Estes Kefauver

Born July 26, 1903 (Madisonville, Tennessee)

Died August 10, 1963 (Bethesda, Maryland)

U.S. senator

Estes Kefauver was a senator from Tennessee who gained national attention as chairman of the Special Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce. Conducted by the Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses in 1950 and 1951, the committee was more commonly known as the "Kefauver Committee." Using the relatively new medium of television, the hearings drew public attention to the revelation that a nationwide organized crime syndicate actually existed. They also made the phrase "taking the Fifth" a part of American conversation, as many witnesses invoked their constitutional Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

The five-man committee headed by Kefauver exposed a powerful underworld made up of mobsters and corrupt politicians. The hearings began in May 1950 and lasted for fifteen months. Sessions in fourteen cities heard testimony from hundreds of witnesses about violence, corruption, and the criminal control of illegal markets. The hearings resulted in Treasury Department indictments of hundreds of lawbreakers.

"In the United States today, [many] . . . believe that if this country is to be kept great, the little man must be given an adequate opportunity and a reasonable standard of living. I'm on the side of the [these] . . . people."

The Kefauver Committee submitted four reports indicating that organized crime syndicates existed through the support
or tolerance of public officials. It was not until 1970, however, that Congress passed the Organized Crime Control Act to coordinate the investigation and prosecution of organized crime in America.

A love of the law

Carey Estes Kefauver was born on a farm in Monroe County, near Madisonville, Tennessee. His mother was Phredonia Bradford Estes and his father, a hardware merchant, was Robert Cooke Kefauver. Estes attended public schools in the area and graduated from high school in 1922. He then went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 1924. Kefauver left Tennessee to join the staff of a Hot Springs, Arkansas, high school where he taught mathematics and coached football for a year.

Kefauver then moved to New Haven, Connecticut, to attend law school at Yale University. He was admitted to the bar (the legal profession) in 1926, received a law degree with honors from Yale in 1927, and then returned to Tennessee to establish a law practice. Kefauver settled down in Chattanooga where he met Nancy Pigott of Glasgow, Scotland, while she was visiting relatives. The young couple married in 1935; they would become the parents of four children, one of them adopted.

Political persuasions

One of Estes Kefauver's clients was a local newspaper called the Chattanooga News. While serving as the paper's attorney over the years he developed an interest in politics. He sought election to the Tennessee senate in 1938. Though the campaign was unsuccessful, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1939.

Kefauver spent the next nine years in the House where he was a consistent supporter of organized labor and other movements considered liberal (radical) in the South at the time (the South was more traditional and less open to progress and change). He focused most of his legislative efforts on congressional reform and antimonopoly measures (measures restricting businesses from controlling market prices for their goods). Kefauver established himself as one who did things on his own and who dedicated a great deal of energy and study into each area requiring his attention.

In 1948 Kefauver ran for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat. His campaign began with little public awareness or interest, while his opponent was well known and experienced. Kefauver began a new style of personal campaign by going town-to-town, meeting voters, and shaking their hands. Kefauver's sharp wit and sense of humor while interacting with people turned the tide of public support his way and was a dramatic high point of the campaign regarding the candidate's celebrity
status. His campaign strategy was successful and Kefauver was elected as the Democratic senator from Tennessee. He began serving on January 3, 1949, and would remain in the position until his death in 1963.

An honest man

Kefauver made his mark as a senator when he was appointed chair of the Special Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce. He headed the five-man panel and conducted hearings into the existence of a nationwide organized crime syndicate in the United States (see sidebar). The investigation began in May 1950 and saw hundreds of witnesses testify in fourteen cities over the next fifteen months. Underworld figures from minor players to major gangsters as well as public servants, from police officers to mayors, gave testimony on the activities of organized crime.

Other congressional committees had been televised before but the Kefauver Committee was the first to attract a large audience. Because few people owned television sets during the 1950–51 hearings, they would gather in restaurants, bars, and businesses to watch the drama unfold. Never before had national attention been so completely focused on a single matter.

Organized Crime

Organized crime thrives by providing goods and services that laws prohibit but people desire. Not everyone agrees about the seriousness of the various activities defined as organized crime. Not all Americans see sports betting, extortion (threats of violence), loan-sharking (charging very high interest rates on loans), and racketeering (participating in a pattern of more than one criminal offenses) as equally criminal or socially harmful. Organized crime, however, does use violence, intimidation, and threats to establish power. Corruption of police and public officials is necessary in sustaining control in criminal specialties, particularly involving drug trafficking and gambling.

