In July 1974, Leon Jaworski argued to the Supreme Court that not even the president of the United States was above the law. As the special prosecutor in the Watergate proceedings, Jaworski sought tape recordings made by President Nixon. The president claimed executive privilege, but the court sided unanimously with Jaworski, and the information on the tapes led to Nixon’s resignation in August. Leon Jaworski was a man whose experience taught him to both revel in the contest of public debate and believe in the integrity of the law.
Born Leonidas Jaworski on September 19, 1905, he was the third son, and first American-born child, of Central European immigrants newly arrived to Waco. His parents, Joseph and Mira Jaworski, immigrated to the United States in 1903 and settled into a life of pastoral ministry in the Evangelical Church. Eventually, Mira Jaworski’s ill health compelled her husband to seek a country pastorate, so the family moved from Waco to Geronimo, Texas, in 1907. However, she died only two years later. Both Leon’s parents were well educated, and Rev. Jaworski supplemented his children’s schooling by tutoring them. It was a desire to provide greater educational opportunities for his children that motivated Rev. Jaworski to return to Waco in 1914.
After finishing at Central Grammar School, Leon started at Waco High where he displayed the educational acumen to complete four years of study in three. An avid baseball lover, Jaworski’s small stature prevented him from competing in the game in high school, so the teenager joined the debate team. The experience sealed Jaworski’s love for verbal sparring, and he abandoned his earlier intention to join his older brother Hannibal in the practice of medicine to pursue law instead.
As a sixteen-year-old, Jaworski started college at Baylor. He completed one year of coursework before continuing his studies at the newly reopened law school. Jaworski graduated in 1925 with an LLB, the professional degree necessary at the time for practicing law. At nineteen, he became the youngest person admitted to the Texas Bar. To further cultivate his legal skills, Jaworski enrolled in George Washington University’s yearlong Master of Laws (LLM) program. His education now complete, Jaworski returned to Waco to practice law.
Jaworski cut his legal teeth in Prohibition-era Waco where the Ku Klux Klan still made its presence felt. He practiced alongside Tom Scott and Joe McNamara, and their firm handed several cases involving illegal spirits. Jaworski nevertheless tested the limits of community goodwill when he defended an African American man, Jordan Scott, charged with the 1928 murder of a white couple. He faced backlash from Wacoans for taking the case and believing the man was entitled to a strong defense. Though he lost, its publicity brought new professional opportunities Jaworski’s way. In 1930, he left Waco to practice with the A. D. Dyess firm in Houston where he stayed for a year before joining another Houston firm that would eventually bear his name: Fulbright and Jaworski.
With his colleagues—Fulbright, Crooker, Freeman, and Bates—Jaworski practiced corporate law, developing clients in the oil and gas industry. Over his five decades with the multinational firm, he handled clients such as Exxon and Shell. When World War II erupted, Jaworski joined the US Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps where he took part in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, but declined participation in the Nuremburg trials. However, Jaworski was not an infallible attorney. One of his JAG convictions was later overturned, and his corporate ties and ambition left him open to accusations of conflicts of interest and ethics violations. Whispers of such conduct followed Jaworski through the most notable cases of his career.
Jaworski’s status as a litigator garnered the attention of politicians of both parties in Washington. In 1960, Jaworski argued fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson’s case to both campaign for his Senate seat and as John F. Kennedy’s running mate. A few years later, Attorney General Robert Kennedy tasked Jaworski with the litigation against Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett for defying a federal order to integrate the University of Mississippi. Jaworski achieved his greatest acclaim as the Watergate special prosecutor in 1974, and three years later he returned to Washington as the special counsel for the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct charged with handling “Koreagate.” The matter involved Korean lobbyists’ attempts to gain influence over members of Congress. With that case, the most public portion of Jaworski’s career came to a close.
Jaworski died of a heart attack at his ranch outside Wimberley, Texas, on December 9, 1982. His legacy in the legal profession included not only his most public cases, but also his service as president of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the State Bar of Texas, and the American Bar Association. Leon Jaworski debated his way from Waco to the top of the legal profession where he participated in one of the most significant legal cases of the twentieth century.
For more (including 6 images & 4 audio files) view the original article
]]>Long before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, attorney Richard D. (R.D.) Evans waged the fight for civil rights from his Waco law office. As Waco’s first African American attorney, he became one of the most influential early twentieth century civil rights lawyers in Texas.
Born in Burleson County, circa 1873, Evans graduated from Prairie View Industrial College and worked as schoolteacher in Burleson County until 1909. Three years later, he graduated from Howard University’s law school and returned to Texas. Evans practiced law briefly in Brenham before settling in Waco in 1913. Slowly building a career serving the legal needs of Waco’s Black community, Evans soon established himself as the champion of Black Texans’ voting rights.
