The Congressional Hall of Shame: James Traficant

Posted on June 28, 2026 by Ken Dowell

A vote to expel a member of Congress has been a rare occasion. And in even the most obvious cases, there have been congressmen who voted against it. In 1861 when John Bullock Clark became the first congressman to be expelled, 45 reps opposed the move even though Clark was actively fighting for the confederacy in the Civil War. One hundred sixty-two years later, when George Santos got the boot, 114 reps wanted to keep him around despite the clear evidence he was a total fraud. Yet when the vote to expel Ohio’s Congressman James Traficant came to the House floor on July 22, 2002, the tally was 420-1.

That’s what happens after being convicted of 10 felony counts, including taking bribes, filing false tax returns, racketeering, and forcing his congressional staff to perform chores at his farm and houseboat.

Traficant was initially elected to Congress in 1984. He represented Ohio’s 17th Congressional district which included his hometown of Youngstown. In Congress “Mr. Traficant was an anti-establishment eccentric in the buttoned-up capital, and the behavior that was derided on Capitol Hill made him a favorite among his mostly blue-collar voters at home. He opposed free-trade agreements, pushed for ‘Buy American’ requirements in spending bills and raged against foreign aid.” (Elena Schneider, New York Times, Sept. 27, 2014)

He was no stranger to official hanky-panky. “When he was a local sheriff in 1982, the government accused him of taking bribes from mobsters, having caught him on tape. Acting as his own lawyer, Mr. Traficant convinced a jury that he had been running a sting operation. Riding a wave of publicity, he was elected to Congress in 1984.” (Alison Mitchell, New York Times, July 25, 2002)

But his corruption would catch up to him. The AP broke the news on April 11, 2002:

“Rep. James Traficant Jr. was convicted yesterday of taking bribes and kickbacks from businessmen and his own staff after a raucous and often-farcical trial in which the fiery congressman insisted on serving as his own lawyer.

“Among the charges against him this time were filing false tax returns and receiving gifts and free labor from businessmen in return for his political help. He also took cash kickbacks – and free labor on his houseboat and at his horse farm – from members of his staff.

“Prosecutors called 55 witnesses to testify against Traficant and submitted as evidence bank records showing large cash deposits. They also produced a briefcase stuffed with $24,500 in cash that one witness said the congressman asked him to hide.

“Former Traficant staff member Allen Sinclair testified that he was hired under an agreement that he give his boss $2,500 in cash each month.

“In addition, Traficant had office workers bale hay, fix farm equipment and build a corral at his farm.”

A few months later, his long run in the House of Representatives came to an abrupt end:

“In a near unanimous vote, a grim and subdued House tonight expelled Representative James A. Traficant Jr. a maverick Ohio Democrat who was convicted in April on 10 counts of bribery, racketeering and corruption.

“Known for his bombastic, sometimes erratic, one-minute speeches on the House floor, Mr. Traficant had promised the performance of his life when the House moved against him.

“‘When I walk on the floor for the final execution I’ll wear a denim suit,’ he proclaimed recently, ‘I’ll walk in there like Willie Nelson, John Wayne, Will Smith, ‘Men in Black,’ James Brown. Maybe do a Michael Jackson moon walk.’

“For all his threats to be unruly, Mr. Traficant was subdued, arguing in a rambling defense that one of the witnesses against him had ‘lied through his teeth’ and that the government had been out to get him and had pressured witnesses to turn on him. ‘I’ll go to jail,’ he thundered, waving his arms. ‘But I’ll be damned that I’ll be pressured by a government that pressured these witnesses to death.’” (Alison Mitchell, New York Times, July 25, 2002)

He did go to jail. And when he did we found out something else about Traficant. “Ex-congressman James A. Traficant Jr.’s famous mop-top is a rug. Some people thought the hair was too unruly to be a toupee. But Sheriff Drew Alexander said the newly sentenced Traficant had to remove the hairpiece this week during a routine search while being booked into the Summit County Jail.” (CBS News, Oct. 29, 2002)

In jail, he again ran for Congress. Running as an independent in 2002, he lost to a former aide, Tim Ryan. He would go on to serve seven years of an eight year jail sentence. He was released in 2009.

After his release, AP reporter Meghan Barr caught up with him in Boardman, Ohio (May 2, 2010):

“Jim Traficant is back from prison, and people are taking notice.  The hero of the Tea Party movement is seated in a corner booth at his favorite diner, his famous toupee sticking out above the wooden slats like a warning. That mop of hair, possibly more famous than the man himself, tells the regulars bent over coffee mugs all they need to know: Jimbo has entered the building.

“This is the man who once compared the U.S. Congress to a bunch of prostitutes — then publicly apologized to prostitutes for comparing them to the U.S. Congress. This is the man who, while defending himself against a House ethics committee, told lawmakers that he would like to ‘kick them in the crotch.’ This is a man who, according to his friends, claims that his ancestors are from Transylvania, making him a distant relation of Dracula.

“Above all, though, this is the man who will decide, come Monday, whether he will yet again make a run for Congress, this time as a felon who was convicted of racketeering and bribery and as an independent proudly bearing the mantle of the tea party. The notion of a convicted felon running for Congress might seem slightly preposterous. But here, in the gloomy ruins of shuttered steel mills, the name Traficant reminds people of better times.”

