Background
Edward Eugene Cox was born on April 3, 1880 in Mitchell County, Georgia, United States. He was the son of Stephen Edward Cox, a relatively prosperous farmer, and Mary Magnolia Williams Cox.
Edward Eugene Cox was born on April 3, 1880 in Mitchell County, Georgia, United States. He was the son of Stephen Edward Cox, a relatively prosperous farmer, and Mary Magnolia Williams Cox.
He attended public schools in Camilla, the county seat, and received his law degree from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia in 1902.
Cox returned to Camilla to open a law practice. Cox entered politics in 1903, when he was elected mayor of Camilla; in 1912 he became judge of the Georgia Superior Court, Albany Circuit. Cox resigned his judicial position and, after running unsuccessfully for Congress in 1916, returned to private practice in Camilla.
In 1924 Cox was elected to Congress from the Second District in southwestern Georgia; he continued to represent the district for the next twenty-seven years.
During his years of legislative service in Washington, Cox maintained close ties with his constituency a relatively small proportion of the adult population, since poll-tax requirements and other measures effectively disenfranchised the large black population and insured low voter participation. His seat was never seriously challenged, and more often than not he was reelected without question. During his long tenure in the House of Representatives Cox acquired considerable influence as a member of the powerful Rules Committee.
Although he initially supported the New Deal as an emergency program to combat the crisis of the Great Depression, he soon turned against it.
Cox vigorously defended states' rights and free enterprise, except for his support of federal aid to farmers, and he was an ardent critic of civil rights legislation and organized labor.
During World War II, Cox sponsored antistrike legislation designed to curb organized labor while also sponsoring a bill to provide draft exemptions for management. In 1943 he suffered a blow to his prestige when the Federal Communications Commission released documents indicating that he had represented a Georgia radio station before the commission and had received a sizable fee for his services in apparent violation of federal law. The commission forwarded the evidence to the Attorney General, but the case was never prosecuted. Cox struck back by demanding an investigation of the commission and its links to Communist subversive activities. He himself headed the select committee that initiated the investigation, but ultimately he stepped down as chairman as a result of a sustained newspaper attack on his conduct of the hearings.
Despite heavy criticism in the national media, Cox continued on the Rules Committee, which became a graveyard for progressive legislation during the postwar years as Cox rose to become its ranking Democrat.
Cox died in Bethesda, Maryland while he was serving as chairman of a select committee investigating subversion in tax-exempt educational and philanthropic foundations.
Cox was an extreme conservative on virtually all social, economic, and political issues.
He was a vociferous critic of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Cox was also a leader of the southern Democratic opposition to New Deal-Fair Deal reform measures.
He was among the first in Congress to raise the cry of Communist subversion in government and played a formative role in the creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Cox became increasingly alienated from the national Democratic party leadership (particularly after President Harry S. Truman submitted his civil rights program to Congress), and in 1948 he supported Dixiecrat candidate J. Strom Thurmond for president.
He was a member of the U. S. House of Representatives from Georgia's 2nd congressional district.
Although known to friends as a kindly and gracious man, Cox displayed a fiery temper and a propensity for violent language in congressional debates.
In 1902 he married Roberta Patterson, the daughter of a Macon physician. In 1916 his wife died, leaving him with two children. In August 1918, Cox married Grace Pitts Hill, a widow from Cordele, Georgia; they made their home in Camilla and had one child.