Robert Byrd
Robert Carlyle Byrd was an American politician who served as a United States senator from West Virginia for over 51 years, from 1959 until his death in 2010. A Democrat, Byrd also served as a U.S. representative for six years, from 1953 until 1959. He remains the longest-serving U.S. senator in history; he was the longest-serving member in the history of the United States Congress until surpassed by Representative John Dingell of Michigan. Byrd is the only West Virginian to have served in both chambers of the state legislature and in both chambers of Congress.
Byrd's political career spanned more than sixty years. He first entered the political arena by organizing and leading a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, an action he later described as "the greatest mistake I ever made". He then served in the West Virginia House of Delegates from 1947 to 1950, and the West Virginia State Senate from 1950 to 1952. Initially elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1952, Byrd served there for six years before being elected to the Senate in 1958. He rose to become one of the Senate's most powerful members, serving as secretary of the Senate Democratic Caucus from 1967 to 1971 and—after defeating his longtime colleague Ted Kennedy for the job—as Senate Majority Whip from 1971 to 1977. Over the next 12 years, Byrd led the Democratic caucus as Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader. In 1989, he stepped down, following the pressure to make way for new party leadership. As the longest-serving Democratic senator, Byrd held the position of President pro tempore four times when his party was in the majority. This placed him third in the line of presidential succession, after the vice president and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Byrd became West Virginia’s Senior Senator in 1985 following the retirement of Jennings Randolph. He served three different tenures as chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations, which enabled Byrd to steer a great deal of federal money toward projects in West Virginia. Critics derided his efforts as pork barrel spending, while Byrd argued that the many federal projects he worked to bring to West Virginia represented progress for the people of his state. Notably, Byrd strongly opposed Clinton's 1993 efforts to allow homosexuals to serve in the military and supported efforts to limit same-sex marriage. Although he filibustered against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and supported the Vietnam War earlier in his career, Byrd's views changed considerably over the course of his life; by the early 2000s, he had completely renounced racism and segregation. Byrd was outspoken in his opposition to the Iraq War. Renowned for his knowledge of Senate precedent and parliamentary procedure, Byrd wrote a four-volume history of the Senate in later life. Near the end of his life, Byrd was in declining health and was hospitalized several times. He died in office on June 28, 2010, at the age of 92, and was buried at Columbia Gardens Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia.
Background
Robert Byrd was born on November 20, 1917, as Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr. in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, to Cornelius Calvin Sale and his wife Ada Mae. When he was eleven months old, his mother died on Armistice Day during the 1918 flu pandemic. Byrd was the youngest of four and in accordance with his mother's wishes, his father dispersed the children among relatives. Calvin Jr. was adopted by his biological father's sister and her husband, Vlurma and Titus Byrd, who changed his name to Robert Carlyle Byrd and raised him in the coal mining region of southern West Virginia, primarily in the coal town of Stotesbury, West Virginia. Robert Byrd's biological father Calvin Sale went on to have four more children with his second wife, Ola Sale.Byrd was educated in the public schools of Stotesbury. Byrd played the violin at the Mark Twain School orchestra and the bass drum in the Mark Twain High School marching band. He was the valedictorian of his 1934 graduating class at Stotesbury's Mark Twain High School.
Marriage and children
On May 29, 1937, Byrd married Erma Ora James who was born to a coal mining family in Floyd County, Virginia. Her family moved to Raleigh County, West Virginia, where she met Byrd when they attended the same high school.Robert Byrd had two daughters, six grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
Ku Klux Klan
In the early 1940s, Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to create a new chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Sophia, West Virginia.As a young boy, Byrd had witnessed his adoptive father walk in a Klan parade in Matoaka, West Virginia. While growing up, Byrd had heard that "the Klan defended the American way of life against racemixers and communists". He then wrote to Joel L. Baskin, Grand Dragon of the Realm of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, who responded that he would come and organize a chapter when Byrd had recruited 150 people.
It was Baskin who told Byrd, "You have a talent for leadership, Bob … The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation". Byrd later recalled, "Suddenly lights flashed in my mind! Someone important had recognized my abilities! I was only 23 or 24 years old, and the thought of a political career had never really hit me. But strike me that night, it did". Byrd became a recruiter and leader of his chapter. When it came time to elect the top officer in the local Klan unit, Byrd won unanimously. Despite his later claim to have only been a KKK member for a year, documents indicate that Byrd joined the KKK around 1941, and a 1946 letter to Samuel Green indicates that Byrd was a Klan member until at least 1946.
