William David Upshaw

William David Upshaw (* October 15, 1866 in Newnan, Georgia, † November 21, 1952 in Glendale, California ) was an American politician. Between 1919 and 1927 he represented the state of Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Career

William Upshaw attended the common schools and in Atlanta. He then studied at Mercer University in Macon. After his studies Upshaw worked in agriculture and trade. After an accident he suffered permanent damage, which made a continuation of these activities impossible. Therefore, he was reciter, writer and evangelist. In 1906 he founded the magazine in Atlanta "The Golden Age".

Upshaw was a member of the Democratic Party. In 1907, he campaigned for a ban on alcohol in Georgia. In the congressional elections of 1918 he was in the fifth electoral district of his state in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he became the successor of William S. Howard on March 4, 1919. After three re- elections, he was able to complete in Congress until March 3, 1927 four legislative sessions. There were passed in the years 1919 and 1920, the 18th and the 19th Amendment. It was about the nationwide ban on the trade in alcoholic beverages and to the nationwide introduction of women's suffrage.

In 1926, Upshaw was not nominated by his party for re-election. After that, he was Vice President of the Scandinavian Commercial Commission. In 1932, when the repeal of Prohibition loomed because of its demonstrated impracticality Upshaw joined temporarily for the Prohibition Party, which campaigned for the preservation of this Act. He has even been nominated for presidential candidate of that party. But with the elections he had with his faction no chance against the candidates of the two major American parties. Finally, the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President. Upshaw finished with 81 905 votes, representing a share of 0.2 percent, the fifth place, yet behind the candidates of the Socialists and the Communists.

Later he returned to the Democratic Party. In 1942, he sought unsuccessfully to their nomination for the U.S. Senate. In the meantime, he continued working as a lecturer, writer and evangelist. Upshaw became Vice President of Linda Vista Bible College and Seminary. At the age of 72 years he was officially ordained as a priest in 1938 the Baptist Church. Until his death he remained a supporter of the Prohibition movement. In 1951 he declared that he had been cured by a miracle healing of his suffered in 1885 disability. William Upshaw died on November 21, 1952 in Glendale.

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