Sam Ervin

North Carolina senator who chaired the Senate Watergate Committee and styled himself a simple country lawyer.

Overview

Ervin, a former judge on the North Carolina Supreme Court, was appointed to the Senate in 1954 and soon served on the select committee that recommended the censure of Joseph McCarthy. A respected constitutional scholar, he defended civil liberties and privacy while also opposing major civil rights legislation and the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1973 he was named chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, and its televised hearings, marked by his folksy quotations from the Bible and Shakespeare, exposed the Watergate cover-up and the White House taping system. He retired from the Senate at the end of 1974.