Many of our fellow Tennesseans are positively football crazy; most of us remember University of Tennessee quarterback Heath Shuler was elected to Congress from North Carolina. Yet there is hardly any person in the State of Tennessee with better name recognition than...
By Ray Hill The folks who read this column regularly are some of God’s gentlepeople and highly discerning. That is my opinion, yet I will be positively shocked if a single reader remembers Arthur Wergs Mitchell. One of the most interesting aspects of history to me...
By Ray Hill Tennessee had gone Republican in both the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections. Volunteer State Democrats had been especially shocked when Adlai Stevenson had lost Tennessee in 1956 as home-state U. S. senator Estes Kefauver had been the vice...
The 1956 Presidential Election in Tennessee II By Ray Hill Democrats all across the South had gathered in Knoxville, Tennessee, to plan the strategy for the fall campaign at the end of August in 1956. At least ten states had been represented, including much of the...
The 1956 Presidential Election in Tennessee By Ray Hill Dwight D. Eisenhower had carried Tennessee in the 1952 election, albeit it only barely, with the final totals being 446,147 for “Ike” and 443,710 for Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson. It was a difference of...
By Ray HIll Key, Jr., famed political scientist and author, gave an excellent description of the grand divisions of Tennessee and its politics in 1949: “Tennessee is a narrow ribbon of real estate stretching from North Carolina to the Mississippi. Tennessee’s far...
By Ray Hill Few politicians of the time were as cognizant and protective of their public images as was Cordell Hull of Tennessee. One of the most closely guarded secrets in Washington, D. C. was the fact Cordell Hull suffered from tuberculosis. Hull was...
By Ray Hill From 1920 until his death in 1961, the most personally popular politician inside Tennessee’s First Congressional District was B. Carroll Reece. That can be attested to on a variety of fronts, not the least of which are the election returns from that...
By Ray Hill This column is written for my friend Alexander Waters and his family. I knew Alexander’s grandfather, John B. Waters, Jr. Mr. Waters was one of those young Republicans, like Jim Haslam, who helped elect Howard Baker, Tennessee’s first popularly elected...
By Ray Hill It seems like so many folks my age are experiencing raising their grandchildren or having their own children return home to live. All too often, my generation has seen their children and grandchildren afflicted by drug addiction. Back in the day, the...
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