John S. Cooper
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John Sherman Cooper (August 23, 1901 – February 21, 1991) was a Republican United States Senator from Kentucky who served a total of twenty years (1946-1949, 1952-1955, 1956-1973). He served as a member of the Warren Commission, was a captain in the United States Army and was an ambassador to India and East Germany.
Today, there is a statue in honor of him at the Fountain Square in Somerset, Kentucky; additionally, the John Sherman Cooper Power Plant supplies most of the county's power.
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[edit] Early life
John Sherman Cooper was born in Somerset, Pulaski County, Kentucky. After a year at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. Cooper went to Yale, where he was captain of the basketball team, a member of Skull & Bones and who in 1923 was voted most likely to succeed.
He went on to Harvard Law School but had to withdraw in 1925 after learning from his dying father that the recession of 1920 had virtually wiped out the family's resources.
Assuming his father's debts, Cooper sold the family mansion. Over the next twenty five years he paid off the debts and sent six brothers and sisters to college. He passed the state bar examination and was admitted to law practice in 1928.
[edit] Political Career
Cooper won his first elective office in 1927, a two-year term in the Kentucky Legislature. From 1930 to 1938 he served as county judge, a powerful local administrative post that controlled county patronage.
Cooper was elected three times to fill unexpired terms in the United States Senate. The first was in 1946, after A.B. "Happy" Chandler, a future Kentucky governor (1955-1959), resigned to become commissioner of baseball. Cooper failed to win in the 1948 general election, but in 1952 he was elected to fill the unexpired term of Virgil Chapman, the man who defeated in Cooper in the 1948 election.
Considered a liberal Republican, he was one of the first Republicans in the Senate to denounce Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin for the tactics of Mr. McCarthy's anti-Communist campaign. When it was unpopular to do so, Cooper also opposed legislation to remove from reluctant witnesses the Fifth Amendment's protection against compelled self-incrimination.
In the next general election he was defeated by Alben W. Barkley, a Democrat who was Vice President under Harry S. Truman, but Barkley subsequently died and Mr. Cooper was elected to fill his unexpired term in 1956. This time Cooper was reelected to a full term, in the election of 1960, and was elected to another full term in 1966. Mr. Cooper's Senate service continued until his retirement in 1973. He continued being a part of the liberal wing of the Republican Party. During the Vietnam War Cooper joined with Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho in drafting the Cooper-Church amendment, which was aimed at barring further United States military action in Cambodia. He voted for many pieces of civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
[edit] Diplomatic assignments
Cooper's brief first stint in the Senate won him friends, among them Arthur Vandenberg, a Republican Senate leader, and President Truman. In 1949 Truman made Cooper a delegate to the United Nations; in subsequent years Cooper served in other missions to the United Nations and as a special assistant to Secretary of State Dean Acheson.
[edit] The Warren Commission
John S. Cooper was one of the original commission members appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Cooper was quoted as saying: "Now, people have said that somebody told them that they saw somebody on the railroad bank or saw somebody going over the bank, but no one has ever been able to show any cartridges, any rifle, any pistol, no one has ever found anything other than the evidence about Oswald."
| Preceded by William A. Stanfill |
United States Senator (Class 2) from Kentucky November 6, 1946–January 3, 1949 |
Succeeded by Virgil Chapman |
| Preceded by Thomas R. Underwood |
United States Senator (Class 2) from Kentucky November 5, 1952–January 3, 1955 |
Succeeded by Alben Barkley |
| Preceded by Robert Humphreys |
United States Senator (Class 2) from Kentucky November 7, 1956–January 3, 1973 |
Succeeded by Walter Huddleston |
[edit] External links
- Find-A-Grave profile for John S. Cooper
- "John Sherman Cooper: A Unique Senator" (Senate February 26, 1991)
| Members of the Warren Commission |
|---|
| Earl Warren (Chairman) • Hale Boggs • John Cooper • Allen Dulles • Gerald Ford • John McCloy • Richard Russell |
