James B. Pearson

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This article is about James Blackwood Pearson, U.S. Senator. For other people of the same name see James Pearson.

James Blackwood Pearson (born May 7, 1920) was a U.S. Senator from Kansas.

He was born in Nashville, Tennessee. With his parents, he moved to Virginia in 1934 and attended public school. He went on to attend college at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. During the Second World War he interrupted his schooling to serve as a pilot in the Naval Air Transport of the United States Navy (1943–1946), and was discharged as a lieutenant.

Pearson graduated from the law school of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville in 1950. He was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of law in Mission, Kansas in 1950. Pearson served as Assistant County Attorney of Johnson County, Kansas from 1952 to 1954; County Probate Judge from 1954 to 1956; and member of the State Senate from 1956 to 1960. He did not seek reelection but returned to the practice of law. On January 31, 1962, he was appointed as a Republican to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Andrew F. Schoeppel. He was elected on November 6, 1962, in a special election for the term ending January 3, 1967; reelected in 1966 for a full six-year term; and reelected again in 1972.

Pearson was initially a member of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, opposing Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs, opposed repealing the right-to-work provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, and supported Everett Dirksen's proposed constitutional amendment in 1966 that would have permitted voluntary prayer in public schools. However, Pearson moderated during the Nixon years, taking liberal positions on the death penalty, abortion, and busing, but retained a level of conservatism on economic issues, demonstrated by his support of removing price controls on natural gas during the energy crisis of the 1970s.

Pearson served from January 31, 1962, until his resignation on December 23, 1978. He was not a candidate for reelection in 1978. Pearson is a resident of Washington, D.C.

[edit] References

• Congressional Biography

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