Texas Governor James V. Allred

Allred was born in Bowie on March 29, 1899, and the V was a name, not an initial. After Navy service he clerked in a Wichita Falls law office. As district attorney he became known as 'the fighting district attorney' for his open opposition to the Ku Klux Klan. As governor he helped establish the Texas Department of Public Safety and engineered the Interstate Oil Compact Commission, and the national Junior Chamber of Commerce named him 1935's Outstanding Young Man in America. He lost a 1942 Senate race to W. Lee O'Daniel and died in 1959.

What the plaque says

From this courthouse, James V. Allred began his career that led to highest state office. As lawyer with firm of O'Neal and Martin, he won elections as district attorney in 1923 and Attorney General of Texas, 1931. Governor from 1935 to 1939, he corrected many social and economic ills, ushering in era of better government for state. In his last years, he was a federal judge. He is remembered for his crusading liberalism and his personal integrity. He married Joe Betsy Miller. They had three sons. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 0.3 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Kell House Museum — 0.3 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 12 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 18 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• Joseph Hudson Barwise — steps away
• First County Officials — steps away
• Lost Battalion — steps away
• Charlye Ola Farris — steps away