Harley Martin Kilgore (January 11, 1893 – February 28, 1956) was a United States senator from West Virginia.
Biography
He was born on January 11, 1893, in Brown, West Virginia. He was born to Quimby Hugh Kilgore and Laura Jo Kilgore. His father worked as an oil driller and contractor. and from October 1942, he chaired the Subcommittee on War Mobilization of the Military Affairs Committee, otherwise known as the Kilgore Committee, that oversaw U.S. mobilization efforts for World War II. He also helped establish the National Science Foundation in 1950.
Senator Kilgore was West Virginia's favorite-son candidate in 1948 Democratic presidential primaries and won his home state unopposed.
In 1950 Kilgore joined a small group of liberals, including Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, trying to stop the McCarran Act of 1950. The bill was designed to suppress the American Communist Party. Kilgore proposed a substitute bill that would allow the president to lock up subversives without trial in a time of national emergency. The model was the Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The goal was to split the McCarran coalition, but the substitute was instead added to the bill. For years, critics charged that the liberals favored concentration camps. The ploy failed to stop the new law; the Senate voted 57 to 10 to overturn Truman's veto, with Kilgore voting against the bill and in support of the veto. Kilgore did not sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto despite school segregation being legally required in West Virginia prior to Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
Kilgore died on February 28, 1956, aged 63 and was interred in Arlington National Cemetery.
National Science Foundation
In 1942, American manufacturing expert Herbert Schimmel advised Kilgore to form a committee to centralize scientific research done for the war effort. The Kilgore Committee drafted legislation for an Office of Technological Mobilization, which would have power to fund research, share patents and trade secrets, and facilities that could help the war effort. Additionally, the organization would be able to draft scientists and facilities for the war effort.
Following its recommendations based on 1954 hearings, the Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee undertook in 1955 a full-scale inquiry into antitrust policies and monopolies. Harley M. Kilgore (D W. Va.) headed the Subcommittee for which the Senate March 18 voted $200,000 for investigations."