The 1950s Democratic Party Hijinks

mining the archives of the Progressive Pioneers

In the 1950s, Texas internal Democratic Party battles were legendary for the intensity and the dirty tricks. There are strong rumors of a Netflix series on this sordid chapter in Texas history. I suspect it will be great, because, honestly, it don’t get any more entertaining.

This epic political saga doesn’t show up much in textbooks, but let PHIT point you to a couple of books you might want to glance at George Green and Max Krocmal have reconstructed a lot of this history.

Coming out of WWII, politics got downright savage in Texas. Progressives and liberal-minded people who had to run for office during this Red Scare period were called “Commiecrats.” (And other things that I am too delicate to mention.)

Texas progressives, though, could reach back to the Texas Populist history and most politicians, Yarborough in particular, claimed themselves Texas Populists.

PHIT has already written about the Port Arthur incident. That sterling example of dirty tricks happened during a 1952 Democrat primary race between Alan Shivers and Ralph Yarborough.

But the fun started even before the Shivers Era.

State conventions were usually scenes of some wild times.

George Green, labor historian and founder of the Labor Archives at the University of Texas in Arlington, gave PHIT an interview back in 1990 when we were collecting oral histories on the Progressive Pioneers.

“Beginning mostly with Homer Rainey in 1948 campaign and up

through the Yarbrough campaigns in those years, a number of progressive Democrats began organizing at the precinct level.”

“You first see this in '46 with people like George and Latane Lambert in Dallas, Ruth and Don Ellinger in Dallas, Juanita Craft, from the NAACP, in Dallas. Frankie Randolph and Billie Carr in Houston. Jack and Margaret Carter in Fort Worth. Henry Gonzalez in San Antonio. Hector Garcia and with his GI forum in Corpus Christi.”

[All of those names go in the honor roll of the Progressive Pioneers and deserve biographies and public statues.]

“They were putting together precinct organizations who are building Liberalism from the grassroots. They would urge attendance at the precinct meetings. Some of these people were part of organized labor.”

But it wasn’t easy.

In 1948, the year Homer Rainey ran for Governor, the Dixiecrats, at the state convention, marched out. Among the supporters of the “old and hallowed way” was Neville Penrose, who underwrote the rental of the furniture for the convention. “You can’t put me in bed with Truman and the Commiecrats,” Penrose ranted. He called a truck and had everything hauled off. When Yarborough stood up to protest, they hauled away his desk. And, before he could sit back down, his chair quickly carted off.

If you remember your history, Truman, the supposed “commiecrat,” won that presidential election with a barnstorm train trip through the country. The Truman train barreled through Texas with acclaim.

The “liberal minded Democrats” were subjected to heavy handed tactics in the Texas county conventions. Precinct meetings attracted few voters, but those precinct meetings was where power in the Party was exercised. Shivers people were the precinct bosses. They would hold the meetings early in the day which made it hard for working people to attend. Meetings after the statewide vote would start promptly at 7:30 and the clock would be often be moved back so it started early, and the Shivers people could quickly elect themselves delegates to the state convention. Or the meeting place would be changed on short notice. You know…the tricks of the trade.

[I know that when I became active in housing and environmental issues in the 70s, those tricks were still being used. Precinct meetings after the general vote were eliminated after Obama overwhelmed everything in 2008. PHIT collected footage for a documentary on the Texas Two Step in 2008. Funding the completion of the project proved to be nigh unto impossible. And then the powers changed the whole process. But PHIT has oodles of interviews and footage of the primary process in Texas. Which might get used someday, if anyone is interested.]

From the 1956 state convention, I quote from George Green’s Establishment in Texas Politics.

“Lyndon Johnson, Sam Rayburn, Price Daniel and Alan Shivers agreed ahead of time to steal the convention from the labor-liberals if there was no other way to win it.” “It turned out that there was no other way.”

Their corporate backers of elected leaders wanted the party machinery to remain in conservative hands.

So….a chain link fence topped with barbed wire was erected around the Fort Worth Convention Center, the site of the State Democratic Convention. “One man in the balcony watched closely with a pistol in his hand.”

Johnson had the credentials committee meet after it had technically adjourned and then the committee stripped the liberal El Paso of voting status. [See The Big Steal of the Texas Democratic Party, a pamphlet in the George and Latane Lambert papers for the full story.]

At this point in the story, the liberals stepped outside the Party and set up Democratic Clubs to organize independently. Those Democratic Clubs were effective and eventually led to some significant victories by the liberal-labor, progressive pioneers. One of which was Yarborough being elected Senator. Hightower, Richards, Mattox and Mauro were elected to state offices in 1982.

Wild, huh?

Texas has a lot of history that doesn’t show up in the school history books.

But there are lots of lessons to be learned from a study of the past.