John Sparkman | |
|---|---|
 Sparkman in 1959 | |
| United States Senator fromAlabama | |
| In office November 6, 1946 – January 3, 1979 | |
| Preceded by | George R. Swift |
| Succeeded by | Howell Heflin |
| Chair of theSenate Foreign Relations Committee | |
| In office January 3, 1975 – January 3, 1979 | |
| Preceded by | J. William Fulbright |
| Succeeded by | Frank Church |
| Chair of theSenate Banking Committee | |
| In office January 3, 1967 – January 3, 1975 | |
| Preceded by | A. Willis Robertson |
| Succeeded by | William Proxmire |
| Chair of theSenate Small Business Committee | |
| In office January 3, 1955 – January 3, 1967 | |
| Preceded by | Edward Thye |
| Succeeded by | George Smathers |
| In office February 20, 1950 – January 3, 1953 | |
| Preceded by | Committee formed |
| Succeeded by | Edward Thye |
| House Majority Whip | |
| In office January 1, 1946 – November 6, 1946 | |
| Leader | John W. McCormack |
| Preceded by | Robert Ramspeck |
| Succeeded by | Leslie C. Arends |
| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromAlabama's8th district | |
| In office January 3, 1937 – November 6, 1946 | |
| Preceded by | Archibald Hill Carmichael |
| Succeeded by | Robert E. Jones Jr. |
| Personal details | |
| Born | John Jackson Sparkman (1899-12-20)December 20, 1899 Hartselle, Alabama, U.S. |
| Died | November 16, 1985(1985-11-16) (aged 85) Huntsville, Alabama, U.S. |
| Resting place | Maple Hill Cemetery |
| Party | Democratic |
| Spouse | Chelsea Ivo Hall (d. 1999) |
| Children | 1 |
| Education | University of Alabama (BA,LLB) |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Branch/service |  United States Army |
| Unit | Student Army Training Corps |
| Battles/wars | World War I |
John Jackson Sparkman (December 20, 1899 – November 16, 1985) was an American jurist and politician from the state ofAlabama. ASouthern Democrat, Sparkman served in theUnited States House of Representatives from 1937 to 1946 and theUnited States Senate from 1946 until 1979. He was theDemocratic Party's nominee forvice president in the1952 presidential election.
Born inMorgan County, Alabama, Sparkman established a legal practice inHuntsville, Alabama, after graduating from theUniversity of Alabama School of Law. He won election to the House in 1936 and served as house majority whip in 1946. He left the House in 1946 after winning a special election to succeed SenatorJohn H. Bankhead II. While in the Senate, he helped establishMarshall Space Flight Center and served as the chairman of several committees. Sparkman served asAdlai Stevenson's running mate in the 1952 presidential election, but they were defeated by theRepublican ticket ofDwight D. Eisenhower andRichard Nixon.
Known as a defender ofsegregation during theCivil Rights era, Sparkman voted regularly against civil rights legislation and condemned the "judicial usurpation" of theU.S. Supreme Court decision ofBrown v. Board of Education, Sparkman signed the 1956Southern Manifesto, which pledged opposition to racial integration and promised to use "all lawful means" to fight the ruling that put court power behind the integration of public institutions. He became the longest-serving senator from Alabama in 1977, a record that was surpassed byRichard Shelby in 2019.[1] Sparkman chose not to seek re-election in 1978 and retired from public office the following year.