In December 1944, Byrd wrote to segregationist Mississippi Senator Theodore G. Bilbo:
In 1946, Byrd wrote a letter to Samuel Green, the Ku Klux Klan's Grand Wizard, stating, "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation". The same year, he was encouraged to run for the West Virginia House of Delegates by the Klan's grand dragon; Byrd won, and took his seat in January 1947. However, during his campaign for the United States House of Representatives in 1952, he announced that, "after about a year, I became disinterested, quit paying my dues, and dropped my membership in the organization", and that during the nine years that have followed, he had never been interested in the Klan. He said he had joined the Klan because he felt it offered excitement and was anti-communist, but also suggested his participation there "reflected the fears and prejudices" of the time.
Byrd later called joining the KKK "the greatest mistake I ever made". In 1997, he told an interviewer he would encourage young people to become involved in politics but also warned, "Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don't get that albatross around your neck. Once you've made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena". In his last autobiography, Byrd explained that he was a KKK member because he "was sorely afflicted with tunnel vision— a jejune and immature outlook—seeing only what I wanted to see because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions". Byrd also said in 2005, "I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times … and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened". In a 2005 book, Byrd claimed that the Klan had been made of "upstanding people" like lawyers, judges, clergy and doctors.
Early career
Byrd worked as a gas station attendant, grocery store clerk, and butcher. During World War II, he worked as a welder in shipyards in Baltimore and Tampa. After returning to West Virginia, he bought a grocery store in Sophia. In 1946, he won a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates, representing Raleigh County from 1947 to 1950. Byrd became a local celebrity after a radio station in Beckley began broadcasting his "fiery fundamentalist lessons". In 1950, he was elected to the West Virginia Senate, where he served from December 1950 to December 1952.In 1951, Byrd was among the official witnesses of the execution of Harry Burdette and Fred Painter, which was the first use of the electric chair in West Virginia. In 1965 the state abolished capital punishment, with the last execution having occurred in 1959.
Continued education
Early in his career Byrd attended Beckley College, Concord College, Morris Harvey College, Marshall College, and George Washington University Law School, and joined the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity.Byrd began night classes at American University Washington College of Law in 1953, while a member of the United States House of Representatives. He earned his Juris Doctor degree cum laude a decade later, by which time he was a U.S. Senator. President John F. Kennedy spoke at the commencement ceremony on June 10, 1963, and presented the graduates their diplomas, including Byrd. Byrd completed law school in an era when only three years of undergraduate education were required. He later decided to complete his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, and in 1994 he graduated summa cum laude from Marshall University.
Congressional service
In 1952, Byrd was elected to the United States House of Representatives for West Virginia's 6th congressional district, succeeding E. H. Hedrick, who retired from the House to make an unsuccessful run for the Democratic nomination for governor. Byrd was re-elected twice from this district, anchored in Charleston and also including his home in Sophia, serving from January 3, 1953, to January 3, 1959. Byrd defeated Republican incumbent W. Chapman Revercomb for the United States Senate in 1958. Revercomb's record supporting civil rights had become an issue, playing in Byrd's favor. Byrd was re-elected to the Senate eight times. He was West Virginia's junior senator for his first four terms; his colleague from 1959 to 1985 was Jennings Randolph, who had been elected on the same day as Byrd's first election in a special election to fill the seat of the late Senator Matthew Neely.Despite his tremendous popularity in the state, Byrd ran unopposed only once, in 1976. On three other occasions—in 1970, 1994 and 2000—he won all 55 of West Virginia's counties. In his re-election bid in 2000, he won all but seven precincts. Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, the daughter of one of Byrd's longtime foes, former governor Arch Moore Jr., briefly considered a challenge to Byrd in 2006 but decided against it. Capito's district covered much of the territory Byrd had represented in the U.S. House.
In the 1960 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Byrd—a close Senate ally of Lyndon B. Johnson—endorsed and campaigned for Hubert Humphrey over front-runner John F. Kennedy in the state's crucial primary. However, Kennedy won the state's primary and eventually the general election.