Ray Blanton

Leonard Ray Blanton (April 10, 1930 – November 22, 1996) was an American politician who served as Governor of Tennessee from 1975 to 1979. He also served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, from 1967 to 1973. Though he initiated a number of government reforms and was instrumental in bringing foreign investment to Tennessee, his term as governor was marred by scandal, namely over the selling of pardons and liquor licenses.

Early life and Congress

Blanton was born near Adamsville, Tennessee, the son of Leonard and Ova (Delaney) Blanton. He was raised in an impoverished sharecropping family with road-building interests. While working with his family's road company, he occasionally got into fights at bars in Mississippi, and was once grazed in the neck by a stray bullet. Blanton graduated from Shiloh High School in 1948, and obtained a bachelor's degree in agriculture from the University of Tennessee in 1951. He taught school in Mooresville, Indiana, from 1951 to 1953, when he returned to Adamsville to work in the family construction business, B&B Construction.