Background
Fuller Warren was born in Blountstown, Fla. , the son of Charles Ryan Warren, a farmer, and Grace Fuller, a teacher. Warren grew up in a poor household and worked at a number of odd jobs in his youth.
Fuller Warren was born in Blountstown, Fla. , the son of Charles Ryan Warren, a farmer, and Grace Fuller, a teacher. Warren grew up in a poor household and worked at a number of odd jobs in his youth.
He attended local schools and graduated from Blountstown High School in 1922. With financial aid from a family friend he enrolled at the University of Florida. In his senior year, at the age of twenty-one, he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in his native Calhoun County. After one term in office he enrolled at Cumberland University in Tennessee, receiving a law degree in 1928.
Warren moved to Jacksonville, Fla. , in 1929 and joined a law firm, practicing criminal law. He was elected to the Jacksonville city council in 1931, 1933, and 1937. Two years later he was again elected to the Florida House, this time representing Duval County. In 1940, although a virtual unknown, he ran for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination and finished third in a field of eleven. This campaign gained him state recognition, but his career was interrupted by America's entry into World War II. He joined the navy, serving as a gunnery officer on troop ships. He was discharged from the navy in 1945 and returned to his criminal law practice. He entered his second race for the Florida governorship in 1948, conducting a vigorous campaign in which he won the crucial Democratic nomination (at the time the Republican party had no power in the South) and the subsequent general election. Warren was at his best running for public office. He authored three books on political and public speaking: Eruptions of Eloquence (1932), Speaking of Speaking: Articles, Addresses and Other Strident Stuff (1944), and (with Allen Morris) How to Win in Politics (1949). In the 1948 primary election Warren had been financially supported by three personal friends: Louis Wolfson, a Jacksonville businessman; C. V. Griffin, a citrus grower; and William H. Johnston, a Chicago and Miami racetrack owner. Each of the three significantly influenced the administration's patronage decisions, but it was Johnston, reputed to have ties with organized crime, who helped drag Warren's governorship into its worst crisis. In 1950 the U. S. Senate created the Crime Investigating Committee, headed by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. As a result of its national investigation it learned of the Warren-Johnston connection in Florida and of the contributions made to the governor's campaign. Called to testify before the committee's hearings in Miami, Warren refused. He added to his problems by being reluctant to suspend local sheriffs who were implicated in illegal gambling operations. As a result, the committee's May 1951 report claimed that Warren had allowed the power of his office to be used by a crime syndicate "in its successful effort to muscle into Miami Beach gambling. " The report damaged the governor's reputation in Florida and the rest of the country and led to a failed attempt in the Florida legislature to impeach him. In the summer of 1951 the U. S. Senate Crime Investigating Committee, now headed by Senator Herbert O'Conor of Maryland, issued a subpoena to force Warren to testify in Washington, D. C. Warren denied all wrongdoing and refused to honor the subpoena, claiming that Congress had no constitutional right to subpoena a state governor. In the end, the committee, unsure of its constitutional position, let the matter drop. Warren often acted in a flamboyant manner during his time of troubles. He challenged each of the two crime committee chairmen to a public debate. He also threatened to campaign against Chairman O'Conor in the next Maryland election and caused a minor furor when he surreptitiously included an attack on Senator Kefauver in the Congressional Record. In May 1951 some of Warren's supporters in the Florida legislature, presumably with his backing, attempted unsuccessfully to pass bills that would have allowed investigations of Florida newspapers critical of the governor. At the height of his political troubles in 1951 Warren announced he would permanently retire from public life once his term ended. However, after three years of practicing law, he broke that pledge and ran again for governor in the 1956 Democratic primary. He finished fourth out of six candidates. Significantly, this was the first Florida gubernatorial election since the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision that ended racial segregation in public schools. Warren's opinions on race relations had fluctuated throughout his career. In 1949 he admitted having been a nominal member of the Ku Klux Klan before World War II, but as governor he denounced Klansmen as "hooded hoodlums" and "covered cowards. " He passed legislation in 1951 that prohibited the wearing of masks in public, but he declined to outlaw the Klan, saying that it was not constitutionally possible to do so. After a series of violent racial incidents in 1951 he offered sympathy but no viable solutions. The most famous of these cases was the December bombing deaths of Harry T. Moore, a state coordinator of the NAACP, and his wife in Mims, Fla. Warren denounced the act, sent a special investigator to the scene, and offered a reward of $5, 000 for conviction of the perpetrators, but nothing came of these gestures. In the 1956 gubernatorial race Warren supported segregation, trying to paint the eventual winner, LeRoy Collins, as being too moderate on race. His 1956 defeat ended Warren's political career. He resumed the practice of law in Miami, where he died of a heart attack.
He was a charismatic speaker who enthusiastically portrayed himself as a "man of the people. " As governor he often had a difficult time working with the legislature and sometimes seemed unable to understand the issues. Moreover, he had a penchant for making bad appointments and developing questionable friendships. Despite his flaws, he was a tireless promoter of Florida across the rest of the country, and he did manage to address a number of important state concerns. He ended the state's custom of permitting cattle to graze on open rangeland, which had caused an increasing number of highway accidents. He tightened regulation of the citrus industry, moved against illegal off-track betting, and attempted to reform Florida's regressive tax system.
In 1929 he married the first of his three wives, Sallie Mae Stegall, from whom he was divorced in 1937. Warren had married Pat Pacetti in 1939; their marriage ended in 1942. In his first year as governor he married Barbara Manning, whom he had met on a trip to California. They divorced in 1954 after he left the governorship.