Brooks Hays

Brooks Hays   (politician)
Born	August 9, 1898 London (Arkansas), Arkansas, USA
Died	October 11, 1981 (Age 83) Chevy Chase, Maryland
Nationality	US
Alma mater	University of Arkansas, George Washington University Law School
Religion	Southern Baptist
Party	Democratic
Attended the February 1957 Bilderberg meeting as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. "One of the leading specialists in psychological warfare against communism", and proponent of religion as a way to fight it  Special Assistant to the President In office December 1961 - February 1964 Employer JFK administration,  LBJ administration Bilderberger  Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs In office 1961 Preceded by Brooks Hays Succeeded by Brooks Hays Bilderberger  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Arkansas's 5th district In office January 3, 1943 - January 3, 1959 Bilderberger

Lawrence Brooks Hay was an American politician who attended the February 1957 Bilderberg meeting. Drew Pearson described him as "one of the foremost experts in psychological warfare against communism," and used his evangelical connections to form a Christian conservative opinion in favor of the secretive The Family, which worked to spread the "militant freedom" favored by the internationalist Republicans and the conservative Democrats.

Education

Brooks Hays attended public school in Russellville, Arkansas. He then enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1918. After the end of the war, he again left the army and began to study at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where he graduated in 1919. He then attended the law department of George Washington University in Washington. He received his law degree in 1922 as well as his admission as a lawyer. After that, he went back to Russellville and opened a practice. He was a freemason.

Career

Hays was the assistant Attorney General of Arkansas from 1925 to 1927. After that, he was a member of the Democratic National Committee from 1932 to 1939 as a representative of his state. With the arrival of the New Deal, Hays was appointed economic control officer for the National Recovery Administration in Arkansas in 1934. He then became deputy settlement administrator in 1935 and held the administrative and legal position in the Farm Security Administration between 1936 and 1942.

Hays ran for the U.S. House of Representatives and was elected to Congress. He was re-elected seven more times. His term of office lasted from January 3, 1943 to January 3, 1959.

In 1953, Hays supported Resolution 60 to create "a place of retreat as an encouragement to prayer" within the Capitol. This followed a trend of pious legislation, which had declared the previous year in the justification of the "National Day of Prayer" and that in the following years it would be continued with the introductory words "Under God" in the oath of allegiance (1954). In 1955, the supplement "In God We Trust" followed, which has been maintained to this day.

1953 was also seen as the beginning of the Presidential Prayer Breakfast, later renamed the National Prayer Breakfast, a movement promoted by the International Christian Leadership, also better known as The Family. Drew Pearson described him in his Washington Post column on May 20. June 1954, as "one of the leading specialists in psychological warfare against communism", and used his evangelical connections to form a Christian conservative opinion in favor of the internationally offensive The Family, which invoked the "militant freedom" favored by the internationalist Republicans and the conservative Democrats.

Hays was involved in the 1956 constitution of the Southern Manifesto, which spoke out against racial integration in public institutions.

In the election of 1958 the main concern of the day was President Eisenhower's decision to send federal troops to Central High School in Little Rock. Most politicians from Arkansas were against this intervention, Hays alone tried to mediate indirectly from the distance between the federal government and Governor Orval Faubus. Hays was not an integrationist, but his actions inflamed the supporters of racial segregation in the state, who then rallied around a citizens' council candidate in the democratic primaries. Hays won by a 3-2 margin. Then, with just a week to go before the November elections, Dale Alford, a member of the school board in Little Rock, made a run against Hays. Supported by Faubus' allies, Alford won in a major upset by over 1200 votes (51-49 percent).

Later career

After the end of his term, Hays was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He carried out this activity between 1957 and 1958. He then joined the supervisory board of the Tennessee Valley Authority, where he stayed from 1959 to 1961. In addition, Hays worked in the Kennedy administration in 1961 as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs at the State Department and as special assistant to the US President from late 1961 to February 1964.

He was in correspondence with John McCone on establishing more relations between religious groups and the CIA.

He attended a Washington conference (unknown year, but probably the 1950s) on psychological warfare against communism. The purpose of the conference was to "To focus public attention upon the resistance to Soviet Communist control by peoples now enslaved by its regimes, in the Soviet Union and satellite lands; to make known the potential power of this resistance, to discuss ways and means whereby all such resistance movements may be increased and made more effective, including methods of unconventional warfare; to present definite plans of action to aid the oppressed victims of communist tyranny to the end that they may at the proper time overthrow the communist regimes and be liberated to establish free (and democratic) governments, based on the right of self-determination, and to establish a continuing organization to carry out the aims and programs developed in the conference."

Hays became a professor of political science at the Eagleton Institute of Rutgers University and a visiting professor of government at the University of Massachusetts. He also worked as director of the Ecumenical Institute at Wake Forest University between 1968 and 1970, after which he became co-chairman of the Former Members of Congress, Inc. in 1970. and worked as the chairman of the Government Good Neighbor Council in North Carolina.

In 1972, Hays made another run for the 93rd Congress as a representative for North Carolina, but he lost to Republican incumbent Wilmer Mizell.

After his political career ended, Hays bought a retirement home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He died there on October 11, 1981, and was buried in Russellville, Arkansas.

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1957 February	15 February 1957	17 February 1957	US St Simons Island Georgia (State)	The earliest ever Bilderberg in the year, number 5, was also first one outside Europe.

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