Estes Kefauver Open Collections Estes Kefauver Papers: MPA-112 [MS-0837] Finding Aid (pdf) Estes Kefauver Collection: MPA-113 [MS-2035] Finding Aid (html) Estes Kefauver Papers: MPA-114 [MS-2337] Finding Aid (html)

Carey Estes Kefauver (1903-1963) was a U.S. House Representative (1939-1949), U.S. Senator (1950-1963), and 1956 Democratic Vice Presidential candidate. He graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1924 and Yale Law School in 1927. In 1935 he married Nancy Piggott, a native of Scotland. During his years in the Senate, he served on the Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, voted for the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, and sponsored the Kefauver-Harris Drug Control Act of 1962. He lost favor among Southerners with his support of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision to desegregate schools and when he and Albert Gore, Sr., were the only southern senators to refuse to sign the Southern Manifesto, intending to block school integration, in 1956. In 1952, he lost to Adlai Stevenson for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, but in 1956 he was Stevenson's Vice Presidential running mate.

The Estes Kefauver Papers contain the correspondence of the late Senator Kefauver from 1935 to August 1963, including personal, constituent, and political correspondence. Also included are political files, speeches, legislative papers, manuscripts, clippings, and audio-visual material.