Traficant did make another run for his old Congressional seat. In 2010 he again lost to Ryan, getting 16% of the vote.

Traficant died on Sept. 23, 2014, a few days after an accident on his farm near Youngstown. A tractor he was driving flipped over and landed on top of him. It was later determined he died from asphyxiation.

It is the people with connections to Youngstown who best put his life and career in context. Marilyn Geewax of NPR (Sept. 27, 2014) wrote:

“Few outside of Youngstown will mourn his passing. Many will laugh at the memory of his oft-used command on the House floor: ‘Beam me up, Mr. Speaker.’

“The bad toupee, the denim suit with the high-water pants, the bombastic style; he was like a profane cartoon character. When he was in Congress and I was a reporter on the Hill, people would laugh if I mentioned I was from Youngstown. My parents’ congressman was a punch line.

“In fact, he was much worse than that. He was a crook.”

Writing for Politico (Sept. 27, 2014) Vince Guerrieri wrote:

“My tales – about a judge who got disbarred, ran for mayor and won; a prosecutor who was the subject of an attempted assassination and his predecessor, who did time for corruption; a group of gangsters who incorporated their own municipality for the express purposes of hiding a brazenly-operated illegal gambling casino from local law enforcement – were too far-fetched to anyone who’d never lived in the steel town on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border. 

“But James A. Traficant Jr., a man who once had his salary garnished by the Internal Revenue Service for failing to report a bribe by organized crime figures on his income tax – was the living embodiment of every yarn spun about the region and its residents. He was the Congressman you’d call from central casting – if Quentin Tarantino was directing the movie.”

So who was the one congressman who voted no on the resolution to ditch Traficant. The one in the 420-1 final tally. It was Gary A. Condit of California. He had already lost in a primary one month earlier after disclosures that he had an affair with a young intern who gone missing and was later found to have been murdered. 

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The Congressional Hall of Shame: Theodore G. Bilbo

Posted on June 21, 2026 by Ken Dowell

Over its 250 year history the United States Congress has housed an untold number of racists. There are still some in place today. But few if any compare to the vileness of Mississippi Senator Theodore G. Bilbo.

Bilbo served two terms as governor of Mississippi. He was elected to the Senate in 1934, re-elected in 1940 and again in 1946. But he never served his third term. His seating was held up as the Senate investigated charges of election interference and inappropriate payments from contractors. Before that inquiry was completed Bilbao succumbed to cancer in 1947.

His career long advocacy of white supremacy included:

— Membership in the KKK in the 1920’s.

— Authoring a book titled Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization.

— He once criticized the Mississippi National Guard for preventing a lynching (1927).

— He proposed a bill in the Senate to deport 12 million Black Americans to Liberia.

— He filibustered to try to prevent the Senate from passing an anti-lynching bill.

— He encouraged white Mississippians to prevent Blacks from voting.

His prejudices went beyond just Blacks. He once argued in a lettter to General MacArthur after World War II that all Japanese should be sterilized. The New York Times ran this United Press story on July 23, 1945:

“Representative Vito Marcantonio of New York demanded today that Senator Theodore G. Bilbo of Mississippi apologize to a Brooklyn woman for calling her ‘My Dear Dago,’ but Bilbo’s reply was ‘Hell, no.’”

In fact, his bigotry was so legendary that Pete Seeger sang a song about it:

There were a number of other unethical checkpoints in Bilbo’s career.

— In 1910, as a State Senator, he admitted to taking a bribe to change his vote on choosing a candidate to fill a vacant Senate seat. The Mississippi Senate voted 28-10 to expel him, one vote shy of the 3/4ths needed

— In 1923 he made the announcement that he was running for Governor from his jail cell where he was doing time for contempt of court for refusing to testify in a case involving a sex scandal with the current governor.

— He was accused of taking bribes from contractors, one of which was a Christmas present of a Cadillac.

This election year incident, described below in the Charlotte News (June 26, 1946), proved to be the flashpoint that raised doubts about whether Bilbo should remain in the Senate.

“A few days ago a Negro veteran attempted to exercise his franchise by registering for the Democratic Primary in that state: he was, according to his uncontested story, not only refused but beaten. The incident has served as the springboard for one of the most remarkable statements yet to come out of a political campaign distinguished for its demagogy. Senator Theodore Bilbo has called on ‘every red-blooded Anglo-Saxon man in Mississippi to resort to any means to keep hundreds of Negroes from the polls in the July 2 primary. If you don’t know what that means you are just not up on your persuasive measures.’ The Senator’s statement was broadcast.”

Freedom House, an organization founded by Eleanor Roosevelt and Wendell Wilkie, was quick to call for Bilbo’s censure.

