By Ray Hill Alice Roosevelt Longworth remained the most famous presidential daughter in our country’s history; certainly she was the most enduring. An especially astute observer of politics and things political, Alice Roosevelt Longworth was also known for her elegance, entertaining, and most especially her acid tongue. No insipid child dependent upon a powerful […]
By Ray Hill Governor Tom C. Rye had run for the United States Senate in the 1918 Democratic primary against Senator John Knight Shields as a supporter of President Woodrow Wilson and lost. Rye’s defeat did not necessarily mean the people of Tennessee had turned against Wilson; in fact, had the President written the public […]
By Ray Hill Colonel Luke Lea, away in Europe during the First World War, had never gotten along with John Knight Shields when they were colleagues in the United States Senate. Lea’s newspaper, the Nashville Tennessean sided with Shields’ opponent, Governor Tom Rye in the Democratic primary. According to Lea’s newspaper, Shields had made several […]
By Ray Hill The United States was finally catching a glimpse of the end of the bloodiest conflict in human history, World War II, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt vacationed at his cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia. Roosevelt was sitting for a portrait by artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff, who had been chosen by the president’s former […]
The Strickland Case By Ray Hill “I’m guilty,” were the only words spoken by William “Billy” Strickland, a fresh-faced twenty-eight year old when he revisited the Knox County Court House. Strickland had been engaged in a bitter battle for custody of his four year-old son with his pretty twenty-three year-old wife, June. Six months after […]
By Ray Hill The very idea that anything but a Democrat could represent Tennessee’s Hermitage District in Congress seemed not only outlandish, but utterly unthinkable. The Fifth Congressional district of Tennessee was known as “the Hermitage District” because it contained the home of the founder of the Democratic Party, General Andrew Jackson. Congressman Joseph W. […]
By Ray Hill Congressman Joseph W. Byrns, Jr. had first been elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in 1938, toppling incumbent Richard M. Atkinson in a hard fought campaign inside the Democratic Primary. Tennessee’s “Hermitage District,” so named because the Fifth Congressional district contained the home of General Andrew Jackson, founder of the […]
By Ray Hill Joseph Wellington Byrns was almost surely the most popular political figure inside Tennessee’s “Hermitage District.” That was the Congressional district in Tennessee which encompassed Nashville and the “Hermitage”, home of General Andrew Jackson. For nearly twenty-eight years, that same district had been represented by Jo Byrns. Tall and lean with white hair […]
By Ray Hill Kenneth D. McKellar, Tennessee’s senior United States senator, had won a thumping renomination inside the Democratic primary, beating Congressman Finis Garrett, the Minority Leader of the U. S. House of Representatives. Tennessee Republicans had nominated James A. Fowler, the mayor of Knoxville, to run in the general election. One of the […]
By Ray Hill Tennessee politics was in flux in 1928 due to the nomination of New York governor Alfred E. Smith as the Democratic nominee for president. Smith, a cigar-chomping, derby hat wearing product of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen was a pronounced wet who openly favored abolishing the prohibition laws. Even worse, at least to […]