Sparkman, a son of Whitten Joseph and Julia Mitchell (Kent) Sparkman, was born on a farm nearHartselle, inMorgan County,Alabama.[2] He grew up in a four-room cabin with his eleven brothers and sisters. His father was a tenant farmer and doubled as the county's deputy sheriff. As a child, Sparkman worked on his father's farm picking cotton.[3] He was raisedMethodist.[4]
He attended a one-room elementary school in rural Morgan County, then walked 4 miles (6.4 km) every day to his high school.[5] Sparkman graduated from Morgan County High School in 1917 and enrolled in theUniversity of Alabama atTuscaloosa.[6] DuringWorld War I he was a member of the Students Army Training Corps.[7] Sparkman worked shoveling coal in the university's boiler room to help pay for his education.[8] He worked onThe Crimson White (the university's newspaper), becoming the paper's editor-in-chief, and served as his class's student-body president.[9] Sparkman was awarded a teaching fellowship in history andpolitical science,[10] he became a founding member of the Gamma Alpha chapter ofPi Kappa Alpha in 1921, and was chosen as the university's "most outstanding senior" the same year.[9] He received hisBachelor of Arts in 1921, and hisBachelor of Laws from theUniversity of Alabama School of Law in 1923. In 1924, Sparkman earned his master's degree in history; his master thesis, on formerConfederatecolonelWilliam C. Oates's 1894 campaign forGovernor of Alabama, was titled "The Kolb-Oates Campaign of 1894".[11]
Sparkman briefly worked as a high school teacher before he wasadmitted to theAlabama State Bar in 1925. He commenced his practice inHuntsville.[12] He was also an instructor at Huntsville College from 1925 to 1928.[13] He was appointed as a U.S. Commissioner (magistrate judge) for Alabama's northern judicial district, serving from 1930 to 1931.[2]
Sparkman was involved in many civic organizations, including serving as the district governor of theKiwanis Club of Huntsville in 1930,[14] and later as the president of the HuntsvilleChamber of Commerce.[15] AFreemason, he was life member ofHelion Lodge#1 in Huntsville.[16] He was also member of the HuntsvilleScottish Rite bodies and a recipient of the Knight Commander Court of Honor (KCCH).
After RepresentativeArchibald Hill Carmichael announced his retirement in 1936, Sparkman ran in the Democratic primary for the open seat. A teacher of the Big Brother Class at the FirstMethodist Church in Huntsville, his campaign was launched through fundraising, campaigning and advertising by students in his Sunday class.[15] Sparkman was elected to theUnited States House of Representatives in the1936 election, defeatingUnion Party candidate, architect Harry J. Frahn[17] with 99.7% of the vote.[18] He was reelected in1938 and1940. During this time,World War II began in Europe. Sparkman took a pro-British foreign policy stance, advocating the United States should assist Great Britain in the war against the Nazis. In 1941, he voted in favor of theLend-Lease Act of 1941 in order to provide military equipment and food to theUnited Kingdom.[19] Sparkman was reelected in the elections of1942 and1944, serving in the75th,76th,77th,78th, and79th Congresses.
As a Member of the House of Representatives, "[Sparkman] gained renown for his sponsorship of such programs as the farm-tenant purchase program, rehabilitation loans for small farmers, and lower interest rates for farm loans. He was a champion of theTVA andREA."[20]
In 1946, he served ashouse majority whip.[21] He was reelected in the1946 House election to the80th Congress and on the same date waselected to the United States Senate in aspecial election to fill the vacancy caused by the death ofJohn H. Bankhead II, for the term ending on January 3, 1949. Sparkman resigned from the House of Representatives immediately following the election and began his Senate term on November 6, 1946. He served until his retirement on January 3, 1979, having not sought reelection in1978.
He was chairman of the Select Committee on Small Business (81st,82nd, and84th through90th Congresses), co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Inaugural Arrangements (86th Congress), chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency (90th and91st Congresses), co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Defense Production (91st and93rd Congresses),Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (92nd and 93rd Congresses), and a member of theCommittee on Foreign Relations (94th and95th Congress).
The 1943Sparkman Act, which allowed female physicians to be commissioned as officers in the armed forces, was named after him.
In 1949, Sparkman was instrumental in convincing theUnited States Department of the Army to transfer the missile development activities fromFort Bliss, Texas, toRedstone Arsenal. This broughtWernher von Braun and the GermanOperation Paperclip scientists and engineers to Huntsville, forming the foundation to what eventually became theNASAMarshall Space Flight Center. Von Braun selected Huntsville to relocate his fellow German engineers because it reminded him of Germany.
Sparkman was a representative of the United States at the FifthGeneral Assembly of theUnited Nations in 1950.[4]
In January 1951, Sparkman stated that he believed theTruman administration housing defense program could increase inflationary pressures, a view that aligned with Republican senatorsIrving Ives andAndrew Frank Schoeppel, but furthered that the plan was essential and should be undertaken regardless of inflation concerns.[22][23] On September 8, 1951, he was the fourth signatory to theTreaty of Peace with Japan (with two declarations).
