Katana VentraIP

Sam Rayburn

Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn (January 6, 1882 – November 16, 1961) was an American politician who served as the 43rd speaker of the United States House of Representatives. He was a three-time House speaker, former House majority leader, two-time House minority leader, and a 24-term congressman, representing Texas's 4th congressional district as a Democrat from 1913 to 1961. He holds the record for the longest tenure as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, serving for over 17 years (among his three separate stints).

This article is about the politician. For the football player, see Sam Rayburn (American football). For things named after the politician, see § Named in his honor.

Sam Rayburn

Joseph W. Martin Jr.

Joseph W. Martin Jr.

Joseph W. Martin Jr.

Joseph W. Martin Jr.

Joseph W. Martin Jr.

John W. McCormack

Joseph W. Martin Jr.

Joseph W. Martin Jr.

John W. McCormack

John Wesley Marshall

Chester H. Terrell

Rosser Thomas

Robert Reuben Williams

Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn

(1882-01-06)January 6, 1882
Kingston, Tennessee, U.S.

November 16, 1961(1961-11-16) (aged 79)
Bonham, Texas, U.S.

Metze Jones
(m. 1927; div. 1927)

Born in Roane County, Tennessee, Rayburn moved with his family to Windom, Texas, in 1887. After a period as a school teacher, Rayburn won election to the Texas House of Representatives and graduated from the University of Texas School of Law. He won election to the United States House of Representatives in 1912 and continuously won re-election until his death in 1961, serving a total of 25 terms. Rayburn was a protégé of John Nance Garner and a mentor to Lyndon B. Johnson.


Rayburn was elected House Majority Leader in 1937 and was elevated to the position of Speaker of the House after the death of William B. Bankhead. He led the House Democrats from 1940 to 1961, and served as Speaker of the House from 1940 to 1947, 1949 to 1953, and 1955 to 1961. Rayburn also served twice as House Minority Leader (1947 to 1949 and 1953 to 1955) during periods of Republican House control. He preferred to work quietly in the background and successfully used his power of persuasion and charisma to get his bills passed due to having to navigate the post-Joseph Cannon era when each individual committee chairman had immense power in the House.


Along with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, Rayburn refused to sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto and helped shepherd the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, the first civil rights bills passed by the U.S. Congress since the Enforcement Acts and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 during Reconstruction (1865–1877).[1][2][3] Rayburn was also influential in the construction of U.S. Route 66. He served as Speaker until his death in 1961, and was succeeded by John W. McCormack. He is the most recent Speaker of the House to die in office.

which contains offices of House members and is adjacent to the United States Capitol, completed in 1965.

Rayburn House Office Building

Nuclear ballistic missile submarine , launched in 1963 and decommissioned in 1989.

USS Sam Rayburn

Sam Rayburn Reservoir

Sam Rayburn, Texas

in Pasadena, Texas, opened in 1964.

Sam Rayburn High School

in Ivanhoe, Texas, established in 1964.

Sam Rayburn Independent School District

Sam Rayburn Memorial Student Center at , built in 1963. New Sam Rayburn Student Center replaced the old center, built in 2009.

Texas A&M University–Commerce

Sam Rayburn Intermediate School in Bryan, Texas.

Sam Rayburn Middle School in San Antonio, Texas.

Sam Rayburn Freeway is a portion of U.S. Highway 75 that runs through .

Sherman, Texas

is a toll road in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex that goes through Dallas, Denton, and Collin counties in northeast Texas.[45][46]

Sam Rayburn Tollway

Sam Rayburn Memorial Highway, roughly a forty-mile section of Texas State Highway 121 that begins at Texas State Highway 78, two miles north of Bonham, Texas, and ends at its terminus with the Sam Rayburn Tollway in .

McKinney, Texas

Sam Rayburn Elementary School in .

McAllen, Texas

Sam Rayburn Elementary School in .

