Willis Smith

Willis Smith

Willis Smith (* 19th December 1887 in Norfolk , Virginia ; †  26. June 1953 in Bethesda , Maryland ) was an American politician of the Democratic Party , of the State of North Carolina in the US Senate represented.

Virginia-born Willis Smith was less than two years old when his father died and his mother moved with him to North Carolina. He attended public school in Elizabeth City before he graduated from the Trinity College in Durham and (1910) at the Law School of Duke University made (1912). In 1912 he was inducted into the bar and began practicing law in Raleigh. During the First World War he served in the US Army .

During the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, Smith served as a trial observer on behalf of the USA. In 1952 he headed the US delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Bern . He also served as chairman of the governing body of Duke University and president of the United States Lawyers Association .

Smith's political career began in 1928 with the election to the North Carolina House of Representatives , of which he was a member until 1932; for a short time in 1931 he acted as speaker of the chamber. He did not return to politics until 1950, when he defeated incumbent Frank Porter Graham in the Democratic Party primaries for the US Senate . Graham, who was supported by President Harry S. Truman and who had made a name for himself as a representative of the liberal wing of the party by rejecting racism , had only moved up to the Senate a good year earlier for the late J. Melville Broughton , but was now defeated by Smith , who was supported by a young political strategist: Jesse Helms , who would later represent North Carolina in the Senate as a Republican for many years .

After the election to Congress and his inauguration on November 27, 1950, political impulses from Willis Smith were largely absent. He died in June 1953 at the Bethesda Naval Hospital and was buried in Raleigh. In memory of Smith, Duke University Law School presents the Willis Smith Award each year to the law students with the highest grade point average in their year.

Web links

• Willis Smith in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)