Lambert C. Mims

Lambert C. Mims (April 20, 1930 – November 25, 2008) was a politician and member of the City Commission of Mobile, Alabama (1965-1985). During this period, he also served co-terminously in several one-year terms as president of the council and mayor of the city. Deeply religious, he saw morality as a cornerstone of Mobile's community.^[1] His two decades in public service were overshadowed by a controversial corruption conviction in 1990.

Early life and career

Born on a farm in Uriah, Monroe County, Alabama, in 1930, Mims moved to Mobile, Alabama in 1949. He worked as a salesman before co-founding, a year later, the Phillips-Mims Feed and Flour Company, and, in 1965, starting his own wholesale feed and flour company, Mims Brokerage. In 1965 he ran successfully for the three-member city commission where he served for the next twenty years as public works commissioner and rotating mayor of Mobile. He was the last mayor of the city to govern through this non-partisan city commission system which had been adopted in 1911; it was replaced in May 1985 with a Mayor-council government. General elections were held two months later, in which Mims did not run.^[2]

In 1969 Mims wrote the book "For Christ and Country".

Indictment and conviction

In 1989, Mims, a Democrat, entered the race for mayor, still considered a non-partisan position, against Republican incumbent Robert R. Outlaw. Shortly afterwards, he was charged with three counts of a 35-count indictment by Jeff Sessions, US attorney for Alabama’s southern district from 1981 to 1994, in a racketeering/extortion trial against him and four co-defendants.^[3][4] The charges referred to construction negotiations that had taken place four years earlier, when Mims was still in office, for the construction of a garbage-to-steam energy plant that was not built. Mims claimed that the charges were timed by Republicans to halt his political campaign and called the charges "a satanic attack." ^[5] The charges were highly controversial, as there was no clear evidence of wrongdoing by Mims, and the plant in question was never even built.^[4] He was convicted in April 1990 of two counts of violating the Hobbs Act. He served 46 months of a 10-year prison sentence and was paroled in 1997.

Later life

After his release from prison, Mims ran a real estate business in Mobile and was active in church and civic organizations. He filed a civil suit in 1997 to have his sentence vacated, but was unsuccessful.^[6] In 2005, he wrote the book "Mayor on Mission: From the Cotton Patch to City Hall", recounting his life and career and his years of fighting the extortion charges.^[3]

Bibliography

• For Christ and Country, Old Tappan, N.J., 1969)
• Mayor on Mission: From the Cotton Patch to City Hall, Coral Springs, Fla., 2005 ( ISBN 1595264922, ISBN 978-0544103344)

References

External links

• Guide to the Lambert C. Mims Papers (PDF), University of South Alabama, retrieved March 8, 2017