20th Century

Son of President William Howard Taft, Robert Taft represented Ohio in the Senate from 1939 until his death in 1953. He helped writ...

A onetime isolationist and 1940 presidential aspirant, Vandenberg underwent a public conversion, telling the Senate in January 194...

After six terms in the House, Dirksen served in the Senate from 1951 until his death in 1969 and as Republican leader from 1959. H...

Johnson entered the House in 1937, won a contested Senate seat in 1948 by 87 votes, and rose in 1955 to majority leader, the young...

Russell served from 1933 until his death in 1971, entering the Senate at 35 after a term as Georgia's youngest governor. He chaire...

Kefauver served from 1949 until his death in 1963. In 1950 and 1951 his Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Comme...

A wartime marine and circuit judge, McCarthy was elected in 1946 and in February 1950 charged in a Wheeling speech that the State ...

Smith won her late husband's House seat in 1940, moved to the Senate in 1948, and served until 1972, the first woman elected to bo...

Mayor of Minneapolis, Humphrey entered the Senate in 1949, and at the 1948 convention had urged the party to walk into the sunshin...

A Butte miner and professor of Far Eastern history, Mansfield served Montana in the House from 1943, then the Senate from 1953 to ...

Rayburn represented a northeast Texas district from 1913 until his death in 1961, holding the speakership for 17 years across thre...

Thomas P. O'Neill, whose all politics is local became a rule of the craft, succeeded John F. Kennedy's House seat in 1953, rose to...

Vinson served from 1914 to 1965, 50 years, the first House member to reach that mark. From the Naval Affairs and then Armed Servic...

Celler served from 1923 to 1973, 50 years, and chaired the Judiciary Committee from 1949 to 1953 and 1955 to 1973, a record tenure...

Powell, minister of Abyssinian Baptist Church, won election in 1944 as the first Black member from New York and the Northeast. He ...

A pacifist and lobbyist for national suffrage, Rankin won Montana's at-large seat in 1916, four years before the Nineteenth Amendm...

Appointed in 1931 to succeed her late husband, Caraway won a special election in 1932, surprising the establishment with a Huey Lo...

Hayden began as Arizona's first representative in 1912, moved to the Senate in 1927, and served until 1969, holding the combined-s...

Curtis, who spent part of his childhood on the Kaw reservation, served in the House from 1893 to 1907 and then in the Senate, wher...

Longworth represented Cincinnati in the House for most of the period from 1903 to 1931 and in 1906 married Alice Roosevelt, daught...

Born in Germany and raised in New York City, Wagner rose through Tammany Hall politics and, after the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fir...

Long built a powerful political machine as governor of Louisiana, paving roads, building schools, and providing free textbooks whi...

Ervin, a former judge on the North Carolina Supreme Court, was appointed to the Senate in 1954 and soon served on the select commi...

Elected to the Senate in 1956 at the age of 32, Church became an early critic of the Vietnam War and co-sponsored the Cooper-Churc...

Ford represented Grand Rapids in the House from 1949 to 1973, served on the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassinat...

Mink was elected to the House in 1964, becoming the first woman of color and the first Asian American woman to serve in Congress. ...