Chester E. Holifield

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Chester E. Holifield (December 3, 1903 - February 6, 1995) was a United States Representative from California. He was born in Mayfield, Graves County, Kentucky. He moved with his family to Springdale, Arkansas in 1912. He attended the public schools and moved to Montebello, California in 1920 where he engaged in the manufacture and selling of men’s apparel from 1920-1943. He was chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Central committee of the Fifty-first District from 1934-1938. He was chair of the California State Central committee of the Twelfth Congressional District from 1938-1940. He was also a delegate to each Democratic National Convention from 1940 to 1964.

Holifield was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-eighth and to the fifteen succeeding Congresses and served from January 3, 1943 until his resignation on December 31, 1974. He was not a candidate for reelection in 1974 to the Ninety-fourth Congress. While in Congress, he was chair of the Committee on Government Operations (Ninety-first through Ninety-third Congresses) and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (Eighty-seventh, Eighty-ninth, and Ninety-first Congresses). He was member of the President’s Special Evaluation Commission on Atomic Bomb Tests at Bikini Atoll, 1946. He was also a congressional adviser to international conferences on uses of atomic energy, nuclear weapons testing, water desalinization, and disarmament. He resumed the manufacture and selling of men’s apparel after leaving Congress. He died on February 6, 1995.

This article incorporates facts obtained from the public domain Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

[edit] References

Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

[edit] Bibliography

Dyke, Richard Wayne. Mr. Atomic Energy: Congressman Chet Holifield and Atomic Energy Affairs, 1945-1974. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989; Dyke, Richard Wayne and Francis X. Gannon.
Chet Holifield: Master Legislator and Nuclear Statesman. With a foreword by Gerald R. Ford and an afterword by Carl Albert. Lanham, [Md.]: University Press of America, 1996.