( Few people who know him or read his Sunday column in th...)
Few people who know him or read his Sunday column in the San Antonio Express-News are neutral about Maury Maverick Jr., not only one of the twentieth century’s most outspoken iconoclasts but an individualist who helped shape American constitutional history. Many of Maverick’s columns continue his efforts to achieve civil rights guarantees for the disadvantaged. They draw heavily on what he learned from his previous professional careers as a politician, a teacher, and, more significantly, a successful civil-rights lawyer. The legal issues which most deeply interest Maverick are free speech, due process of law, separation of church and state, world peace, and preservation of human dignity. Using the press as an avenue to express his political, economic, social, and religious views has kept Maverick active in public life. He has observed: “Journalism gives me a kinship with sculptors who start out with a big blob of nothing and try to make it into something. . . . Because of journalism, I feel that artists, poets and musicians are my spiritual cousins. I never had that feeling about the law.” But occasionally Maverick gets tired of politics, and then he writes about pinto beans, poetry, music, birds, abandoned dogs, and gardening. He has a special fondness for stray dogs, many of whom he adopts, and purple martin shelters, which he urges people to build. Allan O. Kownslar has selected Express-News columns to reveal Maverick’s views on a variety of topics, from heroes to the Red Scare, Maverick relatives to war. The result is a look at important events in history and selected individuals.
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(Excerpt from In Blood and Ink With liberty dead in over ...)
Excerpt from In Blood and Ink With liberty dead in over half the world, and gasping every where else, it is time for all Americans to spend a little while finding out just what our rights are - and to be willing to spend a little more time protecting them. Conditions in Germany with its cruelty and persecution are shocking, but so are conditions in many other places - and we are far from perfection. In our country it is especially important now to inquire into our Constitution, above all, our Bill of Rights. We came to a virgin continent and have made money so fast, though we have wasted and squandered our resources, that we have forgotten our constitutional heritage. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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( Old Villita is reissued by Wings Press in celebration o...)
Old Villita is reissued by Wings Press in celebration of the Tricentennial of the founding of San Antonio, Texas on May 5, 1718. Earlier in the 1930s, U.S. Congressman Maury Maverick Sr. had worked closely with his friend, President Roosevelt, to implement FDR's New Deal policies. His 1937 autobiography, A Maverick American, was something of a Depression-era bestseller. Among the many progressive acts in his life — which included securing W.P.A. funds for the initial development of the San Antonio Riverwalk — he was proudest of the restoration of La Villita, the 18th century settlement from which the city of San Antonio grew. Maverick's grand daughter, Lynn Maverick Denzer, wrote La Villita Continues, the story of the "Little Village" from its restoration to its present incarnation as La Villita Historic Arts Village.
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Fontaine Maury Maverick was born on October 23, 1895 in San Antonio, Texas. He was the son of Albert Maverick, a land office manager and real estate dealer, and Jane Lewis Maury Maverick. (The American political term maverick, which came to mean "nonconformist, " originally referred to the unbranded cattle of his grandfather, Samuel Augustus Maverick, which were allowed to roam over South Texas. )
Maury Maverick (he dropped the name Fontaine at an early age) attended Virginia Military Institute and the University of Texas but graduated from neither. From his youth, however, he established a regimen of reading and study that made him a bona fide scholar.
