Joseph Lister HILL, Congress, AL (1894-1984)

HILL, Joseph Lister, a Representative and a Senator from Alabama; born in Montgomery, Ala., December 29, 1894; attended the public schools and the Starke University School at Montgomery, Ala.; graduated from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa in 1914 and from its law department in 1915; also studied law at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and Columbia University, New York City; admitted to the Alabama bar in 1916 and commenced practice at Montgomery, Ala.; president, Montgomery Board of Education 1917-1922; served in the Army with the Seventeenth and Seventy-first United States Infantry Regiments during the First World War 1917-1919; elected on August 14, 1923, as a Democrat to the Sixty-eighth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of John R. Tyson; reelected to the Sixty-ninth and to the six succeeding Congresses and served from August 14, 1923, to January 11, 1938, when he resigned, having been appointed to the United States Senate on January 10, 1938; chairman, Committee on Military Affairs (Seventy-fifth Congress); subsequently elected to the Senate as a Democrat on April 26, 1938, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Dixie Bibb Graves for the term ending January 3, 1939; reelected in 1938, 1944, 1950, 1956, and again in 1962 and served from January 11, 1938, to January 2, 1969; was not a candidate for reelection in 1968; Democratic whip 1941-1947; chairman, Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments (Seventy-seventh through Seventy-ninth Congresses), Committee on Labor and Public Welfare (Eighty-fourth through Ninetieth Congresses); chairman, National Committee on Biological Research; a strong advocate of health care; the Lister Hill Center at the National Institutes of Health, which he helped create, was named for him in 1968; died in Montgomery, Ala., December 21, 1984; interment in Greenwood Cemetery.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Hamilton, Virginia Van der Veer. Lister Hill: Statesman From the South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987; U.S. Congress. Memorial Addresses for Lister Hill. 99th Cong., 1st sess., 1985. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1985.

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