“In an open letter to Senator Alben W. Barkley, majority leader, the board of directors of Freedom House urged yesterday that the United States Senate, when it reconvenes, should entertain a resolution censuring Senator Theodore G. Bilbo of Mississippi, ‘so that all Americans may be assured that the United States Senate disassociates itself from the shameful acts of one of its members.’ The letter condemned ‘the insulting letters which he has written to loyal Americans who differ with him and, above all, his open scorn of American public opinion and human decency.’ It suggested that the resolution of censure should be a prelude to removal proceedings if Senator Bilbo should ‘persist in using his high office to undermine the American way of life.’ (New York Times, Aug. 9, 1945)

There were even some folks in Mississippi who wanted to see Bilbo unseated.

“Over 50 Negro and white qualified voters of Mississippi, including Editors, Educators, Ministers and Veterans filed today a sworn complaint in Washington D. C., with a Special Committee to Investigate Campaign Matters, charging that Senator Bilbo’s election in the Democratic primary for United States Senator was ‘tainted with fraud, duress and illegality’ and ‘acheived by force and violence and the use of criminal, extra legal and illegal tactics’ and asking that he be denied his seat in the Senate for the new term commencing next January. The original was filed with the Special Committee to Investigate Senatorial Campaign Expenditures and a duplicate was filed with the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee. The complaint charges that Senator Bilbo ‘conducted an aggressive and ruthless campaign.’” (The Black Dispatch, Oklahoma City, Sept. 28, 1946)

On  Jan. 1, 1947, the AP reported: “Senator Hocy (D-NC) said today an agreement had been reached between Theodore G. Bilbo (D) and Senate leaders on a compromise: which would grant the Mississippian his senatorial salary but deny him his seat temporarily.

“Hocy told a reporter that Republican and Democratic leaders have agreed and Bilbo has acquiesced. This procedure which would permit 35 other senators-elect to take their oaths while Bilbo’s case remains in abeyance. The agreement would permit Bilbo to appear in the Senate in his own defense when charges are heard against him that he profited by dealing with war contractors and prevented Negroes from voting in the Mississippi primary. But the Mississippian would be denied the oath of office and could not vote on his own case, while the charges are pending.”

By that time Bilbo’s cancer had already been diagnosed. He remained defiant: “Debt-free and author of a new book setting forth the creed of ‘white supremacy’ so dear to his heart, Senator Theodore G. Bilbo is now resting at his ‘dream house’ in Poplarville with assurances pouring in that his ‘popularity’ in this State has increased immeasurably. Senator Bilbo has served notice publicly that nothing will deter him from demanding his Senate seat ‘immediately’ after surgeons have pronounced him ‘fit for duty.’ However, there seems little doubt that at least another three months must elapse before he receives a ‘medical mandate.’ The attitude of Mississippians in general was well illustrated this week when the State Legislature, meeting in extraordinary session, received resolutions in both branches calling upon the United States Senate to seat Mr. Bilbo in recognition of the constitutional right of the Magnolia State to have national representation ‘of its own choosing.’ (New York Times, March 9, 1947)

The ‘fit for duty’ pronouncement never came. He passed away on Aug. 21, 1947. Here are two very different eulogies. The first is from the Jackson Clarion-Ledger (Aug. 23, 1947)

“Theodore G. Bilbo, twice Governor of Mississippi by the votes of the people, three times elected to the United States Senate by Mississippi Democrats, ‘stormy petrel’ of Mississippi politics for 35 years, one of the most colorful figures in the State’s history, last perhaps of the factional chieftains, a man of many enemies and many weaknesses but who was able to hold the loyalty of thousands of Mississippians of two generations, is dead. 

“The manner in which Theodore G. Bilbo, through the last year of his life, fought the deadly cancer, fought and endured pain and mutilation, fought and planned to keep on fighting those who barred him without trial from the Senate seat to which Mississippi Democrats elected him, won for him the respect and admiration of thousands of Mississippians who had never been numbered among his personal friends or political supporters. His enemies, including groups which are the enemies of the social and political institutions cherished by Mississippi Democrats, attacked without pity, moved to bar him from his Senate seat, even as he was having to summon strength and courage to fight the deadly cancer which had appeared in his mouth and throat. His answer was a challenge.”

The Northwest Enterprise, Seattle, (Aug. 27, 1947) had a different take:

“The 70 years of his lifetime have been 70 years of obvious, shameful degeneracy for the South. It is fitting that death should remove him, like an obscene and putrid blot from the face of the South at the very time it appears to be trying to shake itself free of degenerating influences and rise to the level of the rest of the nation. No man could tell the lies, could wallow in the profanity, could intoxicate and excite himself with the obscenities Theodore Bilbo directed against the Negro race unless he were a degenerate. We submit that Theodore Bilbo’s hatred of Negroes was linked with the rest of his vulgar nature, his red galluses and red neckties, his gaudy, diamond-studded stickpins, to form a personality repulsive to decency, unhealthy, unclean and paranoic. It should be to the everlasting shame of the nation that it tolerated an unmanageable, obscene mad man in one of the highest offices of the land.”

The last word on Bilbo would fall to a state house clerk in Jackson:

“Mystery solved: The top administrator in the Mississippi House says he unilaterally made the decision to take a statue of a racist former Gov. Theodore Bilbo off public display and put it into storage. 

“House clerk Andrew Ketchings spoke to reporters Wednesday, answering a question that has been all the buzz at the state Capitol: Where’s Bilbo? 

