Richard B. Russell

Georgia master of the Senate whose expertise anchored the Armed Services Committee for decades.

Overview

Russell served from 1933 until his death in 1971, entering the Senate at 35 after a term as Georgia's youngest governor. He chaired Armed Services for most of two decades, guiding military budgets and reorganizing defense, and made the school lunch program permanent law in 1946, expanding it over southern objections to race. Leader of the southern bloc, he argued segregation's constitutional defense with institutional rather than demagogic style. He ran for president in 1952, and the Senate's oldest office building bears his name.