Don Yarborough
Encyclopedia
Donald Howard Yarborough, known as Don Yarborough (December 15, 1925 - September 23, 2009), was a liberal Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

 who was reportedly the first Southern politician to endorse the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...

. Yarborough, an attorney
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

 in Houston
Houston, Texas
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...

, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, ran for governor of Texas
Governor of Texas
The governor of Texas is the head of the executive branch of Texas's government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military forces. The governor has the power to either approve or veto bills passed by the Texas Legislature, and to convene the legislature...

 in 1962, 1964, and 1968. In 1962, he came very close to winning the primary runoff election against John B. Connally, Jr., having polled 49 percent of the ballots. Other intraparty rivals, considered conservatives, included the state attorney general
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...

, Will Wilson
Will Wilson
Will Reid Wilson, Sr. was a prominent Democratic politician in his native Texas best known for his service as attorney general of Texas from 1957-1963. In 1968, he joined the Republican Party to support the election of Richard M. Nixon as U.S. President. Nixon thereafter named Wilson an assistant...

, highway commissioner Marshall Formby
Marshall Formby
Marshall Clinton Formby, Jr. , was a Texas attorney, newspaper publisher, radio executive, and a Democratic politician who served a term in the Texas State Senate from District 30 from 1941 to 1945. He was a defender of West Texas interests and entitled a 1962 book, These Are My People...

, and General
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....

 Edwin A. Walker, who made anticommunism the centerpiece of his race. The Republican gubernatorial nominee, Jack Cox
Jack Cox (Texas)
Jack M. Cox was an oil equipment executive from Houston and the 1962 Republican gubernatorial nominee in the state of Texas.-Early years:...

, an oil equipment executive from Houston, was also a strong conservative and a former Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives
Texas House of Representatives
The Texas House of Representatives is the lower house of the Texas Legislature. The House is composed of 150 members elected from single-member districts across the state. The average district has about 150,000 people. Representatives are elected to two-year terms with no term limits...

.

Although Yarborough never became governor, his campaigns contributed strongly to the reform of the Texas Democratic Party, uniting, behind Yarborough's candidacy, traditional New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

 loyalists, organized labor, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and reform-seeking liberals, thereby enabling this coalition to capture local constituencies in the Texas House and Senate and build organizations later drawn upon by Mark White
Mark White
Mark Wells White is an American lawyer, who served as the 43rd Governor of Texas from January 18,1983-January 20,1987.-Biography:...

 and Ann Richards
Ann Richards
Dorothy Ann Willis Richards was an American politician from Texas. She first came to national attention as the state treasurer of Texas, when she delivered the keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Richards served as the 45th Governor of Texas from 1991 to 1995 and was...

.

Yarborough was born in New Orleans on December 15, 1925. His father was the president of a bank in New Orleans that went bust in the Great Depression, so Don was sent temporarily to spend part of his boyhood living with an aunt in Mississippi, where he helped out picking cotton in the fields of his family’s farm with the laborers. His father eventually got a job with the government and moved the family to Washington, D.C. His family also spent time during the years after the Depression living with relatives in Coral Gables, Florida. The family eventually moved together to Houston when he was 12. His mother, Inez Black Yarborough, served as head of the Women in Yellow volunteer corps at the Jefferson Davis Hospital in Houston.

Upon graduating from San Jacinto High School at 17, Yarborough enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, entered officer’s training school and became a Company Commander at the age of 19. He served one year in China at the close of World War II. After the war, Yarborough entered the University of Texas, where he belonged to Kappa Alpha fraternity, and worked part-time to supplement the money he received under the G.I. bill. He earned his law degree in 1950.

Yarborough re-entered the Marine Corps to serve during the Korean War as a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corp (JAG Corp). He then returned to Texas to found his own law firm and take part in civic affairs. In 1956, as president of the Houston Junior Chamber of Commerce, Yarborough won the national debating championship for the organization due to his passionate speaking skills.

In 1963, Yarborough was named by LIFE magazine as one of the 100 young Americans who were "distinguished by their dedication to something larger than private success, because they had the courage to act against old problems, the boldness to try out new ideas, and a hard-bitten, undaunted hopefulness about man.

In his first run for political office, Yarborough ran for Lieutenant Governor of Texas in 1960. In 1962, he ran for the first time for governor, and in a field of five Democratic candidates, he reached a run-off with John Connally and came within 28,000 votes of winning the nomination, a nationally-noted near-upset in a state long dominated by the conservative faction of the Democratic Party. He ran for governor again in 1964 and 1968. In political life he championed civil rights, economic justice, environmental protection, and women's equality, and he challenged the big business establishment that had long dominated Texas politics.

After leaving politics, Yarborough promoted science as a means to ease suffering and cure aging, which he considered to be a disease that affected everyone. He worked as a lobbyist for Paraplegia Cure Research in Washington, D.C., where he lived for many years on Capitol Hill and in Mclean, Va. He also played a role in the Council for a Livable World and was a founding member of biotech research companies.

Yarborough died of Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...

on September 23, 2009.
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