Charles Curtis

This article is about the former Vice President of the United States. For other uses, see Charles Curtis (disambiguation). Charles Curtis
31st Vice President of the United StatesIn office
March 4, 1929 – March 4, 1933President Herbert HooverPreceded by Charles G. DawesSucceeded by John N. Garner2nd United States Senate Majority LeaderIn office
March 9, 1925 – March 4, 1929Preceded by Henry Cabot LodgeSucceeded by James E. Watson President pro tempore of the United States SenateIn office
December 4, 1911 – December 12, 1911Preceded by Augustus O. BaconSucceeded by Augustus O. Bacon United States Senator
from KansasIn office
January 29, 1907 – March 4, 1913
March 4, 1915– March 4, 1929Preceded by Alfred W. Benson
Joseph L. Bristow U.S. Representative
from KansasIn office
March 4, 1893 – January 28, 1907Born January 25, 1860(1860-01-25)
Topeka, KansasDied February 8, 1936(aged 76)
Washington, D.C.Nationality American Political party RepublicanSpouse Annie Elizabeth Baird Curtis (died on June 20, 1924) Religion Methodist

Charles Curtis (January 25, 1860 – February 8, 1936) was a Representative and a Senator from Kansas as well as the thirty-first Vice President of the United States. Nearly half of Curtis' background was made up of American Indian stock. His mother, Ellen Pappan Curtis, was one-fourth Kaw, one-fourth Osage, and one-fourth Pottawatomie (as well as one-fourth French). Curtis spent part of his early life on a Kaw reservation, and is the first and only person with acknowledged non-European ancestry to reach either of the two highest offices in the United States government's executive branch. Curtis was the last U.S. Vice President or President to wear a beard or mustache—in his case, a mustache—while in office.

Curtis was born in Topeka, Kansas, attended Topeka High School and was admitted to the bar in 1882. He commenced practice in Topeka and served as prosecuting attorney of Shawnee County, Kansas from 1885 to 1889. He was elected as a Republican to the House of Representatives of the 53rd Congress and to the six succeeding Congresses and served in the House from March 4, 1893 until January 28, 1907, when he resigned, having been chosen by the Kansas Legislature to serve in the United States Senate to fill the short unexpired term of Joseph R. Burton, who had likewise resigned. On that same day of January 28, Curtis was simultaneously tapped by Kansas' state lawmakers to the full Senatorial term commencing March 4 of that year and ending March 4, 1913. He was an unsuccessful candidate for re-designation in 1912. However, the Kansas Legislature again appointed him for the six-year term commencing March 4, 1915. In 1920, he was elected by Kansas voters (in compliance with the Constitution's recently-ratified 17th Amendment) and again in 1926 and served without interruption from March 4, 1915, until his resignation on March 3, 1929. During his tenure in the Senate, he was President pro tempore of the Senate as well as Chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of the Interior, of the Committee on Indian Depredations, and of the Committee on Coast Defenses, as well as of the Republican Conference. He was also United States Senate Republican Whip from 1915 to 1924 and Majority Leader from 1925 to 1929. It was during his Senatorial years that he—in concert with fellow Kansan, Representative Daniel Read Anthony, Jr.—offered in their respective bodies during December of 1923 the first rendition of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution.

President of the United States Calvin Coolidge, First Lady of the United States Grace Goodhue Coolidge, and Senator Curtis on their way to the Capitol building on Inauguration Day, March 4, 1925.

Curtis resigned from the Senate on March 3, 1929 to assume the office of Vice President, following the landslide 58% - 41% victory achieved as running mate to Republican candidate Herbert Hoover in 1928. The pair were inaugurated on March 4, 1929. He endorsed the five day work week, with no reduction in wages, as a work-sharing solution to unemployment soon after the Great Depression began. (See John Ryan's book Questions of the Day.) Following the 57% - 40% landslide defeat of the Hoover-Curtis ticket in 1932, Curtis' term as Vice President ended on March 4, 1933.

In Washington, D.C., Curtis resumed the practice of law. He died from a heart attack in that city in 1936. His remains were returned to Topeka, Kansas, where he is buried at the Topeka Cemetery.

The Curtis Act of 1898—passed while he served in the House of Representatives—expanded the powers of the federal government over American Indian affairs. An Act of Congress in 1902 disbanded the Kaw, the tribe of his mother, as a legal entity and transferred 160 acres (0.6 km²) to the federal government and about 1,625 acres (6.6 km²) of Kaw land to Curtis and his children, Permelia Jeannette Curtis George, Henry "aka Harry" King Curtis and Leona Virginia Curtis Knight.