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Senate Years of Service: 1917-1953 Party: Democrat
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McKELLAR, Kenneth Douglas, a Representative and a Senator from Tennessee; born in Richmond, Dallas County,
Ala., January 29, 1869; received private instruction from his parents and his sister; graduated from the
University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa in 1891 and from its law department in 1892; moved to
Tennessee in 1892 and settled in Memphis; admitted to the bar the same year and commenced the
practice of law; presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1904; elected on November 7, 1911,
as a Democrat to the Sixty-second Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of George W.
Gordon; reelected to the Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth Congresses and served from December 4, 1911,
to March 3, 1917; did not seek renomination, having become a candidate for Senator; elected as a
Democrat to the United States Senate in 1916; reelected in 1922, 1928, 1934, 1940, and 1946 and
served from March 4, 1917, to January 3, 1953; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1952;
served as President pro tempore of the Senate during the Seventy-ninth, Eighty-first and Eighty-second
Congresses; chairman, Committee on Civil Service and Retrenchment (Sixty-fifth Congress),
Committee on Post Office and Post Roads (Seventy-third through Seventy-ninth Congresses),
Committee on Appropriations (Seventy-ninth through Eighty-second Congresses); retired; died in
Memphis, Tenn., October 25, 1957; interment in Elmwood Cemetery.
BibliographyDictionary of American Biography;
McKellar, Kenneth. Tennessee Senators As Seen By One of Their Successors.
Kingsport, Tenn.: Southern Publishers,, 1942; Pope, Robert Dean. Senatorial Baron: The Long
Political Career of Kenneth C. McKellar. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1975.
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