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George W. Norris

George W. Norris
Portrait of George W. Norris.jpg
Portrait of George W. Norris
United States Senator
from Nebraska
In office
March 4, 1913 – January 3, 1943
Preceded by Norris Brown
Succeeded by Kenneth S. Wherry
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Nebraska's 5th district
In office
March 4, 1903 – March 3, 1913
Preceded by Ashton C. Shallenberger
Succeeded by Silas Reynolds Barton
Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary
In office
August 1926 – March 4, 1933
Preceded by Albert B. Cummins
Succeeded by Henry F. Ashurst
Personal details
Born George William Norris
(1861-07-11)July 11, 1861
York Township, Sandusky County, Ohio
Died September 2, 1944(1944-09-02) (aged 83)
McCook, Nebraska
Political party Republican (until 1936)
Independent
Spouse(s) Pluma Lashley (m. 1889, dec. 1901
Ellie Leonard (m. 1903)
Children 3
Alma mater Baldwin University
Northern Indiana Normal School
Profession Lawyer

George William Norris (July 11, 1861 – September 2, 1944) was a U.S. politician from the state of Nebraska and a leader of progressive and liberal causes in Congress. He served five terms in the United States House of Representatives as a Republican from 1903 until 1913 and five terms in the United States Senate from 1913 until 1943, four terms as a Republican and the final term as an independent. Norris was defeated for reelection in 1942.

Norris is best known for his intense crusades against what he characterized as "wrong and evil", his liberalism, his insurgency against party leaders, his isolationist foreign policy, his support for labor unions, and especially for creating the Tennessee Valley Authority. President Franklin Roosevelt called him "the very perfect, gentle knight of American progressive ideals," and this has been the theme of all of his biographers. A 1957 advisory panel of 160 scholars recommended that Norris was the top choice for the five best Senators in U.S. history.

Norris was born in 1861 in York Township, Sandusky County, Ohio and was the eleventh child of poor, uneducated, farmers of Scots-Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch descent. He graduated from Baldwin University and earned his LL.B. degree in 1883 at the law school of Valparaiso University. He moved to Beaver City, Nebraska to practice law. In 1889 he married Pluma Lashley; the couple had three daughters (Gertrude, Hazel, and Marian) before her 1901 death. Norris then married Ellie Leonard in 1903; they had no children.


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