Spessard Holland

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Spessard Holland bigraphy, stories - Florida Governor, U.S. Senator, judge, lawyer

Spessard Holland : biography

July 10, 1892 – November 6, 1971

Spessard Lindsey Holland (July 10, 1892 – November 6, 1971) was an American lawyer and politician. He served as the 28th Governor of Florida from 1941 to 1945, and as a United States Senator from Florida from 1946 to 1971. A Democrat, he was a member of the conservative coalition in Congress.

Early life and education

Holland was born in Bartow, Florida, the son of Benjamin Franklin and Virginia Spessard Holland, a teacher. He attended public schools, entering the Summerlin Institute (now Bartow High School) in 1909. Holland graduated magna cum laude from Emory College (currently Emory University) in 1912, where he was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. Holland would go on to teach high school in Warrenton, Georgia for four years.

In 1916, Holland began attending law school at the University of Florida. There he taught in the "sub-freshman department" (high school) of the university. He also became the first elected student body president and a member of the debating society. During his time at Emory and UF, he played track and field, football, basketball, and baseball; on one occasion, he played so well as a pitcher in an exhibition game against the Philadelphia Athletics that Connie Mack (the grandfather of Connie Mack III, who would one day hold the Senate seat Holland once occupied) offered him a contract (he declined).

Early political career

After the war, Holland resumed his law practice in Bartow. This however, was short-lived, because Holland accepted an appointment as the Polk County prosecutor later that year. He served two years in the prosecutor’s office, but left after being elected to a four-year term as a county judge in 1920. Holland was reelected in 1924, but left after the end of his second term in 1929. Holland returned to private law practice later that year, joining William F. Bevis in the law firm of Holland & Bevis. The firm grew rapidly, eventually becoming a large international law firm that still exists today as Holland & Knight.

In 1932, Holland was elected to the Florida Senate, where he served eight years. During his term, Holland was noted for his strong advocacy for public schools; as a member of the school committee, he drafted and cosponsored the Florida School Code and supported legislation that raised teachers’ pay and retirement benefits. Holland also supported worker’s compensation, tax cuts, and unemployment insurance. He was strongly opposed to both the sales tax and the poll tax, which he helped repeal in 1937.

Retirement

Holland left office in January 1971. His activities were somewhat limited due to an increasingly severe heart condition, and Holland died of a heart attack at his Bartow home on November 6, 1971 at age 79.

As senator

Holland was elected in 1946 to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Charles O. Andrews. Following the death of Senator Andrews in September 1946, Holland assumed his seat in the U.S. Senate. Re-elected in 1952, Holland defeated former U.S. Senator (and later U.S. Representative) Claude Pepper in the 1958 Democratic primary. Returned to the U.S. Senate in 1958, Holland was re-elected to a fourth and final term in 1964, having defeated Republican Claude R. Kirk, Jr., who two years later was elected governor.

At the age of seventy-seven, Holland announced in November 1969 that he would not seek re-election in 1970. He subsequently campaigned for his fellow Democrat and Polk County resident Lawton Chiles, a state senator from Lakeland, who defeated the Republican U.S. Representative William C. Cramer of St. Petersburg in the general election. Cramer carried the backing of U.S. President Richard M. Nixon in the election.

Holland, along with all other senators from the former Confederate states (except Lyndon B. Johnson, Estes Kefauver, and Albert Gore, Sr.), signed the "Southern Manifesto," which condemned the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education and promised to resist its implementation. Ten years later, in 1964, Holland sponsored the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibiting the poll tax. Holland’s opposition to the poll tax was atypical of his general stand in support of racial segregation.