Estes Kefauver
Carey Estes Kefauver (/ˈɛstɪs ˈkiːfɔːvər/;[2] July 26, 1903 – August 10, 1963) was an American politician from Tennessee. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1939 to 1949 and in the U.S. Senate from 1949 until his death in 1963.
Estes Kefauver
After leading a much-publicized investigation into organized crime in the early 1950s, he twice sought his party's nomination for President of the United States. In 1956, he was selected by the Democratic National Convention to be the running mate of presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson. He continued to hold his U.S. Senate seat after the Stevenson–Kefauver ticket lost to the Eisenhower–Nixon ticket. Kefauver was named chair of the U.S. Senate Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1957 and served as its chairman until his death.
Political career[edit]
U.S. House of Representatives[edit]
Kefauver was elected to five terms in the House of Representatives as a Democrat. As a member of the House during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's time in office, Kefauver distinguished himself from the other Democrats in Tennessee's congressional delegation, most of whom were conservatives, by becoming a staunch supporter of the President's New Deal legislation. In particular, he backed the controversial Tennessee Valley Authority and was best known for his successful bid to rebuff the efforts of Tennessee Senator Kenneth McKellar to gain political control over the agency.
As a member of the House, "Kefauver began to manifest his concern over the growing concentration of economic power in the United States",[5] concentrating much of his legislative efforts on congressional reform and anti-monopoly measures. Among the committees Kefauver chaired was the House Select Committee on Small Business, which investigated economic concentration in the U.S. business world in 1946. That same year, Kefauver also introduced legislation to plug loopholes in the Clayton Antitrust Act.
In a May 1948 article, which appeared in the American Economic Review, Kefauver also proposed that more staff and money be allocated to the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, and to the Federal Trade Commission; that new legislation to make it easier to prosecute big corporations be enacted; and recommended the danger of monopolies should be publicized more.
The Kefauver investigation into television and juvenile delinquency in the mid-1950s led to an even more intensive investigation in the early 1960s. The new probe came about after people became increasingly concerned over juvenile violence, and the possibility of this behavior being related to violent television programs.[6]
His progressive stances on the issues put Kefauver in direct competition with E. H. Crump, the former U.S. Congressman, mayor of Memphis, and boss of the state's Democratic Party, when he chose to seek the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in 1948. During the primary, Crump and his allies accused Kefauver of being a "fellow traveler" and of working for the "pinkos and communists" with the stealth of a raccoon.
In a televised speech given in Memphis, in which he responded to such charges, Kefauver put on a coonskin cap and proudly proclaimed, "I may be a pet coon, but I'm not Boss Crump's pet coon."
To win election to the Senate, Kefauver defeated the incumbent Tom Stewart in the 1948 Democratic primary. Kefauver was backed by the influential editor Edward J. Meeman of the Memphis Press-Scimitar, who had long fought the Crump machine for its corruption and stranglehold over Memphis politics.[7] After he went on to win both the primary and the election, he adopted the cap as his trademark and wore it in every successive campaign. He received the cap from journalist Drue Smith.
Kefauver was unique in Tennessee politics in his outspoken liberal views, a stand which established a permanent bloc of opposition to him in the state. Kefauver's success—despite his liberal views—was predicated largely on his support by the Nashville Tennessean, a consistently liberal newspaper that served as a focus for anti-Crump sentiment in the state. His constituency included many prominent citizens, whose views were considerably less liberal than his, but who admired him for his integrity.
Despite opposition from the Crump machine, Kefauver won the Democratic nomination, which in those days was tantamount to election in Tennessee. His victory is widely seen as the beginning of the end for the Crump machine's influence in statewide politics.
Once in the Senate, Kefauver began to make a name for himself as a crusader for consumer protection laws and antitrust legislation. On civil rights, he was ambivalent: he admitted later that he had difficulty adjusting to the idea of racial integration, and in 1960 he held out to the last in favor of permitting cross-examination of black complainants in voting rights cases. Despite this fact, Kefauver supported the civil rights program generally, and consistently supported organized labor and other movements considered liberal in the South at that time.
Death[edit]
On August 8, 1963, Kefauver suffered what was reported as a "mild"[18] heart attack on the floor of the Senate while attempting to place an antitrust amendment into a NASA appropriations bill which would have required companies benefiting financially from the outcome of research subsidized by NASA, to reimburse NASA for the cost of the research. Two days after the attack, Kefauver died in his sleep in Bethesda Naval Hospital of a ruptured aortic aneurysm.[19] After a wake in Washington, D.C., his body was taken to the First Baptist Church in Madisonville where thousands of mourners paid their respects.[20] He was interred in a family cemetery beside his home.[20]
There was some speculation that Nancy Kefauver might stand for election to her late husband's Senate seat in 1964, but she quashed such notions early on.[21] Tennessee Governor Frank Clement appointed Herbert S. Walters to the seat instead.[22] In November 1963, President Kennedy named Nancy Kefauver to be the first head of the new Art in Embassies Program—Kennedy's last presidential appointment. Mrs. Kefauver never considered remarrying, remarking that she "had too perfect a marriage".[23]
The federal courthouse in Nashville, Tennessee, was renamed the Estes Kefauver Federal Building and United States Courthouse in his honor.[24] One of the libraries at the University of Tennessee was also named for him; his papers are held there.[23][25] The bridge over Pickwick Dam in Counce, Tennessee is named Estes Kefauver Bridge. One of the two city parks in Madisonville, Tennessee, is named Kefauver Park in his honor, as well.