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 Joseph Rosier was an unlikely United States senator and only reached that body because of his personal friendship with Matthew Neely. Matthew Mansfield Neely held sway for decades as both a perennial candidate for public office and unlike most perennial...
By Ray Hill There was a time when people engaged in voting a straight ticket, meaning they voted for every candidate of one political party or the other. There have also been election cycles where a tidal wave of support empowered one party or the other. 1920 was such...
By Ray Hill There are those who remember Paul Wellstone, the United States senator from Minnesota, who died, along with his wife and daughter, while campaigning for reelection in 2002 when his chartered airplane crashed. Wellstone, however, was not the first United...
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