Color Photograph Signed by Helms, Jesse

INSCRIBED "To my kind and gracious friend, / Hazel Dorman, / with very best wishes / Jesse Helms / U.S. Senate" in black felt tip pen. 8" x 1"0 color photo of Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. (October 18, 1921 - July 4, 2008) was an American politician and a leader in the conservative movement. He was elected five times as a Republican to the United States Senate from North Carolina. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001 he had a major voice in foreign policy. Helms helped organize and fund the conservative resurgence in the 1970s, focusing on Ronald Reagan's quest for the White House as well as helping many local and regional candidates. Helms was the longest-serving popularly elected Senator in North Carolina's history. He was widely credited with shifting the one-party state into a competitive two-party state. He successfully advocated that conservatives move to the Republican Party because the national Democratic Party was too liberal for them. Helms was the most stridently conservative politician of the post-1960s era, especially in opposition to federal intervention into what he considered state affairs (including legislating integration via the Civil Rights Act and enforcing suffrage through the Voting Rights Act). "I want our government to encourage and protect freedom as well as our traditions of faith and family." - J. Helms.