Everett Dirksen
Everett McKinley Dirksen was an American politician. A Republican, he represented Illinois in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. As Senate Minority Leader from 1959 until his death in 1969, he played a highly visible and key role in the politics of the 1960s. He helped write and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, both landmark pieces of legislation during the civil rights movement. He was also one of the Senate's strongest supporters of the Vietnam War. A talented orator with a florid style and a notably rich bass voice, he delivered flamboyant speeches that caused his detractors to refer to him as "The Wizard of Ooze".
Born in Pekin, Illinois, Dirksen served as an artillery officer during World War I and opened a bakery after the war. After serving on the Pekin City Council, he won election to the House of Representatives in 1932. In the House, he was considered a moderate and supported much of the New Deal; he became more conservative and isolationist over time, but reversed himself to support US involvement in World War II. He won election to the Senate in 1950, unseating Senate Majority Leader Scott W. Lucas. In the Senate, he favored conservative economic policies and supported the internationalism of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dirksen succeeded William F. Knowland as Senate Minority Leader after the latter declined to seek re-election in 1958.
As the Senate Minority Leader, Dirksen emerged as a prominent national figure of the Republican Party during the 1960s. He developed a good working relationship with Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and supported President Lyndon B. Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War. He helped break the Southern filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While still serving as Senate Minority Leader, Dirksen died in 1969.
The Dirksen Senate Office Building at the Capitol Building in Washington, and the Dirksen United States Courthouse in central Chicago are named for him.
Early life
Everett McKinley Dirksen was born on January 4, 1896, in Pekin, Illinois, a small city near Peoria. His parents were German immigrants from East Frisia near the Dutch border. His father Johann Friedrich Dirksen was born in Jennelt and his mother Antje was born in Loquard. Today, both villages are part of the municipality of Krummhörn.The Dirksens were strong Republicans. Everett's parents gave him the middle name "McKinley" after William McKinley, then a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president. His fraternal twin, Thomas Reed Dirksen, was named for Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed, also a candidate for the nomination at the time. Another brother, Benjamin, was named for President Benjamin Harrison. Everett had two older half-brothers, Thomas and Henry, from his mother's first marriage to Beren Ailts.
Johann and Antje Dirksen spoke a Low German dialect at home and taught German to their children. Johann Dirksen farmed and worked at the Pekin Wagon Works as a design painter. He had a debilitating stroke when Everett was five years old and he died when Everett was nine.
Dirksen grew up on a farm managed by his mother in a neighborhood called Bonchefiddle on the outskirts of Pekin. The neighborhood was known as Bonchefiddle because frugal immigrants grew beans in their front yards instead of decorative flowers. He attended local schools and graduated from Pekin High School in 1913 as the class salutatorian. While in school, he helped support the family by working at a Pekin corn refining factory.
Dirksen attended the University of Minnesota, where he was a pre-law student from 1914 to 1917. He paid his tuition by working in the classified advertising department at the Minneapolis Tribune, as a door-to-door magazine and book salesman, as an attorney's assistant, and as a clerk in a railroad freight office. While attending the university, Dirksen participated in the Student Army Training Corps and attained the rank of major in the school's corps of cadets. He also gained his first political experience by giving local and on-campus speeches in support of Republican presidential nominee Charles Evans Hughes during the 1916 campaign.
Military service
At the start of World War I, the Dirksens came under local scrutiny for their German heritage. Dirksen's mother refused to take down a living room photo of Kaiser Wilhelm II as demanded by a self-appointed Pekin "loyalty commission" on the grounds that "it's a free country." Benjamin Dirksen was medically unfit for military service and Thomas was married. It fell to Everett to demonstrate the family's patriotism by serving in uniform. He dropped out of college to enlist in the United States Army.On January 4, 1917, his twenty-first birthday, Dirksen joined the United States Army. Three months later, the United States entered World War I. He completed his initial training in field artillery at Camp Custer, Michigan, performed duty with his unit at Camp Jackson, South Carolina, and attained the rank of sergeant. He was deployed to France in 1918 and attended artillery school and officer training at Saumur. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant and assigned to the 328th Field Artillery Regiment, a unit of the 85th Division. Dirksen was trained as an aerial observer and conducted target acquisition and assessment of field artillery bombardments in the Saint-Mihiel sector as a member of the 328th Field Artillery's 13th and 19th Balloon Companies. He later performed the same duty for the 69th Balloon Company, a unit of the IV Corps. He subsequently served in the intelligence staff section of the IV Corps headquarters. Dirksen performed post-war occupation duty with IV Corps in Germany until mid-1919. Dirksen declined an opportunity to remain with the Army of Occupation, received his discharge, and returned to Pekin.
