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Monday, July 25, 2016
Texas History Minute: swear in Lyndon Johnson as president. Sanders became the Assistant Attorney General in 1965 and helped convince Congress to pass the landmark Voting Rights Act, which allowed millions more American citizens to vote. Johnson nominated Sanders for a position as federal judge in 1968. However, legislative delays prevented the Senate from Dr. Ken Bridges acting upon the nomination Judge Barefoot Sanders was familiar before Johnson’s term expired. figure in the Dallas legal community The incoming president, Richard for years. And not only did he make Nixon, refused to nominate history, he was a witness to many Sanders. important events in the twentieth century. Sanders returned to private law practice, and in 1972, he Harold Barefoot Sanders, Jr., was announced his candidacy for the born in Dallas in 1925. Barefoot US Senate. He faced former US was his grandmother’s maiden Sen. Ralph Yarborough in the name. Though he disliked the name Democratic primary, who was as a youngster, he embraced it as an ousted in the 1970 primary by adult. He graduated high school in Lloyd Bentsen. Sanders won the 1942 and enlisted in the navy the nomination but lost to John next year, serving on a battleship in Tower that fall by a sizable the Pacific for the remainder of margin. World War II. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter After his service, he enrolled at the nominated Sanders to be a University of Texas. He was a federal judge. This time, popular figure on campus and Sanders was confirmed easily. graduated in 1949. He quickly As a federal judge, he oversaw enrolled at the UT Law School and many cases, but the most earned a law degree by the next year prominent was the desegregation and soon found a position at a Dallas of Dallas schools. The Dallas law firm. school board had slowly moved to desegregate the schools in the In 1952, he was elected to the Texas late 1960s, a handful of students House of Representatives, his first of at a time. Even this enraged three terms. He sponsored a number segregationists who refused to of reforms to investment law, the accept any desegregation of judicial process, and to the state’s schools and civil rights activists mental health care system. In 1958, who believed the rights of all he ran for Congress for the Dallas Dallas school children were at County district held by Republican stake. Bruce Alger, but lost decisively. After years of court fights, the In spite of the defeat, John F. case landed in Sanders’s court. Kennedy hired Sanders to manage By 1981, he ordered a new his presidential campaign in Dallas desegregation plan for Dallas, County in 1960. Afterward, which he would oversee the Kennedy appointed Sanders as US implementation for the next Attorney for the District of North twenty years. For Sanders, the Texas. But that fateful November in law was not about protecting the 1963, he warned Kennedy not to status quo. The law and the come to Dallas for his goodwill tour rights promised to all Americans of the state, fearful of the toxic in the Constitution had to apply political atmosphere of the time. to everyone for it to mean Sanders rode in one of the cars in the anything. Though the changes motorcade. After the president’s were sometimes difficult, Dallas murder in the streets of Dallas, he slowly moved toward located and brought federal judge desegregation of its schools. Sarah T. Hughes to Love Field to Sanders stepped down from an
active role on the court in 1996. Once he took senior status, as it is called, he took only the occasional case. As his health declined in his later years, he retired completely from the court in 2006. He died in 2008 at the age of 83.
Dr. Bridges is a Texas native, writer, and history professor. He can be reached at drkenbridges@gmail.com.
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