“He said a work crew moved the Bilbo statue on a Saturday in October, at a cost of about $4,000 to $5,000, paid by public money. It is now covered by a fire-resistant blanket, in a large closet behind one of the Capitol elevators.” (Emily Wagster Pettus, AP, Feb. 9, 2022)

(All photos from the Library of Congress public domain collection.)

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The Congressional Hall of Shame: B.H. Roberts

Posted on June 14, 2026 by Ken Dowell

Brigham Henry Roberts (usually known as B.H. Roberts) was elected to the House of Representatives from the state of Utah in 1899. Roberts was the president of the First Council of the Seventy of the Church of Latter Day Saints, a position he would hold for forty+ years. Over the course of his career he wrote two biographies, a novel and numerous works about Mormonism. He served as a chaplain in the military. But he had one problem. Or maybe you could call it three problems: Sarah Smith Roberts, Celia Dibble Roberts, and Margaret Curtis Shipp Roberts. He would never be allowed to take his congressional seat.

Reaction to the news of Roberts election was quickly forthcoming. A pamphlet produced by an organization called the League for Social Service and published in the Scranton Tribune (Nov. 1, 1899) under the headline “Roberts Must Walk the Plank” explained why:

“1. The said B.H. Roberts is an avowed polygamist, having at least three wives.

“2. The said B.H. Roberts has married all his polygamous wives since the Edmunds Anti-polygamy law of 1882, or since the Congressional Anti-polygamy law of 1862, and hence his marriages have all been consummated in open and willful defiance of law, as well as in willful defiance of the sense of morality of the American people. 

“3. The said B.H. Roberts was convicted of living with plural wives prior to the amnesty proclamation of President Benjamin Harrison, January 4th, 1893, and of President Grover Cleveland, September 25th, 1894, for which offense he served a term of imprisonment, to which he was sentenced on May 1st, 1889.

“4. Part of the penalty for living with plural wives, as prescribed by the Edmunds law of 1882 (see 8th section of said law) and reaffirmed by the Edmunds-Tucker law of 1887, is disqualification to vote or to hold office as an American citizen.

 “5. The said B.H. Roberts has confessedly lived with plural wives and has begotten polygamous children since November 1st, 1890.”

The pamphlet goes on the list another 17 reasons to keep Roberts  out of the House before concluding:

“Upon such grave issue as is herein involved every true American citizen will expect the House of Representatives to stand uncompromisingly for honesty, for morality, for the Christian home, and for our free institutions, by seeing to it that B.H. Roberts is not permitted to have a voice in our national legislation for a single day, or even for an hour.“

Roberts married his first wife, Sarah Smith, in 1878. His second wife, Celia Dibble came along in 1884. He  had seven children with Smith, eight with Dibble. At times he moved families to Colorado to avoid “co-habitation” charges. He was in 1889 charged with unlawful co-habitation and was sent to prison where he served five months. After he got out in 1890 he took on his third wife Margaret Curtis Shipp.

The American Baptist Home Mission Society added their two cents with this resolution (San Francisco Examiner, June 1, 1899)

“Other men in public life may be wicked, but they are not flaunting their sin in the face of the American people and glorying in their shame as the highest social ideal. We call upon all good people everywhere to insist that their Representatives in Congress use all honorable means to unseat Mr. Roberts. For his retention in legislative halls while practicing that for which a few years ago he was incarcerated in the penitentiary will be regarded by the Mormon people as the very seal of heaven upon their system of marriage, which, like a monster octopus, is reaching out everywhere with its blighting touch of death and has already filled every valley in Utah with uncounted floods of tears, with broken hearts innumerable, and with forgotten graves.”

The Michigan congressional delegation needed no further convincing (Lansing State Journal, Jan. 28, 1899):

“Whereas, A pure and righteous family is of the supremest importance to the welfare of the nation, and 

“Whereas, One of the darkest blots upon the history of our country has been the existence of polygamy within our territory, which the good citizenship of the nation has attempted for many years to stamp out, by religious and educational effort and by statutes of the national Legislature, especially those known as the Edmunds Law of 1882, and the Edmunds Tucker law of 1887, and by the operation of the courts, and 

“Whereas, B.H. Roberts who has been elected to the House of Representatives of the United States from the State of Utah is a confessed polygamist and has stated, May, 1898, ‘Polygamy is not adultery.’ It ‘must be not only not bad but positively good, pure and holy,’ and 

“Whereas, The admission of B. H. Roberts to a seat in the United States House of Representatives would be an encouragement to the polygamists whose evil practices the nation has been long striving to suppress, and 

“Whereas, The United States House of Representatives is the judge of the qualifications of its own members according to section 5, of article 1, of the constitution of the United States, therefore it is hereby 

“Resolved, By the House (the Senate concurring), That we express to the Representatives in Congress from the various congressional districts of Michigan, that in our judgment for B.H. Roberts to be permitted to take his seat as a member of the Congress of the United States would be in conflict with all those standards of high civilization, for which our nation stands, an offense to the good citizenship of the nation and contrary to sound public policy, and we recommend to the representatives in Congress from the State of Michigan that for these reasons they vote against the seating of B.H. Roberts as a member of the national House of Representatives.”

