Senate Historical Office: the Kefauver Committee, Notable Senate Investigations

The U.S. Senate Historical Office's account of the Special Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce: its resolution, chairmen and members, funding, extension, and television audience. A secondary account written by the Senate.

Date

unknown

Kind

agency-history

Source

United States Senate, Senate Historical Office

Retrieved

2026-10-12

Rights

Text written by the U.S. Senate Historical Office, a work of the United States government. Public domain in the United States. 17 U.S.C. § 105. Photographs on the page carry no credit and are not covered by this record.

The page is headed “Special Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce (The Kefauver Committee),” in the series “A History of Notable Senate Investigations” prepared by the Senate Historical Office. It gives the resolution as passed May 2, 1950; the chairmen as C. Estes Kefauver (1950 to 1951) and Herbert O’Conor (1951); and the members as Lester Hunt, Herbert O’Conor, Charles Tobey and Alexander Wiley. The page carries no publication date, so the date field here is “unknown.”

It states that Senate Resolution 202 provided $150,000, that the Senate extended the inquiry to September 1, 1951 after the committee was due to expire at the end of February 1951, that “During the course of a 15-month investigation, the committee met in 14 major U.S. cities,” and that “an estimated 30 million Americans tuned in to watch the live proceedings in March 1951.” It says the committee began in Miami on May 28, 1950.

This is a secondary account, and the printed hearings are the better source where they differ. Part 1 of the hearings prints its first Miami sessions on May 26 and 27, 1950 (see Part 1: Florida). The Senate’s footnoted print version cites the underlying sources.