Maverick was admitted to the Texas bar in 1916 and the California bar in 1917; after World War I he practiced in both states and in Washington, D. C. As an infantry lieutenant in the Argonne offensive in 1918, Maverick received severe wounds, from which he never fully recovered, and was awarded the Silver Star. On his return to Texas he married Terrell Louise Dobbs; they had two children. During the 1920's Maverick organized and operated a lumber company and construction business. Increasingly concerned with civil liberties, he began to establish a political base in Bexar County. In 1930 he helped to organize the Citizens' League in San Antonio and became tax collector of Bexar County. In 1932, while serving as tax collector, he created Diga Colony, an experiment in communal living to aid impoverished war veterans. Most of the residents were remnants of the Bonus Army of the Great Depression. Virtually none of these people had any ideological appreciation of the venture, and Maverick's attempts to politicize them failed. The colony lasted no more than a year but attracted national attention and study in 1933. The creation of the Twentieth Congressional District (Bexar County) in 1933 provided Maverick with a new opportunity. In his first year he was an organizer of a bloc in the House of Representatives that was usually referred to as the Mavericks. They played a key role in pushing neutrality legislation through the House over the objections of President Franklin D. Roosevelt; on the other hand, they helped him to win a group of major amendments to the Tennessee Valley Authority Act. Maverick was a vigorous leader in planning the strategy for these votes. The Mavericks were instrumental in the passage of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935. Maverick was a dedicated and able champion of civil liberties in Congress during his two terms. He organized campaigns that prevented passage in 1935-1936 of the Tydings-McCormack military disaffection bill and the Kramer bill, both of which were designed to punish the advocacy of "dangerous" ideas. In the 1936 election Maverick survived attacks on his loyalty that were based on these activities. The attacks did not cause him to moderate his views or behavior. In 1937 he led the successful move in the House to repeal a provision of the District of Columbia appropriation bill that required teachers to swear that they were not Communists. When Roosevelt offered his Supreme Court packing plan in 1937, Maverick introduced the bill and made national radio addresses in its behalf, actions that found little support in his constituency. He also was the only Southern Democrat in the House who voted for the Gavigan anti-lynching bill in 1937. In 1937 Maverick published his first book, A Maverick American. This semiautobiographical bestseller presented Maverick's hopes and prescriptions for a genuine political and economic democracy in the United States. His second book, In Blood and Ink (1939), was a combination of documents and commentaries by Maverick that traced the development of American constitutional rights. It was a solid piece of scholarship but was little appreciated as such. He also wrote dozens of articles and book reviews. In 1938 Maverick was defeated in his third race for Congress, but he was elected as the reform mayor of San Antonio (1939 - 1941). His administration was notable for effective, honest government; but he was most proud of his restoration of the historic Spanish village, La Villita, in the heart of San Antonio. Maverick served only one term as mayor, for he would not relent in his determination to defend free expression. Over the protests of patriotic groups, he permitted the Communist party to hold a meeting in the San Antonio Auditorium. A mob of 5, 000 people drove the Communists from the auditorium, broke most of the windows, and ripped up seats. Civil libertarians across the nation applauded Maverick's stand, but it was highly unpopular in San Antonio. With the outbreak of World War II, Maverick announced his conversion from a near-pacifist position to a "practical militarist" stand. In 1940 he joined William Allen White, Adlai Stevenson, and others in organizing the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. He championed this cause in major addresses across the nation, in national radio speeches, and in articles until the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1942 Maverick was appointed to the War Production Board and, soon thereafter, to the chairmanship of the Smaller War Plants Corporation (SWPC). He was generally credited with doing an excellent job of bringing small business into defense production. Maverick added another word to the American lexicon when he issued a terse memorandum to SWPC employees that urged them to stop using "gobbledygook" language "Be short and use Plain English. " This indictment of bureaucratic jargon bloomed into a New York Times Magazine article, "The Curse of Gobbledygook" (May 21, 1944), and won him a permanent place in public-administration textbooks. Maverick's public career ended when the SWPC was abolished in 1946; but he continued to be an influential gadfly, especially in his correspondence with his friend President Harry Truman. In 1951 Maverick made extensive preparations to campaign for Texas congressman-at-large, but a severe heart attack forced him to leave the race. He died in San Antonio.
Maverick is best remembered for his independence from the party and for coining the term "gobbledygook" for obscure and euphemistic bureaucratic language. He was also a member of the United States House of Representatives from Texas, representing the 20th district from January 3, 1935, to January 3, 1939.
(Excerpt from In Blood and Ink With liberty dead in over ...)
( Old Villita is reissued by Wings Press in celebration o...)
( Few people who know him or read his Sunday column in th...)
Following a bitter campaign that featured attacks on his liberal-radical political views, he won the seat by a substantial margin in 1934.
Member of the U. S. House of Representatives from Texas's 20th district
Maverick's bulldog appearance and demeanor, as well as his engaging brashness, earthiness, and radicalism, made him an overnight success with the Washington press corps. No quiescent freshman, he demanded to be heard and he was heard.
Maverick married Terrell Louise Dobbs and had a daughter and a son, San Antonio newspaper editorialist Maury Maverick, Jr.
7 May 1854 - 24 January 1947
14 December 1858 - 15 February 1954
September 1885 - 1 September 1907
11 December 1893 - 23 April 1980
14 August 1883 - 19 March 1962
27 December 1890 - 20 November 1987
2 January 1887 - 19 August 1977
2 December 1881 - 30 June 1910
9 December 1879 - 15 November 1954
3 March 1889 - 13 August 1975
27 December 1877 - 17 May 1958
4 April 1901 - 15 December 1994
3 January 1921 - 28 January 2003