The House did what the House does. They set up a Special Committee on the case of Brigham H. Roberts and held a hearing. Several witnesses were called to the stand. One example is T.T. Brandon, a resident of Centerville, Utah, who had been postmaster and probate judge.

“…asked by (committee member) Morris as to the marital repute of Roberts and Celia and Louisa Roberts. ‘There is such a general repute.’ the witness replied. ‘It is that Celia Dibble Roberts Is recognized by the entire community as B.H. Roberts’ second wife. She is dealt with by the Mormon church as his second wife.’ 

“’How about Louisa Roberts?’ ‘She is recognized as his first wife.’ Brandon said that the third reputed wife, Marguerite Shipp Roberts, had come there once to attend the funeral already referred to. The records of these marriages, the witness said, were in the Temple, which was the only depository of plural marriages.” (San Francisco Call, Dec. 20, 1989)

After hearing much similar testimony, the committee issued its findings. Their report is available online at the Library of Congress:

“ Upon the facts stated, the majority of the committee assert that the claimant ought not to be permitted to take a seat in the House of Representatives, and that the seat to which he was elected ought to be declared vacant.

“I. By reason of his violation of the Edmund’s law.

“II. By reason of his notorious and defiant violation of the law of the land, of the decisions of the Supreme Court, and of the proclamations of the presidents, holding himself above the law and not amenable to it. No government could possibly exist in the face of such practices. He is in open war against the laws and institutions of the country whose Congress he seeks to enter. Such an idea is intolerable. It is upon the principle asserted in this ground that all cases of exclusion have them based. 

“III. His election as representative is an explicit and offensive violation of the understanding by which Utah was admitted as a state.”

Roberts was out before he ever got in.

Roberts had his supporters back home. The Ogden (Utah) Morning Examiner (Aug. 25, 1906) would comment “The Hon. B.H. Roberts should have been allowed to retain his seat in congress, for he represented the choice of a sovereign state.”

Roberts obit in the (Salt Lake City) Deseret News, Sept. 28, 1933, offered this assessment:

“The stalwart, princely figure. of President Roberts will be missed by his associates and by the people of the Church generally among whom he had mingled during his long and active years in the ministry. An acknowledged veteran of many religious battles and debates in his former years he has been recognized as one of the outstanding defenders of Mormonism.

“Through his efforts the teachings of Joseph Smith have found the hearts of multitudes. They honor and revere him as their friend and his passing will be a shock to them. Through his fearlessness and his staunch defense of the principles of the Gospel President Roberts has won many outsiders to friendship for the Church.”

The modern day reader would also take issue with Roberts views on women’s suffrage (he was opposed) and on race (he was a segregationist). But those issues were of little consequence to the 1900 Congress. The three wives, on the other hand, were a different story.

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The Congressional Hall of Shame: John Bullock Clark

Posted on June 7, 2026 by Ken Dowell

When George Santos, the shambolic Republican congressman from Long Island was expelled from the U.S. House of Representatives in 2023, he became only the sixth congressman to have suffered that fate. The first, in 1861, was Missouri Rep. John Bullock Clark.

Clark had been elected to Congress in 1858. He was reelected in 1860, but before he could be seated, he was expelled. The reason: treason. Clark, a practicing attorney, became an officer of the Missouri State militia and rose to the rank of brigadier general. When Missouri seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy, Clark led troops in battle against the country for which he had been elected as a congressman.

It takes a two-thirds vote to expel a member from the House. This seemed a pretty clear-cut case. The vote was 94-45. How is it that 45 members opted not to expel Clark? I can tell you why two of them did.  Another Missouri rep, John W. Reid, and a Kentucky congressman, Henry C. Burnett, had likewise fought for the Confederacy and they would both be expelled from Congress later that year.

Upon being expelled, the New York Times said of Clark that he would “henceforth roost as low as any bird that ever hawked as saucily as he.” (Pete Bowles, Newsday Service, Oct. 3, 1980)

In Missouri, Clark was viewed as anything but a low-roosting bird. His obit in the Kansas City Times (Nov. 10, 1885) concluded:

“Thousands of reminiscences could be spoken of and told of the man of whom we write, of his conduct and career as a soldier; the strange and interesting lawsuits in which he has been engaged; of his wonderful career as a politician; of his tact of overcoming the want of education; and of the wonderful hold he had upon the affections of the masses… Here where he lived we may say that he was held in high esteem and warm affection by all our people. Here he lived and labored, and here his memory will ever be green.”

The Missouri Historical Review offered the following in its Remisiscences of General John B. Clark (W.D. Vandiver, State Historical Society of Missouri, January 1926):

“He is revered in memory as a kind and generous neighbor, a great pleader at the bar, a veteran of five wars, a statesman of two governments, and as yet one who lived to enjoy the peace of old age and the prosperity of a reunited country.”

But here are some things that these local historians felt were unnecessary to bring to their readers attention:

— One of those wars in which he participated was the so-called Missouri Mormon War in 1838. Clark received an executive order from Governor Liburn Boggs to expel all Mormons from the state. According to the Joseph Smith Papers (John Bullock Clark – Biography) he “Insisted Saints leave Missouri; in conjunction with civil authorities, oversaw prosecution of Latter-day Saint prisoners at preliminary hearing, Nov. 1838.” The Mormons ended up fleeing Missouri.

