Hundreds of citizens ousted Biloxi mayor who refused to leave after losing 1935 election
One angry and sore election loser put the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the national spotlight for a few weeks in January 1935 as Biloxi wrangled with installing its duly elected new mayor.
Obviously, American election disputes have long been a distressing American tradition well before Trump and Biden in 2020.
In the Biloxi incident, armed guards, voters toting fisticuffs as well as their own guns, purloined records necessary for running a municipal government, court hearings and heated partisan tempers marred what should have been a peaceful transition.
“Several hundred citizens, some of whom were armed with rifles and other weapons, at 1:30 a.m. today overpowered officers of the R. Hart Chinn administration and took possession of Biloxi City Hall on behalf of the new administration,” The Daily Herald reported Jan. 7, 1935.
“The Chinn ranks were an easy target for the backers of Mayor-Elect John A. O’Keefe and offered no resistance... Friends of Chinn stated later that had he notified them they could have mustered sufficient strength to withstand the attack on city hall.
“Why Chinn failed to have sufficient men on the job to save his fort is not known and what steps he will follow also are in doubt.”
The “coup-d’etat,” as the newspaper described it, began under cover of darkness and fog. The men described as “the invading hordes” were asked to refrain from drinking and violence. Mostly, that’s what happened.
In one of the first coup steps, establishment law enforcers were relieved of their guns and a new police chief sworn in. Also, at some unnamed site on Point Cadet, new city attorneys, city commissioners, other new city officers and the mayor-elect himself were given their oaths, deliberately timed just after the legal regime-changing strike of the midnight clock.
Then the march downtown to city hall began. Once the dust settled there, it became obvious record books were missing, safes were locked and the keys to city properties couldn’t be found.
Although this happened 85 years ago, the Biloxi story is reminiscent of ongoing debates over the November 2020 nationwide elections and potential aftermaths. From the founding, American politics have always suffered unsettling hiccups.
This one started with the Biloxi general election in July 1934. Biloxi had about 15,000 citizens, but only 2,800 were registered voters. That low number is partly because of Mississippi’s disenfranchisement of blacks and women and a required poll tax that also affected poor white voters.
Vying for mayor were two well-known businessmen, both in their 40s and both Democrats as was common in that era. In a change that would be welcomed in today’s elongated election battles, their campaign rallies and speeches lasted two weeks. Yes, only two weeks.
The winner won by 356 votes, and there was no talk of a recount. Despite honking horns and an unusual proliferation of sign totters, the July election went off with little incident. Reported The Daily Herald, an earlier incarnation of this newspaper:
“Despite the city-wide interest and the fight factions in supporting their candidates, there were no serious troubles reported although one person is carrying a ‘shiner’ apparently as a result of wagers made on the official count.”
The trouble erupted several months later when it was time to transition mayoral regimes. The loser claimed the election was fraudulent because the winner owed taxes and had voted in two different counties. None of that was ever proven.
In this cast of 1935 characters, John A. O’Keefe was a major in the Mississippi National Guard and his family was well established in the funeral home business. After experience as a sugar chemist and with a Tulane College degree, he settled in Biloxi and found his military calling during World War I. O’Keefe received 1,241 votes.
R. Hart Chinn, who received 845 votes, was the mayoral incumbent who won office in a general election less than two years earlier to fill the unexpired term Mayor John J. Kennedy. Chinn had lived in Biloxi since age 2, worked in his family’s dry-goods business, served in WWI and entered the automobile-selling business, as well as seafood canning and banking.
In his campaigning, Chinn crowed about his accomplishment as Biloxi’s short-term mayor as well as his vision for growth and fiscal restraints for a small town budget.
O’Keefe, who sported a long list of civic involvement, touted his familiarity with Coast people and the fact this was his first run for office. In the end, many believed O’Keefe won the vote because Coast fishermen were angry that Chinn sought outside political support from the Louisiana Conservation Commission. The local seafood industry held outsized sway in those days.
After a number of lively court appearances, Chinn turned over the missing city records and eventually dropped his suit over O’Keefe’s qualifications.
O’Keefe, for his part, attempted to reconcile with Biloxians, declaring “It will be my purpose at all times to render any service to everyone, with no ill feeling to anyone.”
After all this hoopla, O’Keefe served as mayor for only 15 months, leaving when asked to become the National Guard’s state adjutant general. (As a side note, 38 years later his nephew, Jeremiah O’Keefe III, served as Biloxi mayor from 1974–81.)
In the immediate election that followed to fill the unexpected vacancy Chinn, of course, ran. He lost by 29 votes. The next time Chinn vied for mayor was in 1951 in a much changed region poised to benefit from post-WWII prosperity.
Sixteen years had passed since the nerve-wracking Chinn-O’Keefe dust-up and Biloxi was ready to give Chinn another try. According to Herald election coverage, “former Mayor R. Hart Chinn was swept back into office...”
Kat Bergeron, a veteran feature writer specializing in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes the Mississippi Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at BergeronKat@gmail.com or at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923.