Fair Ways: How Six Black Golfers Won Civil Rights in Beaumont, Texas

CHAPTER 8. Judge Lamar Cecil

C H A P T E R 8 Judge Lamar Cecil A fter the 1952 Eisenhower victory, Lamar Cecil continued working in the law business, but he also capitalized on his newfound power in the Republican Party. He played the patronage game, exploiting and cultivating new friendships to get benefits for himself and fellow Republicans. In June, 1953, just six months after the Eisenhower inauguration, he wrote a patronage letter to William P. Rogers, the new deputy attorney general. Cecil recommended Glenn D. Gillette, a Washington, D.C., radio-engineering consultant, to fill a vacancy on the Federal Communications Commission. Apparently he had not met Gillette but sent the letter at the suggestion of other Texas Republicans . Cecil did know Rogers personally, as well as Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr., having worked with them on the Eisenhower team at the Chicago convention. He opened his letter to Rogers with “Dear Bill” and closed with vague promises to visit Washington, D.C.: “I am going to try my best to get up your way before too long, and I am looking forward to a visit with you.” Rogers forwarded Cecil’s letter to Sherman Adams, Eisenhower’s top advisor, an action that indicated Cecil’s access to the inner circles at the White House.1 Soon Lamar Cecil played a patronage card for himself. During the fall of 1953, when Congress considered legislation to create new federal judgeships for Texas, Cecil became a prospective nominee for one of the judgeships. He traveled to Washington, 146 CHAPTER 8 D.C., where he made an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee headed by Sen. William Langer, a Republican from North Dakota. Congress deferred action, but early the next year it created more than twenty additional federal district judgeships around the nation, including two for Texas—one for the Southern District and one for the Eastern District. The Beaumont Enterprise covered the story, speculating that President Eisenhower would nominate Joe Ingraham of Houston for the new Southern District post, while Lamar Cecil was the likely candidate for the Eastern District position. If Eisenhower named Ingraham and Cecil, they would be the first Republican nominees in Texas since 1931, when President Herbert Hoover nominated Robert J. McMillan for the Western District of Texas. The newspaper writer suggested that Texas Republican leader Jack Porter would recommend Cecil, “the Beaumont attorney who championed the case of the Texas Eisenhower delegation at the Republican convention in 1952.” When questioned by the Enterprise reporter, Cecil indicated he would accept the judgeship.2 The Eastern District of Texas, where Cecil aspired to judgeship, was one of four districts in the state of Texas. The state was part of the Fifth Circuit, a larger judicial region that then included Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Cases appealed from district courts were referred to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, and from there to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Eastern District of Texas comprised forty-one East Texas counties and six division courts: Beaumont, Jefferson, Paris, Sherman, Texarkana, and Tyler, the last being district headquarters and home to the chief judge, Joseph W. Sheehy. If Cecil obtained the judgeship, he would be based in Beaumont and travel the district to supplement the work of Sheehy, a Democrat appointed in 1951 by President Truman. With a population of 1.3 million that included about 300,000 African Americans, the Eastern District shared a long history with the Deep South; most of its citizens adhered closely to the traditions of the southern caste system.3 Jack Porter, the Texas Republican leader, helped initiate a formal campaign for Lamar Cecil’s appointment, sending a letter on February 17, 1954, to Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr., and suggesting Cecil as a prospective judicial nominee. In the JUDGE LAMAR CECIL 147 Eisenhower administration, Attorney General Brownell and his deputy William P. Rogers had official responsibility for judicial nominations, receiving, processing, and recommending them for the president’s approval. Cecil’s own nomination file, now in the possession of his daughter Grayson Cecil, demonstrated how he, his partners, friends, and fellow lawyers worked to advance his cause. Bar associations from Jefferson, Orange, and other counties in the Eastern District sent letters of recommendation, as did various Beaumont lawyers: Gilbert T. Adams, Joiner Cartwright, J. B. Morris, Will E. Orgain, Beeman Strong, and W...