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Former congressman dies in Lufkin
On this day in 1972, former congressman Martin Dies died in Lufkin. His
father, also named Martin Dies, was an outspoken nativist and opponent
of woman suffrage who served in Congress from 1909 to 1919. The younger
Dies, born in Colorado City in 1900, was elected to Congress in 1930 and
gained fame as the first chairman of the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), established in 1938 to investigate subversion. Dies
ran against Lyndon B. Johnson for a Senate seat in 1941, finishing last
in a four-way race. During World War II he became a leader of the
anti-Roosevelt, anti-union Texas Regulars, but announced his retirement
in 1944 after the Congress of Industrial Organizations launched a vast
voter-registration drive and found a candidate to oppose him. In 1952 he
won election to a new congressman-at-large seat, but he was not allowed
to return to the HUAC, which believed that he had damaged the cause of
anticommunism. He finished second to Ralph Yarborough in the 1957
special election to fill the Senate seat of Price Daniel, Sr. After
declining to run for reelection to Congress in 1958, Dies continued to
warn that the United States was succumbing to communism.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- DIES, MARTIN [1900-72]
- DIES, MARTIN [1870-1922]
- JOHNSON, LYNDON BAINES
- TEXAS STATE INDUSTRIAL UNION COUNCIL
- TEXAS REGULARS
- LABOR ORGANIZATIONS
- YARBOROUGH, RALPH WEBSTER
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Historic World War II pipelines sold (1947)
- Cuero paper uncovers land fraud (1954)
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