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James V. ALLRED Govenor (04010206010705)
Allred Progenitors: (Renne, William, Renne, Patience, Catherine, John)
Born: 03/29/1899 Bowie, TX
Died: 09/27/1959 Laredo, TX
Submitted by: Sharon Allred Jessop 03/19/2000
RENNE ALLRED
Attorney at Law
P.O. Box 1079
Bowie, Texas 76230
Telephone:
Area Code 817
872-3541
Beginning in 1961 and up to the present time, the writer has
sent to many persons and places a copy of the booklet “Allred
1553-1961" which booklet was dedicated to my brother, James V.
Allrred, 1899-1959, former Attorney General, Governor and United
States District Judge in Texas.
On June 15, 1968, the Historical Survey Committee of Montague
County (his home county) and the Historical Survey Committee of
the State of Texas dedicated an official Texas Historical Marker
honoring Governor Allred, in the park at the junction of
Highways 287 and 81 in Bowie, Texas.
Since the program prepared by the Committee for this dedication
contained many of the Achievements of my brother, the thought
occurred to me that you might like to have a copy, and the
writer is sending one to you with this letter.
Sincerely
(Original signed)
Renne Allred, Jr.
GOVERNOR JAMES V. ALLRED
1899-1959
A man equal to the burdens of a troubled era in Texas was James
V. Allred, who was first elected governor in the crime-plagued
and Depression-sad year of 1934. He served from January 15,
1935, until January 15, 1939, and was leader in the political
moves that brought about better times.
James V. Allred was born in Bowie, Texas, March 29, 1899. He was
one of nine children born of Renne and Mary Henson Allred. From
childhood in a strictly-disciplined home, among his many
brothers and sisters, he very early learned how to practice
tolerance; and what he learned in that home about social
adjustment and equity stood him in good stead throughout his
career as a statesman. He learned to work, to persist, to act on
positive belief that whatever he wished to attain was within the
scope of possibility.
His father was the first rural mail carrier in Montague County,
and Jimmie and his brothers served as substitutes. As a boy,
Jimmie Allred also worked as a soda pop bottler, a shoeshine
boy, and a newsboy, besides carrying out duties at home. The
mother in the home was a highly intelligent, good and positive
person; her children followed her wishes that they master
practical skills, including the basic tools of business
life--shorthand, bookkeeping, business arithmetic. All the sons
to reach adulthood became court reporters or law clerks; the
daughters were competent secretaries. (After her children were
educated, Mrs. Allred also graduated from commercial college,
and the college president pronounced her the family’s best
student; she later was a partner of her husband in the real
estate business)
Jimmie Allred finished high school and business college, and
entered Rice Institute, where free tuition was provided for the
bright youth of Texas; but free tuition is not quite enough to
keep a good mind functioning in a healthy body, and as a late
teenager with a good appetite, this youth had to drop out. He
went to work for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration, and then in
1917 entered the United States Navy and served in World War I.
After the war, he studied law at Cumberland University, in
Tennessee, and was admitted to the bar in Texas in 1921. He soon
joined the Wichita Falls firm of Bernard Martin and Ben G. Oneal.
(Mr. Oneal was later a State Senator.) Mr Martin in 1922 became
District Attorney, and boyish Jimmie Allred was Assistant
District Attorney. Then in 1923 Governor Pat M. Neff appointed
Jimmie Allred-- still under 25--to the post of District
Attorney, 30th Judicial District of Texas. His star of political
destiny had risen.
For his forthright opposition to the Ku Klux Klan, resurrected
in the frustrations of war’s aftermath, Allred won distinction
as “the fighting district attorney.” Adversaries fought back,
and when he aspired to state office (as Attorney General) in
1926 he met with considerable opposition. Some questions raised
as to his qualifications were frivolous. As to his being a West
Texan, too young for state office, and a bachelor, he was wont
to reply that his birth occurred in West Texas because that was
where his mother was at the time of his birth; he was growing
older; and he was working to end his bachelorhood. Nevertheless
he was defeated.
In 1927 he married Joe Betsy Miller, granddaughter of an
old-time district attorney in Hamilton, Texas, and daughter of
Wichita Falls councilman Claude Miller, who for an interval had
lived across the Red River and had been a delegate to the
Oklahoma statehood convention in 1906-1907.
In 1930, Jimmie Allred won the office of Attorney General of
Texas. He took office in an era marked by bank failures,
economic depression, and crimes of desperation. The fabulous
East Texas oil field--largest in the world--was being opened
with exciting discovery wells of great value. This sudden wealth
gave the state some economic advantage, but it also attracted
criminal elements against which Attorney General Allred had to
fight, in order to defend Texas’ good name.
During four years as Attorney General he made a record fight
also against business monopoly and against efforts of
corporations to influence state taxation and fiscal policies. He
was able to put “teeth” into the gasoline tax law that
previously had been rather summarily evaded. He went into court
and defended oil proration laws--winning the very first test
case. He established for the state school fund its title to West
Texas oil royalties worth over $20,000,000.00, and successfully
fought the federal government’s attempts to tax the income of
Texas schools.