— In 1840 he unsuccessfully ran for governor of Missouri and almost ended up in a duel. “M.M. Marmaduke, the Democratic candidate easily defeated him. But the contest produced a famous feud with Clairborne Fox Jackson after an article in the Boon’s Lick Democrat claimed that Clark as a Whig had inserted his name on fake Democratic ballots. In a letter to the editor, Jackson charged Clark with fraud. Clark wrote to Jackson seeking redress, believing Jackson had ‘sullied his integrity, even his manhood.’ Jackson sent terms for a duel to be held within one mile of Fayette.” (Kansas Bogus Legislature – John Bullock Clark) Apparently, the two couldn’t agree on terms so the whole thing was called off.

— Clark owned 140 slaves. Why would a practicing attorney need 140 slaves?!!! Nothing in my research could even begin to answer that question. I’m pretty sure these unfortunate men and women were not preparing and reviewing legal documents.

— Having been tossed from the U.S. House of Representatives, Clark was appointed to the Missouri Confederate State Senate in 1862. After serving a two year term Confederate Governor Thomas Canute Reynolds’s chose not to appoint him for a second term. According to the authors Ezra J. Warner and W. Buck Yearns (Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress, 1975) Clark was accused of alcoholism, mendacity and womanizing. Specifically they claim he “attempted seduction of Albert Pike’s mistress.” Pike was also a Confederate Army general.

— When the Civil War ended, Clark flew the coup. With a $10,000 reward on the table for his capture, he escaped to Mexico. He eventually came back, was arrested and detained but in 1866 was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson.

Clark returned to Missouri and resumed his legal practice. He would make one more run for a house seat. That was in 1872, but he failed to get the nomination. Who got it? His son, John Bullock Clark Jr. Junior was elected and would go on to serve for five terms. The younger Clark had also fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

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The Blanton Contemporary Galleries

Posted on May 31, 2026 by Ken Dowell

Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin

Temptation Island, Emily Mae Smith
Among women only, Louis Fratino
The Broad, Jay Lynn Gomez
Madam CJ Walker, Sonya Clark. Madam Walker (1867-1919) was the first female self-made millionaire in the U.S. She built a beauty business that employed thousands of African-Americans. This portrait was built using pocket combs
Parade, Mequitta Abuja
Restoration, Noah Purifoy. Build from the charred debris left from 1965 Watts Uprising.
David Bourdon and Gregory Battcock (New York art critics), Alice Neel
That’s not ladylike no. 1, Deborah Robert’s
Retrato, Hugo Alberto Sbernini
Go Go Go, Jorge de la Vega
Untitled (Head of Woman), Jose Fors
Mnesic Myths, Alma Lopez

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These Artists Got a New Deal

Posted on May 25, 2026 by Ken Dowell

Art in Every Corner, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

The Works Progress Administration was part of the New Deal, an initiative of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration to deal with the Depression. Started in 1935, it employed some 8 million people during its 8-year existence. While perhaps best known for the large public works created through the labor of these men and women, it also hired musicians, actors, writers and artists.

The Federal Art Project was part of this WPA program. It has been estimated 400,000 works of art were created by WPA employed artists. Below are the stories of some of these artists. It is based on an exhibit “Art in Every Corner” at the Blanton Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin. The pieces shown are all from that exhibit.

When the WPA closed up shop in 1943, the commissioned works were donated to institutions throughout the country. Some went to the Blanton and the pieces below were part of that allocation.

Donato Rico

Donato Rico was born in 1912, the son of Italian immigrants. He learned wood engraving at an early age. Working for the Federal Art Project he produced a number of engravings depicting life during the Depression. One of those, Subway Driller, is shown above. Some of his other engravings are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress. Rico would go on to have a prolific and varied career. By the end of the thirties he began creating comic books. He is credited with co-authoring the Marvel Comic characters Black Widow, Jann of the Jungle, Leopard Girl and Lorna the Jungle Girl. In the 1960’s, he turned to writing paperback novels. He created more than 60 of them using various pen names. A decade later he co-wrote the story for a bisexual vampire movie Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary.

Rockwell Kent

Born in 1882, Rockwell Kent made a name for himself early in his career as a painter of landscapes and seascapes. His painting focused on the natural beauty of places like Newfoundland, Alaska and Greenland. He was hired in 1937 by the WPA to paint murals on the New Post Office Building in Washington. The above wood engraving (left), Workers of the World Unite!, was created that same year. It was the cover illustration for an issue of New Masses magazine. On the right is a lithograph, And Now Where, created in 1936. Kent was an advocate for labor who was at times a member of the IWW, the AFL and the CIO. He was a member of the Socialist Party of America and would later become president of the American Society of Soviet Friendship. His works were exhibited in Soviet Russia. His politics led to his having his passport revoked in 1950. That was later overturned by the Supreme Court (Kent vs. Dulles, 1957) which ruled it a violation of his civil rights.

