico. This stand attracted favor from the Ku Klux Klan, which sponsored Heflin in a number of anti-Catholic speeches over the nation. A student of Heflin's career, Ralph Tanner, has nevertheless concluded that the matter of Heflin's membership in the Klan is problematical.
Heflin was suspected of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1937, the Imperial Wizard, Hiram Wesley Evans, told the press that Heflin had joined the secret order in the late 1920s.
Heflin attracted attention by the garb which was to become his trademark, a Prince Albert coat, double-breasted vest, and flowing tie. Throughout his long career Heflin never varied this outfit except to change it seasonally from black to white.
Heflin's own family life was marked by tragedy. His wife, Minnie Kate Schuessler, whom he married on December 18, 1895, died on March 8, 1916; three of their children died in infancy, and James Thomas Heflin, Jr. , their first son, died at thirty-four of complications resulting from alcoholism.