His record as Attorney General helped him win the office of
Governor in 1934, and also the distinction of being given the
title “Outstanding Young Man in America” by the national Jaycees
in 1935. Having taken the helm in Texas government when a severe
economic depression was blighting the world, he found ample
opportunity to exercise his zeal for reform and reorganiation.
By leading the state to cooperate with federal programs and
combat the Depression, he saw living standards raised for
Texans, and his work was highly commended by President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt.
On November 19, 1935, Governor Allred signed into law the first
old-age assistance bill for Texans. During his tenure, social
security amendments were added to the state constitution. He
instituted aid to dependent children and aid to the needy blind.
Having high esteem for education, as he had from childhood, he
was glad to take the lead in setting up a teachers’ retirement
fund, and to obtain fairer salaries for educators. He was also
instrumental in setting up building programs for the colleges
and other state institutions.
He sloshed in shoe top-deep mud over the neglected main road
that led to Prairie View College, and became the first Texas
Governor ever to visit there. (Later he saw to it that the road
to Prairie View was paved!)
Governor Allred set up a Board of Pardons and Paroles to correct
the outdated Texas system whereby, it was alleged, the selling
of pardons had not always in times past been unknown in the
governor’s office. He also instituted prison reforms.
During his administration the first securities regulation
legislation was enacted in Texas.
Having a personal interest in all classes of people, Governor
Allred signed into law the state’s first unemployment insurance
measure. He improved facilities for public health. For the
improvement of animal health and to increase the supply of good
meat and milk for human consumption, he increased the funds of
the Livestock Sanitary Commission.
It was during his leadership as Governor of Texas that drivers
were first licenced in the state. The paving of roads was begun;
the state began to administer motor bus regulations.
Governor Allred combined the Texas Rangers and the Highway
Patrol, modeling the state’s enforcement division somewhat after
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He had come into office
shortly after the ending of the Clyde Barrow gang’s reign of
terror, and in the aftermath of violence in the East Texas oil
fields. Much of the lawlessness had come under his scrutiny
while he was Attorney General. As Governor he had more power to
curb vice. This he did in the face of underworld threats to his
young sons--James V., William David and Sam Houston--whom he had
to place in seclusion on at least one occasion, when he defied
gangland.
Although he loved horses, it was one of the proudest moments of
his life when he put an end to pari-mutuel betting in Texas. He
could not suffer the cries of little children whose parents
wasted family funds in gambling.
Human strengths were to him the greatest resources in the
universe, and it was his constant desire to see that ambitious
and capable people found the opportunities they needed in order
to serve the nation. He named to the judiciary in Texas its
first woman member, Sarah T. Hughes, who later became a Federal
Judge and the person who gave the oath of office to the 36th
President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson.
As a very young man, Lyndon B. Johnson had gone in 1937 to the
Governor’s Mansion to seek advice about giving up his post as
head of the National Youth Administration in Texas in order to
run for the U.S. Congress in 10th District. Later he was to say
to James V. Allred: “Governor, but for your help I would never
have been elected to public office!”
Other statesmen counseled and encouraged by Governor Allred
included United States Senator Ralph Yarborough; former United
States Secretary of the Treasury Robert B. Anderson; and Robert
Calvert, Chief Justice, Texas Supreme Court.
The Centennial Anniversary of Texas fell in 1936, and Governor
Allred took great pleasure in traveling and acquainting the
world with the glories of this occasion. It was said of him that
he liked crowds and parades, and all sorts of ceremonies that
would serve to reflect credit upon Texas. The Centennial was a
huge success, and to the Governor was due much of the credit for
its splendor.
Shortly before Allred’s second term was to end in 1939,
President Roosevelt appointed him to the Federal bench. He left
that appointment to run unsuccessfully for the United States
Senate in 1942, and was reappointed in 1949 by Harry S. Truman.
As Federal District Judge he felt deep concern for the people
who appeared before him. He directed the probation officers
under his jurisdiction to study these people as human beings;
conferences in Judge Allred’s chambers often led to new lives
for troubled people. He did not handle an interview as though it
were merely between judge and prisoner but as between two
immortal souls responsible to heaven.
While serving as U.S. Judge, Southern District of Texas, he died
suddenly in Laredo on September 27, 1959. Funeral Services for
him were held in Corpus Christi, in the State Capitol in Austin,
and in Wichita Falls, where he is buried. He was a much beloved
and a greatly respected statesman.
During the Texas Centennial he had spoken of his great personal
commitment:
“I love Texas because it gave me the breath of life at birth; I
love it because my forebears settled here 99 years ago and
pledged their posterity to its service. I love it because of its
romantic and historic traditions; because of its lands and its
people; and because I believe it can be a greater Texas tomorrow
and next year than it has ever been before, I want to see Texas
grow and prosper; I want only to reflect credit to my native
state.” |
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Allred
Family Organization
