Horace Hall Edwards (21 August 1902–27 January 1987), attorney, mayor and city manager of Richmond, and Democratic Party leader, was born in Isle of Wight County and was the son of Helen Hope Hall Edwards and Samuel Hennon Edwards, an attorney. He later described himself as a simple country boy who took his first train ride to a big city when he left home to go to college. Edwards enrolled at the University of Richmond in 1920 and transferred in 1922 to the university's law school. After receiving a B.L. in June 1926, he established a law practice in Richmond. Edwards married Mary Olive Lynch, of South Carolina, in Richmond on 22 December 1926. They had two daughters and one son.
A Democrat, Edwards won election in 1933 to one of the six at-large seats representing Richmond in the House of Delegates. He sat on the Committee on Courts of Justice throughout his three two-year terms. During his first term Edwards served on the Committee on Counties, Cities, and Towns, which he relinquished in favor of a seat on the Committee on Appropriations for his second and third terms. He was also a member during all three terms of the minor Committees on Militia and Police and on Retrenchment and Economy.
On 6 June 1938 the Richmond city council appointed Edwards city attorney. He spent much of his eight years in office resolving legal questions arising from the city's attempts to annex a portion of Henrico County in order to increase the tax base. In 1942 Edwards became president of the National Institute of Municipal Law Officers. He served as city attorney until 11 September 1946, when the council elected him mayor. Edwards was the last mayor who served as chief executive officer of Richmond under the city's bicameral system of government. Although he took no public stand on the change in the city charter that the General Assembly approved on 5 March 1948, he worked for a smooth transition to the council-manager form of government that transformed the office of mayor into the presiding officer of a unicameral council. He left the mayor's office on 7 September 1948, the designated transition date for officers under the new charter, and opened a private law practice in Richmond.
Edwards chaired the Democratic Party's State Central Committee for eight years beginning in 1940, a position that put him near the center of power in the party organization that Harry Flood Byrd (1887–1966) directed. After criticizing a proposal that Byrd and Governor William Munford Tuck advanced early in 1948 that would have allowed the party's leaders to keep the name of President Harry S. Truman off the presidential ballot in the state, Edwards relinquished the chair of the central committee and in the summer of that year announced his candidacy for the 1949 nomination for governor. The campaign for the nomination was a dramatic and important one. Edwards and John Stewart Battle, a member of the Senate of Virginia, initially appeared set to divide the vote of the party regulars and thus to allow an anti-organization candidate, Francis Pickens Miller, an opportunity to win. During the campaign Edwards attacked Byrd's principal lieutenant, Everett Randolph Combs, and proposed a 2 percent sales tax to finance improvements to public education. His attack and proposal alienated many Byrd organization loyalists, who encouraged Republicans to vote for Battle in the Democratic Party primary. In the polling on 2 August 1949, Edwards and Miller split most of the anti-organization vote, and Battle won the nomination with about 43 percent of the total vote. Edwards received only about 15 percent of the vote and finished a surprisingly distant third in a four-man race, ahead of only Remmie LeRoy Arnold.
Edwards was never an anti-organization Democrat. He supported Byrd and candidates Byrd backed during the 1950s. He re-entered public service in May 1953 when he accepted appointment to the Richmond Planning Commission. The city council named Edwards city manager, effective the following 1 January. During his tenure as the city's second manager, Richmond's racial and economic bases shifted significantly. In staff meetings and speeches to civic groups, Edwards emphasized equitable distribution of city services and employment opportunities to the city's African American population, which was growing faster than the white population; but urban renewal projects and the construction of interstate highways and a downtown expressway disrupted large, historically Black communities in the city. Richmond attempted to expand its tax base through annexing parts of neighboring Chesterfield and Henrico Counties. Edwards's relations with the council occasionally grew contentious, and on at least three occasions he narrowly escaped a vote to fire him.
Edwards retired as city manager on 31 August 1967 and joined the Richmond law firm of Mays, Valentine, Davenport, and Moore. In October of that year the council appointed him its chief legal counsel in a lawsuit to annex a portion of Chesterfield County. On 1 January 1970 the city acquired twenty-three square miles and approximately 47,000 residents, most of them white, from northern Chesterfield County. The following year, African Americans filed lawsuits challenging the annexation as a violation of the Fifteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In prolonged court battles, Edwards and the city presented testimony and statistics to demonstrate that economic necessity, and not racial considerations, had motivated the annexation, but evidence came out that some city officials indeed intended for the annexation to prevent Richmond from having a Black voting majority. Privately, Edwards said that the annexation's economic considerations were inseparable from race because most Richmond families living at or below the poverty level were African American. Federal courts allowed the annexation to stand. In 1977 Richmond created nine electoral wards to replace election of council members at-large and allow Black candidates in some portions of the city an increased chance of winning election to the council.
Edwards received an honorary LL.D. from the University of Richmond in 1967. He suffered a stroke in 1985 and resigned from his law firm. Horace Hall Edwards died of renal failure in a Richmond hospital on 27 January 1987 and was buried in Hollywood Cemetery.
Sources Consulted:
Who's Who in America (1966–1967), 607; family information provided by daughter Mary Ann Edwards Moss (2007); Marriage Register, Richmond City, Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA); feature articles in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 22 May 1949, 29 Dec. 1963; Richmond Times-Dispatch Biographical Files, with information obtained in interviews with Edwards; Horace H. Edwards Papers (1928–1961) and some correspondence in Lettie Florence Landes Croushorn Papers, both Personal Papers Collection, LVA; Horace H. Edwards Papers (1941–1977), Special Collections and Archives, James Branch Cabell Library, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond; Edwards-for-Governor Public Information Office Bulletin, 2 May 1949, and some Edwards correspondence in various collections, both Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC), Richmond; sound recordings, including Edwards's 1949 concession speech and 1960 interview on annexation, WRVA Radio Collection, Acc. 38210, and Edwards Gubernatorial Campaign Recordings (1949), Acc. 43950, both LVA; 1949 campaign statements in Virginia Journal of Education 42 (May 1949): 16 (portrait), 26, and Virginia and the Virginia County 3 (June 1949): 27–29 and inside front cover; John E. Damerel, comp., "Edwards on Administration: The Philosophy, Directives, and Agreements Recorded at the City Manager's Staff Meetings, 4 April 1955 to 24 August 1967" (typescript, 1967), and "Minutes, 1955 April 7–1967 August 24, of Staff Meetings" (typescript, 1967), both VMHC; Peter R. Henriques, "The Organization Challenged: John S. Battle, Francis P. Miller, and Horace Edwards Run for Governor in 1949," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 82 (1974): 372–406; BVS Death Certificate, Richmond City; obituaries (both with portraits) and editorial tributes in Richmond News Leader, 27, 28 Jan. 1987, and Richmond Times-Dispatch, 28, 31 Jan. 1987.
1934 Legislative photograph courtesy Visual Studies Collection, Library of Virginia.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Larry Hall.
How to cite this page:
Larry Hall, "Horace Hall Edwards (1902–1987)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2023 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Edwards_Horace_Hall, accessed [today's date]).
Return to the Dictionary of Virginia Biography Search page.
