Claude Pepper

Claude Pepper

Claude Denson Pepper (born September 8, 1900 in Dudleyville , Alabama , † May 30, 1989 in Washington, DC ) was an American lawyer and politician ( Democratic Party ). He represented the state of Florida in the US Senate from 1936 to 1951 and in the United States House of Representatives from 1963 to 1989 .

Early years

Claude Pepper was born on September 8, 1900 on a farm in Chambers County , Alabama. Both his grandfathers had in the Civil War as a soldier of the Confederacy fought. His parents - Joseph Wheeler Pepper († July 8, 1945) and Lena Corine Talbot (Pepper) - were poor tenants of a tiny farm in rural Alabama. In 1904 the family moved to Texas for a short time , then returned to Alabama and settled in Camp Hill (again in Chambers County), where Claude Pepper - the eldest of four children of the couple - with his siblings Joseph, Sarah and Frank grew up. There his father later worked as a trader and police chief, while Pepper attended high school in Camp Hill and then trained as a teacher. At the age of 14, he told a teacher that he would later become a senator. From 1917 to 1918 he taught at public schools in Dothan (Alabama) and worked in a steel mill in Ensley (Alabama) until he was able to study law at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1918 , which he participated in in 1921 graduated with a bachelor's degree. He subsequently graduated from the Law School of Harvard University postgraduate studies, which he successfully completed the 1924th He briefly taught law at the University of Arkansas before moving to Perry, Florida, southeast of Tallahassee , in 1925 , where he and William Barnett Davis opened a civil and criminal law firm. The firm worked successfully so that he could support his parents financially and enable his siblings to attend college.

politics

Even during his student days, Pepper was involved in the Democratic Party. In 1928 he was elected to the Florida state executive committee. In 1929 he was appointed as a deputy for the Taylor County in the Florida House of Representatives voted, but then failed in 1930 his re-election. He moved his law firm and residence to Tallahassee, the capital of Florida.

US Senate

In 1934 Pepper ran for a seat in the US Senate, but lost the Primary (area code) of the Democratic Party with 4050 votes against incumbent Park Trammell . When the two Florida senators - Park Trammell († May 8, 1936) and Duncan U. Fletcher († June 17, 1936) - died almost simultaneously in 1936, the two seats were briefly occupied by William Luther Hill and Scott Loftin and then New elections for the vacant seats are scheduled. In these elections, Pepper was able to win one of the two Senate seats; the second Florida Senator was Charles O. Andrews . On November 4, 1936, Pepper took office.

Pepper quickly became the spokesman for those Senate members who supported and supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies , and became Roosevelt's close confidante. Pepper worked closely with the trade unions to improve the situation of the employed population and the lower classes because he saw it as one of his most important tasks to ensure that the citizens got a government “... which in its heart wants to be fair to every one of its citizens and which will see to it that every one of its citizens is fair to every one of his fellow citizens. ” (Eng .:“ ... who wants nothing more than to be fair to each of its citizens and which ensures that every citizen behaves fairly towards each of his fellow citizens. ”) When elections to the US Senate were again held in 1938, Pepper was able to oppose Congressman J. Mark Wilcox , who was responsible for the New Deal - Roosevelt's policy vehemently opposed, and David Sholtz , a former governor of Florida, enforced it.

After the outbreak of the Second World War , the Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, 1937 and 1939 , a strong isolationist wing of Congress, and the mood of the population, forced the American government to initially maintain and - at least officially - Maintain neutrality. Only the great military successes of Hitler Germany led to a rethink. Pepper was instrumental in bringing about the so-called "Land Lease Act" ( " Loan and Lease Act " ) of March 11, 1941. The law gave the American President the right to sell, donate, or rent any type of weapon, provided that its value does not exceed $ 1,300,000,000 , "to any nation whose defense he deems vital to the United States" . The law initially only applied to Great Britain , which was materially and financially exhausted by the war with Hitler's Germany ( but was also applied to this country after the German invasion of the Soviet Union ) and was an attempt to support states fighting against Hitler's Germany with weapons to avoid direct participation of the USA in the war.

After Pepper had been re-elected as Senator in 1944, he lost the Democratic Party's primary election for the Senate seat against his right-wing competitor George Smathers in 1950 . Smathers' victory was made possible against the background of a foreign and domestic political situation that had changed completely since the end of the Second World War. The war alliance of the Allies ( anti-Hitler coalition ) was finally broken and the new " containment-policy " ("containment policy") of the USA, which began with the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan , meant increased confrontation with the USSR.

As a result, the communist hunt of the so-called McCarthy era became increasingly important domestically , in which lies, slander, and unfounded suspicions of completely innocent people became the norm. Like many conservatives, Smathers equated New Deal politics with socialism or communism and attributed the economic and social laws passed under Roosevelt to the infiltration of the government apparatus by communists. These changes in the political framework gave Smathers a tailwind for his election campaign. In contrast to Pepper, who was a staunch Roosevelt supporter, New Dealer and spokesman for the liberal forces in the Senate, Smathers was a staunch supporter of Harry S. Truman ("I always was a Truman man." / Smathers) and his foreign policy line ( Truman Doctrine ).

