Furnifold McLendel Simmons

Furnifold McLendel Simmons (January 20, 1854 – April 30, 1940) was an American politician who served as a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from March 4, 1887, to March 4, 1889, and U.S. senator from the state of North Carolina between March 4, 1901, and March 4, 1931. He served as chairman of the powerful Committee on Finance from March 4, 1913, to March 4, 1919. He was an unsuccessful contender for the 1920 Democratic Party nomination for president. Simmons was a staunch segregationist and white supremacist, and a leading perpetrator of the Wilmington massacre.

Life and career Simmons was born in Pollocksville, North Carolina, the son of Mary McLendel (Jerman) and Furnifold Greene Simmons. After Republicans won control of the North Carolina legislature in 1894, Simmons led efforts to disenfranchise black voters and return Democrats to power across the state. He allied with white supremacist newspapers to stoke fears of black men as predators of white women and too incompetent to be trusted as office holders or voters. Simmons also set up hundreds of "White Government Unions," which aimed to "announce on all occasions that they would succeed if they had to shoot every negro in the city." As a result, Democrats swept the 1898 election, and the Wilmington massacre broke out the following day.

In 1901 Simmons won the Democratic nomination for the US Senate. From his Senate seat, he then ran a powerful political machine, using A. D. Watts "to keep the machine oiled back home," in the words of one journalist. Simmons remained in office for the next thirty years.

Senator Simmons refused to endorse Al Smith, the Democratic nominee for president in 1928 and the first Catholic nominated by a major party, winning him praise from members of the Ku Klux Klan. Still, rejecting the Democratic nominee in 1928, together with the Great Depression, led to Simmons being defeated in the 1930 Democratic primary by Josiah W. Bailey, who was backed by Governor O. Max Gardner.

Simmons died on April 30, 1940. He is the last U.S. Senator to have served during the presidency of William McKinley.