Alben William Barkley was an American lawyer and politician from Kentucky. He served as the 35th vice president of the United States from 1949 to 1953. He died of a heart attack during a speech at the Washington and Lee Mock Convention on April 30, 1956.
About Alben W. Barkley in brief
Alben William Barkley was an American lawyer and politician from Kentucky. He served in both houses of Congress and as the 35th vice president of the United States from 1949 to 1953. He died of a heart attack during a speech at the Washington and Lee Mock Convention on April 30, 1956. Barkley was the eldest of John Wilson and Electa Eliza Barkley’s eight children. His parents were tenant farmers who grew tobacco, and his father was an elder in the local Presbyterian church. Barkley traced his father’s ancestry to Scots-Irish Presbyterians in Rowan County, North Carolina. His childhood playmates included future U.S. Vice President Adlai Stevenson I and James A. McKenzie, a future congressman from Kentucky, as well as future Senator John Sherman Cooper. He was active in the debating society at Marvin College and his experiences at Marvin persuaded him to convert to Methodism, the denomination with which he spent the rest of his life. Barkley worked on his parents’ farm and attended school in Lowes, Kentucky, between the fall harvest and spring planting. Unhappy with his birth name, he adopted “Alben” as soon as he was old enough to express his opinion in the matter. In 1905, he was elected county attorney for McCracken County, Kentucky. He was chosen County JudgeExecutive in 1909 and U. S. representative from Kentucky’s First District in 1912. In 1926, he unseated Republican Senator Richard P. Ernst. In the Senate, he supported the New Deal approach to addressing the Great Depression and was elected to succeed Senate Majority Leader Joseph T.
Robinson upon Robinson’s death in 1937. When World War II focused President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attention on foreign affairs, Barkley gained influence over the administration’s domestic agenda. In 1952, Barkley began organizing a presidential campaign, but labor leaders refused to endorse his candidacy because of his age, and he withdrew from the race. He retired but was coaxed back into public life, defeating incumbent Republican Senator John Sherriff Cooper in 1954. Barkley was a member of Delta Tau Delta fraternity, the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and the Delta Tau Epsilon sorority. In 1898, Barkley went to Oxford, Georgia, to teach at Emory College, but did not make enough money to meet his basic living expenses. He resigned in December 1898 to move to Clinton, but he could not afford to continue his education and returned to Emory in the spring of 1898. In December 1898, he became a teaching assistant at the University of Georgia, where he taught English, French, and history. He later became a professor of English at the College of William and Mary. In 1909, Barkley was chosen to serve as the County Judge Executive of McCrackens County in Kentucky. As a Representative, Barkley supported President Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom domestic agenda and foreign policy. Endorsing Prohibition and denouncing parimutuel betting, Barkley narrowly lost the 1923 Democratic gubernatorial primary to fellow Representative J. Campbell Cantrill.
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