In 1952, he was the Democratic Party's nominee for vice president, running on the ticket ofAdlai Stevenson. However, the election was won by the Republican candidate,Dwight D. Eisenhower. Sparkman ran againstRichard M. Nixon, the junior senator fromCalifornia.
After the election, Sparkman in an interview expressed approval that American small businessmen were giving large firms competition for foreign aid contracts. "The large firms once dominated this field. Now we are insisting that the small business get a fair share of these contracts and it has had a good effect. The increasing competition has cut costs in the entire American foreign aid program."[24]
In January 1955, the University of Alabama News Bureau released remarks of Sparkman he had made during an interview following the 1954 midterm elections. Sparkman predicted a larger number of Democrats would cooperate with the Eisenhower administration, furthering that their tendency to criticize the Republicans rather than the president directly was ending, and Republicans, by contrast, would be more likely to oppose the president's foreign policy. Sparkman advocated for studying of the administration's defense program to confirm that the reduction in numbers would not be concurrent with a decrease in strength.[25]
On January 21, 1955, Sparkman introduced a bill authorizing $50 million in appropriation each quarter of the year forG.I.s to see a reduction dependent on the sales of home mortgages to private lenders of properties owned by theVeterans Administration. In a statement, Sparkman argued that the past few years had seen a home loan program which had come up short in meeting the needs of GI applications and the government was making a profit from the loans to GI's.[26]
On February 2, 1955, during an interview, Sparkman said the US would have to weigh giving Nationalist islands to Red China if the United Nations succeeded in imposing a cease-fire inFormosa. He said the Eisenhower administration had a foggy attitude towards defending the islands.[27]
In February 1955, Sparkman criticized the farming policies of the Eisenhower administration, charging them with having hurt the financial situations of American farmers the most since before the beginning ofWorld War II and that the plight of farmers would continue so long as legislation affecting controls on crop acreage and the flexible price support system was enacted.[28]
Sparkman delivered a speech at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner inRome, Georgia on February 21, 1955, assailing Republican economic promises as a hoax and asserting the Eisenhower administration was operating on a theory of reactionarytrickle-down economics. He said the school and road programs of the Eisenhower administration were intended to deliver larger funds to investment bankers rather than children or those using highways, predicting that the enactment of Eisenhower's school program would not see a single classroom built in either Georgia or Alabama.[29]
On February 25, 1955, Sparkman predicted the Senate would approve the authorization of one and a half billion dollars of government insurance to be granted for housing mortgages, saying that if the bill was not enacted, "our housing program will come to a stop."[30]
In 1956, Sparkman was one of 82 representatives and 19 senators who signed theSouthern Manifesto opposing the 1954U.S. Supreme Court decisionBrown v. Board of Education andracial integration. In 1956, the Democrats did not renominate Sparkman as Stevenson's vice presidential running mate, opting instead for U.S. SenatorEstes Kefauver of neighboringTennessee, partly because he had refused to sign.[31] In 1957, Sparkman voted against HR 6127, theCivil Rights Act of 1957.[32]
On June 30, 1961, PresidentJohn F. Kennedy signed the Housing Act of 1961; Kennedy thanked Sparkman for spearheading "this bill through the Senate".[33] During the September 4, 1964 signing of the Housing Act of 1964 by PresidentLyndon B. Johnson, the latter expressed his "very special congratulations this morning to both Senator Sparkman and Congressman Rains of Alabama."[34]
In August 1961, theKennedy administration reaffirmed its lack of interest in compromising on its five-year foreign aid program, Sparkman arguing that the administration faced the possibility of having to settle for a reduction in the program by two years.[35]
On June 19, 1964, Sparkman and 20 other Southern Democrats, and one lone Southern Republican voted against theCivil Rights Act of 1964.[36]
On July 9, 1964, President Johnson signed theUrban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 into law, observing Sparkman was one of the members of Congress who helped in securing the legislation's passage.[37]
From 1967 to 1975, Sparkman was the chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency where he worked on helping small farmers.
