Copyright 2022 Coordinating Council for Women in History. He left home at 16, traveling and taking odd jobs until he returned to farm in Bell County. 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Even his former political allies couldnt find him innocent in the face of such damning evidence and his own indefensible behavior. So, he quit ahead of time so he could then turn aroundand he was counting on coming right back and getting reelected. This ragtag pair, better known as "Pa . The vote made him ineligible to hold any office of honor, trust or profit in the state of Texas. [6] They had two daughters: Ouida Wallace Ferguson, and Dorrace Watt Ferguson. This might sound like the controversy involving UT System Regent Wallace Hall, an appointee of Gov. Among the charges was falsifying campaign finance reports to conceal a loan to his campaign of $350,000. The Texas Senate reduced the charges to 10, half of which dealt with the transfer of the $5,600. [15][16] No unelected official in Texas has ever been successfully impeached or removed from office. Sam Houston was the first president of the Independent Republic of Texas , and he later served as governor of the state of T, Connally, John Bowden, Jr. Ferguson convinced his wife to run one more time in 1940. Federal courts | Johnson Roofing built a business on topping off buildings, but when it comes to its legacy, Bill Johnson and daughter Sherri focus on the foundation. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Jim Ferguson so enormously popular 100 years ago. Though no Texas official has been impeached and removed from office at the state level since Ferguson, Texas politics has hardly been scandal-free. James E. Ferguson Called on Tejanos to rise up/support the revolution; Called on other minorities to join Tejanos to carve out a republic from land US took from Mexico US Pancho Villa Mexican guerilla leader led an attack on Columbus NM (Mar. The Court of Impeachment, by a vote of twenty-five to three, removed Ferguson from office and made him ineligible to hold any office of honor, trust, or profit under the state of Texas. A reiteration and compilation of documents created in the House impeachment proceedings. 1. so that gubernatorial elections will not be influenced by a presidential election 2. so that candidates cannot run for governor and a federal office at the same time 3. so that voters will not become overwhelmed by too many candidates in one year 4. because Texas happened to become part of the US during an off-year He left home at 16, traveling and taking odd jobs until he returned to farm in Bell County. As much as one might appreciate Fergusons homey aphorisms, a word hed likely have found objectionable because of its academic taint his style loses its charm when you learn all that was revealed at his impeachment. Three new normal schools were authorized. He was reelected in 1916 but the following year was impeached on grounds of misusing public funds and removed from office. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than two dozen books, most recently Anti-Black Violence in Twentieth-Century Texas. Low 54F. You have permission to edit this article. The day before he was thrown out of office he resigned, saying it didn't count. Five of the articles sustained by the Senate charged Ferguson with the misapplication of public funds, three related to his quarrel with the University, one declared that he had failed properly to respect and enforce the banking laws of the state, and one charged that he had received $156,500 in currency from a source that he refused to reveal. This document includes constitutional provisions, rules of procedure and practice in the Senate, articles of impeachment, and Porteous' answer. Ferguson was indicted on nine charges which included misapplication of public funds, embezzlement and the diversion of a special fund. Similarly, the Texas Constitution gives the lower house of the legislature power to impeach judges, the governor and statewide elected officials. Millions of Texans have rare diseases. (renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax). The letter claimed that Winkler was the best person for the job. Their campaign slogan: Two governors for the price of one.. [8] Hall, as an individual citizen, filed FOIA requests with the University system after his inquiries via his role as a Regent were rebuffed. But the day before the conviction was certain to come down. He showed up most every day to his own trial, invited or not, with two armed Texas Rangers as escorts. In the United States legal tradition, impeachment is comparable to an indictment in a criminal court. "In light of the fundamental role attorneys play, it would lead to an absurd result were it criminal for an official to provide student records to his or her attorney in the face of litigation, or anticipated litigation, involving these records," Philip Hilder wrote in the report. James Ferguson. James "Pa" Ferguson was the Governor of Texas from 1915 to 1917, when he was impeached and convicted on several charges. Kay Reed Arnold then follows the Ferguson story into the halls of academia at the University of Texaswhich Ferguson threatened to closesparking a fierce response by faculty, alumni, students, and, especially, the Womens Committee for Good Government. There were two major elements of the impeachment charges brought against Ferguson in 1917. [9] According to his accusers, Hall filed requests of more than 800,000 pages, which some Texas administrators called an unnecessary burden. When Ferguson found that he could not have his way, he vetoed practically the entire appropriation for the university. Leah LaGrone Ochoa then explores Fergusons hot-and-cold relationship with the Texas press, and Mark Stanley examines the impact of the impeachment on Texas politics in the decades that followed. When Vinson refused to fire the professors, Ferguson went after the Board of Regents to get them to do his bidding. The veto was retaliation against the