By Ray Hill When the Tennessee General Assembly reduced the number of Tennessee’s congressional seats from ten to nine, Congressman J. Ridley Mitchell had been displaced. Mitchell’s home county of Cumberland had been placed in the heavily Republican Second District, which was represented by GOP Congressman J. Will Taylor. “Hillbilly Bill” Taylor was considered unbeatable […]
By Ray Hill Every ten years legislative and Congressional districts must undergo some changes; redistricting always poses a danger to incumbents. It is not uncommon for a sitting congressman to run for higher office when faced with the elimination of his district. Congressman Albert Gore’s district was carved up in 1952, but he was already […]
By Ray Hill For three decades Gordon Browning had been a force to be reckoned with in Tennessee politics. Following his disastrous attempt to return to the governorship in 1954, Browning was relegated to the status of senior statesman. First elected to Congress in 1922, Gordon Browning left office thirty years later. Browning belonged to […]
By Ray Hill Gordon Browning was a veteran of Tennessee’s turbulent and oftentimes brutal political wars. Browning had unseated a twenty-four year incumbent in his first race for Congress in 1920, although he lost the general election to a Republican. Stubborn to a fault, Browning ran again in 1922 and handily beat Lon Scott, the […]
By Ray Hill to 1915, United States senators from Tennessee had been elected by the state legislature. That same year Democrats were anticipating a primary, a year in advance of the 1916 general election. The primary would include a run-off election between the two top vote getters, something that has never happened since. The incumbent […]
By Ray Hill Disappointed by his failure to be appointed to the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Dr. John R. Neal continued to be the Volunteer State’s political gadfly extraordinaire. John R. Neal ran for the United States Senate eighteen times, governor nine times and the U. S. House of Representatives once. […]
By Ray Hill Dr. John Randolph Neal had some solid achievements under his belt, both as a state legislator and educator, yet there was growing dissatisfaction at the University of Tennessee. That dissatisfaction seemed to be confined largely to administrators, as Dr. Neal was apparently quite popular with his students. By 1923, those same administrators […]
By Ray Hill Dr. John R. Neal was an American original; an educator, lawyer, state legislator, and perennial candidate for public office. Neal could have been the blueprint for the absentminded professor. Dr. Neal is frequently remembered for his many eccentricities, which included paying virtually no attention to his personal appearance, bathing infrequently, if at […]
By Ray Hill Jake Lindsey epitomized much about how Americans saw themselves when he joined the army in February of 1940. Lindsay, a resident of the tiny hamlet of Lucedale, Mississippi, joined the armed forces well before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The nineteen year-old Mississippian would go on to become one of World War […]
By Ray Hill Cordell Hull, remembered as the longest serving Secretary of State in the country’s history, almost abbreviated his service due to his unhappiness inside President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Cabinet. Frequently feeling ignored, if not actually humiliated by a president who preferred guiding U. S. foreign policy himself, Hull began thinking of returning home […]
The opinions expressed by Focus columnists and those providing comments are theirs alone, and may not reflect the opinions of The Knoxville Focus or any employee thereof.