Don Yarborough

Who was Don Yarborough?

Donald Howard Yarborough, known as Don Yarborough, was a liberal Democratic politician who was reportedly the first Southern politician to endorse the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yarborough, an attorney in Houston, Texas, ran for governor of Texas in 1962, 1964, and 1968. In 1962, he came very close to winning the primary runoff election against John B. Connally, Jr., having polled 49 percent of the ballots. Other intraparty rivals, considered conservatives, included the state attorney general, Will Wilson, highway commissioner Marshall Formby, and General Edwin A. Walker, who made anticommunism the centerpiece of his race. The Republican gubernatorial nominee, Jack Cox, an oil equipment executive from Houston, was also a strong conservative and a former Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives.