Early Life and Career
Allen was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and graduated from Friends High School (now Sidwell Friends) in Washington, D.C. He graduated from the Cumberland School of Law in Lebanon, Tennessee in 1931 and was admitted to the Tennessee bar the same year. He was elected to a first term in the Tennessee State Senate in 1948. In 1950 he first ran for governor of Tennessee in the Democratic primary against incumbent governor Gordon Browning and was defeated in a very close election where Allen's main issue was that the state should start providing free school textbooks to all school children. Running again in 1952 he was again defeated, running third (Frank G. Clement was the winner, with Browning finishing second). Allen was seen by some as the representative of the urban and progressive forces as opposed to those whose support was largely rural, such as Clement. He was also a staunch opponent of Boss Crump of Memphis, and was invariably opposed by the Crump political machine. The rivalry between Allen and Clement was such that on one occasion, health inspectors shut down a downtown Nashville restaurant owned by Allen, who got a court order allowing it to reopen. This was judged by Nashvillians to have been politically motivated, and the restaurant reopened to long lines.
Allen was elected to the State Senate again in 1954 where he was a strong advocate for teachers and the public schools. Allen urged enforcement of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1958 he again entered the Democratic primary for governor, losing to Buford Ellington, a Clement colleague who had served Clement both as campaign manager and Cabinet member. During this period of what was essentially one-party rule in Tennessee (by the Democrats in the western two-thirds of the state and by the Republicans in East Tennessee), organized factions within the parties often served the role traditionally served by parties, nominating tickets of candidates who ran together, pooled their resources in advertising, and generally ran for office as a unit.
In January, 1957 the Tennessee State Senate refused to seat Richard Fulton, who had been elected to the seat formerly held by Allen. Fulton had run for the office in the place of his popular older brother Lyle, who had died of cancer shortly after entering the race to succeed Allen, but was several weeks short of having reached the constitutionally required age of 30 prior to the beginning of the legislative session, and Allen was appointed back to this seat again.
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