Topic summary
George W. Norris
U.S. House of Representatives
from Nebraska's 5th district
March 4, 1903 – March 3, 1913
July 11, 1861
Independent (1936–1944)
Northern Indiana Law School
George William Norris (July 11, 1861 – September 2, 1944) was an American progressive politician from Nebraska. He served in the United States House of Representatives as a Republican from 1903 to 1913, and in the United States Senate from 1913 to 1943. Disillusioned with the Republican Party, he became an independent in 1936. In the Senate, Norris was the chairman of the powerful Judiciary Committee and the Agriculture and Forestry Committee.
George W. Norris was a leader of progressive and liberal causes in Congress. He is best known as the man behind the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933. Still in operation today, the Tennessee Valley Authority brought electricity to poor rural areas and constructed dams for flood control in the American Southeast. Norris was also the father of Nebraska's unicameral legislature—the only one-house legislature in the United States—and the author of the Twentieth Amendment. He was one of only six senators to vote against U.S. entry into World War I. Norris was known for his populist and pro-labor ideology, his frequent defiance of the Republican Party, his non-interventionist foreign policy, and his intense crusades against what he characterized as "wrong and evil".
President Franklin D. Roosevelt called him "the very perfect, gentle knight of American progressive ideals", and this has been the theme of all his biographers. He is one of eight senators profiled in President John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. A 1957 advisory panel of 160 scholars recommended Norris as the top choice for the five best senators in U.S. history.