People
Mary Dawson Cain: a life ‘cut rose-diamond-fashion’
In Mississippi history, the name Mary Dawson Cain will be remembered as the first woman in the state to run for the office of governor.
To me and scores of other teenagers in the late 1950s in the Pike County town of Summit, she was Aunt Mary and her husband was Uncle John.
She was born Aug. 16, 1904, somewhere between Pike County, Mississippi, and Burke, Louisiana, in the middle of the night. Her father was a railroad man, and he and his wife lived on the train — and that’s where Aunt Mary was born as the train rumbled through the night.
Summit was the family home, and she grew up there, went to school there and later to LSU. She taught music and speech, worked as a bookkeeper and married a local boy, John L. Cain.
She began her career in journalism in 1930, working for a local weekly, The Summit Sentinel. It was on the second of April 1936 that she issued volume one number one of her own newspaper, The Summit Sun. She chose not to issue it a day earlier as folks might think it was an April fool!
She edited the tabloid weekly for almost 48 years.
Physically she was beautiful·— tall and well-formed, with dark hair that she pulled back in rolls to the top of her head — an elegant and stately lady whose sparkling black eyes bespoke her thoughts.
She was quick to speak her mind and was unyielding in what she thought was right. Her mind was like a steel trap, ready to spring and size up any situation. To her, truth remained truth whether it was popular or not. Principles didn’t change, and she stuck to her principles.
She asked for no special privileges, only opportunity, and through the years was state president of the Business and Professional Women’s Organization and organized the women’s division of the Mississippi Press Association. She headed the women’s campaign for Thomas L. Bailey when he was elected governor.
Her first battle with the federal government occurred during the Franklin Roosevelt years. Newspapers , especially weeklies, were having financial difficulties, and the president wanted to subsidize them with federal grants. Mary Cain saw it as an attempt by Roosevelt and the New Deal to get control of the press by having newspapers obligated to them, and she sounded the alarm among other editors nationwide. She won, and Roosevelt dropped the idea.
She was a brilliant speaker, never using notes, her thoughts coming straight from the shoulder and the heart. Invitations came from many parts of the country, and when a poll of governors asked if any thought a woman could be a good vice president, her name was one of only three submitted. She was the choice of Gov. J. Backen Lee of Utah.
Her greatest public acclaim occurred one day in 1953. when she went to battle with the federal government over forced retirement insurance — Social Security. The amount she owed was small, about $41, but to her it was not the government’s business or responsibility to take·care of her. She preferred to tend to that chore personally.
She was sick, in bed with a cold, when she learned that IRS agents had bored a hole in the double doors of the Sun and secured them with a chain and padlock. It didn’t take her but a few minutes to get out of bed, secure a hack saw, and free the newspaper from government control and confiscation. The press dubbed her “Hacksaw Mary,” and her fame spread nationally.
At the Summit post office, more than 7,000 letters of support poured into the small building — letters of praise and support for her courageous stand, and she became a champion among the fiscal conservatives.
The battle went on for years. She made some smart legal moves, and though the U.S. Supreme Court put it on the docket, it never heard the case, which had run its course. The case was basically forgotten by everyone except Aunt Mary, who included a matter-of-fact note each year when she filed her taxes that she did not have, did not want, and would not accept a Social Security number.
In 1951, she entered the race for governor of Mississippi. She felt that if there were enough governors with guts, they could straighten out things in Washington. She made an impressive showing when the votes were counted, so she entered another race in 1955.
I was a college student at Southwest Mississippi Junior College in Summit and worked part-time at the Sun. That summer I got my first taste of politics. I sometimes drove Aunt Mary’s red and white Buick Roadmaster for her as she crisscrossed the state. Though her campaign funds were limited, she would pull up in the middle of a town square or park at a crossroads country store, introduce herself (there were loudspeakers atop the car) and tell folks her plans as governor.
Her trademark was a red umbrella to shield herself from the sun, a folding fan to stir the air and high-heeled pumps. To soothe her throat, she kept a mixture of lemon juice and honey. There is a certain bond among editors, and often she was the overnight guest at the local editor’s home.
On weekends, she headed toward home, caught up on her mail, wrote editorials, paid bills and went to church. On Monday morning she was back on the road.
There was usually a crowd on hand at every stop. Folks wanted to hear the pretty lady who spoke her mind, who defied tradition by seeking to be governor in a man’s world. The crowds loved her. She usually won the straw polls, and crowd response after a major talk always found her to be the favorite, hands down.
But they wouldn’t vote for her: if only she wore pants… “and if this wind keeps blowing, you’re going to find out that I do!” she once quipped to a Gulf Coast crowd.
Though they were opponents, there was a certain cordiality among most of the candidates. In the race with Aunt Mary were Sum Lumpkin, Ross Barnett, Hugh White, J.P. Coleman, Fielding Wright, Kelly Hammond, Jesse Burd, Jimmy Walker and Paul Johnson Jr.
Coleman wasn’t fond of Aunt Mary, and for good reason. A highway patrolman had stopped a black man who worked for Uncle John and accused him of carrying a concealed weapon. It was a false charge, and Aunt Mary went to bat for the man. Coleman was attorney general, and when he realized Aunt Mary’s fierce determination in defending her friend, all charges were dropped.
During the campaign only Coleman made remarks. In McComb, he told his supporters that Mrs. Cain should go back to the kitchen where she belonged, but she just laughed about it. She wouldn’t know what to do in a kitchen — Uncle John even made the coffee.
All the male candidates were attorneys. Mary Cain was a journalist and the lawyers made a point to tell the public that the state needed someone with a strong legal mind at the helm. Aunt Mary retorted with a story about a farmer who was walking through a graveyard and saw an epitaph on a tombstone tombstone: “Here lies a Lawyer and an Honest Man.” The farmer mused for a moment and then surmised: “Must be two men in that grave.”
When the votes were counted, she came in about the middle. She never tried politics again though she never lost her interest.
There was another side to Aunt Mary. She loved to entertain friends. She sang beautifully, was a good pianist and was a poet. She also taught Sunday School. She had a quick wit.
When Charlie Sullivan was defeated for governor by Bill Waller, she commented that “Every four years Mississippians take an IQ test — and fail.”
I grew a beard, and she hadn’t seen me for a while. She hesitated, then kissed me, commenting, “You have to go through the briars to get to the berries.”
Her stamina was amazing, and her Bible held the key. It is in Isiah: “Hast thou not known … that the everlasting God … fainteth not, neither is weary? He giveth power to the faint … they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; and they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
On Jan. 7, 1984, Uncle John died unexpectedly at 85. Four months to the day after his death, Aunt Mary followed him. Her body lay in state in her parlor, a lifetime of awards all around. In death, the lady who had brushed shoulders with the great proudly wore her Old Glory pin.
She loved a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said, “The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of two things: first, that the truest lives are those that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with many facets answering to the many-planed aspects of the world about them; secondly, that society is always trying in some way or other to grind us down to a single flat surface. It is hard work to resist this grinding-down action.”
Aunt Mary was a beautiful lady in every respect, one I loved very much. I thank God for her and that she had such an influence on my life and the lives of many others. She never lost her sparkle, her wit, her wisdom and she successfully resisted that grinding-down process about which Oliver Wendell Holmes warned.
And there’s no Social Security number on her death certificate.
