Wilbert
Lee O'Daniel was born in Malta, Ohio, on 11th March, 1890. His father
died in an accident soon after his birth and his mother moved the
family to Reno County, Kansas.
After
graduating from Salt City Business College he became a stenographer
for a flour-milling company in Anthony, Kansas. Later he became a
sales manager in a company in Kingman. He also worked in Kansas City
and New Orleans.
In
1925 O'Daniel moved to Forth Worth where he became sales manager of
the Burrus Mills. This included running the company's radio advertising.
O'Daniel wrote scripts and songs and eventually created the Light
Crust Doughboys to perform on radio.
O'Daniel,
a member of the Democratic
Party,
decided to try and become governor of Texas in 1938. Accompanied by
his band, the Hillbilly Boys, he attracted large audiences to his
meetings. During his campaign he promised to raise old age pensions
and to abolish capital punishment, the poll tax and the sales tax.
After winning office he reneged on all these promises. He also tried
to introduce a sales tax that had been drawn up by a group of industrialists.
O'Daniel
was expected to be defeated by Miriam
A. Ferguson in
1940 but gained important publicity when he announced he had informed
Franklin D. Roosevelt that he had
discovered a communist conspiracy in Texas. After his election nothing
more was said about this matter and no one was arrested for this conspiracy.
In
1941 O'Daniel introduced anti-trade union legislation. Most of these
laws were eventually overturned by the courts. He also began attacking
Homer Price Rainey, the president of the University of Texas. After
he fired Rainey he was condemned by the American Association of University
Professors.
Later
that year he defeated Lyndon Baines Johnson
in the race to become a member of the Senate. Over the next few years
he and his fellow Texan, Tom Connally,
tended to support the conservative Republican-Southern Democratic
coalition.
In
1944 he joined forces with Martin Dies,
Eugene B. Germany and Hugh
R. Cullen to
establish the Texas Regulars. These
were a group of right-wing members of the Democratic
Party
who
opposed the liberal policies of Franklin
D. Roosevelt. Supported by Texas oilmen, the group were also opposed
to the fixed prices of oil and gas imposed by Roosevelt's government
during the Second World War. They also campaigned
against the New Deal, civil
rights and pro-trade union legislation.
The group disbanded after they failed to remove Roosevelt as the leader
of their party.
O'Daniel
was also
opposed to Harry S. Truman and his Fair
Deal proposals that included legislation on civil rights, fair employment
practices, opposition to lynching
and
improvements in existing public welfare laws. When Truman won the
nomination, O'Daniel joined the States' Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrats)
and Storm
Thurmond was
chosen as its presidential candidate. It
was thought that with two former Democrats, Thurmond and Henry
Wallace standing, Truman would have difficulty defeating the Republican
Party candidate, Thomas Dewey. However,
both Thurmond and Wallace did badly and Truman defeated Dewey by 24,105,812
votes to 21,970,065.
With
public opinion polls showing little support for O'Daniel, he decided
to retire from politics in 1948. He retired to a ranch near Forth
Worth. O'Daniel was totally opposed to desegregating America's schools
and claimed that communists had gained control of the Supreme
Court.
Wilbert
Lee O'Daniel
died
on 12th May, 1969.
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