------------------------------------------------------------------ Source: http://www.arkansaspreservation.org/history/landmarks.asp Downloaded 18 May 2002 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Joseph Taylor Robinson House at 2122 Broadway in Little Rock, Pulaski County, a 1904 structure that was home to U.S. Senator Joseph T. Robinson, Senate majority leader during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term as President of the United States. National Historic Landmark designation on 10/12/94. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Source: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=9824 Downloaded 3 April 2003 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Joseph Taylor Robinson Birth: August 26, 1872 Death: July 14, 1937 Member of Arkansas state house of representatives, 1895; US Representative from Arkansas 1903-13; Governor 1913; US Senator from Arkansas, 1913-37; candidate for Vice President of the United States, 1928. Burial: Roselawn Memorial Park Little Rock Pulaski County Arkansas, USA Plot: Hillcrest Lot 36 Space 2 GPS (lat/lon): 34.43729, -92.18318 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Source: http://www.uark.edu/depts/speccoll/findingaids/jtrobinson/ Downloaded 3 April 2003 ------------------------------------------------------------------ INFORMATION ABOUT JOSEPH TAYLOR ROBINSON (1872-1937) Joseph Taylor Robinson was born in a log cabin near Lonoke, Arkansas, in 1872. He attended the University of Arkansas for two years and then read law with Judge Thomas C. Trimble before taking a law degree at the University of Virginia in 1895. Even before he was called to the Arkansas bar he was elected to the Arkansas General Assembly. In 1902 Robinson was elected to Congress from the Sixth District of Arkansas and served five terms. He supported progressive measures to reform government and control big business and voted for the income-tax and woman-suffrage amendments. In 1912 Robinson was elected Governor of Arkansas on a platform of fiscal and administrative reform. He was inaugurated on January 14, 1913, ten days after the death of Jeff Davis, U.S. Senator from Arkansas. On January 28, Robinson was elected Senator by the Arkansas General Assembly, so serving as Congressman, Governor, and Senator within a two-week period. He was the last Senator to be elected by vote of a state legislature. Robinson was re-elected to four more Senate terms. In 1928 he was nominated for Vice President on the Democratic ticket with Al Smith of New York, but Herbert Hoover was elected President. He  was Majority Leader under Franklin Roosevelt from 1932 until his death in 1937, and the leading spokesman for the Roosevelt New Deal in Congress. He died of a heart attack while working for Roosevelt's "court-packing" proposal in 1937. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Sources: http://www.uspresidency.com/ussenate/JosephTRobinson.com/ http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=R000347 Downloaded 3 April 2003 ------------------------------------------------------------------ ROBINSON, Joseph Taylor, 1872-1937 Joseph T. Robinson, US Senate Majority Leader 73rd Congress (1933-1935) 74th Congress (1935-1937) 75th Congress (1937-1939) Senate Years of Service: 1913-1937 Party: Democrat [Library of Congress Photo] ROBINSON, Joseph Taylor, a Representative and a Senator from Arkansas; born on a farm near Lonoke, Lonoke County, Ark., August 26, 1872; attended the common schools, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, and the law department of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville; was admitted to the bar in 1895 and commenced practice in Lonoke, Ark.; member, State general assembly 1895; presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1900; elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-eighth and to the four succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1903, to January 14, 1913, when he resigned, having been elected Governor; chairman, Committee on Public Lands (Sixty-second Congress); Governor of Arkansas from January to March 1913, when he resigned, having been elected Senator; elected to the United States Senate in 1913 to fill the seat vacated by the death of Senator Jeff Davis; reelected in 1918, 1924, 1930, and 1936 and served from March 4, 1913, until his death; minority leader 1923-1933; majority leader 1933-1937; chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Treasury Department (Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth Congresses), Committee on Claims (Sixty-fifth Congress); unsuccessful candidate for Vice President of the United States on the Democratic ticket in 1928; died in Washington, D.C., July 14, 1937; funeral services were held in the Chamber of the United States Senate; interment in Roselawn Memorial Park in Little Rock, Ark. Bibliography American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Weller, Cecil E. Jr. Joe T. Robinson: Always a Loyal Democrat. Fayetteville, Ark.: University of Arkansas Press, 1998; Bacon, Donald C. ³Joseph Taylor Robinson: The Good Soldier.² In First Among Equals: Outstanding Senate Leaders of the Twentieth Century, edited by Richard A. Baker and Roger H. Davidson, pp. 63-97. Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1991. -- Biographical Data courtesy of the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Source: http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Death_of_a_Majority_Leader.htm Downloaded 3 April 2003 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ July 14, 1937 Death of a Majority Leader On the morning of July 14, 1937, a maid entered the Methodist Building, across the street from the Capitol. When she turned the key to the apartment of her client, the Senate majority leader, a terrible sight awaited her. There sprawled on the floor, a copy of the previous day's Congressional Record lying near his right hand, was the pajama-clad body of Arkansas Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson. At the height of his powers, with hopes of a Supreme Court appointment as his reward for services to a grateful president, the grievously over-worked sixty-four-year-old Robinson had succumbed to heart disease. Today, Robinson's portrait hangs just outside the Senate chamber's south entrance. It suggests the warm and gentle demeanor he displayed when relaxing with friends. Another artist, however, might have captured a different side of his personality‹the one that he occasionally displayed as Democratic floor leader. "When he would go into one of his rages," reported a close observer, "it took little imagination to see fire and smoke rolling out of his mouth like some fierce dragon. Robinson could make senators and everyone in his presence quake by the burning fire in his eyes, the baring of his teeth as he ground out his words, and the clenching of his mighty fists as he beat on the desk before him." Joe Robinson entered the Senate in 1913, weeks before the Constitution's Seventeenth Amendment took effect, as the last senator who owed his office to election by a state legislature. In 1923, his Senate Democratic colleagues elected him their floor leader, a post he retained for the next fourteen years. Iron determination, fierce party loyalty, and willingness to spend long hours studying Senate procedures and legislative issues allowed Robinson, more than any predecessor, to define and expand the role of majority leader. In 1933, at the head of a large and potentially unruly Democratic majority, he helped President Franklin Roosevelt push New Deal legislation through the Senate in record time. In the blistering hot summer of 1937, he rallied to the president's call a final time. Ignoring doctors' orders to avoid stress, he labored to salvage Roosevelt's legislative scheme to liberalize the Supreme Court by expanding its membership to fifteen, adding one new position for every sitting justice over the age of seventy. Robinson's death cost the president his "court-packing" plan and deprived the Senate of a towering leader. Reference Items: Bacon, Donald C. "Joseph Taylor Robinson." Included in Baker, Richard A., and Roger H. Davidson, eds. First Among Equals: Outstanding Senate Leaders of the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1991. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Transcribed by Paul M. Webber on 3 April 2003 Home Page: http://home.pcisys.net/~pwebber/31_id/rtw.htm