Grand Prairie, Texas

Sam Rayburn Memorial Veterans Center in Bonham, Texas.

The Rayburn Room, a meeting room at in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. The Greenbrier contains the Bunker

The Greenbrier

Sam Rayburn Drive is a portion of Texas State Highway 56 that runs through .

Bonham, Texas

The Rayburn Room, a large reception room at the where congressmembers can meet with press or receive constituents. It also serves as a holding room for visiting officials attending joint sessions of Congress.[47][48]

United States Capitol

Portrayals[edit]

Pat Hingle played Rayburn in the 1987 made-for-television movie LBJ: The Early Years. James Gammon played him in the 1995 HBO movie Truman.

List of Freemasons

Wahrenberger House

List of United States Congress members who died in office (1950–1999)

Brown, D. Clayton. "Sam Rayburn and the Development of Public Power in the Southwest." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 78.2 (1974): 140–154 .

online

Champagne, Anthony. "Sam Rayburn: Achieving Party Leadership." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 90.4 (1987): 373–392.

online

Champagne, Anthony. and Floyd F. Ewing, "RAYBURN, SAMUEL TALIAFERRO (1882-1961)." Handbook of Texas Online (2005)

online version

Champagne, Anthony. Congressman Sam Rayburn (Rutgers University Press, 1984), a scholarly biography

online

Champagne, Anthony. Sam Rayburn: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood, 1988).

online

Dorough, C. Dwight Mr. Sam (1962).

Gould, Lewis L., and Nancy Beck Young, "The Speaker and the Presidents: Sam Rayburn, the White House, and the Legislative Process, 1941–1961" in Raymond W. Smock and Susan W. Hammond, eds. Masters of the House: Congressional Leadership Over Two Centuries (Routledge, 2018) pp. 181–221.

Hardeman, D. B., and Donald C. Bacon, Rayburn: A Biography (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1987), popular biography by an aide to Rayburn.

Hairgrove, Kenneth Dewey. "Sam Rayburn, Congressional leader, 1940-1952" (PhD. Dissertation, Texas Tech University, 1974)

online

Liles, Maurine Walpole. Sam and the speaker's chair: the story of Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (1994) for middle schools;

online

McWhorter, William, "Together They Won: Sam T. Rayburn and the Fourth Congressional District during World War II," East Texas Historical Journal 49 (Fall 2011), 82–93.

Schwarz, Jordan A. The New Dealers: Power politics in the age of Roosevelt (Vintage, 2011) pp 249–263.

online

Shanks, Alexander G. "Sam Rayburn in the Wilson Administrations, 1913-1921." East Texas Historical Journal 6.1 (1968): 63–76 .

online

Shanks, Alexander Graham. "Sam Rayburn: The Texas Politician as New Dealer." East Texas Historical Journal 5.1 (1967): .

online

Smallwood, James. "Sam Rayburn and the Rules Committee Change of 1961." East Texas Historical Journal 11.1 (1973) .

online

Sam Rayburn (Hawthorn, 1975) online, popular biography.

Steinberg, Alfred

Obituary, The New York Times, November 16, 1961, "Rayburn Is Dead; Served 17 Years As House Speaker"

published 1961, hosted by the Portal to Texas History

The leadership of Speaker Sam Rayburn

United States Congress. . Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

"Sam Rayburn (id: R000082)"

at Find a Grave

Sam Rayburn

from the Handbook of Texas Online

Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn

"Mister Speaker", Time, September 27, 1943

RAYBURN: MR. SPEAKER (A feature-length documentary about Sam Rayburn's life and career)

Sam Rayburn House Museum Website

Address Delivered by The Honorable Sam Rayburn at the Dedication of the Marker over the Graves of His Great-Great Grandfather Col. George Waller and his wife Ann Winston Carr, Oakwood Cemetery, Martinsville, Virginia, May 6, 1951

Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine

Associated Press, August 16, 2014 - Letter provides peek at personal Sam Rayburn