Highlights from The Dirksen Center

* NEW * Scott W. Lucas: The Nation’s Number One Senator

The 1950 campaign for the U.S. Senate in Illinois pitted Republican challenger Everett M. Dirksen against incumbent Democrat Scott Lucas, Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate. The Illinois Democratic State Central Committee produced a 16-page, professionally illustrated, full-color, cartoon-style brochure on Lucas's behalf. Even today, it is an amazing piece of campaign literature complete with headings set apart from cartoon frames filled with action scenes and dialogue presented in bubbles. The span of subjects is equally impressive. They include depictions of Lucas's ancestors; his early years of a hard-scrabble existence; his education, law practice, and public service; his election first to House, then to Senate, and finally to his leadership position; and his stance on issues.

Lucas, not Dirksen, could afford the extravagance of such a brochure. In selecting this option, the campaign reviewed several examples of comic books, including one devoted to Harry Truman's life and career. They even consulted research on the effectiveness of comic books. For example, a study entitled, "Adult America's Interest in Comics," reported these findings: four out of every five urban adults read comics; the reading of comics was widespread among all levels of society; people who read comics generally spent more time listening to the radio, read more magazines, and attended more movies than people who did not; a much higher percentage of adults with a college education read comics than those limited to a grade school education; one out of four adults was a present reader of comic books.

Lucas's campaign selected Commercial Comics, Inc. to produce the piece. The contract called for a press run of one million at a cost of $13,250. The shipment weighed 50,000 pounds and occupied 1,600 cubic feet.

Find the Scott W. Lucas brochure at: http://www.congresslink.org/lucasbrochure/index.html

The Dirksen Center has authored a lesson plan to complement the Scott W. Lucas brochure.

This lesson asks students to (1) identify the messages the comic book intended to convey; (2) describe the qualities of the candidate the book emphasized; (3) evaluate the effectiveness of the comic book approach in depicting those qualities; and (4) prepare a comic book storyboard for one of today's candidates.

Find The Comic Book Campaign: The Illinois U.S. Senate Race, 1950 at: http://www.congresslink.org/print_lp_lucas.htm

* NEW *Congressional Research Awards Recipients Announced

Each year The Dirksen Congressional Center invites proposals for grants to fund research on congressional leadership and the U.S. Congress. The Center, named for the late Senate Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen, is a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to the study of Congress and its leaders. Since 1978, the Congressional Research Awards (formerly the Congressional Research Grants) program has invested more than $881,041 to support over 414 projects.

The Center received 91 proposals for the 2012 round of competition – the second highest number in The Center's history.

Awards and recipients were announced in April 2012. Take a look at the long list of winners since 1978: http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_grants_CRAs_table.htm

Read the 2012 Congressional Research Awards abstracts: http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_grants_CRAs.htm#Grntrecipient00

To learn more about the Congressional Research Awards visit: http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_grants_CRAs.htm

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Research Grants | Congress in the Classroom

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Congressional Timeline

For each Congress beginning with the 73rd (1933-35), this timeline features session dates, partisan composition, the presidential administration, a list of congressional leaders, and notable legislation passed...More

73rd Congress: March 9, 1933 - June 18, 1934

73rd Congress: March 9, 1933, to June 18, 1934

A meeting of the legislative branch of the U.S. federal government. The first session of Congress, known as the "Hundred Days," took place before the regular seating and was called by President Roosevelt specifically to pass two acts. March 9, 1933, The Emergency Banking Act...More

74th Congress: January 3, 1935 - June 20, 1936

The Soil and Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act allowed the government to pay farmers to reduce production so as to conserve soil, prevent erosion, and accomplish other minor goals. It was a piece of legislation passed in response to the Supreme Court's declaration....More

75th Congress: January 5, 1937 - June 16, 1938

In 1938 the Civil Aeronautics Act transferred federal responsibilities for non-military aviation from the Bureau of Air Commerce to a new, independent agency, the Civil Aeronautics Authority. The legislation also gave the authority the power to regulate airline fares and to determine...More

76th Congress: January 3, 1939 - January 3, 1941

On November 4, 1939, the Neutrality Act of 1939 was passed, allowing for arms trade with belligerent nations on a cash and carry basis, thus in effect ending the arms embargo. ...More

77th Congress: January 3, 1941, to December 16, 1942

The Lend-Lease Act was signed into law on March 11, 1941, a year and a half after the outbreak of the European war in September 1939, but six months before the U.S. entrance into the war in December 1941. It was called An Act Further to Promote the Defense of the United States...More

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Dirksen Center Special Projects

Dirksen Center Special Projects is a series of multi-media projects rich in Web-based resources on a variety of topics from civil rights to editorial cartoons. We have posted them where it makes sense within our Web suite. But as the suite has grown, we suspect it has become more difficult to find these special projects.

To make them stand out, we have created the Dirksen Center Special Projects web page to host links to all our special projects listed below.

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