Walker Evans

Born in St.Louis in 1903, Walker Evans is best known as a photographer who produced a number of iconic images chronicling the impact of the Great Depression, particularly on rural Americans. He was hired by the Resettlement Administration, which later became the Farm Security Adminstration. His photos were used to promote public support for government relief efforts. Some of these photos are now housed at the Metrolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the National Galleries of Scotland.  The above photo, Bessemer, Alabama or Birmingham Steel Mill and Workers Houses, was taken in 1936 while in the government employ. That same year he teamed with the writer James Agee to produce Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. The book was based on their experience living with three tenant farmer families in Alabama. Evans photos in that book are among the most famous photographic depictions of the Depression.

Betty Waldo Parish

Born in 1910 in Germany to American parents who moved back to the states before World War I. They eventually settled in New York where Parish was a regular exhibitor at the Washington Square outdoor art shows. During the Depression, Parish studied at the Spokane Art Center which was sponsored by the WPA. Later in the decade she would go on to make prints as an employee of the Federal Art Project. Waldo exhibited her work in group exhibitions with the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, the Pen and Brush Club and the American Society of Etchers. She had posthumous solo exhibitions (she died in 1986) at the Sylvan Cole and Susan Teller Galleries.

She created the above lithograph, “Cooper’s Farm” in 1941.

Minnie Lois Murphy

Born in Kansas, Murphy was a Columbia University graduate. The above print “Summer Day” (1937)  is one of several of her works published by the WPA. Murphy has prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Gallery of Art.

Otis William Oldfield

A San Franciscan, Oldfield created the above lithograph in 1936 as part of a series depicting the construction of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge. Oldfield was employed by the WPA at the time and the bridge itself was a WPA financed project. He would later become a teacher at the California College of Arts. He has works in the collections of the Metrolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Bernard P. Schardt

Born in 1903 in Milwaukee, Schardt at one time shared a New York apartment with Jackson Pollack and the two of them co-owned a farmhouse in Bucks County, Pa. Schardt was employed by the Federal Art Project in 1935. His works were exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago and in 1939, he was put in charge of the FAP’s poster division. He supervised exhibitions at the New York World’s Fair that same year. The above wood engraving, Slaughter House, was created in 1938 while working for the WPA.

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The Shame of the Billionaires

Posted on May 19, 2026 by Ken Dowell

East 6th Street, Austin, Texas

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Beetles, Acrobats and Birds

Posted on May 10, 2026 by Ken Dowell

The Magical World of Joan Danziger

Joan Danziger is a Washington, D.C.-based sculptor. She recently had a retrospective exhibit, The Magical World of Joan Danziger, at the Katzen Museum at American University. That exhibit included some seven decades of works beginning with drawings from the 1950’s and 60’s through glass sculptures of ravens from the last few years. In between are a lot of large, poofy and playful sculptures of beetles, acrobats and birds. Some of the works from that exhibit are presented here in rough chronological order.

Acid Trip, 1958
Space Age, 1963
Two Nudes, 1961
Monster Woman, 1961
Up Against the Pole, 1969
Acrobats with Rose, 1975
Bird Millman, 1977
On the Hunt,1989
Flying Bird, 1995
Love Girl’s Sunshine Band, 2008
Golden Prince, 2017
Empress Ravenhair, 2021
Inferno, 2024
Fish Flower Still Life Wall Mount, 2025
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Around the World, Cinematically Speaking

Posted on April 28, 2026 by Ken Dowell

Recent movies from Europe, Latin America and Asia, most of which are now available to stream.

France

A Private Life ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster) is a French psychiatrist, and seemingly not a very good one. As her patients lie on a couch baring their souls, she seems lost in her own thoughts. When the guy who’s seeing her for help in quitting smoking rings the bell, she quickly stubs out her cigarette before answering.

One of her patients, a woman she’s been treating for nine years, dies of what is called a suicide. Lilian is convinced it’s a murder. Aided by an ex-husband and a hypnotist who has her envisioning the people around her in previous lives, she sets off on a detective mission to solve the crime. Her detective skills are on a par with her psychiatric ones.

Who’s lying and who’s telling the truth? Who’s the murderer? Was there a murder? I’m not sure I can fully answer all the questions even after the movie ends. This is a mystery like no other I’ve seen. And it’s puzzling and unpredictable.

The score features “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads. They blasted it in the theater where I saw the movie. Would suggest home streamers do the same.

(Available to rent from Fandango at Home,  Amazon Prime or Apple TV)

Germany

Miroir No. 3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Laura is a music student studying in Berlin. She goes on a road trip with a boyfriend she doesn’t seem too keen on. They have an accident. He’s killed, she’s left lying on the side of the road.

Betty is a middle-aged woman living by herself in some rural area of Germany. She finds Laura and brings her home. Laura’s okay, but wants to stay. Once she’s well, Betty invites ‘her men’ over for dinner, a dour-faced husband and son who run a sketchy auto repair garage.

And at this point you know something is very wrong here. The next 60 or so minutes is about finding out what that is. There is a tragedy involved. If I told you what it was it would be a mega spoiler. But the director leaves us some pretty good hints along the way.

