Don’t Take Away Veteran’s Freeeedooooom!!! — The Battle of Athens, 1946.McKinn Cou

Don’t Take Away Veteran’s Freeeedooooom!!! — The Battle of Athens, 1946.McKinn County, Tennessee was certainly a very corrupt county back in the 1940’s.  Essentially the county was controlled by two men, Paul Cantrell and Pat Mansfield.  Paul Cantrell was a fatcat bigwig born into money who used his wealth and influence to become sheriff in 1936.  In 1942 he was elected to state senate, and groomed his deputy Pat Mansfield to become sheriff.  A 1941 law reduced the number of voting precincts from 23 to 12, and the number of justices of the peace from 14 to 7.  With his influence, Cantrell was able to tweek the law so that voting precincts that contained his main opposition were eliminated, and he then proceeded to pack remaining offices with his supporters.  Finally, it was quite clear that Cantrell often resorted to voting fraud. Due to voter complaints he was investigated three times by the Federal Government, however he was able to get away scot free due to his connections within the Roosevelt Administration. Records later revealed that Federal investigators had found numerous abuses, but no action had been taken.Cantrell set up a system in which his deputies were paid based on the number of arrests, citations, and incarcerations they made.  As a result, the deputies set up a racket in which they would arrest numerous people, often with trumped up charges or for minor offenses.  They would even stop and board buses traveling through the county, ticketing or arresting passengers for offenses real or imagined. They especially liked to raid busses on long trips, as they could arrest the sleepy passengers, exhausted from their journey, and book them for public drunkenness. Eventually, the McKinn County Sheriffs department were arresting 115 people per weekend. In the meantime illegal prostitution, gambling, liquor, and organized crime thrived as they bribed the deputies to leave them alone.In 1946, after serving a brief stint in the state senate, Cantrell ran for Sheriff again.  He set up Pat Mansfield to take his place in the state senate.  For Cantrell the election should have been an easy win, were it not for 3,000 battle hardened veterans who were returning from World War II. The vets found themselves victims of Cantrell’s policing scheme, who saw the returning servicemen as more income for their scheme. McKinn County veterans had not gone overseas to fight fascism, only to have it take hold in their own hometowns. In response the veterans formed the GI Non-Partisan League, running a decorated combat veteran named Knox Henry in opposition to Cantrell. Their goal was to end Cantrell’s control over the county, institute honest elections, and clean up county government.Election day came on August 1st, 1946.  Cantrell called in 200 deputies from other counties to patrol the county.  Many were stationed at the voting place itself, where they intimidated and harassed voters.  A black man was even shot and wounded by a deputy when voting.  When the elections were over, the deputies did the unexpected, rather than turning the ballet box over to county officials for counting, they seized the ballot box and locked it away in their jail in the town of Athens, barricading the jail with 55 armed deputies.  To the people of McKinn County, it was clear that shenanigans were afoot. For the veterans, this was the straw that broke the camels back. Hundreds of veterans took up arms, either their own personal firearms or weapons from a local National Guard Armory, and surrounded the jail, demanding the deputies surrender the ballot box.  A gunfight ensued leading to several injuries but no deaths.  When the veterans blew the jail door with dynamite, the deputies surrendered.  The ballots were counted, and the GI Non-Partisan League had swept the election.  Cantrell and Pat Mansfield resigned, as did most officials who had been appointed by both.  While the GI Non-Partisan league passed some reforms, such as a $5,000 salary cap, unfortunately the movement was just a short term fad, and politics as usual returned within a few years. -- source link

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