Leonidas C. Dyer

Leonidas C. Dyer

Leonidas Carstarphen Dyer (June 11, 1871 – December 15, 1957) was an American politician, reformer, civil rights activist, and military officer who served 11 terms in the U.S. Congress as a Republican Representative from Missouri from 1911 to 1933. In 1898 enrolling in the U.S. Army as a private, Dyer served notably in the Spanish–American War; and was promoted to Colonel at the war's end.

Working as an attorney in St. Louis, Dyer started an anti-usury campaign and was elected to Congress as a Republican in 1910. As a progressive reformer, Dyer authored an anti-usury law in 1914 that limited excessive loan rates by bank lenders in the nation's capital, then still governed by Congress.

Horrified by the race riots in Saint Louis and East Saint Louis in 1917 and the high rate of reported lynchings in the South, in 1918 Dyer was notable for proposing the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. In 1920 the Republican Party supported such legislation in its platform from the National Convention. In January 1922, Dyer's bill was passed by the House, which approved it by a wide margin due to "insistent countrywide demand". The bill was defeated by the white Democratic voting bloc of the South in filibusters in the Senate in December 1922, in 1923 and 1924.

In 1919, Dyer authored the motor-vehicle theft law, which made transporting stolen automobiles across state lines a federal crime. By 1956, the FBI reported that the law had enabled the recovery of cars worth more than $212 million. In terms of Prohibition, Rep. Dyer voted against various anti-liquor laws, including the Eighteenth Amendment.

Dyer served in Congress from the 62nd Congress to the 72nd Congress. He was defeated for re-election during the 1930s of the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's programmes to put people to work and extend social welfare during the Depression helped attract voters to Democratic candidates.