Floyd Mann

When University of Alabama president F. David Mathews was appointed as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Mann went to Washington as his assistant. At the end of the Ford administration, he returned to the University of Alabama as vice president of external affairs. Mann retired from the university in 1982 and returned to state service, spending one and a half years in the Fob James administration as chief administrator of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.

After the end of Patterson's administration in 1963, Mann was interviewed for the position of police chief of Trenton, New Jersey, and Kansas City, Missouri. He chose to return to a company near his home, where he was employed by West Point Pepperell in Lanett, Alabama, as director of security. He was later employed by the University of Alabama as special assistant for security.

Mann was the Director of Public Safety for Alabama in 1961, when the nonviolent Freedom Riders entered the state seeking an end to segregation. As governor, Patterson was resisting U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's demands that the Freedom Riders be protected from the Ku Klux Klan and others who were attacking them at their Alabama stops. Patterson was a committed segregationist who called the Freedom Riders "fools" and "agitators" for whom he did not want to "play nursemaid".

Among his awards and honors, Mann was named United Press International's man of the year in Alabama for 1961. Mann established the Alabama Highway Patrol cadet program in 1959, which trained recruits aged 18 to 22 for a future career as an Alabama highway patrol officer. In 1947, he attended the FBI's National Academy, a six-month intensive police training program in Virginia, and later served as the president of the Alabama chapter of the FBI National Academy Graduates. In 1988, Mann was one of the first inductees in the Alabama Peace Officers Hall of Fame. At the induction ceremony, his superiors remarked “Floyd Mann knew what was going on.” At the time of his death, he was the executive director of the state Fraternal Order of Police, where he had served since 1988.

From 1950 until 1958, he served as the chief of police of Opelika, where he assisted with the clean-up of gambling and corruption that had spilled over from Phenix City. During this time he developed a close relationship with John Patterson, who later became attorney general and governor. From 1959 until 1963, he served as director of the Alabama Department of Public Safety, appointed by Governor Patterson.

Mann was born in Daviston, Tallapoosa County, Alabama, in 1920. After schooling in Davidson and Alexander City, Alabama, Mann joined the United States Army Air Corps, serving as a tail gunner on a B-17, where he flew 27 combat missions including the first daylight raid on Berlin. He received numerous awards including the Distinguished Flying Cross. He married Grace Doss of Fort Worth, Texas, on November 25, 1944.

Floyd Mann (August 20, 1920 - January 12, 1996) was an American law enforcement official, who served as Director of the Alabama Department of Public Safety between 1959 and 1963. He is best known for his interactions with the Freedom Riders who passed through Alabama in May 1961.