Benton Oscar Dillard (23 December 1905–23 May 1972), local politician, was born Oscar Benton Dillard, in the Henry County town of Oak Level, and was the son of Henry Oliver (later Oliver Henry) Luck Dillard, a farmer, and Alzie Ann Young Dillard. By 1908 the family had settled in Franklin County. In 1925 Benton Oscar Dillard (like his father, he had reversed the order of his first and second names) graduated from the Chatham Training School, in Pittsylvania County, in the last class before the school became Hargrave Military Academy. He attended Roanoke College from the autumn of 1925 through the autumn of 1927 but did not receive a degree. On 29 June 1929 he married Mattie Lee Mullins, of Franklin County. They had two sons, one of whom died when an infant.
Dillard read law with a Roanoke-area attorney and in 1928 received a B.L. from Blackstone Institute, a correspondence school. He passed the bar examination in 1930 and two years later established a law office in downtown Roanoke. In 1933 Dillard began longtime service on the local Democratic executive committee. In the April 1934 primary he placed sixth among twelve candidates seeking the party's nomination to compete for four seats on the city council. Dillard, the only candidate to use radio, campaigned during the 1936 primary with a progressive agenda emphasizing social welfare, increased funding for recreational facilities, and law enforcement but finished third in a field of four. He mounted additional failed bids to secure nominations for the House of Delegates in 1937 and for the city council in 1940 and 1942.
During World War II, Dillard served for forty-two months in the United States Army Air Force. Stationed in the European theater until at least August 1945, he rose to the rank of captain. After the war Dillard joined the reserves and eventually became a lieutenant colonel. Resuming his quest for election to the Roanoke city council in 1946, he appeared to have suffered a razor-thin loss, but a lawsuit by supporters triggered a recount that resulted in his election by a twelve-vote margin. He took his seat in August and served one year as vice mayor.
Identifying himself with working-class neighborhoods, Dillard appealed to voters as a champion of the average Roanoker. He supported schools, improvement of water and sewage facilities, and public housing, which probably cost him a victory in the 1950 primary, in which he won the backing of African American voters but finished fifth among the twelve candidates. His support of the liberal Francis Pickens Miller in the three-way race to secure the Democratic nomination for governor in 1949 probably also played a part in his defeat. Dillard rebounded in 1956 and led the field to win election on a no-tax-increase platform. Although it was customary to select the candidate who had received the largest vote total as mayor, the other council members declined to appoint Dillard.
In 1959 Dillard considered running for the House of Representatives, but he opted instead to seek reelection to the council. He proposed amending the city charter so that voters would directly elect the mayor, but the council rejected the change. Dillard resumed his insistence that the city manager, whom he had nominated in 1947, be fired, on the grounds that longtime officials tended to think that they ruled, rather than served, the people. Complaining that the city council was "spending money like a bunch of drunken sailors," he vowed to fight tax increases, special privilege, and secret council sessions. Dillard led the field in the primary and in the June 1960 election but was again denied the office of mayor. Doubtful that the city was fiscally stable enough to acquire new territory, he voluntarily testified at an annexation hearing in March 1961 on behalf of Roanoke County. The court ruled against Roanoke City, and the newspapers later rebuked his actions as "unforgiveable."
In 1961 Dillard decided to run for Congress from the Sixth District and proposed that the party's platform call for tax relief for the aged and retirees, abolition of the poll tax, and hospitalization through Social Security. At the convention he received only one nominating vote in the roll-call balloting. Observers became convinced that his political strength was waning. Following an amendment to the city charter, Dillard resigned his council seat in March 1964 to run for mayor. The Roanoke Times opposed his candidacy, and the Roanoke World-News, describing him as "the stormy petrel of Roanoke politics," devoted an entire editorial page to a critique of his thirty-year political career. In June, Dillard trounced the other candidates to become the first popularly elected mayor since adoption of the city-manager form of government in 1918.
By early in 1965 headlines proclaimed a city hall in crisis. Dillard clashed with the city manager, whom he still wanted to fire; with the vice mayor, whom he accused of grabbing power and neglecting the needs of African American children; and with a former mayor in a shouting match in which each likened the other to Adolf Hitler. Angry churchgoers confronted Dillard after he remarked that topless go-go dancers were good for business. These early squabbles faded, however, and Dillard developed stable relationships with the city council members. He abandoned his longtime advocacy of low taxes and led successful efforts to secure approval for bond issues to fund a civic center (after it had failed in three previous referenda) and extensive capital improvements.
In 1968 Dillard stunned party officials by withdrawing from the primary. Running as an independent, he lost the mayoral election, a defeat he attributed to higher taxes caused by the unexpectedly high costs of the civic center. In September, several days after leaving office, Dillard was injured in a car wreck and about three weeks later suffered a heart attack. By October he had recovered sufficiently to criticize a proposed consolidation of Roanoke City, Vinton, and Roanoke County, a merger that voters rejected in November.
Benton Oscar Dillard died of complications from a heart condition at a Salem hospital on 23 May 1972 and was interred in Evergreen Burial Park, in Roanoke. Editorial tributes remembered him as a personable, charming man outside the political arena and a brash, combative force within it. A decade after his death, a newspaper feature on the city's history described Dillard as "a true-life legend in Roanoke's political history."
Sources Consulted:
Delayed Birth Certificate, Henry Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; biography in Robert C. Glass and Carter Glass Jr., Virginia Democracy (1937), 3:429–430 (with self-reported marriage date); variant marriage date of 28 June 1929 and other information provided by son Richard H. W. Dillard (2010); Roanoke Times, 8 Mar., 5 Apr. 1936, 2 Feb., 16 Mar. 1960 (first quotation), 16, 17 Mar. 1961, 10, 11 June 1964, 7, 14 Feb. 1965, 19 June 1966, 3, 4 Jan., 25 Aug. 1968, 19, 29 Oct. 1969; Roanoke World-News, 3 Apr. 1956, 1 Feb. 1960, 12 Mar., 29 May (second and third quotations) 1964, 8 June 1965, 26 Apr. 1967, 17 Oct. 1969; Roanoke Times and World-News, 25 Apr. 1982 (fourth quotation); obituaries in Roanoke Times, 24 May 1972, and Richmond Times-Dispatch, 25 May 1972; obituary, editorial tribute, and feature article in Roanoke World-News, 24 May 1972; editorial tribute and feature article in Roanoke Times, 25 May 1972.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Donald W. Gunter.
How to cite this page:
Donald W. Gunter, "Benton Oscar Dillard (1905–1972)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2021} (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dillard_Benton_Oscar, accessed [today's date]).
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