Career
Davis served as prosecuting attorney of the Fifth Judicial District of Arkansas from 1892 to 1896. He was elected as Attorney General of Arkansas and served from 1898 to 1901. He served as Governor of Arkansas from 1901 to 1907.
Davis was elected to the United States Senate and served from 4 March 1907 until his death in Little Rock, Arkansas on 3 January 1913. He was chairman of the Committee on the Mississippi and its Tributaries.
Davis was well known for his outrageous rhetoric and oratorial skills. He made a career of skewering the business interests, newspapers, and urban dwellers in order to appeal to the poor rural citizens of the state. He portrayed himself as just another poor country boy against the moneyed interests that held back the common man. Davis was equally able to wield humor, the "bloody shirt", and racial differences. It was also said that many of his supporters incorrectly believed he was of familial relation to the Jefferson Davis who was the President of the Confederacy, a belief that Davis did nothing to discourage, and which he may have covertly encouraged.
Davis was an avowed racist and segregationist. In 1905, when President Theodore Roosevelt visited Arkansas, Davis greeted him with a speech in defense of the practice of lynching. Roosevelt responded with a calmer speech in defense of the rule of law.
Read more about this topic: Jeff Davis (Arkansas Governor)
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)