“Live so that when you die, even the undertaker will be sorry.” Sign that hung in the business office of Jim Cummings. By Ray Hill James H. Cummings is likely a name unfamiliar with most readers, but during his time he was a power and a man to be reckoned with. When he died […]
By Ray Hill Brazilla Carroll Reece had served Tennessee’s First Congressional District in Congress for ten years before losing the 1930 general election to Independent candidate Oscar Byrd Lovette. It was the first time in 52 years any candidate aside from a Republican had won a seat in Congress from the First Congressional District. Carroll […]
By Ray Hill Carroll Reece, congressman from Tennessee’s First Congressional District, had served for a decade. Yet, in the 1930 general election, Reece found himself surprisingly hard pressed by the challenge of Oscar Byrd Lovette, the former District Attorney for four Tennessee counties that surround Lovette’s home of Greene County. Tennessee’s First Congressional District was […]
Remembering Senator Bill Brock By Ray Hill Bill Brock died March 25, 2021 of pneumonia while in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Brock was one of the founders of Tennessee’s modern Republican Party and he had a great deal to do with turning the Volunteer State into a genuine two-party state. Brock was the grandson and namesake […]
By Ray Hill By 1930, Carroll Reece, congressman from Tennessee’s First Congressional District, had served for a decade in the House of Representatives. Reece had defeated an incumbent who had also served for ten years in Congress to win the Republican nomination in 1920 as a thirty-one-year-old veteran of the First World War. Reece had […]
By Ray Hill Few readers likely recall how very close the 1960 presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon truly was. Kennedy won by a margin of 0.17 percent of the vote, some 112,827 votes. As Kennedy prepared to take over from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the U. S. House of Representatives […]
By Ray Hill Lyndon Johnson once called Estes Kefauver, “The greatest campaigner of them all.” Kefauver was no silver-tongued orator; in fact, he was oftentimes tongue-tied and frequently mangled names and phrases. Yet Estes Kefauver likely had no peer as a retail politician in meeting folks one-on-one. Estes Kefauver also generated strong feelings in […]
By Ray Hill Carroll Reece had first been elected to Congress to represent Tennessee’s First District in 1920 when he had defeated incumbent congressman Sam R. Sells in the Republican primary. 1920 had been a banner year for Republicans in Tennessee with the GOP winning the governorship, electing a member of the state Railroad and […]
By Ray Hill To get to Congress, Carroll Reece had to defeat an entrenched incumbent, who had served for a decade. After taking the oath of office on March 4, 1921, Carroll Reece became one of the most enduring political figures in Tennessee’s political history. Reece remains to this day one of the longest serving […]
By Ray Hill Carroll Reece, thirty years old and a veteran of the First World War, had defeated Congressman Sam R. Sells for the right to carry the Republican Party banner in the general election of 1920. Sells had not taken his defeat lightly and had tried to challenge the election results without success. 1920 […]
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