Sometimes you see a movie with such great acting, with such great pictures, that you don’t need much in the way of dialogue or narrative. Some of the most poignant moments of this movie are captured in silence. It’s sort of a “picture is worth a thousand words” kind of thing. A simple closed mouth smile at an unexpected moment can, in this film, trigger a wave of emotion.

This is a really powerful movie, skillfully paced and presented. I walked out in a bit of a fog.

(Available to rent from Fandango at Home)

Colombia

A Poet ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It’s not easy to be a poet. Oscar has no money, his family is like “get a real job,” he still lives with his mother despite not being a young man, and nobody’s reading his books. Add to that, he is a chronic screw up. Failed as a husband and father, as a teacher and as a mentor. And he drinks. So maybe he wakes up sometimes lying in the street clutching a beer bottle.

During a brief stint as a teacher he takes an interest in a young student who also writes poems. She is from a large, very poor family and can never overcome her environment. Oscar’s attempts to help her prove a mixed blessing.

Set in a poor neighborhood in a Colombian city, the movie contrasts the rhythmic, artistic vibe of the poet with the hard life of families in poverty. A lack of expectations is expressed as indifference. But we do get a glimpse of the passion of the poet. And amidst all the anguish, some empathy emerges from unexpected places.

(Available to rent on Prime Video, Apple TV or Fandango at Home))

Japan

Rental Family ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Take the title literally. It’s a Tokyo-based business where you can rent an impersonator to be a family member, significant other or associate of some type. If you’re a single mother needing a father for your child’s school admission interview, you can rent one. If you need a surrogate mistress to apologize to your wife for your cheating, rent one. Maybe you need a journalist to interview your aging father about his wonderful career. You can rent that too.

Phillip Vanderploeg is an American actor with a stalled career living in Tokyo. His resume seems to consist of a few commercials. He reluctantly takes a job at Rental Family where a “big American” is a unique asset.

What transpires is not just deception but emotional connection. Among his assignments, Phillip becomes a father to one, a son to another. And along the way it fills a void in his life. Brendan Fraser is the actor who plays the actor and he does a great job of it, telling the story in body language and facial expression as much as in words.

A unique and creative story and an interesting mashup of Japanese and American culture.

(Available on Hulu)

Germany

Sound of Falling ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A dark movie. In more ways than one. Many of the scenes take place in a dimly lit German farmhouse, the pictures are dark and muted. The other darkness is harder. It’s about abuse, abandonment and death.

The movie is structured almost like a series of vignettes. They’re not sequential. Sometimes they connect, sometimes they don’t. The stories involve a few dysfunctional families and take place in different eras. The only commonality is the setting, a rural village in what was once East Germany. One interesting technique the director uses is employing different imaging to tell time. The early 20th century scenes look like an old movie with shadowy, murky images. As the timing becomes more modern, the imaging becomes sharper and brighter.

The sounds of falling? They include bodies falling off barnyard lofts or moving horse-drawn carriages and the raging currents of a river that more than one character plunges into for different reasons. If there’s a lesson to be learned here it’s that for most of the 20th century it was tough to be a woman in this part of Germany.

The movie is long and deliberately paced. There is a lot of creative cinematography, but it lost me before it was over.

Romania

Kontinental 25

⭐️⭐️

Orsolya is a bailiff in Cruj, Transylvania. She is assigned to evict a homeless man, a former Romanian athlete who became an alcoholic, from the boiler room of a building that will be demolished. Given 20 minutes to pack his things. He kills himself instead.

Orsolya cannot get over it. In conversations with the police and with friends she expresses her guilty feelings. Everyone who asks and some who don’t hear the same story of how he tied a wire to a radiator and put it around his neck.

The movie offers up some interesting story lines. There’s ethnic tensions between Romanians and Hungarians dating back to where Transylvania belongs. Orsolya is of Hungarian descent living in Romania and she is trolled by online nationalists. There’s talk of politics, of Gaza and Ukraine and Viktor Orban. There is a wave of sympathy for those down on their luck and the lack of government support is bemoaned.

But the film falls flat. Orsolya pulls out of the family holiday. She visits and fights with her mother. She pets animatronic dinosaurs in a park. She has a drunken night with a former student and prays in a cemetery with a priest. Nothing moves the needle. Neither for Orsolya the character nor for the viewers of this movie.

(Available to rent on Fandango at Home)

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Streets of Loreto

Posted on April 19, 2026 by Ken Dowell

Loreto is a town of about 20,000 on the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. Founded by Jesuit missionaries in 1697, it was the first Spanish colonial settlement on the peninsula. The stone church shown in the photos below, Mision de Neustra Senora de Loreto Concho, was built in the 1740’s. It still functions as a Catholic Church.

Loreto is a cultural center for the area, hosting several fiestas, and has become a tourist destination, primarily for American sport fishermen. Flights from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and Dallas come into Loreto International Airport.

This is an 85% scale replica of a rock shelter with cave paintings like those found by the Spanish explorers when they arrived in what would become Loreto. This is in the Jesuit Missions Museum which is next to the church.

This sculpture portrays Father Juan Maria de Salvatierra, the founder of the mission at Loreto, with indigenous Cochimi people.

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