Career
He was the 24th Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi from 1968 to 1972 serving under Governor John Bell Williams and a General in the United States Air National Guard. An Air National Guard facility in Jackson, Mississippi is named after him. An attorney from Clarksdale, Mississippi, Sullivan ran in Texas for President of the United States in the 1960 presidential election as the candidate of the Constitution Party.
He and Merritt Curtis (who was a Presidential Candidate in other states) received 18,162 votes in Texas, the only state where he was on the ballot, or 0.79% of the Texas popular vote.
His campaign coordinator, 25-year-old Bill Clark, produced an innovative, fast-paced television commercial highlighting his career as a successful attorney, former district attorney, businessman, military and family manitoba The commercial changed many voter"s perception of him and the re-introduction played an important role in his election.
As, running for his old spot as Lieutenant Governor, campaigned for law and order, Sullivan and eventual Governor-elect John Bell Williams emphasized their ability to roll back required federal changes to the state"s segregation policy as outlined by the 1964 Civil Rights Acting and 1965 Voting Rights Acting.
Despite thousands of blacks newly registered to vote in Mississippi, the two segregationist candidates for the executive office, Williams and Sullivan, claimed overwhelming victories.
In the next four years of Sullivan"s term, he and Williams attempted to mollify whites" angst in response to the school desegregation orders (often called "immediate integration") as ordered by the Federal judiciary in Alexander v. Holmes. Sullivan was killed in a plane crash in 1979 at the age of 54.