My Mom's first cousin twice removed was Coke Stevenson. A distant cousin, who uses the moniker "GoneToTXas" on Ancestry.com, kindly shared a 1942 news item that I was happy to find today. This article from an Austin, Texas newspaper tells how escaped prisoner Clarence Andrew Mann Parker was NOT shot by the law one hot August night.
Born in Mason County, Texas in 1888, Stevenson received seven years of formal schooling. As a teenager, he worked as a janitor at the Junction State Bank while studying bookkeeping. He became a bank cashier at age 20, studied law and passed the bar in 1913. Served as prosecutor and county judge in Kimble County and was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1929.
Lieutenant Governor Coke Stevenson became governor in 1941 when Gov. O'Daniel resigned to run for the U.S. Senate. He served until 1948. And who knew GOAT RUSTLING was the scourge of Kimble County!
Coke's wife Fay died after a long illness in 1942, leaving a young son. See Coke and his First Lady Fay at the Governor's Mansion:
Among the many challenges the new governor faced was a race riot in Beaumont and martial law. The Texas State Library & Archives Commission notes:
As a shipping and manufacturing center, Beaumont had boomed during the war, with 18,000 newcomers in 1942-43 alone. Because of the overcrowding, segregation could not be enforced. For the first time, whites and blacks found themselves living in close quarters, rubbing elbows on crowded buses, and competing for the same jobs. In the summer of 1943, those of both races also had to deal with severe shortages of meat and canned goods. And, to make matters worse, the Ku Klux Klan had invited thousands of their members to Beaumont for a regional convention, just as thousands of African Americans from East Texas were arriving in town for Juneteenth festivities.
SOURCE: https://www.tsl.texas.gov/governors/personality/stevenson-beaumont.html
Stevenson too ran for a Senate seat in 1948 against LBJ--and lost. My grandfather used to speak with great disgust at how Lyndon Johnson had cheated Coke. I found an excellent summary of this contentious campaign on P. S. Ruckman, Jr.'s blog. Please click and read this bit of thuggery that occurred 68 years ago:
http://www.pardonpower.com/2010/10/speaking-of-all-time-great-election.html
"The election was the closest senatorial race in the nation's history. Stevenson appeared to be the winner when an amended return was filed from Jim Wells County giving Johnson enough to win by 87 votes. Stevenson contested the election all the way to the United States Supreme Court." -- Texas State Library & Archives Commission
Coke returned to Kimble County and took up ranching. He remarried and they had a daughter. Cousin GonetoTXas on Ancestry writes this about her grandmother, born Marguerite King:
...she attended Baylor, taught school in rural Kimble County, then moved to Midland to work for an oil company. Her first husband, Lt. Gordon Marshall Heap was killed in action in 1944, leaving her widowed with an infant son, Dennis. She later served as Kimble County clerk where she met Coke Stevenson, who had returned to Junction to practice law following his loss to Lyndon Johnson in the U.S. Senate race of 1948. They married in 1954.
This photo of Mrs. Stevenson was taken in 1934 when she was 16 years old. Isn't she lovely!