university because of its refusal to dismiss certain faculty members whom Ferguson found objectionable, including William Harding Mayes, former Texas Lieutenant Governor and founder and dean of the University of Texas School of Journalism. He tapped Reverend Allan Ferguson Cunningham to serve as State Librarian, despite his lack of training or experience in the field. Amplify your impact and donate now. Though Fergusons hatred for UT ran deep, he never fully explained his animus. Elected in 1914 and re-elected in 1916, he faced 21 articles of impeachment and resigned during the trial in the Senate on September 24, 1917, one day before the Senate voted to remove him from office and disqualify him from holding office again. Only two Texas public officials have been impeached in the state's history. Bridges can be reached by email at drkenbridges@gmail.com. Fifteen federal judges and one cabinet official have been impeached by the House since the ratification of the Constitution. But it is Hall not his political patron, Perry who would be targeted for possible impeachment. It proved his undoing. He was an avowed enemy of the KKK, but to hear him talk about black people, youd have thought he had earned his hood. The Freddy's Glass legacyPeople who knew our dad and his story say he would be proud of us, but we say, Man, were proud of himHe truly. Reprinted with permission from the Handbook of Texas Online, a joint project of the Texas State Historical Association and the General Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin. Norman Kittrell, Governors Who Have Been and Other Public Men of Texas (Houston: Dealy-Adey-Elgin, 1921). On December 31, 1899, he married Miriam A. Wallace; they had two children. Bruce A. Glasrud is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay, and retired dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Sul Ross State University. Ferguson was reelected by a majority of about 60,000 votes, but opposition was sufficient to show that many Texans, including a number who were not prohibitionists, were displeased with his stewardship. The second had to do with his utilization of the Temple Bank he had controlling interest in as his personal slush fund. James Ferguson died on September 21, 1944, and was buried in the State Cemetery in Austin. You can cancel at any time. Encyclopedia.com. While there, legislators legally took up another matter, impeachment. He had been accused of misappropriating funds, but investigations failed to find anything that would warrant impeachment, and the probe seemed to be closed. ex-governor banned from holding state office. The following sections are outlined in Article 15 of the Texas Constitution. But the mere fact that Ferguson had been impeached and made ineligible to hold any office of trust or profit under the state did not in any sense remove him from the field of Texas politics . Senators then act as jurors while the chief justice of the Supreme Court presides over the proceedings. Jessica Brannon-Wranosky is the Distinguished Professor of Digital Humanities and History at Texas A&M UniversityCommerce. Click here to contact us for media inquiries, and please donate here to support our continued expansion. Jessica Brannon-Wranosky concludes with an assessment of the historical memory of Fergusons impeachment throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Vinson asked what they had done to deserve it and he said, I dont need a reason, Im the governor.. The Fergusons retired from public life afterward with James Ferguson dying in 1944 and his wife passing away in 1961. James Edward (Pa) Ferguson (1871-1944), Texas governor, son of James Edward and Fannie (Fitzpatrick) Ferguson, was born on August 31, 1871, near Salado, Bell County, Texas. James Edward Ferguson Jr. (August 31, 1871 September 21, 1944), known as Pa Ferguson, was an American Democratic politician and the 26th Governor of Texas, in office from 1915 to 1917. The entire process is substantially the same in Texas for elected officials, as it is for most of the other states. In 1924, unable to run under his own name, he Mr. Ferguson, known as "Pa", ran his wife's campaign for the governorship against Judge Felix Robertson, the candidate endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. When he was four years old, his father died. Lewis L. Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973; rpt., Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1992). The State Senate reduced the charges to ten, half of which dealt with the transfer of the $5,600. Committee member Dan Flynn said he was not surprised by the findings and was pleased the university counsel reached a conclusion.[21][22][23][24]. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Norman D. Brown, Hood, Bonnet, and Little Brown Jug: Texas Politics, 1921-1928 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1984). After a trial, the Senate voted him out of office by a vote of 25-3 and banned him from holding any state office. Scandals of all sorts, from the brazen to the bizarre, have occurred for decades at all levels. An overview by John R. Lundberg offers a comprehensive survey of the impeachment process. Jordan wa, Houston, Sam Cities | Bruce Rutherford, The Impeachment of Jim Ferguson (Austin: Eakin Press, 1983). Ferguson was on the ballot only in Texas, where he received 47,968 votes (9.9 percent of the vote in Texas, 0.2 percent of the vote nationwide). Though he was kicked out of office and disgraced in front of his colleagues, Ferguson was still popular among his hardcore supporters and rallied back. 1914 campaign literature in which Ferguson fires back against criticisms from his 'dry' opponent, Thomas H. Ball, and others in the prohibition faction. She would serve one more term as governor from 1933 to 1935. And here, Ferguson made his second blunder. And she won. The account said Ferguson accused the student protesters of committing treason against him. 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