Estes Kefauver

Tennessee senator whose televised crime hearings made him a national figure and reform symbol.

Overview

Kefauver served from 1949 until his death in 1963. In 1950 and 1951 his Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce traveled the country holding hearings on gambling and organized crime, broadcast into millions of homes; The spectacle made him one of the first television-era political celebrities. He sponsored the antimerger amendments to antitrust law, fought for drug safety, sought the presidency in 1952 and 1956, and won the 1956 vice presidential nomination under Adlai Stevenson.