By Ray Hill Congressman Albert Gore’s independent streak had not set well with President Franklin Roosevelt. FDR was not one to value independence in a legislator and tended to have a vindictive streak. As World War II raged on, there were rumblings that Gore would...

By Ray Hill For more than a decade Leonidas Campbell Houk was the Congressman from Tennessee’s Second District.  A man with neatly combed hair and a mustache that would have done justice to a Victorian villain; Houk was a popular political figure who tightly...

  By Ray Hill Camille McGee Kelley, judge of the Shelby County Family Court, was a jewel in the crown of the Memphis machine of Edward Hull Crump. At the time of her appointment in 1920, Kelley was only one of two female judges in the South and the only woman to...

By Ray Hill One of the more fascinating, as well as disturbing, stories in Tennessee history is that of Camille Kelley who became Judge of the Memphis Juvenile Court. A widow, Camille Kelley was a star in the crown of the Crump machine and when she assumed the bench,...

By Ray Hill Bryant Winfield Culberson Dunn was born July 1, 1927, the son of Aubert and Dorothy Dunn.  Anyone who has had the pleasure of hearing Winfield Dunn cannot help but hear the soft Southern lilt in his voice, which is a reminder of the fact Governor Dunn was...

By Ray Hill President Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to Tennessee several times during his presidency.  It gave local politicians the opportunity to bask in the glow of Roosevelt’s magnetic presence and the people of Tennessee to actually see the jaunty tilt of FDR’s...

By Ray Hill Just a few years following America’s bloody Civil War, as states were readmitted to the Union, old Confederates began to arrive in Congress.  The United States Senate particularly came to be dominated by Southerners, who occupied most of the powerful...