But also in domestic politics, Smathers presented himself as a rabid anti-communist and covered Pepper with an unprecedented dirt campaign. For Smathers Claude Pepper was already therefore a "Red" ( "Red") , "Red Pepper" because it recognized the use and immense human and material losses of the USSR during World War II, traveled to the USSR, had talked to Stalin and rejected the so-called Truman Doctrine. Newspapers that supported Smathers, mounted on their front pages headlines, where Pepper as "Pinko" ( "Red Rosa") "Pinko Senator Pepper ' u. a. was slandered.

Smathers circulated something called The Red Book of Senator Claude Pepper . Pepper's commitment to comprehensive, adequate health insurance and coverage for all US citizens was discriminated against by Smathers as a plan to nationalize all areas of the US. "When they socialize the doctors, then they will socialize the lawyers. Then next they will socialize insurance men, and when they socialize the insurance men, the farmer will be next. They plan to socialize everybody. "/ Smathers (Eng .:" First they nationalize the doctors, then the lawyers. Next, they will nationalize the insurance agents, and once they have nationalized the insurance agents, the next thing is the farmers. They plan everything and nationalize everyone. ” Smathers' anti-communism was exacerbated by a racist component. So he “served” his conservative, white electorate by calling Claude Pepper a “nigger-lover” , simply because these black Americans shook hands and advocated the abolition of racial segregation. A photo was enough for Smather, on which Pepper was shown together with the black artist Paul Robeson, who had been branded as a communist by McCarthy's committee for un-American activities , in order to insult him as a “nigger communist” . The journalist David Brinkley described the election campaign between Claude Pepper and George Smathers as "the dirtiest in the history of American politics" ( Eng : "the dirtiest election campaign in the history of American politics") . But Smathers was elected and was able to oust Claude Pepper with a wafer-thin majority of 60,000 votes.

In an interview in 1974, Claude Pepper attempted to explain his disqualification (and the failure of a number of other Senators from the Democratic Party): “And by 1950, there were six ... I'm speaking of the whole country now, there were six senior Senators defeated. I was one of them. And the basic issue was National Health Insurance, civil rights, liberal attitudes favoring labor, minimum wage and all that sort of thing. Adequate hospital and medical care for the people, those things were basically the issues. And of course, the McCarthy stuff was simply the coloration of it. It was an excuse, it was simply a manifestation of that extreme right-wing conservative attitude that was beginning to grow stronger and stronger. And since that time, we have seen more Republicans elected ... " (Eng .:" In 1950 there were six ... I am now speaking of the entire United States ... six incumbent senators were voted out. I was one of them. Mainly left It was about health insurance covering all citizens, civil rights, a more open-minded attitude towards the workers and their support, minimum wages, all that. Adequate medical care for the people. That was basically what it was about. And then of course the McCarthy stuff, that one more thing It was pushed forward, it was simply an expression of this extremely right-wing conservative stance, which (at that time) began to get stronger and stronger, because since then more and more Republicans have been elected ... ") .

The choice of Smathers was supported by Pepper's former friend and sponsor Ed Ball , from whom he had recently split up in an argument. After leaving the Senate, Claude Pepper reopened a law practice in Miami and Washington DC and also took on a senior position at the Washington Federal Savings and Loan Association . Still active in the Democratic Party, he also supported the election campaigns of Adlai E. Stevenson in 1952 and 1956. In 1958, he tried again in vain for a seat in the Florida Senate.

House of Representatives

It was not until 1962 that Pepper was able to return to Washington as a member of parliament: elected in a constituency in Miami Beach , he became a member of the American House of Representatives. He was one of the few who moved into the House of Representatives after a career as a senator. Pepper was regularly re-elected in this office, most recently he was even the oldest member of the house, to which he belonged until his death in 1989. As a staunch supporter of a liberal social policy, he was one of the leading critics of Republican President Ronald Reagan . The introduction of Medicare and Medicaid determined Pepper significantly; In 1977 he took over the chairmanship of the committee for questions of the elderly population and successfully fought off the introduction of an age limit for members of parliament.

Private

Claude Pepper married Mildred Irene Webster on December 29, 1936. She was also known for her great commitment to social causes. The couple remained in a close relationship until Mildred's death on March 31, 1979 and Claude Pepper found it difficult to get over the death of his partner. The marriage remained childless.

Claude Pepper served Congress longer than any other politician in his state and became known as the great old Florida man. His face often graced the cover of Time magazine between 1950 and 1983 . When he died in Washington DC on May 30, 1989, his body was laid out for two days in the Capitol rotunda ; he was only the 26th American to be honored in this way.

Numerous places in Florida have been named after him, including the Claude Pepper Center at Florida State University and the Claude Pepper Federal Building in Miami. Much of the Florida route on US Route 27 is known as the Claude Pepper Memorial Highway ; Numerous places in Florida have also been named after his wife.

Awards

In the course of his long life he received numerous awards, including the Eleanor-Roosevelt Humanities Award, the Humphrey Statesmanship Award, he was elected Man of the Year in Florida; he is also one of the 50 most important people from Florida. He also received the Four Freedoms Award in 1985 .

literature

• Claude D. Pepper , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 42/1989 of October 9, 1989, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links / sources

• Claude Pepper in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Who is Claude Pepper? By Tom Walls
• Claude Pepper library webpage
• Claude Pepper Foundation webpage
• Interview with Claude Pepper on February 1, 1974 (Oral History of the American South)
• Choice of the fifty most important people from Florida

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ http://www.munzinger.de