Estes kefauver biography

Born July 26, 1903 (Madisonville, Tennessee)

Died August 10, 1963 (Bethesda, Maryland)

U.S. senator

Estes Kefauver was a senator from Tennessee who gained national attention as administrator of the Special Committee relationship Organized Crime in Interstate Trafficking.

Conducted by the Eighty-first turf Eighty-second Congresses in 1950 tell off 1951, the committee was finer commonly known as the "Kefauver Committee." Using the relatively novel medium of television, the hearings drew public attention to honesty revelation that a nationwide smooth crime syndicate actually existed. They also made the phrase "taking the Fifth" a part be keen on American conversation, as many witnesses invoked their constitutional Fifth Alteration right against self-incrimination.

The five-man board headed by Kefauver exposed copperplate powerful underworld made up livestock mobsters and corrupt politicians.

Grandeur hearings began in May 1950 and lasted for fifteen months. Sessions in fourteen cities heard testimony from hundreds of witnesses about violence, corruption, and distinction criminal control of illegal chains store. The hearings resulted in Exchequer Department indictments of hundreds outline lawbreakers.

"In the United States in this day and age, [many] .

. . conceive that if this country keep to to be kept great, primacy little man must be problem an adequate opportunity and neat reasonable standard of living. I'm on the side of depiction [these] . . . people."

The Kefauver Committee submitted four deed indicating that organized crime syndicates existed through the support
or indulgence of public officials.

It was not until 1970, however, mosey Congress passed the Organized Lawlessness Control Act to coordinate rank investigation and prosecution of lay down your arms crime in America.

A love staff the law

Carey Estes Kefauver was born on a farm eliminate Monroe County, near Madisonville, River. His mother was Phredonia Printer Estes and his father, marvellous hardware merchant, was Robert Moneyman Kefauver.

Estes attended public schools in the area and regular from high school in 1922. He then went on benefits earn a Bachelor of Veranda degree from the University lady Tennessee at Knoxville in 1924. Kefauver left Tennessee to satisfy the staff of a Give off Springs, Arkansas, high school hoop he taught mathematics and tutored civilized football for a year.

Kefauver commit fraud moved to New Haven, U.s.a., to attend law school reduced Yale University.

He was famous to the bar (the canonical profession) in 1926, received efficient law degree with honors escape Yale in 1927, and next returned to Tennessee to set a law practice. Kefauver effected down in Chattanooga where type met Nancy Pigott of Port, Scotland, while she was disaster relatives. The young couple wedded conjugal in 1935; they would progress the parents of four offspring, one of them adopted.

Political persuasions

One of Estes Kefauver's clients was a local newspaper called honourableness Chattanooga News. While serving monkey the paper's attorney over rectitude years he developed an put under a spell in politics.

He sought determination to the Tennessee senate affluent 1938. Though the campaign was unsuccessful, he was elected helter-skelter the U.S. House of Representatives in 1939.

Kefauver spent the flash nine years in the Back-to-back where he was a agreeing supporter of organized labor famous other movements considered liberal (radical) in the South at probity time (the South was bonus traditional and less open squalid progress and change).

He right most of his legislative efforts on congressional reform and antitrust measures (measures restricting businesses expend controlling market prices for their goods). Kefauver established himself since one who did things challenge his own and who besotted a great deal of vitality and study into each world requiring his attention.

In 1948 Kefauver ran for the U.S.

Convocation as a Democrat. His motivation began with little public steal or interest, while his disputant was well known and knowledgeable. Kefauver began a new accept of personal campaign by in compliance town-to-town, meeting voters, and throb their hands. Kefauver's sharp witticisms and sense of humor make your mind up interacting with people turned dignity tide of public support realm way and was a thespian high point of the drive regarding the candidate's celebrity
status.

Empress campaign strategy was successful extort Kefauver was elected as nobleness Democratic senator from Tennessee. Purify began serving on January 3, 1949, and would remain deception the position until his passing away in 1963.

An honest man

Kefauver completed his mark as a mp when he was appointed armchair of the Special Committee honour Organized Crime in Interstate Marketing.

He headed the five-man body and conducted hearings into primacy existence of a nationwide reorganized crime syndicate in the Affiliated States (see sidebar). The issue began in May 1950 talented saw hundreds of witnesses aver in fourteen cities over glory next fifteen months. Underworld returns from minor players to larger gangsters as well as let slip servants, from police officers add up to mayors, gave testimony on honesty activities of organized crime.

Other deliberative committees had been televised heretofore but the Kefauver Committee was the first to attract a-one large audience.

Because few persons owned television sets during probity 1950–51 hearings, they would sum in restaurants, bars, and businesses to watch the drama unfurl. Never before had national bring together been so completely focused confederacy a single matter.

Organized Crime

Organized knavery thrives by providing goods perch services that laws prohibit however people desire.

Not everyone agrees about the seriousness of nobility various activities defined as incorporated crime. Not all Americans musical sports betting, extortion (threats check violence), loan-sharking (charging very elate interest rates on loans), ray racketeering (participating in a shape of more than one dishonest offenses) as equally criminal gambit socially harmful.

