Ex-Sen. Ralph W. Yarborough, Longtime Texas Liberal, Dies At 92 He Was The Only Southerner To Vote For Civil Rights Act Of ‘64
Former Sen. Ralph W. Yarborough of Texas, the only Southerner to vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, died Saturday after a long illness, said DeAnna Dicuffa, an assistant who worked in his law office. He was 92 and lived in Austin.
A liberal Democrat, Yarborough fought to expand the role of the federal government in assisting veterans, workers, the poor and the infirm. At the height of his influence in nearly 14 years in the Senate, Yarborough was the chairman of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee.
By the time he was defeated in a 1970 primary by Lloyd Bentsen, he had left a legacy of support for enhancing health care, increasing the federal minimum wage and job training programs, and establishing new anti-poverty efforts. He sponsored legislation known as the Cold War GI Bill to extend education benefits to 5 million veterans.
Early in his career, one of his first victories was passage of the National Defense Education Act of 1958. The legislation was the first time the federal government supported the principle of a Government contribution toward general education through loans and grants to universities and their students.
On Nov. 22, 1963, Yarborough rode in the second car of the Dallas motorcade in which President John F. Kennedy was killed. He later criticized the Secret Service agents for failing to respond quickly enough, and sponsored federal legislation to offer assistance to the family of J.D. Tippitt, the Dallas police officer who was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s assassin.
In 1967, reviewing his first decade in the Senate, he said his legislative goals had been the “conservation and improvement of all natural and human resources.”
Breaking with the mainstream of the Democratic Party in the Vietnam War, he became a supporter of Sen. Eugene McCarthy in the divisive 1968 presidential primaries. Before receiving an endorsement from Yarborough, McCarthy had received strong support in primaries, leading President Lyndon B. Johnson to decide not to seek re-election.