Sam Rayburn

Sam Rayburn's grave sits in his hometown, but his civil rights record belongs beside it. Wikipedia reports that he refused to sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto, the congressional declaration of resistance to the Supreme Court's school desegregation ruling, and helped steer the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 through the House. It calls them the first civil rights bills Congress had passed since Reconstruction. Rayburn represented a rural North Texas district in a state where schools and public places were segregated by law.

What the plaque says

Sam Rayburn (Jan. 16, 1882 - Nov. 16, 1961) Tennessee native Sam Taliaferro Rayburn moved to Texas with his family in 1887. His long and successful political career began with his election to the Texas Legislature in 1906. It continued through 25 consecutive terms in the U. S. House of Representatives, where Rayburn served with 8 presidents and held the speakership for 17 years. His funeral at the First Baptist Church in Bonham was attended by 30,000 people, including 4 presidents and 105 Congressmen. Recorded - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 1.4 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 23 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 28 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.

More markers nearby

• Military Headquarters Northern Sub-District of Texas, C.S.A. — steps away
• John P. Simpson — steps away
• Dr. Tom Douglas Spies — steps away
• Bailey Inglish — 0.4 mi