Sumner, Jessie, 1898-1994

<p>Jessie Sumner (July 17, 1898 – August 10, 1994) was a U.S. Representative from Illinois.</p>

<p>Born in Milford, Illinois, Sumner attended the public schools. She graduated from Girton School, Winnetka, Illinois, in 1916 and Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1920. She studied law at the University of Chicago Law School, Columbia University, New York City, and Oxford University, England. She also studied briefly at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the New York University School of Commerce in New York City.</p>

<p>Sumner was admitted to the bar in 1923 and practiced in Chicago, Illinois. She was employed at the Chase National Bank in New York City in 1928. She returned to Milford, Illinois, in 1932 and resumed the practice of law. She served as county judge of Iroquois County, Illinois, in 1937. She served as director of Sumner National Bank, Sheldon, Illinois.</p>

<p>Sumner was elected as a Republican to the Seventy-sixth and to the three succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1939 – January 3, 1947). She was not a candidate for renomination in 1946.</p>

<p>She resumed position as vice president from 1938 to 1966, and president from 1966 to 1994, of Sumner National Bank. She was a resident of Milford, Illinois, until her death in Watseka, Illinois, on August 10, 1994.</p>

<p>Few Members of Congress so vocally denounced the Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) administration and American intervention in World War II as Illinois Representative Jessie Sumner. Sumner not only advocated American isolationism, she reveled in it—using her biting wit and animated floor speeches to skewer wartime policies, America’s major allies, and plans for U.S. participation in the postwar United Nations. By war’s end, however, as an internationalist mood took hold in the country, it was Congresswoman Sumner who found herself increasingly isolated.</p>

<p>Jessie Sumner was born in Milford, Illinois, on July 17, 1898, to Aaron Taylor Sumner and Elizabeth Gillan Sumner. Her ancestors included such distant relations as General Zachary Taylor, who was the twelfth American President, and outspoken antislavery Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Jessie Sumner graduated from the Girton School in Winnetka, Illinois, in 1916. She earned an economics degree at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1920. Jessie Sumner never married and relished the freedom that unwed life afforded her. She studied law at the University of Chicago, Oxford University in England, and Columbia University and briefly at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 1923 she passed the Illinois bar and commenced practice as a private lawyer in Chicago. On the eve of the Great Depression, Sumner took a job with Chase National Bank in New York City. By 1932 she had returned to Milford, Illinois, to resume her law practice and work as a director at Sumner National Bank, which her father had founded. Her move into politics was abetted, in part, by bank robbers who abducted her brother. After the kidnappers were apprehended, she worked feverishly to secure their convictions and was inspired to run for the office of state’s attorney. Sumner lost in the GOP primary but, with the passing of her uncle, John H. Gillan, the Iroquois County judge, she ran a successful campaign in 1937 to succeed him. Sumner received national notoriety by becoming the first woman to hold a county judgeship in her state.</p>

<p>Iroquois County was one of six jurisdictions along Illinois’s eastern border with Indiana, incorporating the district once represented by Joseph G. Cannon, the autocratic Republican leader and House Speaker. In 1938 Sumner used her new political influence to secure the district’s GOP nomination. In the general election, serving as her own campaign manager, she faced three-term incumbent Democrat James Andrew Meeks, a 74-yearold lawyer. Rather than smothering her audiences with platitudes, Sumner pledged nothing more than to work hard for good government. Her primary theme was a consistent attack against New Deal programs which, she argued, overtaxed Americans and intruded on their individual liberties. In particular, she singled out Roosevelt as practicing “one-man government,” a charge that resonated with an electorate outraged by the President’s ham-handed attempt to pack the Supreme Court with justices favorable to his programs. With the backing of the anti-Roosevelt Chicago Tribune, Sumner defeated Meeks with 55 percent of the vote. She joined 76 new Republicans when the 76th Congress (1939–1941) convened in January 1939.</p>