Edmond Noel
Edmund Favor Noel (March 4, 1856 – July 30, 1927) was an American attorney and politician who served as governor of Mississippi from 1908 to 1912.As governor, he achieved gains in support for farmers,[1] labor legislation,[2] and public education, while also establishing a state charity hospital.After the war, Noel moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to live with his maternal uncle, attorney David Sanders.[3] In 1890 the Democratic-dominated legislature passed a new constitution with provisions that disenfranchised most African Americans by raising barriers to voter registration.These actions crippled the Republican Party in the state, whose members had been primarily made up of newly enfranchised African-American freedmen after the Civil War.Upon joining the State Senate, Noel began advocating for a law requiring party's to employ primary elections to select their candidates, as such a reform would ensure more popular participation in the political process.At the beginning of the 1902 legislative session, Noel introduced a bill which required all party nominations to be determined by primary elections, and called for a run-off contest to be held in the instance of no contender garnering a majority of the votes on the first ballot.[8] Accordingly, the law led to the exclusion of blacks from meaningful input in Mississippi's politics while also driving future candidates to appeal more to regular white voters.