Harold Ford, Sr.
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| Harold Ford, Sr. | |
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| In office January 3, 1975 – January 3, 1997 |
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| Preceded by | Dan Kuykendall |
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| Succeeded by | Harold Ford, Jr. |
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| Born | May 20, 1945 Memphis, Tennessee |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | Dorothy Bowles Ford |
| Religion | Baptist |
Harold Eugene Ford, Sr. (born May 20, 1945) was a United States Representative from Tennessee from 1975 to 1997. He is a Democrat.
Ford was born in Memphis, Tennessee to Newton Jackson and Vera Davis Ford. He grew up with eleven brothers and sisters on South Memphis' Horn Lake Road. His father was owner and operator of N.J. Ford and Sons Funeral Home.[1] His was from a prominent black family who were leaders in the funeral industry in the black community, dating back to the days of E.H. Crump. He attended Tennessee State University in Nashville, graduating in 1967. He also received a mortuary science degree from John A. Gupton College, a private mortuary science school also located in Nashville, in 1969. Ford later earned a M.B.A. degree at Howard University in 1982.
[edit] Political career
Ford was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1970, one of the youngest members and one of only a few blacks to have served in the Tennessee General Assembly to that point in the 20th century. He was a delegate to the Democratic State Convention and the Democratic National Convention in 1972.
After two terms, he ran for and won the Democratic nomination for the Memphis-based 8th Congressional District in 1974. He faced four-term Republican incumbent Dan Kuykendall. Ford received a significant boost from the 1970 round of redistricting, in which Tennessee lost a congressional district. The Tennessee General Assembly redrew the 8th (which had previously been the 9th) with a considerably larger number of black voters than had previously been in the district. While Kuykendall won reelection in 1972, many analysts believed that this district would not stay Republican for long due to massive "white flight" from Memphis itself to the suburbs. Ford waged a tremendous get-out-the-vote campaign in the black community. The race was very close, and when the votes were first counted it looked like Kuykendall had eked out a narrow victory. Ford's supporters found eight ballot boxes that had reportedly been in a dumpster behind the offices of the then-all white Shelby County Election Commission. When those votes were counted, it was enough to give Ford the victory in what is still considered an upset by some analysts. He was the first African-American to represent Tennessee in Congress. He served on the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations that investigated the death, among others, of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Ford was extremely popular in the Memphis black community. Conversely, he was not as popular with many Memphis whites. However, the combination of black and white organized labor votes allowed Ford to cruise to reelection in 1976 and 1978. He ran unopposed in 1980. The 8th was renumbered as the 9th and reconfigured as a majority-black district when the new lines took effect for the 1982 elections, meaning that any Republican who had managed to beat Ford in 1980 would have faced almost certain defeat in 1982. Republicans have not made a serious bid for the district since; they acquiesced in the reconfiguring of the 9th largely because the same redistricting made the neighboring 7th District a heavily Republican area.
In 1987, during the Republican Reagan administration, federal prosecutors obtained an indictment against Ford from a federal grand jury in Knoxville in heavily Republican and predominantly white eastern Tennessee by offering plea bargains to two bankers convicted of bank fraud (after their banking chain went out of business in 1983 in one of the nation's worst bank collapses) in return for their testimony against Ford. Ford was charged in 18 counts of conspiracy, bank fraud, and mail fraud accusing him of receiving nearly $1.5 million in loans from 1976 to 1983 that prosecutors alleged he was never expected to repay. Ford contended that the loans were legitimate business transactions used to extend loans to him and his funeral home family business. A first trial in Memphis in 1990 ended in a mistrial with the jury deadlocked. with 8 jury members voting to acquit and 4 jury members voting to convict Ford. The federal judge hearing the trial determined that an impartial jury could not be found in Ford's hometown, the heavily Democratic and predominantly black city of Memphis where Ford was very popular, and ordered that the jury for a retrial be selected in Jackson, 80 miles northeast of Memphis, from 17 heavily Republican and predominantly white rural counties in western Tennessee outside of Memphis, and transported to Memphis for the trial. Ford appealed this jury selection twice to the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the grounds that it violated his right to a jury of his peers; the appeals were denied twice. In 1993, Stuart Gerson, a hold-over Bush-appointee serving as acting Attorney General sided with Ford's request for a jury from Memphis, but the federal judge hearing the trial rejected the request.
On April 11, 1993, a jury of 11 whites and 1 black acquitted Ford of all charges.[1][2]
Ford suffered in the eyes of many for the antics of his brother John Ford, who had been elected to the Tennessee State Senate in the same 1974 election. John Ford was more confrontational than his brother. He was accused but never criminally convicted of driving between Memphis and Nashville at high speeds in possession of a legal firearm. Harold Ford pointed out that his brother was a separate person over whom he had no control.
Harold, Jr., Ford's son in 1996 returned to run for his retiring father's seat after having worked in New York City and completed his education at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Michigan Law School. The elder Ford publicly hoped that the confrontational stance that he had sometimes used, particularly with regard to race, would never need to be employed by his son. Harold, Jr. went on to hold the seat for a decade, and this attitude served him well as a popular, conservative Democrat, as the district was considerably enlarged in the 2000 redistricting and now again includes a substantial minority of white voters.
Ford, Sr. is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established by African Americans. Currently retired, he divides his time between Tennessee and Fisher Island in Miami, Florida and is still active in the Democratic Party.
| Preceded by Dan Kuykendall |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee's 8th congressional district 1975 – 1983 |
Succeeded by Ed Jones |
| New district | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee's 9th congressional district 1983 – 1997 |
Succeeded by Harold Ford, Jr. |
