Samuel James Ervin Jr. lived from September 27, 1896 to April 23, 1985 and was an American politician who served as a United States senator from North Carolina from 1954 to 1974. A Southern Democrat who liked to call himself a country lawyer, he was at first a staunch defender of Jim Crow laws and racial segregation as the South's constitutional expert during the congressional debates on civil rights, but later became a liberal hero for his support of civil liberties. He is remembered for his work on the investigation committees that brought down Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954 and especially for leading the Senate committee's investigation of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.
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