Background
Andrew Jackson May was born on June 24, 1875 in Langley, Kentucky. He was the son of John May and Dorcas Conley.
Andrew Jackson May was born on June 24, 1875 in Langley, Kentucky. He was the son of John May and Dorcas Conley.
He was educated in Floyd County schools and taught in the common schools of Floyd and Magoffin counties before entering Southern Normal University Law School, Huntington, Tenn. He graduated in 1898.
After his graduation he was admitted to the bar, and, soon after beginning the practice of law, entered politics. In 1901 May was elected Floyd County prosecuting attorney, and four years later he was reelected. His terms as Floyd County attorney were followed, in 1925-1926, by service as a special judge of the circuit court of Johnson and Martin counties. During the intervening period he embarked on a business career, eventually becoming president of the Beaver Valley Coal Company. In 1930, May was elected to Congress from the Tenth District of Kentucky. He was reelected to each succeeding Congress until 1946. His arrival in Washington, a full term before many other Democrats were elected in 1932, enabled May to gain coveted seniority. In the Seventy-third Congress (1933 - 1935) he was sixth-ranking Democrat on the House Military Affairs Committee; in 1938 he succeeded Lister Hill of Alabama as chairman of that committee. Since he had not been elected to Congress as a New Deal Democrat, May did not always feel obliged to support President Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies. In 1933 he opposed Roosevelt's economy measures, and later led the opposition to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). May never hesitated to take a stand opposing or even embarrassing to the Roosevelt administration. In January 1942, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he called for the court-martial of army and navy commanders in Hawaii, and went so far as to suggest that "when General Short and Admiral Kimmel come up for court-martial, I'm in favor of holding a shooting match. " That same year he voted with three other Democrats and nine Republicans on the Military Affairs Committee to submit a report charging widespread inefficiency in war production. But May's influence in Congress ended abruptly. Wartime bribery charges destroyed his public career. In 1946 a committee headed by Senator James M. Mead of New York began its investigation of war contracts. Repeatedly the committee tried to induce May to appear before it to answer questions about his association with a multimillion-dollar Illinois munitions combine headed by Henry M. Garsson. War contracts to the Garsson brothers and their associates, obtained with May's influence, involved $78 million. May was under subpoena to appear when, on July 25, 1946, he suffered a heart attack. After a week or so in a hospital, he returned to Kentucky and ran for reelection, despite charges pending against him. He was defeated. Late in 1946 the Mead Committee turned its investigation over to the Justice Department, and on January 23, 1947, May and the Garsson brothers were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to defraud the government. May pleaded not guilty to this and bribery charges, but testimony during the forty-seven-day trial revealed that he had received more than $53, 000 in bribes and that some of the payments were made by the Garsson companies through an affiliate, the Cumberland Land Company in Prestonburg, Ky. , of which May was an agent. Witnesses at the trial included General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, and Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, who testified that May had come to him seeking wartime favors for the Garssons and their friends. On July 3, 1947, all three men were convicted on conspiracy charges, May of taking bribes, and the Garssons of furnishing them. Repeated appeals to higher courts failed; the Supreme Court refused for a second time to review the cases; and in December 1949, May began serving a sentence of eight months to two years. His request for reduction in sentence, based on poor health, was denied, as was an application for parole; but in September 1950 he was released from Ashland Federal Correctional Institute for his "outstanding institutional record. " In June 1952, a Kentucky court of appeals restored May to his standing as a lawyer, and he resumed practice in Prestonburg, where he spent his remaining years. He continued to protest his innocence but stated that he was not embittered by his experience. In December 1952, President Harry S. Truman granted him a full pardon, restoring his citizenship rights. May died on September 6, 1959 in Prestonburg, Ky.
The journalist Arthur Krock once described May as a moderate, but it would be more accurate to view him as a moderate among southern Democrats and, as such, a conservative. His conservatism was reflected in his views on both domestic and foreign affairs. He spoke out forcefully against what he regarded as left-wing tendencies in the New Deal and in the late 1930's was an advocate of increased military expenditures. From the beginning May was an opponent of TVA, referring to it as "a monstrosity out to gobble up the South. " All enabling legislation for TVA had to pass through the Military Affairs Committee, a situation that put him in a strategic position to limit its growth. From 1933 to 1939 he was checked by the power fulpro-TVA faction in Congress, but in the latter year he won a victory over administration forces, sponsoring a bill passed by the House that put drastic curbs on TVA. This measure cut back a Senate-authorized $100 million bond issue to $61. 5 million, limiting future TVA operations to certain counties in Alabama and Mississippi (in addition to areas it already served), and imposing on future agency activities restrictions that, according to TVA supporters, would completely wreck the "power yardstick" idea. May seems to have been motivated in part by fear that TVA would spread into Kentucky. He clearly stated the purpose of his bill by saying it "would go a long way in restoring confidence of the public in the future of the electric-utility industry. " May's bill was modified in conference committee, but TVA emerged more severely restricted than ever before. He continued to attack the TVA at every opportunity, charging that John M. Carmody, Federal Works Agency administrator, and David E. Lilienthal, TVA chairman, were leftists out to begin a utility war against private companies. May led the battle to force the people of the Tennessee Valley to compensate for the taxes lost when private utility companies in the area became government owned. In 1940 he again tried to hold up appropriations for the TVA and to place it under the jurisdiction of the General Accounting Office, but this attempt was defeated.
To bring the army up to full mechanized strength, he advocated diverting $500 million from river and harbor improvements and flood control programs to military expenditures. More and more after 1940 his views coincided with the preparedness and interventionist views of the Roosevelt administration. He first suggested relaxation and finally, in late 1939, urged repeal of the Johnson Debt Default Act, "since England is now fighting our battle, " but his bill for repeal died with the introduction of the lend-lease bill. He tried to have this bill sent to his Military Affairs Committee for hearings, but it went instead to Foreign Affairs. He nonetheless remained a staunch supporter of the Lend-Lease Act, which was approved by Congress in March 1941.
member of the U. S. House of Representatives
In view of the shadow cast on his reputation by his prison sentence, May retained a remarkable resilience, although he never tried to regain his former status in the public sector.
On July 17, 1901, he married Julia Grace Mayo; they had three children.