MCKELLAR, Kenneth Douglas, A Representative and a Senator from Tennessee; born in Richmond, Dallas County, Ala., January 29, 1869; received private instruction from his parents and his sister; graduated from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa in 1891 and from its law department in 1892; moved to Tennessee in 1892 and settled in Memphis; admitted to the bar the same year and commenced the practice of law; presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1904; elected on November 7, 1911, as a Democrat to the Sixty-second Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of George W. Gordon; reelected to the Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth Congresses and served from December 4, 1911, to March 3, 1917; did not seek renomination, having become a candidate for Senator; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1916; reelected in 1922, 1928, 1934, 1940, and 1946 and served from March 4, 1917, to January 3, 1953; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1952; served as President pro tempore of the Senate during the Seventy-ninth, Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses; chairman, Committee on Civil Service and Retrenchment (Sixty-fifth Congress), Committee on Post Office and Post Roads (Seventy-third through Seventy-ninth Congresses), Committee on Appropriations (Seventy-ninth through Eighty-second Congresses); retired; died in Memphis, Tenn., October 25, 1957; interment in Elmwood Cemetery.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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Graham, Jeanne. "Kenneth McKellar's 1934 Campaign: Issues and Events." West Tennessee Historical Society Papers 18 (1964): 107-29.
Hill, Ray. Senator Kenneth McKellar: Feudin' Son of Tennessee. Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 2025.
McKellar, Kenneth Douglas. Tennessee Senators as Seen by One of Their Successors. Kingsport, TN: Southern Publishers, 1942.
Mank, Russell Walter, Jr. "Senator Kenneth D. McKellar and the Tennessee Valley Authority." Master's Thesis, University of Maryland, 1964.
Pope, Robert Dean. "The Senator from Tennessee." West Tennesee Historical Society Papers 22 (1968): 102-22.
___. "Senatorial Baron: The Long Political Career of Kenneth D. McKellar." Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1976.
Thiel, Robert Ellis. "Kenneth D. McKellar and the Politics of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1941-1946." Master's thesis, University of Virginia, 1967.
