Charles Weltner

Charles Weltner (1963)

Charles Longstreet Weltner (* 17th December 1927 in Atlanta , Georgia , †  31 August 1992 ) was an American politician of the Democrats . Between 1963 and 1967 he represented the state of Georgia in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Charles Weltner was the son of Sally Hull and Philip Weltner; his father was the chancellor of the University System of Georgia and later president of Oglethorpe University . His great-great-grandfather Joseph Henry Lumpkin had been the first presiding judge of the Georgia Supreme Court, and his great-grandfather Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb was a Confederate general . He attended the public schools of his home country and then studied until 1948 at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. After studying law at Columbia University in New York City and being admitted to the bar in 1950, he began working in this profession in Atlanta, speaking out against the violence and repression resulting from racial segregation. Between 1955 and 1957 he served as a first lieutenant in the US Army .

Politically, as a member of the Democratic Party , Weltner advocated racial equality and the abolition of segregation in contrast to many of his contemporaries and party friends in Georgia . In the 1962 election he was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the fifth congressional constituency of Georgia , where he succeeded James Curran Davis on January 3, 1963 . After re-election in 1964 , he was a member of Congress until January 3, 1967. This time was marked by the events of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement . In his first year in Washington, Weltner supported the implementation of the Brown v. Board of Education , which should eradicate segregation in schools. He was the first southern Congressman to publicly condemn the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in which four black girls were killed, and in 1964, knowing that it was controversial in the south , he passed the Civil Rights Act . In the Committee for Un-American Activities , he headed the investigations against the Ku Klux Klan until 1965 . In 1966 Weltner declined to run again because his party demanded the support of Lester Maddox from him . He was a radical supporter of racial segregation and was applying for the office of governor of Georgia. In 1968 Weltner ran again for the congress, but unsuccessfully.

In 1967, Weltner was vice Democratic Party leader in Georgia. In the meantime he worked as a lawyer. From 1976 to 1981 he was a judge in the Atlanta District Court High Court. In 1980 and 1981 he chaired the Judicial Council of Georgia. Weltner has been a judge on the Supreme Court of his state since 1981 . In June 1992, as Chief Justice, he became its presiding judge. He was only able to hold this office for two months until his death on August 31 of the same year.

Weltner was awarded in 1991 as the second person to Profiles in Courage Award of the John F. Kennedy - Presidential Library . He was married three times and had six children.

Web links

• Charles Weltner in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Charles Weltner in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Catherine M. Lewis: Charles Weltner (1927-1992). In: New Georgia Encyclopedia , August 5, 2017.