Attorney, state representative, U.S. senator, and U.S. representative, Claude Denson Pepper (1900-1989) worked tirelessly as the champion of the working class, the poor, and the elderly.

Claude Denson Pepper was born September 8, 1900, on a farm near Dudleyville, Alabama. He spent his youth working at home and attending public school, then went off to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, graduating in 1921. His early years were marked by ambition and desire--he carved "Claude Pepper, United States Senator" on a tree at the age of ten. Pepper worked his way through college hauling coal and ashes before sunrise at a power plant. This did not interfere with his enterprises at the university, however. He was a member of the track squad, the debate team, and Phi Beta Kappa. After college he was admitted to Harvard Law School (he was a classmate of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter), from...