Post-war
After the war, Dirksen invested money in an electric washing machine business, but it failed, after which he joined his brothers in running the Dirksen Brothers Bakery. He also wrote a number of unpublished short stories, as well as plays with former classmate Hubert Ropp. Dirksen was active in the American Legion, and his appearances on its behalf gave him the opportunity to hone his public speaking skills.His political career began in 1926 when he was elected to the nonpartisan Pekin City Council. He placed first in a field of eight candidates vying for four seats. At the time, the top vote-getter also received appointment as the city's commissioner of accounts and finance. Dirksen held both posts from 1927 to 1931.
U.S. representative
Elections
In 1930, Dirksen unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Representative William E. Hull in the Republican primary. He lost by 1,155 votes, 51.06% to 48.94%. In 1932, he challenged Hull again, and won with 52.5% of the vote.He was re-elected seven times from 1934 to 1946. His closest challenge came in 1936, when Charles C. Dickman held him to 53.25% of the vote amid a national and statewide landslide for the Democratic Party.
Tenure
His support for many New Deal programs initially marked him as a moderate, pragmatic Republican, though over time he became increasingly conservative and isolationist. During World War II, he lobbied successfully for an expansion of congressional staff resources to eliminate the practice under which House and Senate committees borrowed executive branch personnel to accomplish legislative work. He reversed his isolationist stance to support the war effort, but also secured the passage of an amendment to the Lend Lease Act by introducing it while 65 of the House's Democrats were at a luncheon. It provided that the Senate and the House could, by a simple majority in a concurrent resolution, revoke the war powers granted to the president.Dirksen studied law privately in Washington, D.C. after he was elected to Congress. He was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1936 and the bar of Illinois in 1937.
In December 1943, Dirksen announced that he would be a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1944. He stated that a coalition of midwestern Republican representatives had urged him to run and that his campaign was serious. However, press pundits had assumed that the candidacy was a vehicle to siphon support away from the campaign of Wendell Willkie, whose reputation as a maverick and staunch internationalist had earned him the hatred of many Republican Party regulars, especially in the Midwest. Dirksen's presidential campaign was apparently still alive on the eve of the 1944 convention, as Time speculated that he was running for vice president. Dirksen received no votes for either office from delegates at the convention.
In 1947, Dirksen was diagnosed with chorioretinitis in his right eye. Despite a number of physicians recommending that the eye be removed, Dirksen chose treatment and rest; he recovered most of the sight in the afflicted eye. In 1948, he declined to run for re-election because of his ailment.
U.S. senator
Dirksen was a Republican Senator 1951–1969.Elections
, Dirksen unseated Senate Majority Leader Scott W. Lucas. In the campaign, the support of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy helped Dirksen gain a narrow victory.In 1956, Dirksen was re-elected over Democrat Richard Stengel, 54.1% to 45.7%.
In 1962, Dirksen was re-elected to a third term over Democrat Sidney R. Yates, 52.9% to 47.1%.
In 1968, Dirksen was re-elected to his fourth and final term over Democrat William G. Clark, 53.0% to 46.6%.
Tenure
In 1952, Dirksen supported the presidential candidacy of fellow Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the longtime leader of the Republican party's conservative wing. At the national party convention, Dirksen gave a speech attacking New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, a liberal Republican and the leading supporter of General Dwight Eisenhower. During his speech, Dirksen pointed at Dewey on the convention floor and shouted, "Don't take us down the path to defeat again", a reference to Dewey's presidential defeats in 1944 and 1948. His speech was met by cheers from conservative delegates and loud boos from pro-Eisenhower delegates. After Eisenhower won the nomination, Dirksen supported him, as he had said he would in his convention speech.In 1959, he was elected Senate Minority Leader, defeating John Sherman Cooper, a more liberal senator from Kentucky, 20–14. Dirksen successfully united the various factions of the Republican Party by granting younger Republicans more representation in the Senate leadership and better committee appointments. He held the position of Senate Minority Leader until his death.
Along with House Minority Leaders Charles Halleck and Gerald Ford, Dirksen was the official voice of the Republican Party during most of the 1960s. He discussed politics on television news programs. On several occasions, political cartoonist Herblock depicted Dirksen and Halleck as vaudeville song-and-dance men, wearing identical elaborate costumes and performing an act called The Ev and Charlie Show.
The Chicago Sun-Times once reported that Dirksen had changed his mind 62 times on foreign policy matters, 31 times on military affairs, and 70 times on agricultural policies.