[1] During his service with Congressman Ford, in Washington, D.C., Coleman made a name for himself by challenging and defeating another young southern congressional staffer, future President Lyndon B. Johnson, for Speaker of the Little Congress, a body that Johnson had dominated before Coleman's challenge.

[citation needed] Coleman became the Governor of Mississippi in 1956 as a moderate candidate in a campaign where he promised to uphold segregation.

As Governor, he befriended Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John F. Kennedy, but set up the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission.

[3] Johnson went on to defeat the Democrat-turned-Republican Rubel Phillips in the 1963 general election, which presented Mississippi voters with a new-at-the-time opportunity to choose between candidates of different parties.

[4] Coleman was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson on June 22, 1965, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated by Judge Benjamin Franklin Cameron.

[1] After his retirement from the federal bench, Coleman returned to the private practice of law in Choctaw County[1] and also farmed[citation needed] until he suffered a severe stroke on December 11, 1990.