Art Hanes

Art Hanes (born 1916 - died May 8, 1997) was the 23rd Mayor of Birmingham, serving as president of the Birmingham City Commission from 1961 until the change to a Mayor-Council form of government in 1963.

Early life and career

Hanes was the son of a Methodist minister and had played baseball and football while a student at Woodlawn High School and Birmingham-Southern College. After graduating from law school he became an FBI agent in Washington D.C. and Chicago, Illinois. He returned to Birmingham as chief of security for the Hayes Aircraft Corporation under Lew Jeffers. It fell to him, as a former FBI man and colleague of the airmen, to clandestinely inform the families of the four U.S. pilots shot down in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

Mayoral campaign

Hanes was recruited by Bull Connor to run for President of the Commission after Jimmie Morgan stepped down. His strongest opponent in the race was Tom King. In the May 2 primary King garnered 1,500 more votes than Hanes, who came in second in the field of seven. On television that night, Hanes made sure to inform viewers that King had carried the "Legion Field boxes" (i. e. the black precincts)

Before the runoff, flyers from the Committee to Keep Birmingham White claimed that King was funded by the NAACP and that his campaign pledge to upgrade the city's airport was a step down Atlanta's accommodationist path. On May 8 King met with Connor at Birmingham City Hall and was caught in a staged photograph shaking hands with a black man who had been paid $20 to grab at the candidate as he left the building.

Connor helped engineer a racial crisis by arranging for the Ku Klux Klan to have 15 minutes of unhampered mayhem when the first Freedom Riders pulled into town on May 14. He later explained the absence of police by saying that they were at home celebrating Mother's Day. In the May 30 [[[1961 Birmingham mayoral election|runoff]] Hanes beat King 21,133 to 17,385. At his swearing-in Hanes and Connor crossed their fingers behind their backs when pledging to uphold the U. S. constitution.

Mayor of Birmingham

As Mayor, Hanes was indisputably beholden to Connor. The first major action of the new Commission was to close public parks in the face of an order from Judge Hobart Grooms that they would have to be integrated by January 15, 1962. The park closing prompted the formation of a coalition of "business progressives" desperate to prevent more "black eyes" for the city. Sidney Smyer chaired a landmark bi-racial meeting on December 1. Hanes, who had pledged during his campaign to "sit down and talk to any group" was invited to attend, but declined. The conference was ineffective at bridging the widening gap between the races, but it did lead toward efforts to change the city's form of government under the banner of progress. That campaign gathered enough petition signatures to force a referendum on November 6, 1962. The decision to change was made by a margin of 700 votes. Hanes declined to throw his hat into the race for Mayor, set for April 2, 1963, just as the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were finalizing plans for their Birmingham campaign of mass demonstrations.

The sitting commission refused to leave office when new Mayor Albert Boutwell and the first Birmingham City Council were sworn in on April 15, claiming that by law they had been elected to serve full four-year terms. Until Judge Edgar Bowron ruled against the Commission on April 23 the city had two governments acting in parallel, sharing City Hall and taking up the same agendas. It was during that period that the most intense confrontations of "Project C" were taking place on the streets and despite the confusion, Connor clearly controlled the city's physical response to the demonstrators.

Later life

After leaving the mayor's office Hanes entered the practice of law, earning acquittals for Klansmen accused of murdering civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo, briefly defending James Earl Ray in 1968, and defending Bob Chambliss in the murder trial brought in 1970 against the men suspected in the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church.

Hanes died in 1997. He was survived by two sons, Art, Jr and Thomas. He was buried at Elmwood Cemetery. Art Hanes Boulevard off Montclair Road in named in his honor.

Preceded by: Jimmy Morgan

Mayor of Birmingham 1961–1963

Succeeded by: Albert Boutwell

References

• "Art Hanes, 80, Mayor Who Closed Birmingham Parks to Bar Blacks." (May 10, 1997) New York Times
• McWhorter, Diane (2001) Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0743226488