Prairie Populist: The Life and Times of Usher L. Burdick

by Edward Converse Blackorby, Janet Daley (Editor)

Usher L. Burdick was a powerful, colorful character in North Dakota's political history. Born in Owatonna, Minnesota, in 1879, Burdick moved with his farming parents to Dakota Territory in 1882. He graduated from the North Dakota State Normal School at Mayville in 1900. Deputy superintendent of schools of Benson County from 1900 to 1902, he graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1904, playing football and teaching business while attending. Admitted to the state bar in 1904, he practiced in Munich, ND, served in the ND House of Representatives from 1907 to 1911, and as speaker in 1909. He moved to Williston in 1907 and continued practicing law. He was the eighth Lieutenant Governor of North Dakota from 1911 to 1913, state's attorney of Williams County from 1913 to 1915, and assistant US district attorney for ND from 1929 to 1932. He also engaged in livestock breeding and farming and was an author. An unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination to the 73rd Congress in 1932 (He favored Franklin D. Roosevelt for President and the repeal of Prohibition), he was elected as a Republican to the 74th Congress and the four succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1935 – January 3, 1945), and supported many New Deal programs and Native American issues. An unsuccessful, Independent candidate for election in 1944 to the 79th Congress, he was elected to the 81st Congress and to the four succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1949 – January 3, 1959). He was the only Republican congressional representative to vote against the Communist Control Act which banned the Communist party. In 1958, afraid he might be defeated for re-election in the Republican primary, Burdick offered to withdraw his candidacy if the Democratic-NPL Party agreed to support his son Quentin as the party candidate. Quentin then received the party endorsement in April, and won the election in November. Usher voted in favor of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. He died in 1960 at the age of 81.

394 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2001