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Podcast: Texas Standard » Stories from Texas
Episode: The Impeachment and Conviction of Texas Governor Jim Ferguson
Description: It’s hard not to like the down-home folksy style that made Texas Governor Jim Ferguson so enormously popular 100 years ago. After all, he was known as “Farmer Jim.” He often said, “Civilization begins and ends with the plow.” Ferguson was a mesmerizing speaker and storyteller and was splendidly fluent in the dialects of rural Texas. Texas was blue, then, really indigo. To be the democratic nominee for governor was the same as being elected governor.
As historian Cortez Ewing pointed out, Ferguson was the “voice of the people,” and with his 6th grade education, he promoted the idea that...