Walter F. George

Walter Franklin George
United States Senator for Georgia
In office November 22, 1922 – January 3, 1957
Preceded by	Rebecca Latimer Felton (interim for Thomas E. "Tom" Watson)
Succeeded by	Herman Talmadge
President pro tempore of the United States Senate
In office January 5, 1955 – January 3, 1957
Preceded by	Styles Bridges of New Hampshire
Succeeded by	Carl Hayden of Arizona
Associate Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court
In office 1917–1922
Born	January 29, 1878 Preston, Webster County Georgia, USA.
Died	August 4, 1957 (aged 79) Vienna, Dooly County, Georgia
Resting place	Vienna City Cemetery
Nationality	American
Political party	Democrat
Spouse(s)	Lucy Heard George (1882–1958)
Children	Heard Franklin George (1904–1988) Joseph Marcus George (1911–1943) Parents: Sarah Louwicie Stapleton (1847–1906) and Robert Theodoric George
Alma mater	Mercer University Mercer Law School (Macon, Georgia)

Walter Franklin George (January 29, 1878 – August 4, 1957) was a United States Senator from Georgia from 1922 until 1957. He declined to seek reelection in 1956 and died five months after leaving the Senate. During his last two years in office, he was the Senate President pro tempore, the longest-serving senator in the majority party.

George was born to sharecroppers near rural Preston in Webster County, just west of Americus, Georgia. He graduated in 1900 from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. After competing law school at Mercer in 1901, he launched his private practice of law. From 1917 to 1922, he was a justice on the Georgia Supreme Court but resigned to run for the U.S. Senate. Considered a Conservative Democrat, he still supported most of the domestic and foreign policies of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Exceptions to this support was his neutrality in the 1932 Democratic nomination contest and five years later his strong opposition to FDR's "court packing" plan. In 2021, President Joe Biden appointed a commission to "study" a renewal of Roosevelt's "court packing" plan, which would have allowed up to fifteen justices if each member over the age of seventy did not then retire from the bench

George (right) with Richard Russell, Jr. (left).

As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee from 1941 to 1946, he also supported FDR's policies during World War II. Twice for brief periods, he was the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He signed the Southern Manifesto, which voiced House and Senate opposition to the 1954 United States Supreme Court legal opinion, Brown v. Board of Education, a decree that outlawed school segregation in the South. George still declined to renounce Brown publicly. He was succeeded by former Governor Herman Talmadge, who served four Senate terms until his own defeat in the 1980 general election by the Republican Mack Mattingly.

George was highly regarded in both political parties and by liberals and conservatives. He is also remember for his support of vocational education and fiscal conservatismc Formerly an isolationist in foreign entanglements, he became with the war a supporter of FDR's branch of internationalism. He worked for adoption of the United Nations Charter in 1945. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas attended George's funeral in Vienna, Georgia. President Dwight Eisenhower named George as special ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels, Belgium, a post that he filled for only six months because of serious illness. Eisenhower ordered flags at all U.S. federal buildings lowered to half-mast in George's memory.