Ralph Webster Yarborough was an American politician and lawyer.
43 Facts About Ralph Yarborough
2.
Ralph Yarborough was a Texas Democratic politician who served in the United States Senate from 1957 to 1971 and was a leader of the progressive wing of his party.
3.
Ralph Yarborough was the only senator from a state that was part of the Confederacy to vote for all five bills.
4.
Ralph Yarborough became an assistant to Texas Attorney General James V Allred in 1931 and specialized in prosecuting major oil companies.
5.
Price Daniel resigned from the Senate after winning the 1956 gubernatorial election, and Ralph Yarborough won the special election to serve the remainder of Daniel's term.
6.
Ralph Yarborough staunchly supported the "Great Society" legislation that encompassed Medicare and Medicaid, the War on Poverty, federal support for higher education and veterans, and other programs.
7.
Ralph Yarborough co-wrote the Endangered Species Act and was the most powerful proponent of the Big Thicket National Preserve.
8.
In 1970, Ralph Yarborough lost re-nomination to fellow Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, who campaigned as relatively more conservative.
9.
Ralph Yarborough attempted to win the 1972 Democratic primary for Texas's other Senate seat, but lost the primary to Barefoot Sanders.
10.
Ralph Yarborough was born in Chandler in Henderson County west of Tyler, the seventh of nine children of Charles Richard Ralph Yarborough and the former Nannie Jane Spear.
11.
Ralph Yarborough was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1919 but dropped out to become a teacher.
12.
Ralph Yarborough instead attended Sam Houston State Teachers College and transferred to the University of Texas at Austin.
13.
Ralph Yarborough spent one year working and studying foreign trade and international relations in Europe, mostly as assistant secretary for the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin, Germany.
14.
Ralph Yarborough was an expert in Texas land law and specialized in prosecuting major oil companies that violated production limits or failed to pay oil royalties to the Permanent School Fund for drilling on public lands.
15.
Ralph Yarborough earned renown for winning a million dollar judgment against the Mid-Kansas Oil and Gas Company for oil royalties, the second largest judgment ever in Texas at the time.
16.
Ralph Yarborough was elected to a four-year term later the same year.
17.
Ralph Yarborough's first run for state office resulted in a third-place finish in the Democratic primary for state attorney general in 1938 against the sitting lieutenant governor.
18.
Ralph Yarborough served in the US Army during World War II after 1943 and achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel.
19.
Ralph Yarborough served as a presiding judge for the Third Administrative Judicial District of Texas.
20.
Ralph Yarborough was urged to run again for state attorney general in 1952, and he planned to do so until he received a personal affront from Governor Allan Shivers who told him not to run.
21.
In 1956, Ralph Yarborough made it to the primary runoff for governor against US Senator Price Daniel.
22.
When Daniel resigned from the Senate in 1957 to become governor, Ralph Yarborough ran in the special election to fill the empty seat.
23.
In office, Ralph Yarborough was a very different kind of Southern senator.
24.
Ralph Yarborough did not support the Southern Manifesto opposing integration and supported national Democratic goals of more funding for health care, education, and the environment.
25.
Blakley had been the interim senator from January to April 1957 but did not run in the special election in which Ralph Yarborough defeated Dies and Hutcheson.
26.
Ralph Yarborough was in a convertible with Vice President Lyndon B Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, United States Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood, and Hurchel Jacks of the Texas State Highway Patrol.
27.
Ralph Yarborough's decision, underpinned by a long-standing feud with Governor Connally, an old friend and erstwhile ally of Johnson, caused embarrassment to both the President and Vice President and drew considerable diversionary attention in the press.
28.
Ralph Yarborough denounced Bush as an extremist to the right of that year's GOP presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, and as a rich easterner and carpetbagger trying to buy a Senate seat.
29.
In 1967, Ralph Yarborough was the first US senator to introduce the first bilingual education act.
30.
In 1969, Ralph Yarborough became chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare.
31.
In 1972, Ralph Yarborough made a comeback effort to win the Democratic nomination for US Senate to challenge Senator John Tower, who as a young man had once circulated Ralph Yarborough stickers.
32.
Ralph Yarborough won the first round of the primary and came within 526 votes of winning the primary without the need for a runoff.
33.
Ralph Yarborough again made accusations of vote fraud from the conservative wing.
34.
Ralph Yarborough lost in the primary runoff to a former US Attorney, Barefoot Sanders, in an anti-incumbent sweep after the Sharpstown Bank-stock Scandal despite neither being an incumbent nor involved at all with the scandal.
35.
From 1973 to 1974, Ralph Yarborough served as a member of the Constitutional Revision Commission of Texas.
36.
Ralph Yarborough practiced law in Austin from 1971 until his death in 1996.
37.
Ralph Yarborough is interred at the Texas State Cemetery there beside his wife, the former Opal Warren, a native of Murchison in Henderson County, Texas.
38.
Ralph Yarborough left a legacy in the modernization of the state of Texas and achieved political power when Texas had a native son, Lyndon Johnson, in the White House.
39.
Ralph Yarborough was combative with the dominant industries of oil and natural gas and pushed for the petroleum industry to pay a greater share of taxes.
40.
Ralph Yarborough was one of the last of the New Deal Democrats and powerful liberals in Texas state politics.
41.
Ralph Yarborough is remembered as the acknowledged "patron saint of Texas liberals".
42.
Ralph Yarborough favored the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and in 1957 was on a subcommittee that began the investigation that resulted in NASA's creation.
43.
Ralph Yarborough advocated more education in science and technology in schools throughout the country.