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Sam Ervin
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Samuel James Ervin Jr. (September 27, 1896 – April 23, 1985) was a Democratic United States Senator from North Carolina from 1954 until 1974. He was a native of Morganton, Burke County, North Carolina.
n served first as an officer, then as an enlisted soldier in combat in France during World War I. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1917 and from Harvard Law School in 1922, with his military service sandwiched between his academic studies.
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Samuel James Ervin Jr. (September 27, 1896 – April 23, 1985) was a Democratic United States Senator from North Carolina from 1954 until 1974. He was a native of Morganton, Burke County, North Carolina.
Early life
Ervin served first as an officer, then as an enlisted soldier in combat in France during World War I. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1917 and from Harvard Law School in 1922, with his military service sandwiched between his academic studies. Ervin was fond of saying that he was the only student to ever go through Harvard Law "backwards," because he took the third-year courses first, then the second-year courses, and finally the first-year courses.
Already admitted to the Bar in 1919, before completing law school, Ervin entered politics straight out of Harvard. Even before he had received his degree, Democrats in Burke County, North Carolina had nominated him in absentia for the North Carolina House of Representatives, to which he was elected in 1922, 1924, and 1930. Ervin also was elected and served as a state judge in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
When his brother, U.S. Representative Joseph Wilson Ervin, committed suicide in late 1945, Sam Ervin filled the remainder of his term in Congress but did not seek re-election, allegedly vowing to never set foot in Washington, D.C. again.
U.S. Senate career
Ervin was serving as an associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court when he was appointed in June 1954 by the governor to fill the U.S. Senate seat of Clyde Hoey, who had died in office. He ran successfully for the seat in November 1954.
Ervin made a deep impact on American history through his work on two separate committees at the beginning and ending of his career that were critical in bringing down two powerful opponents: Senator Joe McCarthy in 1954 and President Richard M. Nixon in 1974. The Senate Select Committee to Investigate Campaign Practices, which investigated Watergate, was popularly known as the "Ervin Committee."
Senator Ervin condemned the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision calling for desegregation of schools when he signed The Southern Manifesto in 1956. He later changed his mind on the Brown decision, but continued to oppose forced desegregation by the federal government, on states' rights grounds.
Senator Ervin's opposition to most civil rights legislation was based on his commitment to the preservation of the Constitution in its pristine formulation that he repeatedly stated encapsulated civil, human and equal rights for all. There is little if any evidence that he engaged in the racial demagoguery of many of his Southern colleagues. Some historians consider Ervin's position to be one of "cognitive dissonance" because he opposed federal legislation to combat race-based discrimination, but did not do so in harsh, ugly terms. While he once maintained that Americans were entitled to "their prejudices as well as their allergies," he did not seem to be motivated by prejudice himself, but more by his suspicion of federal power. Ervin said he didn't like what the Warren Court "has done to the Constitution."
Meanwhile, Ervin's strict construction of the constitution also made him a liberal hero for his support of civil liberties, his opposition to "no knock" search laws, and the growing intrusions of data banks and lie-detector tests as invasions of privacy. In 1966, Senator Ervin played a major role in the defeat of a constitutional amendment to make prayer in public schools compulsory.
When the Senate voted on the Equal Rights Amendment in 1971, Ervin proposed an amendment that would exempt women from the draft; Ervin's amendment to the ERA overwhelmingly failed.
He got his start in investigative matters, even before Watergate, when in January 1970 it was revealed by Christopher Pyle, an investigator for Ervin's Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, that the U.S. Army was performing domestic investigations on the civilian population. Ervin's further investigations on the matter over the following years, together with the Church Committee inquiries, led to passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (after Ervin had left office).
Ervin gained lasting fame through his stewardship of the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Campaign Practices, also known as the Senate Watergate Committee, from the 1972 presidential election. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield chose Ervin because it was unlikely Ervin was going to run for re-election in 1974, because he had no aspirations beyond his office, because of his knowledge of the law and the Constitution, and because he was an even-keeled, conservative, independent-minded Democrat. President Nixon thought at first that Ervin might potentially be partial to him, but that was not the case.
Later life
Ervin resigned in December 1974, just before his term ended. After retirement, Ervin practiced law, wrote several books, and appeared in various commercials for products. In 1973, Ervin was recorded on CBS Records on the LP record, Senator Sam At Home, which featured tracks of Ervin speaking his mind and telling anecdotes, separated by tracks of him singing popular songs. He also sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water" on Golden Throats 2.
As a lawyer, he served as a co-counsel with Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice PLLC on several high-profile cases, including a successful appeal in Joyner v. Duncan. Ervin died in 1985 at a hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina from complications of emphysema. He was 88 years old.
Legacy
Ervin's office and personal library has been preserved as the "Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr. Library and Museum," which is housed in the Phifer Learning Resource Center at Western Piedmont Community College in his hometown of Morganton, NC.
Since Ervin's retirement, no one has held his former Senate seat for more than one term to this day. It is currently held by Richard Burr.
Sen. Ervin's son, Samuel J. Ervin III, was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by President Jimmy Carter in 1980. His grandson, Sam J. Ervin, IV, was elected to the North Carolina Court of Appeals in 2008.
Another grandson, Robert C. Ervin, was elected as a North Carolina Superior Court Judge for District 25A in 2002.
The Play
In 2001, Steve Bouser, a North Carolina journalist who interviewed Ervin, wrote a one-man play titled Senator Sam. The play is set on Ervin's porch in Morganton during the evening of Richard Nixon's resignation. Sam recalls his life, both personal and political.
The play debuted in Morganton in 2001. In 2005, The Blowing Rock Stage Company in Blowing Rock, NC produced a new production starring Gary Lee Smith that later toured several states.
There is also a one-act version for school audiences.
Quotations
In an interview on William F. Buckley's Firing Line program, Ervin suggested that people in public life need to have more "backbone", and Buckley playfully suggested Gordon Liddy as a model to which Ervin responded, "Well, Gordon Liddy has a little too much backbone. I'll have to admit that I have a sort of sneaking admiration for a fellow like Gordon Liddy that does have an excess of backbone. His backbone exceeds his intelligence, really."
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