“It has always been my ambition since childhood to live a life that one day my fellow citizens would call me to membership in this popular branch of the greatest lawmaking body in the world….It is now my sole purpose here to help enact such wise and just laws that our common country will by virtue of these laws be a happier and a more prosperous country.”
— Sam Rayburn’s first speech to the U.S. House of Representatives; May 6th, 1913
Photo of Sam Rayburn Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Rayburn: Mr. Speaker is a documentary in production about the life and legacy of legendary Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Sam Rayburn.
For nearly 50 years Sam Rayburn was a Congressman from Northeast Texas (1913 - 1961). For 17 of those years he was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (1940 - 1947, 1949 - 1953, 1955 - 1961), longer than anyone else in history. For thirty years, from 1931 to 1961, Sam Rayburn was the most important American politician who was never President of the United States.
Rayburn left his fingerprints on some of the most important legislation of the 20th century including the regulation of Wall Street, the communications industry, and electric power companies.
He was especially proud of the laws that he championed, which benefited small farmers such as farm-to-market roads, soil conservation programs, and rural electrification.
Rayburn’s meteoric rise from a young boy who grew up near poverty on a 40 acre cotton farm in Northeast Texas to the pinnacle of legislative power in the United States was never a sure thing. Rayburn once said, “I missed being a tenant farmer by a gnat’s heel.”
Rayburn: Mr. Speaker is the first feature length documentary about Sam Rayburn and his impact on American life. Stay tuned to this website for more info about its release and distribution.
Painting of Sam Rayburn by Douglas Chandor
“[Rayburn] was a common man….and he a had a great sympathy or empathy for the poor….he believed in small towns, believed people should be close to their friends and to their relatives, and he never lost that feeling.”
— Don Bacon, Rayburn Biographer
“Rayburn understood the necessity of government to help people fight forces that were too big for them to fight themselves.”
— Robert Caro, Lyndon Johnson Biographer & Historian
“I would say [Rayburn] is a master of the legislative process.”
— Anthony Champagne, Rayburn Biographer
“During the 10 years, [1951 - 1961], that I knew him up there he was the most revered man in Washington D.C.”
— HG Dulaney, Rayburn Staff Member & Director Emeritus of the Sam Rayburn Library & Museum
“[Rayburn] was a very powerful Speaker. And as Speakers go he’d be one of the very best we ever had.”
— Jack Brooks, Former Congressman (TX-D)
“The House [of Representatives] was [Rayburn’s] home. He was as wedded to that institution as a priest is wedded to a church. He was so much a part of it that I think it would have to be said that he was the greatest legislator of all time.”
— Jim Wright, Former Congressman (TX-D) and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
“I had a chance to serve [in the House of Representatives] in the days when there were giants in the place, and Rayburn was probably the greatest of these. And certainly from what I know of the history of the place and the history of Speakers, he was far and away the greatest of the whole of any of them.”
— John Dingell, Former Congressman (MI-D)
“[Rayburn] supported the New Deal enthusiastically….He was an important leader for the country….He was one of the giants of that period.”
— Stewart Udall, Former Congressman (AZ - D)
“With Sam Rayburn what you saw was what you got….Everyone knew that his word was absolutely rock solid, and he always said ‘tell the truth the first because then you don’t have to remember what you said.’”
— Cokie Roberts, Journalist & Daughter of Representatives Hale & Lindy Boggs (LA-D)