Edward Hull "Boss" Crump Jr. (October 2, 1874 – October 16, 1954) was an American politician from Memphis, Tennessee. Representing the Democratic Party, he was the dominant force in the city's politics for most of the first half of the 20th century, during which the city had a commission form of government. He also usually dominated Tennessee politics from the 1920s to the 1940s. He was elected and served as mayor of Memphis from 1910 to 1915 and again briefly in 1940. However, he effectively appointed every mayor who was elected from 1915 to 1954. Career A native of Holly Springs in northern Mississippi, 19-year-old Crump moved to Memphis, Tennessee, on September 21, 1893, according to the Holly Springs Reporter. When he first arrived in Memphis, the ongoing Panic of 1893, possibly the worst recession in the United States to that time, made it hard for Crump to find work. Eventually, he obtained a clerical position with the Walter Goodman Cotton Company, on Front Street in downtown Memphis. This was the start of his successful business career as a broker and trader. Early in 1901, Crump began seriously courting 23-year-old Bessie Byrd McLean. Bessie (or Betty) McLean, the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Robert McLean (Mr. McLean was then the vice president of the William R. Moore Dry Goods Company), was a prominent Memphis socialite and considered "one of the city's most beautiful and most sought after women." Crump and McLean were married on January 22, 1902 at the Calvary Episcopal Church. Politics Alongside his rising business career, Crump began to make the political connections that served him for the rest of his life. He was a delegate to the Tennessee Democratic State Convention in 1902 and 1904. In 1905, he was named to the municipal Board of Public Works, and was elected to the powerful position of Commissioner of Fire and Police in 1907, among three commissioners who governed the city. Starting in the 1910s, Crump began to build a political machine which came to have statewide influence. He was particularly adept in his use of what were at the time two politically weak minority groups in Tennessee: blacks and Republicans. Unlike most Southern Democrats of his era, Crump was not opposed to blacks voting; Memphis blacks were reliable Crump machine voters for the most part. The party often paid the poll taxes required by state law since