Yarborough, Ralph (1903–1996)

Ralph Webster Yarborough was born in Chandler, Texas, on June 8, 1903. The Texas politician was a leader in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and was the U.S. Senator who introduced the Bilingual Education Act in 1967. Yarborough attended West Point Military Academy in 1919 and left in 1920 to become a teacher. He taught for 3 years and attended Sam Houston State Teachers College and went on to graduate from the University of Texas Law School in 1927.

After his admission to the bar, Yarborough practiced law in El Paso, Texas, until 1931, when the state attorney general, James V. Allred, hired him to be assistant attorney general. With an expertise in land law, he prosecuted oil companies that failed to pay royalties for drilling on public lands, in violation of production limits. Yarborough drew public attention for winning a million-dollar judgment against the Mid-Kansas Oil and Gas Company for oil royalties. In 1938, he ran for state attorney general but was defeated. During World War II, he served in army ground forces and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1946. Yarborough ran for the gubernatorial nomination in 1952, 1954, and 1956. In a 1957 special election, he was elected U.S. Senator as a liberal Texas Democrat.

As a senator, Yarborough was revered by progressive Texans as “the people's senator.” He was the only senator representing a former Confederate state who voted for every major piece of civil rights legislation, and he was a major supporter of Johnson's Great Society programs in education, environmental preservation, and health care. Notably, Yarborough was one of a handful of southern senators who refused to sign the “Southern Manifesto,” a pledge by legislators to resist forced integration. He also voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, legislation that proved to be enormously important in cases of education civil rights, including Lau v. Nichols (1974). In addition, he defied political convention by opposing powerful political interests as well as speaking out against the Vietnam War.

In 1967, Yarborough became the lead sponsor of the Bilingual Education Act, the first federal legislation concerning minority language students. Its purpose was to provide federal funding to school districts to provide innovative programs, including bilingual instruction to children with “limited-English-speaking ability” (LESA). Originally intended for Spanish-speaking students, the bill recommended that Spanish be taught as a native language and English as a second language and that programs to augment Spanish-speaking students' appreciation of ancestral languages and cultures be designed. To increase political support in Congress, Yarborough and the other sponsors broadened the bill to include other language groups in addition to Spanish.

Political opposition from those who feared that federal funds would support the maintenance of a [Page 914]language other than English led to the bill's amendment, while Yarborough assuaged the opposition by noting as follows:

The bill eventually became the core of the Bilingual Education Act, or Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). School districts were provided the opportunity to offer bilingual education programs that would not violate segregation laws. Yarborough's efforts in part made it possible for the Bilingual Education Act to pass as part of the ESEA.

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