Who was Sen. Richard Russell, the man whose name is on a Senate office building?

Cox Media via WPXI ^ | August 27, 2018 | Debbie Lord

[rightwingintelligentsia]

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said this weekend that he will introduce a resolution to rename the Senate's Russell Office Building for Sen. John McCain, who died on Saturday at his home in Arizona.

McCain died 13 months after he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer.

Schumer, D-New York, praised his colleague as an American patriot and said he would introduce the resolution “so that generations remember him."

"As you go through life, you meet few truly great people," Schumer said in a statement. "John McCain was one of them. His dedication to his country and the military were unsurpassed, and maybe most of all, he was a truth teller - never afraid to speak truth to power in an era where that has become all too rare."

The building Schumer is proposing to rename is one of three Senate office buildings adjacent to the U.S. Capitol. Construction was begun on the building in 1903, and it was opened in 1909.

It was called the Old Senate Office Building when it was renamed in 1972 for Sen. Richard Russell Jr., D-Georgia, who served in the Senate for 38 years.

[rightwingintelligentsia]

* He was born in Winder, Georgia, in 1897, the first son and fourth of 15 children of Ina and Richard Russell.
* He practiced law with his father after graduating from the University of Georgia School of Law and serving for a brief time in World War !.
* Russell’s father was later chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court.
* From 1921 to 1931, he served in the Georgia House of Representatives. He was elected governor of Georgia in 1930, taking office in 1931. He won a special election in 1932 to succeed Sen. William J. Harris, who died of a heart attack in April of that year. Russell called for the special election in September 1932, became a candidate and won the seat. He joined the Senate in 1933 and was re-elected six times.
* Russell was known as a skilled legislator for his mastery of the rules of the Senate.
* During his career, he served as president pro tempore of the Senate, chairman of the Committee on Immigration, chairman of the Committee on Manufactures, chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, and chairman on the Committee on Appropriations.
* He was the chief sponsor of the 1946 National School Lunch Act. The legislation offered discounted or free lunches to low-income school children.
* Russell chaired the Senate investigation into the firing by President Harry Truman of General Douglas MacArthur.
* He ran for president in 1952.
* Russell was a segregationist, opposing civil rights legislation. In 1956, he helped to write the “Southern Manifesto” which laid out the Southern states’ opposition to racial desegregation.
* He was a leader in the opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

[1Old Pro]

Please, can we pass a law that we will NOT name publicly financed anything after elected officials!

[G Larry]

ah....come on.....

How sweet will it be to have it renamed:

McCain SOB?

[KSCITYBOY]

btt

[ArtDodger]

2 birds with one stone. Erase a segregationist from the dem rolls and poke Trump in the eye. All the while showing RINOs how they too can be rewarded with immortality if they tow the socialist line.

[dowcaet]

Weren’t the Democrats accusing McVain of being a racist during the 2008 campaign? This is one of those shameless political moves from Schmucky that will predictably win praise from the MSM and the Deep State Congress for “reaching across the political aisle”!

[Paine in the Neck]

We need to stop naming public buildings and facilities after anyone. The one thing the Soviets got right - number them instead.

[skr]

Old Senate Office Building works for me. No controversy and tells us exactly what it is.

[OldGoatCPO]

Be gracious, I think it is appropriate to name some federal facilities after famous men and women who served in Congress. Like the “McCain John” or the “Pelosi Porta Potties.”

[Georgia Girl 2]

That's OK. Russell still has a building in downtown Atlanta. ☺

[katana]

If Senate Republicans had any b***s they'd counter propose changing the name of the building to McKinley Dirksen and rename the office building that currently bears his name to the Mansfield Building (to honor Mike Mansfield, a friend and colleague, of his, WWII USMC vteran, and honorable Senate Democrat Majority Leader of the same generation). Not only did Dirksen (whose deep voice is unforgettable to anyone who followed politics in the sixties) help write the 1964 Civil Rights Act and bust the four and a half day Democrat filibuster against it led by Russell, but as far as I know he never crashed any Navy property, while in uniform commit any acts of collaboration with a declared enemy of the United States, or be a proven co-conspirator in any major financial fraud scandals.

I know, key word is "if".

[Rusty0604]

😈

[ThePatriotsFlag]

What is sad is this question will never be asked again if his name is replaced with John McCain’s. This is revisionist history, no different than taking down a Confederate statue. There are always new government buildings being built in DC. Put McCain’s name on one of those...but leave any previous memorialzation intact.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

That would work for a while until the time that certain numbers are branded as racist.

[V_TWIN]

Wow, I always suspected JM was in tight with the lib dems but this is very telling......to me at least.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

One can almost forget that there are government buildings that are not named after Robert Byrd.

[Taxman]

Chuckie, you are right!

We should ensure “. . . that generations remember him” as the miserable anti-American son of a bitch that he was!

But not by renaming a senate office building!

[Fiji Hill]

If they get away with renaming the Russell building, two of the House buildings are certain to be renamed if the Democrats ever regain the House. Expect the Cannon Building, named for House Speaker Joe Cannon (R-Ill.) and the Longworth Building, named after House Speaker Nicholas Longworth (R-Ohio), both solidly conservative Republicans, to be renamed for Tip O’Neill, Jim Wright, Tom Foley or Nancy Pelosi. But because they are named for Democrats, the Rayburn House Office Building and the Hart Senate Office Building will not be renamed.

[McGavin999]

Should be stressed that he was a democrat. Thanks Senator Schumer for bringing this to everyone’s attention

[Fiji Hill]

Sen. Dirksen also had a chart hit that reached #29 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Gallant Men--Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen (1966)