John Jackson Sparkman was an American jurist and politician from the state of Alabama.
46 Facts About John Sparkman
2.
John Sparkman was the Democratic Party's nominee for vice president in the 1952 presidential election.
3.
John Sparkman won election to the House in 1936 and served as house majority whip in 1946.
4.
John Sparkman left the House in 1946 after winning a special election to succeed Senator John H Bankhead II.
5.
John Sparkman became the longest-serving senator from Alabama in 1977, a record that was surpassed by Richard Shelby in 2019.
6.
John Sparkman chose not to seek re-election in 1978 and retired from public office the following year.
7.
John Sparkman, a son of Whitten Joseph and Julia Mitchell John Sparkman, was born on a farm near Hartselle, in Morgan County, Alabama.
8.
John Sparkman grew up in a four-room cabin with his eleven brothers and sisters.
9.
John Sparkman's father was a tenant farmer and doubled as the county's deputy sheriff.
10.
John Sparkman attended a one-room elementary school in rural Morgan County, then walked 4 miles every day to his high school.
11.
John Sparkman graduated from Morgan County High School in 1917 and enrolled in the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.
12.
John Sparkman worked shoveling coal in the university's boiler room to help pay for his education.
13.
John Sparkman worked on The Crimson White, becoming the paper's editor-in-chief, and served as his class's student-body president.
14.
John Sparkman was awarded a teaching fellowship in history and political science, he became a founding member of the Gamma Alpha Chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha in 1921, and was chosen as the university's "most outstanding senior" the same year.
15.
John Sparkman received his Bachelor of Arts in 1921, and his Bachelor of Laws from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1923.
16.
In 1924, Sparkman earned his master's degree in history, writing his master thesis titled "The Kolb-Oates Campaign of 1894," on former Confederate colonel William C Oates's 1894 campaign for Governor of Alabama.
17.
John Sparkman briefly worked as a high school teacher before he was admitted to the Alabama State Bar in 1925.
18.
John Sparkman was an instructor at Huntsville College from 1925 to 1928.
19.
John Sparkman was appointed as a US Commissioner for Alabama's northern judicial district, serving from 1930 to 1931.
20.
John Sparkman was involved in many civic organizations, including serving as the district governor of the Kiwanis Club of Huntsville in 1930, and later as the president of the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce.
21.
John Sparkman was member of the Huntsville Scottish Rite bodies and a recipient of the Knight Commander Court of Honor.
22.
John Sparkman took a pro-British foreign policy stance, advocating the United States should assist Great Britain in the war against the Nazis.
23.
John Sparkman was reelected in the elections of 1942 and 1944, serving in the 75th, 76th, 77th, 78th, and 79th Congresses.
24.
John Sparkman was reelected in the 1946 House election to the 80th Congress and on the same date was elected to the United States Senate in a special election to fill the vacancy caused by the death of John H Bankhead II, for the term ending on January 3,1949.
25.
John Sparkman resigned from the House of Representatives immediately following the election and began his Senate term on November 6,1946.
26.
John Sparkman served until his retirement on January 3,1979, having not sought reelection in 1978.
27.
The 1943 John Sparkman Act, which allowed female physicians to be commissioned as officers in the armed forces, was named after him.
28.
In 1949, John Sparkman was instrumental in convincing the United States Department of the Army to transfer the missile development activities from Fort Bliss, Texas, to Redstone Arsenal.
29.
John Sparkman was a representative of the United States at the Fifth General Assembly of the United Nations in 1950.
30.
In January 1951, John Sparkman stated that he believed the Truman administration housing defense program could increase inflationary pressures, a view that aligned with Republican senators Irving Ives and Andrew Frank Schoeppel, but furthered that the plan was essential and should be undertaken regardless of inflation concerns.
31.
In January 1955, the University of Alabama News Bureau released remarks of John Sparkman he had made during an interview following the 1954 midterm elections.
32.
John Sparkman predicted a larger number of Democrats would cooperate with the Eisenhower administration, furthering that their tendency to criticize the Republicans rather than the president directly was ending, and Republicans, by contrast, would be more likely to oppose the president's foreign policy.
33.
John Sparkman advocated for studying of the administration's defense program to confirm that the reduction in numbers would not be concurrent with a decrease in strength.
34.
On February 2,1955, during an interview, John Sparkman said the US would have to weigh giving Nationalist islands to Red China if the United Nations succeeded in imposing a cease-fire in Formosa.
35.
John Sparkman said the Eisenhower administration had a foggy attitude towards defending the islands.
36.
In February 1955, John Sparkman criticized the farming policies of the Eisenhower administration, charging them with having hurt the financial situations of American farmers the most since before the beginning of World War II and that the plight of farmers would continue so long as legislation affecting controls on crop acreage and the flexible price support system was enacted.
37.
John Sparkman delivered a speech at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Rome, Georgia on February 21,1955, assailing Republican economic promises as a hoax and asserting the Eisenhower administration was operating on a theory of reactionary trickle-down economics.
38.
John Sparkman said the school and road programs of the Eisenhower administration were intended to deliver larger funds to investment bankers rather than children or those using highways, predicting that the enactment of Eisenhower's school program would not see a single classroom built in either Georgia or Alabama.
39.
In 1956, Sparkman was one of 82 representatives and 19 senators who signed the Southern Manifesto opposing the 1954 US Supreme Court decision Brown v Board of Education and racial integration.
40.
In 1957, John Sparkman voted against HR 6127, the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
41.
On July 9,1964, President Johnson signed the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 into law, observing Sparkman was one of the members of Congress who helped in securing the legislation's passage.
42.
From 1967 to 1975, John Sparkman was the chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency where he worked on helping small farmers.
43.
On January 20,1978, John Sparkman announced that he would not seek reelection as Alabama senator at the age of 78 due to unspecified reason, but noted that he had served as Alabama senator for longer than anybody in history up to that point.
44.
In 1960, Sparkman defeated the Republican Julian E Elgin of Montgomery, who received 164,868 votes in the Senate contest.
45.
On October 30,1977, John Sparkman became the longest-serving senator in the history of Alabama.
46.
On November 16,1985, John Sparkman died of a heart attack at Big Springs Manor Nursing Home in Huntsville, Alabama, a month before his 86th birthday.