Albert Arnold Gore Sr. attended UT from 1926 to 1928, before earning the BS at the Middle Tennessee State Teachers College in 1932. He earned the LLB from Nashville’s YMCA Law School in 1936 while serving as superintendent of schools in Smith County (1932-36). He served as Tennessee Commissioner of Labor in 1936-37. A Democrat, he served as US Representative from the 4th District from 1939 to 1952. He served as senator from Tennessee (1953–70), being defeated for reelection by Republican Bill Brock. In 1956 he was suggested as a presidential possibility. At the 1956 convention, he was nominated for vice president but withdrew, and fellow Tennessean Estes Kefauver became the running mate of Adlai Stevenson.
Gore was the chief senate architect of the 1956 Federal Highway Aid Act and the Highway Revenue Act—acts that established and set the method of payment for the Federal Interstate Highway System. He refused to sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto, which advocated resistance to school desegregation. In 1964 he voted against a civil rights bill, but urged Tennessee to follow it when it passed.
Gore taught law at Vanderbilt from 1970 to 1972. His book The Eye of the Storm: A People’s Policies for the Seventies was published in 1970. His wife, Pauline LaFon Gore, was one of the first female law graduates of Vanderbilt; and his son, Albert, was vice president of the United States and unsuccessful candidate for president.
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