Statesman from the North Star State: Edward J Thye of Minnesota By Ray Hill Politics is perhaps the most fickle of mistresses. The one thing one can always rely upon to change is the times. Even the most enduring of officeholders are frequently faced with the changing...
Georgia’s Little New Deal: Governor Eurith D. Rivers By Ray Hill One of the phenomena of the coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 was the number of states that elected governors who tried to emulate the president inasmuch as they put into place what were frequently...
John J. Dempsey of New Mexico By Ray Hill Each state in the union has its own set of variables and peculiarities, all of which affect its politics. The political history of New Mexico is a mixed bag with the deeply embedded Spanish culture and the “Anglo”...
Oscar DePriest of Illinois By Ray Hill The name of Oscar DePriest will surely be unfamiliar to most readers, but during his time, he was a political power in Chicago and was the first Black person to be elected to the City Council in the Windy City. DePriest also...
Mountain State Dynasty: John Kee of West Virginia By Ray Hill For forty years, one family dominated the politics of West Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District. John Kee, a former state senator, was elected to the House of Representatives in the Democratic landslide...
West Virginia Gentleman: Hugh Ike Shott By Ray Hill The State of West Virginia is now seen as a solidly “red” state, but there were decades when it was just as firmly Democratic. The pendulum has swung back and forth in the Mountain State, which had created itself by...
By Ray Hill The best-selling author Pearl Buck once wrote, “If you want to understand today you have to search yesterday.” History is comprised of the high and the low and everything in between. The “great” historical figures every child (at least in my day) grew up...
When the Mountain State had Three Senators “History is not the past but a map of the past, drawn from a particular point of view, to be useful to the modern traveler.” Historian Henry Glassie. By Ray Hill Sorting through history is rather like finding an...
By Ray Hill Burnet Rhett Maybank — his very name evokes the old Southland of books and stories. So, too, did his life story. Maybank’s middle name was for his mother’s family; Andrew Rhett had been a major in the Confederate Army. Burnet Maybank was the scion of a...
Politician from the Prairie: Harlan Bushfield of South Dakota By Ray Hill Harlan John Bushfield served only a single term in the United States Senate, but he made quite an impression on his home state of South Dakota in a relatively short period of time. Bushfield...
By Ray Hill Despite...
By Ray Hill Kenneth...
By Ray Hill...
By Ray Hill It will...
By Ray Hill Kenneth McKellar...
By Ray Hill Even as a...