The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 87, July 1983 - April, 1984 Page: 443
468 p. : ill. (some col.), maps (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
While the author occasionally tells personal stories about his rela-
tionship with the governors, the book is concerned with public events
that were well known at the time they occurred. Except concerning
James V. Allred, whose mildly New Deal philosophy Morehead dis-
liked, the evaluations are essentially laudatory. For instance, Beauford
H. Jester "was perhaps the most effective governor Texas ever had"
(p. 72), Allan Shivers "may have been-all things considered-the best
governor of his time" (p. 90), John B. Connally (as Morehead quotes
himself as having written in 1965) was "the most effective governor in
modern Texas history" (p. 181), and Preston Smith was "the hardest-
working governor I ever knew" (p. 21 o).
In general, this is Texas politics as one would learn about it within
the columns of the Dallas News. A sincere conservative, Morehead
regards the oil industry as beneficent, classifies President Dwight D.
Eisenhower's intervention in Little Rock in 1957 as the work of an
outsider, and views askance the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He is not
predictable. His work on loan sharks was as fair, harsh, and telling as
any investigative journalism in Texas in his time; he favors fast, high-
quality rail passenger service between major cities. But what he re-
gards as the significant events of Texas politics are very different from
what a more liberal person would regard as important. One gets from
Morehead no sense at all of the importance of the issue of party loyalty
caused by Shivers's endorsement of Eisenhower, no feeling for the real
role of the perfidious "Port Arthur Story" in Shivers's defeat of Ralph
W. Yarborough for governor in 1954, little on the important battles
within the Texas Democratic party and Lyndon B. Johnson's role in
them. To Francis T. ("Sissy") Farenthold, who ran for governor in
her own right and received 612,000 historically important votes in
1972, Morehead devotes no space except that necessary to write her
name in the course of giving the vote totals.
In the second book we have the nonpolitical Morehead, a generous
person who is comfortable in nature and at the ranch, combating
woodpeckers, wishing he had the luxury of a telephone in his bath-
room, arguing with his wife when she turns on the vacuum cleaner
while he is watching a football game on TV, and savoring cooked
cactus. To the last five decades of Texas politics, narrowly conceived
as elections and governors, Morehead's Fifty Years is a general and
quite conservative introduction; with its many warm stories of ordi-443
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 87, July 1983 - April, 1984, periodical, 1983/1984; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117150/m1/511/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.