Curley Byrd - Political Career

Political Career

Byrd resigned from the presidency in January 1954 to embark upon an unsuccessful campaign as the Democratic candidate against the Republican incumbent McKeldin for the state governorship. Byrd campaigned on his stance of separate but equal. McKeldin won comfortable majorities in Baltimore's black, Jewish, and upper-middle class white districts, while Byrd took all of the blue-collar white South and East Baltimore neighborhoods, including McKeldin's boyhood home along Eutaw Street. Elsewhere in the state, however, middle-class white voters did not support Byrd. Byrd also made unsuccessful bids for the Democratic nominations to the U.S. Senate in 1964 and the U.S. Congress in 1966.

Despite his lack of success in campaigning, Byrd did receive several gubernatorial appointments: Chairman of the Maryland Tidewater Fisheries Commission, Maryland Commissioner to the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, and Chairman of the Commission on Chesapeake Bay Affairs. In 1959, Governor J. Millard Tawes appointed Byrd as commissioner of tidewater fisheries. When a fisheries officer killed a Virginian waterman illegally dredging, Byrd disarmed the force. The action was credited with helping to end the long-standing Potomac River Oyster Wars. Following the example of other oyster-producing states, Byrd authorized fossil shell mining to produce culch, crushed shells used to form oyster beds. Byrd ignored Tawes' warning to "stay away from private planting" by promoting the formation of leasing cooperatives, but his plan failed due to opposition in the Maryland General Assembly.