Arthur Vivian WATKINS, Congress, UT (1886-1973)

WATKINS, Arthur Vivian, a Senator from Utah; born in Midway, Wasatch County, Utah, December 18, 1886; attended the public schools, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, 1903-1906, and New York University, New York City 1909-1910; graduated from Columbia University Law School, New York City 1912; admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Vernal, Utah; engaged in newspaper work in 1914; assistant county attorney of Salt Lake County 1914-1915; engaged in agricultural pursuits 1919-1925; district judge of the fourth judicial district of Utah 1928-1933; unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination to the Seventy-fifth Congress in 1936; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1946; reelected in 1952 and served from January 3, 1947, to January 3, 1959; was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1958; chairman, Select Committee on the Censure of Joseph McCarthy (Eighty-third Congress), co-chairman, Joint Committee on Navaho-Hopi Indian Administration (Eighty-third Congress), Joint Committee on Immigration and Naturalization Policy (Eighty-third Congress); member of the Indian Claims Commission, Washington, D.C., from August 1959, until retirement in September 1967; author; was a resident of Salt Lake City until he moved to Orem, Utah, in 1973 where he died September 1, 1973; interment in Eastlawn Memorial Hills.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Watkins, Arthur. Enough Rope: The Inside Story of the Censure of Senator Joe McCarthy by his Colleagues. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present