Sam Ervin
Samuel James " Sam" Ervin Jr. ( born September 27, 1896 in Morganton, North Carolina, † April 23, 1985 in Winston- Salem, North Carolina) was an American lawyer and politician of the Democratic Party of the state of North Carolina represented in both houses of Congress. During his time as a senator, he chaired the Watergate investigative committee.
Life
Sam Ervin attended the common schools and then the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he graduated in 1917. During the First World War he served in France. He received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts. His law degree, he passed in 1922 at Harvard University; In the same year he began to practice law in Morganton. In 1924 he married Margaret Bruce Bell.
In the years 1922, 1924 and 1930, Ervin was elected as an MP in the House of Representatives from North Carolina. From 1935 to 1937 he served as a judge at the criminal court in Burke County, before he moved to the Superior Court of North Carolina, where he remained until 1943. On 22 January 1946 he was elected to the House of Representatives of the United States, where he took the place of his late brother Joseph. He represented the tenth constituency of North Carolina until January 3, 1947 for re-election, he joined not to.
Ervin subsequently took his legal career again. From 1948 to 1954 he belonged to the North Carolina Supreme Court as a judge, before he returned as a Senator in Congress. On 5 June 1954 he was appointed successor to the late Clyde R. Hoey; he also won the election due in November of the same year. Then Ervin was confirmed three more times in his mandate, he was able to exert so until his resignation on 31 December 1974. During this time he gained a reputation as a liberal Senator who stood up for the observance of civil rights and the protection of privacy. In 1954 he was a member of the McCarthy Committee. He was in 1956 one of 19 Southern senators who signed the Southern Manifesto, a document against racial integration in public institutions and the equal rights of blacks. At the end of Ervin's senatorial career, he was appointed in 1973 as Chairman of the committee investigating the Watergate affair. This was also called " Ervin Committee". The Committee has paid the required education about the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon and the condemnation of his accomplices to prison.
After retiring from Congress Sam Ervin was active again as a lawyer as well as in the literary field. He died on 23 April 1985, survived by his wife, two daughters, a son and seven grandchildren.