Luke Lea

Luke Lea (April 12, 1879 – November 18, 1945) was a Democratic United States Senator from Tennessee from 1911 to 1917. Lea was the great-grandson of an earlier Luke Lea who was a two-term Congressman from Tennessee in the 1830s. Initially an ardent supporter of Democrat Andrew Jackson he later later became a member of the Whig Party. The younger Lea attended public schools and then the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, graduating from that institution in 1899. He then attended the Columbia Law School in New York City, completing his studies at that prestigious institution in 1903 and being admitted to the bar the same year, beginning practice in Nashville. Lea was the founder of the Nashville Tennessean and its first...