After this,J. William Fulbright, the longest serving chairman as of 2023 from 1959 to 1974, lost the Democratic primary contest in Arkansas in the1974 United States Senate election in Arkansas, who Sparkman succeeded to become the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee from 1975 to 1979. On the Foreign Relations Committee, the committee lost much of its influence due to a perceived lack of leadership and his ideological position that the president should mainly pursue foreign policy, not Congress. This statement was reinforced by a response to an interviewee's question shortly after becoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, where he said that they don't "make foreign policy, except insofar as the executive will take our advice and consent."[38]
On January 20, 1978, at the age of 78, Sparkman announced that—for reasons he did not specify—he would not seek reelection as Alabama senator, but noted that he had served as Alabama senator for longer than anybody in history up to that point.[39]
In 1960, Sparkman defeated the Republican Julian E. Elgin ofMontgomery, who received 164,868 votes (29.8 percent) in the Senate contest. Six years later, Elgin ran again against Sparkman as anIndependent but polled few votes. In 1966, Sparkman defeated another Republican,John Grenier, the former state GOP chairman and an attorney fromBirmingham, who polled 39 percent of the vote.
Initially, Grenier had planned to run for governor in 1966, andJames D. Martin was poised to oppose Sparkman, as Martin had four years earlier against Sparkman's colleague,J. Lister Hill. However,The New York Times predicted toppling the "tight one-party oligarchy" would be a herculean task. Though Sparkman trailed in some polls,The Times speculated that he would rebound because Alabamians were accustomed to voting straight Democratictickets.[40]
In his last Senate race in 1972, Sparkman easily defeated President Nixon's formerpostmaster general, the Republican businessmanWinton M. Blount of Montgomery, originally fromUnion Springs. Blount, running without a specific endorsement from President Nixon, first had to dispatch intraparty Republican rivals Martin and Alabama State Representative Bert Nettles.[41]
On October 30, 1977, Sparkman became the longest-serving senator in thehistory of Alabama.[42] This record was later surpassed byRichard Shelby in 2019.
On November 16, 1985, Sparkman died of aheart attack at Big Springs Manor Nursing Home inHuntsville, Alabama, a month before his 86th birthday.[43] Survived by his wife and daughter, he was interred in Huntsville at the historicMaple Hill Cemetery.
Sparkman High School inHarvest, Alabama, Sparkman Park in Hartselle, Alabama, Sparkman School inSomerville, Alabama,Sparkman Drive inHuntsville are all named in his honor.
1972 Alabama United States Senatorial Election
| John Sparkman (D) (inc.) 62.3% |
| Winton M. Blount (R) 33.1% |
1966 Alabama United States Senatorial Election
| John Sparkman (D) (inc.) 60.1% |
| John Grenier (R) 39% |
1960 Alabama United States Senatorial Election
| John Sparkman (D) (inc.) 70.2% |
| Julian Elgin (R) 29.8% |
1954 Alabama United States Senatorial Election
| John Sparkman (D) (inc.) 82.5% |
| J. Foy Guin Jr. (R) 17.5% |
1952 United States Presidential Election (Vice President's seat)
| Richard Nixon (R) 55.2% |
| John Sparkman (D) 44.3% |
| Charlotta Bass (Progressive) 0.2% |
| Enoch Holtwick (Prohibition) 0.1% |
1948 Alabama United States Senatorial Election
| John Sparkman (D) (inc.) 84% |
| John G. Parsons (R) 16% |
1946 Alabama United States Senatorial Special Election
John Sparkman (D) Unopposed
| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromAlabama's 8th congressional district 1937–1946 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | House Majority Whip 1946 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | House Democratic Whip 1946 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Democratic nominee forU.S. Senator fromAlabama (Class 2) 1946,1948,1954,1960,1966,1972 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Democraticnominee forVice President of the United States 1952 | Succeeded by |
| U.S. Senate | ||
| Preceded by | U.S. Senator (Class 2) from Alabama 1946–1979 Served alongside:J. Lister Hill,James Allen,Maryon Pittman Allen,Donald Stewart | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chair of theSenate Small Business Committee 1955–1967 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chair of theJoint Inaugural Ceremonies Committee 1960–1961 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chair of theSenate Banking Committee 1967–1975 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chair of theSenate Foreign Relations Committee 1975–1979 | Succeeded by |
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| Class 3 | ||
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| Banking and Currency (1913–1970) | | |
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| Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (1970–present) | ||
Chairs of theUnited States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations | ||
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| Select Committee (1950–1981) | | |
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| Full Committee (1981–) | ||
| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
