Jere Leon Cooper was born on July 20, 1893 on a farm in Dyer County, Tennessee, United States. He was the son of Joseph William Cooper and Viola May Hill. The family moved to Dyersburg, the county seat, where his father was employed in the cotton-oil mill.
Education
In 1914 Cooper received the Bachelor of Laws degree from Cumberland University, a law school in Lebanon, Tennessee, requiring a one-year course of study for the degree.
Career
He was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1915 and began to practice in the Dyersburg law office of Ewell Weakley. On June 23, 1917, Cooper enlisted in the Second Infantry Regiment of the Tennessee National Guard. He was commissioned a first lieutenant and transferred, with his company, to Company K of the 119th Infantry, 20th Division of the United States Army, where he saw action in France and Belgium. He was promoted to captain in July 1918 and was discharged on April 2, 1919.
Cooper's political interests were heightened when he returned to resume his law practice. His organization of the local American Legion post led to involvement in state and national Legion affairs.
In 1921 he was elected state commander of the Tennessee American Legion, and the following year he served on the National Executive Committee. He was also elected to the Dyersburg City Council and was appointed to the school board.
In 1920 he began an eight-year term as city attorney, and in 1924 he managed the successful senatorial campaign of General Lawrence D. Tyson. In 1928 Cooper trounced four Democratic primary contenders for the Ninth District congressional nomination; he went on to defeat his Republican opponent in the November election by 16, 967 votes. Cooper represented the Ninth District (later the Eighth) from 1929 until his death in 1957. As a freshman congressman he was assigned to the Flood Control Committee and later served on the elections and veterans affairs committees.
A vacancy on the House Ways and Means Committee in 1932 led to Cooper's appointment over several senior members. The New York Times later described his record as one of "fairly consistent support for New and Fair Deal Measures. " He was at the time, however, much less in favor of reform. When the House heard testimony in 1935 on the Rayburn-Wheeler holding bill, which was opposed by the power companies, Cooper charged that the TVA was "distributing propaganda among the schools. " He later reversed his position.
In March 1939 Cooper was appointed by Chairman Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina to a special Ways and Means Subcommittee on tax legislation.
In 1945, as vice-chairman of the congressional committee to investigate the Pearl Harbor disaster, he traveled to Hawaii.
On August 10, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Cooper to a seventeen-member bipartisan committee on foreign economic policy.
Cooper died in Dyersburg and was succeeded as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee by Democrat Wilbur D. Mills of Arkansas.
Achievements
Politics
As the Ways and Means Committee ''tax-brain'' he persuaded to adopt a "pay-as-you-go" tax measure.
In the 81th Congress he supported the subversive activities control bill; in 1948, and again in 1950, he supported the tidelands oil bill.
During a 1954 television appearance with leading Democrats, Cooper responded to a plea by Eisenhower for passage of the pending tax law by pledging to seek elimination of a provision giving special advantages to "those fortunate enough to own corporation stock. "
As chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Cooper fought for a three-year extension of the Reciprocal Trade Program, of which he was a long-time supporter, by advocating the Hull Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. He also drafted a bill to extend trade agreements and to increase presidential power in tariff regulation.
He urged that the United States move "swiftly to liberalize . .. trade policies and to seek reduction of trade barriers throughout the free world generally to ease the dollar gap. "
Membership
Personality
Newsweek described him as "another party wheelhorse whose slow, verbose questioning of witnesses often resembles a filibuster. "
Connections
Cooper married Mary Lucille Rankley, a history teacher, on December 30, 1930; they had one son, who died when he was sixteen. Cooper's wife died on October 2, 1935, and he never remarried.