While he handled cases regarding jury selection and other civil rights, Evans rose to prominence constructing the legal challenge to the Texas white primary system. Disenfranchisement in primary elections and general opposition toward any African-American voting prompted Evans to take the case of Waco grocer E.L. Sublett in February 1919. In Sublett v. Duke, Sublett sued the Waco Democratic Executive Committee for its failure to allow African-Americans to vote in primaries. Judge George Clark ruled in favor of Sublett and Evans, a stunning decision that temporarily expanded voting rights. His success in defeating the white primary led Evans to head the Texas NAACP’s efforts to challenge the disenfranchisement at the federal level. Simultaneously, Texas moved to reinstate the white primary in 1922. Two years later, Evans brought a white primary for review by the Supreme Court. Love v. Nixon proved unsuccessful, but the language of the Justice Holmes’ majority opinion left open the possibility of a future challenge.
Evans' victories and defeats provided the precedents upon which the NAACP secured voting rights for African Americans beginning in the 1940s. In the wake of Love, the Texas NAACP, and eventually the national office, sought to make defeating the white primary one of its primary objectives. It was a struggle in which Evans remained deeply invested. The white primary persisted despite two successful Supreme Court cases—in 1927 and 1932—brought by El Paso doctor Lawrence Nixon. However, the Texas NAACP also expanded in size and scope during the 1930s due to the efforts of Evans, Juanita Craft, and A. Maceo Smith. After years of successfully litigating civil rights cases and active leadership, Evans became president of the Texas NAACP and in 1936 was elected to NAACP national board of directors. Connecting to the national NAACP brought its attorney Thurgood Marshall to Texas in late 1938 to help develop a federal legal strategy to combat the white primary. In 1944, it was Marshall’s Supreme Court case for Lonnie Smith in Smith v. Allwright that ended the over twenty year reign of the white primary in Texas.
Unfortunately, R.D. Evans did not live to see this victory. He conducted his litigation on behalf of civil rights during the 1920s and 30s under constant threat of violence to himself and his family. Still he persisted in that work. On June 26, 1938, a train in downtown Waco collided with a car driven by Evans, killing him. The circumstances surrounding Evans' death remain dubious, but likely unresolvable. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery. Evans’ life-long dedication to civil rights made him a seminal figure in securing equal voting rights for African-Americans in Texas. When President Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act it served as the culmination of years of grassroots efforts by Evans and many others to ensure the voting rights of all Americans, regardless of color.
For more (including 3 images & 3 audio files) view the original article
]]>For more than 40 years, the seeds planted in Washington, D.C., by McLennan County native Bob Poage reaped rewards in Central Texas.
As U.S. representative from Texas' 11th Congressional District — a post he held from Jan. 3, 1937, until his retirement on Dec. 31, 1978 — William Robert "Bob" Poage served during a political era of great influence for congressmen of the Deep South, both on Capitol Hill and in the Democratic Party.
Born in Waco on Dec. 28, 1899 — he liked to say he lived "three full days in the 19th century" — Poage and his family moved to a cattle ranch in Throckmorton while he was a toddler. The family returned to Waco in 1913, and he graduated from Waco High School in 1918.
In World War I, he joined the U.S. Navy, serving as an apprentice seaman. After a brief tour of duty, he attended Baylor University, graduating in 1921. He labored as a farm hand from 1920 to 1922, and taught geology at Baylor from 1922 to 1924 while working on his law degree. Poage was admitted to the bar in 1924, and practiced law in Waco while teaching at the law school until 1928.
His first foray into politics resulted in his election to the Texas House of Representatives in 1924. He served four years. He returned to Austin as a state senator from 1931 to 1937.
As a U.S. Representative, the young New Dealer campaigned for rural electrification and rural telephone service during the 1930s and 1940s. Despite others urging him to run for the U.S. Senate, Poage remained in the House through the 1950s, '60s and '70s, building up power and influence through seniority. Poage became chairman of the House Agriculture Committee in 1967 and held that position until 1974.
In 1979, the W.R. Poage Legislative Library for Graduate Studies and Research was dedicated at Baylor. The facility houses not only Poage 's congressional papers, but also the papers of 12 other former U.S. Congressmen, six Texas legislators, five judges and more.
Poage also stayed busy by writing an autobiography, My First Eighty-five Years (1985), and four books on local history and politics: After the Pioneers (1969), Politics Texas Style (1974), McLennan County Before 1980 (1981) and How We Lived (1985).
The congressman died in Temple on Jan. 3, 1987 — the 50th anniversary of his arrival in Washington — and was buried in Waco's Oakwood Cemetery.
]]>