Saturday, February 15, 2025

Leadbelly and the Governor, Pat Neff

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Today, very few (if any) Coryell County residents remember the name of Leadbelly, but a connection to the county remains through one of the most notable Coryell County residents named Pat Morris Neff who became governor of Texas in 1921.

Pat Morris Neff was born in 1871 to very humble conditions in the small village of Eagle Springs, which is located in southeastern Coryell County.  He received his primary education at the one-room schoolhouse known as the Eagle Springs School. It was while attending this school that he became somewhat fascinated with the law and just how it worked. One day, he skipped school to venture to the local mercantile store where he had heard an attorney would be visiting that day. Later, when questioned by his teacher about his absence from school, Neff replied that he wanted to go and see what an actual lawyer looked like.

Following his schooling at Eagle Springs, Neff went on to graduate from high school in nearby McGregor and eventually attended Baylor University where he received his bachelor’s degree. He then ventured to Magnolia, Arkansas where he taught school for two years before returning to Texas and entering the University of Texas School of Law in Austin.

In 1898, he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives serving from 1899 to 1905 – followed by one term as Speaker of the House. For the next six years, Neff served as the assistant county attorney and later as the county attorney in McLennan County.

Neff would later run for governor of the State of Texas and would defeat Joseph Weldon Bailey and would begin his term as governor in 1921. He was later re-elected but did not seek a third term in 1924.

During his governorship, Neff became known for not issuing very many pardons to those incarcerated in the state penitentiaries. The Waco News-Tribune reported in 1925 that Neff granted 25 pardons as his last act in office, while his successor, Miriam Ferguson, paroled over 1,000 convicts in the ten months she was in office.

During his last days in office, Neff issued the most famous pardon of his four years – to a man known simply as Leadbelly. Neff’s stinginess with pardons for Texas convicts was well known. It took only one pardon, however, signed on Jan. 16, 1925, to soften Neff’s reputation as a hard-hearted governor. On that day, he took 23 years off a 30-year sentence of a convicted killer known as Leadbelly. In a biography about Leadbelly, it was written that he was probably the most famous black folksinger in American history.

Leadbelly (also known as Huddie Ledbetter) had become well known in prison as an entertainer, and when he heard that Governor Neff was making one of his visits to check on the prisoners at Sugar Land prison, he prepared for Neff’s visit. He had been saving a white suit for special occasions, and he paid another prisoner a nickel to wash it.

Leadbelly’s biographer noted that he wrote two different songs for the occasion. The more familiar one ended with these lines:

“If I had you, Hon. Governor Neff, where you got me,

I’d wake up in the morning and set you free.”

Neff loved his singing but told him he would not set him free in early 1924 but rather wanted to hear him again and again as he visited the prison on future occasions. A year later, three days before he left office, Neff signed a full pardon for Leadbelly.

As far as it is known, Pat Neff’s and Leadbelly’s paths never crossed again.

A few years later, Leadbelly went back to jail once again for attempted murder. He was sent to the Angola Prison in Louisiana, which is where the folklorist John Lomax found him and documented his songs for the Library of Congress.

In 1933, Lomax met Leadbelly on his first field trip to document and record southern folklore and music. Through Lomax’s influence, Leadbelly was freed from prison once more.

Leadbelly’s songs would later cover a wide range of genres, including gospel music, blues, and folk music, as a well as a number of topics including women, liquor, prison life, racism, cowboys, work, sailors, cattle herding, and dancing.

He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

After his tenure ship as governor of Texas, Pat Neff, in 1927, was appointed to the United States Board of Mediation by President Calvin Coolidge and was later named to the Railroad Commission in 1929.

In 1932, at the age of 60, Neff became the president of Baylor University where he remained until 1947. Governor Neff died in Waco on Jan. 20, 1952 and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Waco. His personal papers and mementos are a major part of The Texas Collection at Baylor, which he helped to create.

In 1945, shortly before his death, Leadbelly gave a concert in Paris. He died penniless, but within six months, his song "Goodnight, Irene" had become a million-record hit for the singing group "The Weavers," along with other pieces from his repertoire, among them "The Midnight Special" and "Rock Island Line," which became a standard. In 1970, he was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Leadbelly died in New York on Dec. 9, 1949, at the age of 61. He was buried at the Shiloh Baptist Church Cemetery in Caddo Parish, Louisiana.