By Ray Hill With just weeks before Tennesseans went to the polls, candidates hustled for votes in October of 1964. Tennessee, once solidly Democratic, had become a battleground state. Tennessee had supported Franklin D. Roosevelt in all four of his presidential campaigns, as well as Harry Truman in 1948 over the fierce opposition of E. […]
By Ray Hill The 1964 election in Tennessee centered around the presidential contest between incumbent Lyndon Johnson and Arizona senator Barry Goldwater. It also featured hard fought contests for both of Tennessee’s seats in the United States Senate. Senator Albert Gore, Tennessee’s “Old Gray Fox”, was seeking a third term in the U. S. Senate, […]
By Ray Hill Once a reliably Democratic state, Tennessee was a battleground state in the 1964 election. Congressman Joe L. Evins of Tennessee’s Fourth Congressional District was designated President Lyndon B. Johnson’s campaign manager for the Volunteer State. At the time, there was hardly any congressional district in the state more Democratic than that of […]
By Ray Hill It has been 100 years since Tennessee ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women the right to vote in our country. It seems appropriate to celebrate the occasion in these pages. Tennessee became the battleground state for the ratification of the proposed nineteenth amendment to the Constitution of the […]
By Ray Hill From 1930 until 1964, the Democratic Party reigned supreme in Tennessee. Republicans had only occasionally been able to elect a governor; the last was Alfred A. Taylor in 1920. That year had been something of a high watermark for the GOP. Republicans had won the governorship, as well as five of Tennessee’s […]
By Ray Hill It seems odd to be writing about my dear little friend Mackie in this column, but God help me, he belongs to the past now. Evidently there really is such a thing as love at first sight. The very first time I laid eyes on a little Scottish terrier puppy 12 years […]
By Ray Hill Both of Tennessee’s seats in the United States Senate were up for election in 1964, just as they had been thirty years earlier in 1934. Thirty years later, Tennesseans would go to the polls to elect two U. S. senators yet again in 1994. Senator Estes Kefauver had died suddenly on August […]
The 1964 Senate Races In Tennessee By Ray Hill Lyndon Baines Johnson was a remarkably able politician. The intricacies of Johnson’s complicated personality have likely best been examined in Robert Caro’s splendid multi-volume biography of Johnson. Much of Johnson’s legacy has been obscured and earned him scorn due to one part of that same legacy: […]
By Ray Hill Edith Irene Bailey Baker is the only woman to represent Tennessee’s Second Congressional District in the U. S. House of Representatives. For those folks who recall Irene Baker today, it is usually because she was the step-mother of U. S. Senator Howard Baker. Irene Bailey Baker was born in Sevierville and began […]
By Ray Hill I imagine few, if any, readers remember George Grider of Memphis. Grider served one term in Congress from Shelby County, yet he deserves to be remembered due to the fact he defeated the last vestige of the old Crump machine to get to Congress. Clifford Davis had been hand-picked by E. […]