William Haydon Burns (March 17, 1912 – November 22, 1987) was an American politician. He was Mayor of Jacksonville, Florida from 1949 to 1965, and served as the 35th Governor of Florida from 1965 to 1967.
Early life
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Haydon Burns' family moved to Jacksonville in 1922, where he attended Andrew Jackson High School before going on to attend Babson College in Massachusetts. Before the outbreak of World War II he was an appliance salesman and a flight school operator. During the war, he joined the U.S. Navy and was posted as a technical officer in the office of the Secretary of the Navy. Following the war, he returned to Jacksonville and began a public relations and business consulting firm and worked selling appliances.
Mayor of Jacksonville
In 1949 Burns, a segregationist, announced his intention to run for Mayor of Jacksonville against incumbent C. Frank Whitehead. He defeated Whitehead in the Democratic Party primary, and then faced Jacksonville businessman William Ashley, a Democrat running as a political independent, in the general election – an unusual occurrence, as Democrats had been dominant in city politics for decades. On June 21, 1949, Burns defeated Ashley to become the mayor of Jacksonville.
Burns' first term was an abbreviated two-year stint; he was thereafter re-elected four times, the longest consecutive stint of any mayor in the city's history. During his time in the mayor's office, he oversaw massive growth in Jacksonville. He promoted the city around the world in an attempt to lure international investments and to get corporations to relocate offices to the city. He commissioned the production of a slide show called "The Jacksonville Story". Hundreds of audiences around the world saw it. The American National Exhibit showed a film version in the Soviet Union. Burns personally made presentations at The Hague and in Israel. He made "The Jacksonville Story" known from coast to coast, and so was Jacksonville's mayor.
He was elected president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, president of the Florida League of Municipalities, and delegate to the International Congress of Municipalities. While mayor, he won tax breaks for insurance companies and Prudential Insurance relocated from New Jersey to a skyscraper in Jacksonville. Other insurance companies followed, and Jacksonville became known as the insurance capital of the South.
A new courthouse and City Hall were built on the site of rotten wharves, and a long-promised Civic Auditorium was built on the banks of the St. John's River. Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum and Sam W. Wolfson Baseball Park made the city thoroughly modern. The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, today CSX, moved from Wilmington, North Carolina, to the Jacksonville riverfront. The world's largest Sears Roebuck store opened on what once was skid row. A modern expressway system took shape and the city got the Jacksonville Suns baseball franchise and a hockey team.
The city faced many problems during Burns' term. Burns was a segregationist running on his ability to control Jacksonville’s racial conflicts, Burns deputized even firefighters to strengthen the city’s police force to resist integration. Racial violence ignited on August 27, 1960, during a protest to integrate downtown lunch counters in the Hemming Park shopping area. Segregationists responded by attacking the protesters with baseball bats and ax handles; the day is remembered as Ax Handle Saturday. Burns tried to blame the shameful incident on visitors but the police chief attributed the attacks to locals. The city's police department was ridden with scandal and multiple grand jury indictments were handed down on public officials all around him.
One of his final acts as mayor was his handling of the Hotel Roosevelt fire in downtown. Although 23 people died, many other hotel guests survived. In 1964 he announced he would be stepping down as mayor to run for Governor of Florida. City Commissioner Lou Ritter was appointed to take his place.
Governorship
Burns defeated Republican Charles Holley in the November 3 general election to become Governor of Florida. He was sworn in on January 5, 1965, to serve an abbreviated two-year term. This short term came about because the cycle of gubernatorial elections was changed so as not to coincide with presidential election years. While in office, he oversaw progress in the development of a new state constitution, as well as new areas of outdoor recreation and industry. Also, Governor Burns opposed the death penalty and allowed no executions (the last pre-Furman execution in Florida took place in 1964).