Background
Alben Barkley, the eldest of John Wilson and Electa Eliza (Smith) Barkley's eight children, was born near Lowes, Graves County, on November 24, 1877.
Alben Barkley, the eldest of John Wilson and Electa Eliza (Smith) Barkley's eight children, was born near Lowes, Graves County, on November 24, 1877.
He attended school in Lowes, Kentucky, between the fall harvest and spring planting. Barkley enrolled at a seminary school, but did not finish his studies before entering Marvin College, a Methodist school in Clinton that accepted younger students, in 1892. The college's president offered him a scholarship that covered his academic expenses in exchange for his work as a janitor. After graduation, Barkley went to Emory College (now part of Emory University) in Oxford, Georgia, the alma mater of several administrators and faculty members at Marvin. During the 1897–1898 academic year, he was active in the debating society and the Delta Tau Delta fraternity, but he could not afford to continue his education and returned to Clinton after the spring semester. Then he continued studying law in the summer of 1902 at the University of Virginia School of Law.
After studying law, he was admitted to the bar in 1901. Barkley later served as prosecuting attorney of McCracken County (1905-1909), and as judge of the McCracken County Court, 1909-1913. He was elected to the national House of Representatives in 1912, serving from 1913 to 1927, and in 1926 was elected to the United States Senate, where he remained from 1927 to 1949, becoming majority leader in 1937. In 1923 Barkley was an unsuccessful candidate for governor of Kentucky. In 1948 he was nominated for vice-president of the United States on the Democratic presidential ticket with President Harry S. Truman and was elected in November. Barkley was chairman of the Kentucky Democratic State Convention in 1918 and again in 1924. Beginning in 1920, he was a delegate to every Democratic presidential nominating convention. In 1932 he advocated both the presidential nomination of Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York, and the repeal of the Prohibition Amendment, which, before its enactment in 1920, he had consistently urged and supported. Though previously known as a moderate conservative, Barkley supported President Roosevelt and his New Deal program. Senator Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas, administration leader in the Senate, died suddenly in the summer of 1937. Competition for the vacancy thus caused lay between Barkley and Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi, leader of the southern Democratic minority in the Senate which opposed much of the President's program of domestic legislation. On July 22, 1937, Barkley was chosen by one vote, largely as the result of a laudatory letter from President Roosevelt addressed to "Dear Alben. " In the next election, in the fall of 1938, Barkley was called upon to lead President Roosevelt's efforts to purge certain members of the House and Senate who had opposed his Supreme Court bill. However, he opposed the President's veto of the tax bill in February 1944. Barkley supported President Roosevelt in his foreign policy and voted for the Neutrality Act of 1939, for the lend-lease program of 1941, and for other similar measures. Barkley supported the reciprocal trade policy and in April 1947 was reelected president of the United States delegation to the Interparliamentary Union at Cairo, Egypt. Barkley supported the Marshall Plan, worked for U. S. recognition of Israel, and opposed the Taft-Hartley labor bill. He resigned from the Senate and was inaugurated as vice-president on Jan. 20, 1949. A supporter of the administration's program, in April 1949 he attended the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty. On November 18, 1949, he married the widowed Mrs. Carleton S. Hadley, with whom he visited Japan and Korea in November 1951. His failure to gain the 1952 Democratic presidential nomination was thought to be due, in part, to his age, then nearly 75 years. His term as vice-president ended on January 20, 1953, when the Eisenhower administration came into office. In 1954 he was elected United States Senator from Kentucky. Always a vigorous campaigner for his party, Barkley was active to the last. He died while making a political speech to the students of Washington and Lee University on April 30, 1956.
On June 23, 1903, he married Dorothy Brower. They had three children: David Murrell Barkley, Marion Frances Barkley and Laura Louise Barkley.