Anthony D. Sayre

Anthony Dickinson Sayre (April 29, 1858 – November 17, 1931) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a state legislator in the Alabama House of Representatives (1890–1893), as the President of the Alabama State Senate (1896–1897), and later as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama (1909–1931). Influential in Alabama politics for nearly half a century, Sayre is widely regarded by historians as the legal architect who laid the foundation for the state's discriminatory Jim Crow laws.

Sayre played a key role in undermining the protections guaranteed to black citizens in Alabama by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and in enabling the ideology of white supremacy. As an ambitious state legislator in the post-Reconstruction era, he authored and introduced the landmark 1893 Sayre Act which disenfranchised black Alabamians for seventy years and ushered in the racially segregated Jim Crow period in the state. Sayre boasted in newspaper interviews that his law forever eliminated "the Negro from politics" in the Cotton State.

Sayre's uncle and patron was U.S. Senator John Tyler Morgan (D-Alabama), the second Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan and one of the most notorious racist ideologues of the Gilded Age. Sayre's daughter was Jazz Age socialite Zelda Sayre, the wife of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. There is scholarly speculation regarding whether Anthony Sayre sexually abused his daughter Zelda as a child, but there is no evidence confirming incest. According to scholars, Zelda idolized her father as a Southern gentleman of "great integrity".

In contrast to her mother Zelda, Anthony's granddaughter and F. Scott Fitzgerald's only child Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald felt guilt and embarrassment over her racist grandfather and the Sayre family's political legacy. Scottie committed herself to initiatives aimed at encouraging African American residents of Alabama to vote. Despite such efforts, many black citizens did not reciprocate their social overtures.

Biography

Early years and education

Anthony D. Sayre was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, to affluent parents Daniel Sayre and Musidora Sayre (née Morgan). His family—particularly his maternal uncle, John Tyler Morgan—were prominent slave-holders and outspoken defenders of the transatlantic slave trade before the American Civil War. His father Daniel Sayre served as the influential editor of ''The Montgomery Post'', an Alabama newspaper described by historians as a propaganda outlet for the Southern Confederacy.

According to historian J. Morgan Kousser, the young Sayre was a model of Southern conservatism and "had all the proper family connections for a conservative politician." His father's brother, William Sayre, built the house later used by Jefferson Davis for the First White House of the Confederacy. His father-in-law was Kentucky Senator Willis Benson Machen, a former Confederate general. His mother's uncle was the influential Alabama Senator John Tyler Morgan, another former Confederate general and the second Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. During Morgan's six consecutive terms as U.S. Senator from 1877 to 1907, he was an outspoken proponent of black disfranchisement, racial segregation, and lynching African-Americans.

After two years of attending a wealthy private academy, Sayre pursued his higher education at Roanoke College, a private liberal arts college in Salem, Virginia. At the time, Roanoke remained famous throughout the American South for its students mustering a volunteer corps and fighting alongside Confederate forces amid the American Civil War.

After graduation, Sayre returned to Alabama in order to study law under Judge Thomas M. Arrington (1829–1895), a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Confederate Army. In 1880 or 1881, Sayre was admitted to the Alabama bar, and he became known as "one of the most brilliant and able lawyers" in the state.

Political career and 1893 Sayre Act

For the next thirty years, Sayre politically aligned himself with his uncle John Tyler Morgan's Bourbon Democrat faction of the southern Democratic Party, and he represented both cities and counties in various capacities. Sayre served as clerk of the city court from 1883 to 1889, and next as Montgomery County's representative in the Alabama House of Representatives from 1890 to 1893.

According to Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Sayre—as an ambitious state legislator serving in the Alabama House of Representatives—played a pivotal role in disenfranchising the black population in the Cotton State and ushering in the Jim Crow era in Alabama. Sayre drafted and introduced the landmark 1893 Sayre Act which he boasted was designed to "eliminate the Negro from politics, and in a perfectly legal way."

Drawing upon his legal expertise, Sayre's shrewdly crafted legislation used "creative ways to reduce the influence of blacks" in Alabama politics and "made the voting process difficult for poor and illiterate blacks and whites through small changes to the election system." According to historian C. Vann Woodward, Sayre's discriminatory legislation explicitly "prohibited assistance in marking ballots, thus providing means of disfranchising thousands of illiterate voters, white as well as black." In the words of a contemporary party leader, the goal of Sayre's bill was to "maintain white supremacy, and to have a ticket selected where only white men will vote."

Sayre's proposed bill immediately met with fierce opposition by Populist and Republican legislators as the bill effectively disenfranchised 60,000 Alabamians and turned Alabama into a one-party state ruled by the Bourbon Democrats. Sayre and other Bourbon Democrats overcame the Populist and Republican opposition to his controversial legislation via procedural stratagems in the Alabama State Senate.

When the final legislation appeared on the desk of Alabama governor and former Confederate officer Thomas G. Jones, he proclaimed that he was eager to sign Sayre's bill to disenfranchise black Alabamians, and Jones allegedly declared: "Let me sign that bill quickly, lest my hand or arm become paralyzed, because it forever wipes out... all the niggers."

According to historian J. Morgan Kousser, Sayre's racist bill resulted in a precipitous decrease in black Alabamians voting after 1892: "The fact that the estimated black voting percentage dropped by 22 points from 1892 to 1894, and remained below 50 percent thereafter, shows that the Sayre law was administered to disenfranchise Negros—especially those hostile to the Democratic party".

With the passage of the 1893 Sayre Act, the State of Alabama undermined the protections of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution guaranteeing black Alabamians the right to vote, disenfranchised black Alabamians for seventy years, and transformed Alabama into a one-party state.

