During the First World War, Richards served overseas as a private, corporal, sergeant, and second lieutenant in the Trench Mortar Battery, Headquarters Company,
118th Infantry Regiment,
30th Division from 1917 to 1919.
Lawyer and judge Richards graduated from the law department of the
University of South Carolina at Columbia in 1921 and was admitted to the bar the same year, commencing practice in
Lancaster, South Carolina. He served as judge of the probate court of
Lancaster County, South Carolina, from 1923 to 1933.
Congressman Richards was elected as a
Democrat to the
seventy-third Congress and reelected to the eleven succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1933 – January 3, 1957). A confidential 1943 analysis of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee by
Isaiah Berlin for the British
Foreign Office described Richards as having "supported the Administration on foreign policy before and after
Pearl Harbor all the way with the single exception of the vote on lifting belligerent zones for American ships three weeks before Pearl Harbor ... Probably internationalist rather than nationalist in outlook". His voting record was "consistently pro-British". He voted in favor of the 1941 Lend Lease Act and in favor of the 1944 Lend Lease Act. In 1947-8, he served on the
Herter Committee. With this position, Richards held rank of ambassador. Following this, he resided in
Lancaster, South Carolina, and resumed the practice of law. Richards died there on February 21, 1979, and was interred in Liberty Hill Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Liberty Hill, South Carolina. ==References==