Bankhead was born on July 8, 1872, at the
Bankhead plantation in
Lamar County, Alabama, the son of Tallulah James Brockman and John Hollis Bankhead. After earning his law degree in 1893 and practicing law for ten with his brother William, Bankhead was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1903. After Alabama's
grandfather clause, which disenfranchised most black voters, was declared unconstitutional, Bankhead was one of the drafters of Alabama's revised voting law effectively preventing most black voters from registering via a series of tests and poll taxes. Following his controversial win over Heflin in 1930, the Senator from Alabama worked at the passage of various pieces of
New Deal legislation to benefit cotton farmers, including the
Subsistence Homestead Act of 1933, the
Cotton Control Act of 1934 and the parity payment amendments to the
Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. After
World War II began in Europe, Bankhead was an interventionist. He took a "pro-British" stance and favored President
Franklin Roosevelt's
Lend-Lease program. On October 23, 1941, Bankhead voted in favor of additional lend-lease funding to provide more funding to the
British Army. On November 7, 1941, he voted in favor of legislation to amend several sections of the neutrality acts. This vote made it easier for the
United States to provide direct military aid to the
United Kingdom during
World War II. In 1943, he sponsored legislation to exempt "substantially fulltime" farm workers from the draft during
World War II. Bankhead was among twelve nominated at the
1944 Democratic National Convention to serve as
Franklin D. Roosevelt's running mate in the
presidential election that year. He was in third place, with 98 votes, when Bankhead made a surprise withdrawal of his candidacy in favor of his Senate colleague,
Harry S. Truman, who was elected vice president and succeeded to the presidency in 1945. On May 24, 1946, Senator Bankhead suffered a stroke while attending an evening Senate committee meeting. Three weeks later, he died at the
U.S. Naval Hospital in
Bethesda, Maryland. He was the brother of
Speaker of the House William B. Bankhead, and the uncle of actress
Tallulah Bankhead. ==See also==