After gaining notoriety due to the passage of his eponymous 1893 law, Sayre was elected as a member of the Alabama State Senate in 1894 and became the president of the Alabama State Senate in 1896 during his second term. He resigned from the Senate when he was elected in 1897 as a Montgomery city court judge. He was re-elected in 1903.

State Supreme Court and later years

In 1909, after Associate Justice James R. Dowdell became Chief Justice, Governor Braxton Bragg Comer appointed Sayre as an Associate Justice to the Alabama State Supreme Court. He served for 22 years. He was re-elected as associate justice in 1910, elected in 1912 for a six-year term, and again in 1918, 1924, and 1930. During his lengthy tenure on the Alabama Supreme Court, he was considered "one of the ablest justices ever to serve on the Supreme Court bench" and was regarded as a bedrock of Southern conservatism.

Sayre died after succumbing to influenza on November 17, 1931, at age 73. His death likely triggered Zelda's second mental health relapse in 1932.: "...During Fitzgerald's absence in California, Judge Sayre had died in Montgomery on November seventeenth, and in January, Zelda, unnerved by this event, underwent a second breakdown and was taken to the mental clinic at Johns Hopkins hospital." After her father's death, Zelda resided in and out of sanatoriums for the remainder of her life.

Personal life

Circa 1883, a 25-year-old Sayre met Minerva "Minnie" Buckner Machen, the daughter of U.S. Senator Willis Benson Machen (D-Kentucky) and his third wife Victoria Theresa Mims. The couple met while in Montgomery through Sayre's uncle and close friend Senator John Tyler Morgan.: "His good friend Senator John Tyler Morgan lived in Montgomery, and it was at a New Year's Eve ball given by the Morgans that Minnie met a nephew of Senator Morgan's, the quiet and courtly young lawyer Anthony Dickinson Sayre, whom she would eventually marry." Morgan hosted a New Year's Eve ball in Montgomery and invited both Anthony and Minnie to attend. At the time, Minnie attended Miss Chilton's School for Girls, which stood on the site of the Sayre Street School. (Sayre Street in Montgomery was named after Anthony's uncle William Sayre who built the home later used by Jefferson Davis for the First White House of the Confederacy.: "The Federal-style house was built between 1832 and 1835 by William Sayre, a lawyer and ancestor of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald.": "Sayre Street, which ran through the most fashionable section of Montgomery, was named in honor of Anthony's uncle, who had built the White House of the Confederacy for Jefferson Davis".) The young couple married on January 17, 1883, in Eddyville, Kentucky, and settled in downtown Montgomery.

The Sayres lived in the fashionable "silk hat" section of Montgomery in a lavish home with five bedrooms. Later, the Sayres relocated to the old Wilson Plantation home on the corner of Pleasant Avenue and Mildred Street. They employed half-a-dozen domestic servants, many of whom were African-American. They had eight children (three of whom died in infancy), including Anthony Dickinson Sayre Jr. who committed suicide in 1933 and Zelda Sayre, the wife of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both Anthony Jr. and his sister Zelda suffered from mental illness.

Whereas Zelda's sibling Rosalind described their father as genial and possessing a wry sense of humor, his daughter Zelda wrote in her semi-autobiographical novel ''Save Me the Waltz'' that her father Anthony was a remote and distant man—a "living fortress". According to biographies of Zelda's life, her father frequently remonstrated against his daughter Zelda's unconventional and rebellious behavior as a Jazz Age flapper. Although there is scholarly speculation regarding whether Anthony Sayre sexually abused his daughter Zelda as a child based on Fitzgerald's characterization in ''Tender is the Night'',: "... that Fitzgerald introduced an incestuous rape into the plot of ''Tender is the Night'' at the end of 1931 because Zelda might have been raped by her father, Judge Anthony Sayre..." there is no concrete evidence confirming that Zelda was a victim of incest by her father.

In contrast to Zelda who venerated her father as a man of "great integrity",: In her own words, Zelda claimed she had "enormous respect for erfather" Anthony D. Sayre whom she believed to be a fearless man of "great integrity".: "As they lingered among the headstones of the Confederate dead, Zelda said Fitzgerald would never understand how she felt about those graves". Anthony's granddaughter Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald felt guilt and embarrassment over her grandfather and the Sayre family's political legacy.: "Virginia urrrecognized a social guilt in my mother. In the early 1890s Judge Anthony Sayre had introduced into the Alabama legislature the bill that had deprived the black people of Alabama, and thousands of poor whites, of the right to vote. The purpose of the Sayre Election Law, a party leader explained, was to 'maintain white supremacy, and to have a ticket selected where only white men will vote.' ' Scottie was really embarrassed by it,' said Virginia. While living in Alabama during the 1970s, Scottie researched the family's history and discovered that Anthony Sayre had authored the 1893 election law that "deprived the black people of Alabama, and thousands of poor whites, of the right to vote." Upon learning these facts, Scottie devoted herself to voter outreach programs for black citizens in Alabama. According to Scottie, many black citizens living in Montgomery still viewed the Sayre family with askance as late as the 1970s, and they did not reciprocate her social overtures.: "At one point, my mother cottietold Virginia that she regretted not having made more friends in the black community n Montgomery "Scottie had made an effort to invite blacks to her house for dinner . . . and she was surprised when she never got invited back."

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Sayre, Anthony D
Justices of the Supreme Court of Alabama
1858 births
1931 deaths
People from Tuskegee, Alabama
Politicians from Montgomery, Alabama
Democratic Party members of the Alabama House of Representatives
Democratic Party Alabama state senators
Lawyers from Montgomery, Alabama
19th-century members of the Alabama Legislature