Early in the nation's history, crime was seen by some immigrants and citizens at the city and regional levels as a practical avenue of upward social mobility. The bootlegging (selling illegal alcohol) and racketeering (obtaining money through illegal enterprise and often intimidation) of the 1920s expanded into labor unions in the 1930s and then casinos and real estate in the 1940s. By the 1950s gangsters were known to terrorize voters and manipulate local elections to their advantage.

The Kefauver Committee greatly increased public awareness of organized crime families in 1950 when it first exposed the powerful American Mafia or Cosa Nostra, literally meaning "our thing." Comprised of several influential Italian mob families, it was not the only crime organization in America, as others existed. It was, however, the most powerful at the time.

In 1970 Congress passed the Organized Crime Control Act, also known as RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act). It provided a coordinated effort in the investigation and prosecution of organized criminal groups. The Italian American crime families of the Mafia were not successfully prosecuted for their crimes until the 1980s and 1990s.

Congress passed RICO specifically to combat the infiltration of organized crime into legitimate businesses. Tougher penalties and increased protection for witnesses accompanied the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986. By the 1980s the definition of organized crime grew to include white-collar or corporate offenders, expanding the battle from the streets to the boardroom.

Criminal conspiracies in the 1980s included accountants, lawyers, bank officials, and real estate developers in a major savings and loan (banking) scandal. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw otherwise legitimate and official organizations committing organized crimes with far-reaching consequences.

Advances in communications technologies also increased international organized crime. The potential for committing crimes across borders further increased with the integration of the world's economic systems after the Cold War. (The Cold War was an intense political and economic rivalry from 1945 to 1991 between the United States and the Soviet Union falling just short of military conflict.) Governments were left to sort out political responses to the complexities of law enforcement as organized crime increasingly operated without national boundaries.

Kefauver encouraged the public trial to arouse the national sentiment necessary to pass legislation against organized crime. He agreed to respect the wishes of those who did not want to be televised when they were testifying. Kefauver was commended for protecting the constitutional rights of all witnesses during the investigation, while still successfully probing into organized crime in America.

The Kefauver Committee investigation produced significant results and offered several recommendations to Congress. Along with the formation of a racketeering squad in the Justice Department harsher penalties were created for many unlawful acts and efforts increased to deport gangsters. Over seventy local crime commissions were established in cities across America as public awareness of organized crime increased.

The great campaigner

To hundreds of thousands of Americans, Kefauver was the man who had exposed the darkness of organized crime and could be counted on to devote himself to the task of leading the nation. Riding on a wave of popularity, Kefauver ran for president in 1952 but lost the Democratic Party nomination. In 1956 he was chosen as Adlai Stevenson's (1900–1965) running mate in an unsuccessful bid for the White House.

Kefauver finally abandoned his presidential ambitions and returned to his legislative duties. In 1954 he took a courageous stand in supporting freedom of speech when he cast the sole senate vote in opposition to a bill outlawing the U.S. Communist Party. Kefauver sponsored a number of important foreign and domestic legislative measures. He continued his fight against monopolies as chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly from 1957 to 1963. The hearings covered organization and pricing practices of the steel, automobile, drug, and bread industries. The ensuing drug hearings sought to protect the public from harmful and ineffective pharmaceuticals. The investigation led to the Kefauver-Harris Drug Control Act of 1962, designed to guard against excessive pricing of prescription drugs.

Kefauver was in another antimonopoly debate in the Senate on August 8 when he became ill. He was taken to the naval hospital at Bethesda, Maryland, where he died two days later of a heart condition. Estes Kefauver was buried in the family plot in Madisonville, Tennessee.

For More Information

Books

Fontenay, Charles L. Estes Kefauver: A Biography. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1980.

Hall, Kermit L. The Oxford Companion to American Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Kefauver, Estes. In A Few Hands: Monopoly Power in America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1965.

Web Sites

"Happy 100th Birthday, Estes Kefauver!" The University of Tennessee.http://www.lib.utk.edu/spcoll/kefauver.html (accessed on August 15, 2004).

"Kefauver, Carey Estes, 1903–1963." Biographical Directory of the UnitedStates Congress.http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=K000044 (accessed on August 15, 2004).