Byrd, Robert C (Carlyle) (1917- )

US Democratic senator. He was elected to the US House of Representatives for West Virginia, 1953-58, and to the US Senate in 1958. A conservative opponent of civil rights and welfare spending in his early career, he grew more liberal by the 1970s, when he played a role in the Watergate investigation and criticized the continuing war in Vietnam.

He was born in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. From humble beginnings as a meatcutter and welder, he rose rapidly in politics, and was elected to the West Virginia state legislature in 1947. He was briefly a member of the Ku Klux Klan in his younger days. A master of Senate procedures, he served as majority whip 1971-76, majority leader 1976-80, minority leader 1981-84, a second term as majority leader 1987-88, and then voluntarily went back to being just a senator.