Samuel Ernest Vandiver Jr. (July 3, 1918 – February 21, 2005) was an American Democratic Party politician who was the 73rd governor of Georgia from 1959 to 1963.

[1] After stateside service as an officer in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, he was elected in 1946 as mayor of Lavonia in Franklin County.

He had pledged to defend segregation, using the campaign motto, "No, not one," meaning not one black child in a white school.

This led to the erosion of the Democratic party in the South, and southern resistance to the civil rights movement.

[3] In March 1960, Vandiver called "An Appeal for Human Rights", an article published in the Atlanta Constitution by black students at Spelman College, "an anti-American document" that "does not sound like it was written in this country".

[4] Vandiver worked behind the scenes with Kennedy and his brother Robert and ultimately played a role in obtaining the release of Martin Luther King Jr. from jail.

Bobby Kennedy called Judge Mitchell, and Martin Luther King was released from jail.

"[7] Under Vandiver's administration, a United States District Court ordered the admission of two African-American students, Hamilton E. Holmes and Charlayne Hunter, to the University of Georgia.

[10] He also appointed banker John A. Sibley to head a state commission designed to prepare for the court-ordered school desegregation.

When Vandiver looked like a potential Democratic nominee, Callaway asked William R. Bowdoin Sr. (1913–1996), an Atlanta banker and civic figure who had chaired a commission on state government reorganization, to run as a Republican gubernatorial candidate.

Oddly, Carl Sanders, the term-limited governor, asked Bowdoin to run that year as a Democrat.

Vandiver finished third behind Sam Nunn and appointed Senator David H. Gambrell in the Democratic primary election.

Nunn defeated the Republican Fletcher Thompson, an Atlanta-area U.S. representative even as Richard M. Nixon was sweeping Georgia in the presidential election against the Democrat George S. McGovern.

Vandiver had worked to make sure the highway traversed Franklin County, instead of proceeding further north as originally planned.