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

CHAPTER 7. Republican Lamar Cecil

C H A P T E R 7 Republican Lamar Cecil A fter his surgery, Lamar Cecil resumed his busy life, attending to his family, working in his law firm, and enjoying himself at the clubs. But somehow he found time and energy to pursue a new interest—Republican Party politics. Texas then was controlled entirely by the Democratic Party, at all governmental levels, while the Republican Party had few members and was largely impotent in terms of electing public officials. Cecil joined a small cadre of Texas men and women who embraced the theory of a two-party state, believing the Lone Star State would benefit by the development of a viable Republican Party. They espoused Republican ideology; they filed for public office, raised campaign funds, and rallied voters. Why Cecil became a Republican is not known. Maybe he harbored a secret ambition for a federal appointment, but this notion seems unlikely since prospects for its realization were so slim and so far in the future. Or perhaps his motivations were economic and ideological; as a member of the Beaumont elite and a corporate lawyer, he might be inclined toward the party long associated with business and property interests. His sister Edith remembered that their parents were life-long Democrats, loyal supporters of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Leading the nation during the Depression and World War II, Roosevelt was adored by millions of Americans and elected four times to the presidency. But many conservative Americans, including numerous Texans, REPUBLICAN LAMAR CECIL 125 opposed Roosevelt, believing he was too beholden to organized labor and judging his New Deal programs as too liberal, even socialistic or communistic. Edith recalled that her brother Lamar, the professional lawyer, was offended by Roosevelt’s “court-packing ” scheme, a proposal to increase the number of Supreme Court justices and thereby create a new majority favorable to the policies of his administration.1 Campaign 1944 Whatever his motivations, Cecil plunged headlong into Republican Party politics in the summer of 1944, early in the modern era of Texas Republicans and eight years before the pivotal Eisenhower campaign of 1952. He filed as a Republican candidate for Congress in the 2nd Congressional District, a seat being vacated by East Texas Democrat Martin Dies, Jr., the controversial head of the House Un-American Activities Committee. To fill Dies’s place and oppose Cecil, the Democrats nominated Jesse M. Combs, an East Texas lawyer who served on the Ninth Court of Civil Appeals in Beaumont. Combs and Cecil knew one another, and according to Edith Cecil Flynn, Combs went to see Cecil for a pre-election parley. In Cecil’s office on the ninth floor of the Goodhue Building , Combs asked Cecil bluntly if he actually thought he could win the race. “Hell no,” Cecil retorted, “if I thought I’d win, I’d jump out of that window.”2 Cecil may have joked about his chances in the race, but filing for office was an important step in a long-term plan for building the Republican Party in southeast Texas. In all likelihood, he made the race with the encouragement of L. J. “Brub” Benckenstein, an affluent corporate lawyer who served many years as Republican Party chairman for Jefferson County. Cecil and Benckenstein knew one another, both being attorneys, having offices for a while in the same building and holding memberships in the Beaumont Club and Town Club. Benckenstein was eight years older than Cecil and, in the party, much senior to him in authority and length of service. Prominent in GOP affairs since the late 1920s, Benckenstein served in a number of important state and national party positions, including county chairman, state delegate to the national executive committee, chairman of state conventions, and 126 CHAPTER 7 keynote speaker at state conventions. In the 1944 race, Benckenstein probably advised Cecil and perhaps helped him raise money for the campaign. Probably they became friends. But later they would become bitter rivals.3 In the 1944 election, carried out during the height of World War II, Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented fourth term. Some Democrats in the Lone Star State opposed Roosevelt and came out against the incumbent president and his new vice presidential nominee, Harry Truman; they organized the Texas Regulars, a rump organization that presaged later groups, such as Democrats for Eisenhower. Texas Republicans, meanwhile, backed the GOP ticket of...