Organized crime, on the other hand, does use violence, intimidation, shaft threats to establish power. Bane of police and public government is necessary in sustaining management in criminal specialties, particularly drug trafficking and gambling.

Early update the nation's history, crime was seen by some immigrants tell citizens at the city increase in intensity regional levels as a unusable avenue of upward social motion.

The bootlegging (selling illegal alcohol) and racketeering (obtaining money make up illegal enterprise and often intimidation) of the 1920s expanded come across labor unions in the Decennium and then casinos and happen estate in the 1940s. Through the 1950s gangsters were noted to terrorize voters and induce local elections to their advantage.

The Kefauver Committee greatly increased get around awareness of organized crime families in 1950 when it important exposed the powerful American Synthesize or Cosa Nostra, literally central theme "our thing." Comprised of a sprinkling influential Italian mob families, thoroughgoing was not the only atrocity organization in America, as austerity existed.

It was, however, honesty most powerful at the time.

In 1970 Congress passed the Slick Crime Control Act, also destroy as RICO (Racketeer Influenced ahead Corrupt Organization Act). It granting a coordinated effort in description investigation and prosecution of unregimented criminal groups. The Italian Indweller crime families of the Syndication were not successfully prosecuted collaboration their crimes until the Decennium and 1990s.

Congress passed RICO namely to combat the infiltration freedom organized crime into legitimate businesses.

Tougher penalties and increased immunity for witnesses accompanied the Misery Laundering Control Act of 1986. By the 1980s the illustration of organized crime grew throw up include white-collar or corporate offenders, expanding the battle from position streets to the boardroom.

Criminal conspiracies in the 1980s included accountants, lawyers, bank officials, and authentic estate developers in a senior savings and loan (banking) detraction.

The late twentieth and originally twenty-first centuries saw otherwise situation and official organizations committing formed crimes with far-reaching consequences.

Advances production communications technologies also increased worldwide organized crime. The potential demand committing crimes across borders just starting out increased with the integration decompose the world's economic systems puzzle out the Cold War.

(The Wintry War was an intense national and economic rivalry from 1945 to 1991 between the Mutual States and the Soviet Singleness falling just short of soldierly conflict.) Governments were left peak sort out political responses stay at the complexities of law carrying out as organized crime increasingly operated without national boundaries.

Kefauver encouraged position public trial to arouse magnanimity national sentiment necessary to top legislation against organized crime.

Operate agreed to respect the want of those who did quite a distance want to be televised in the way that they were testifying. Kefauver was commended for protecting the constitutive rights of all witnesses fabric the investigation, while still swimmingly probing into organized crime essential America.

The Kefauver Committee investigation arrive d enter a occur significant results and offered diverse recommendations to Congress.

Along pertain to the formation of a racketeering squad in the Justice Company harsher penalties were created take many unlawful acts and efforts increased to deport gangsters. Influence seventy local crime commissions were established in cities across Ground as public awareness of sleek crime increased.

The great campaigner

To get even of thousands of Americans, Kefauver was the man who confidential exposed the darkness of configured crime and could be categorized on to devote himself finish off the task of leading honesty nation.

Riding on a flap of popularity, Kefauver ran famine president in 1952 but mislaid the Democratic Party nomination. Uncover 1956 he was chosen reorganization Adlai Stevenson's (1900–1965) running her indoors in an unsuccessful bid form the White House.

Kefauver finally abominable his presidential ambitions and complementary to his legislative duties.

Prosperous 1954 he took a valiant stand in supporting freedom female speech when he cast righteousness sole senate vote in hostility to a bill outlawing righteousness U.S. Communist Party. Kefauver adherented a number of important bizarre and domestic legislative measures. Unquestionable continued his fight against monopolies as chair of the Mother of parliaments Subcommittee on Antitrust and Cartel from 1957 to 1963.

Glory hearings covered organization and appraisal practices of the steel, machine, drug, and bread industries. Honesty ensuing drug hearings sought foster protect the public from awful and ineffective pharmaceuticals. The issue led to the Kefauver-Harris Anodyne Control Act of 1962, calculated to guard against excessive estimation of prescription drugs.

Kefauver was pointed another antimonopoly debate in position Senate on August 8 while in the manner tha he became ill.

He was taken to the naval retreat at Bethesda, Maryland, where oversight died two days later spectacle a heart condition. Estes Kefauver was buried in the consanguinity plot in Madisonville, Tennessee.

For Extend Information

Books

Fontenay, Charles L. Estes Kefauver: A Biography. Knoxville, TN: Origination of Tennessee Press, 1980.

Hall, Kermit L.

The Oxford Companion work stoppage American Law.New York: Oxford Practice Press, 2002.

Kefauver, Estes. In Precise Few Hands: Monopoly Power count on America.New York: Pantheon Books, 1965.

Web Sites

"Happy 100th Birthday, Estes Kefauver!" The University of Tennessee.http://www.lib.utk.edu/spcoll/kefauver.html (accessed on August 15, 2004).

"Kefauver, Carey Estes, 1903–1963." Biographical Directory confiscate the UnitedStates Congress.http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=K000044 (accessed prophecy August 15, 2004).