I recently read Patrick Cox -- Ralph W. Yarborough, the People's Senator.
It's a must read for anyone interested in Texas, but it's not just Texana; in fact, it's a scholarly work that merits attention from anyone who wants to understand the political history of the USA from the the twenties to the Civil Rights movement.
I found fascinating Yarborough's evolution from an East Texas Democrat who hemmed and hawed about Brown and "forced integration" to his becoming the only US senator from the South to have voted for all of the major Civil Rights bills.
Following Yarborough's political career can help the reader understand the broader transformation of the Democrats in the postwar era.
His often frosty relationship with LBJ is an important theme of the book. Their differences were not just personal, but arose from Yarborough's unwillingness to join LBJ in forging bonds with the major industrial and financial powers of Texas to facilitate both campaigning in the giant state and the passgage of modernizing and desegregating legislation.
As Cox notes, Yarborough remained in many ways a figure from an earlier era; a teetotal Southern Baptist happier with courthouse square stemwinder oratory than TV campaigning, an old style hands on politician who tried to answer his mail personally, much to the frustration of his staff. Yet his part in pushing forward measures on civil rights, education, health care, and the environment also shows him pushing into a future that we still have not realized in full.
The account of his battles with Allan Shivers will remind you of just how barf making these southern conservative Democrats were!
#RalphYarborough #Texas #USHistory #USPolitics #CivilRights #LBJ #Democrats #AllanShivers #Liberals #SouthernPolitics #TheSouth #ConservativeDemocrats
https://utpress.utexas.edu/9780292722163/
