Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

A LLAN
S HIVERS
❖
Former Texas Governor Allan Shivers
and his wife, Marialice, admiring the
Texas Historical Marker in front of
the Shivers Museum in Woodville,
Texas. Shivers was born in Lufkin,
and his family moved to Port Arthur
when he was 16. He graduated from
Thomas Jefferson High School, Port
Arthur College, and law school.
Shivers was elected Lt. Governor of
Texas in 1946 and served as
Governor 1949-1957.
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST,
PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS.
Allan Shivers, was born in Lufkin, Texas, on October 5, 1907, and spent his early childhood
on a family farm in Tyler County near Woodville, but his attorney father moved the family to Port
Arthur, where Shivers was graduated from high school in 1924. He attended the University of
Texas, was elected president of the student body, and participated in many extracurricular
activities before graduating in 1931 with a degree in law.
Occasionally Shivers took time off from school to work in a refinery in Port Arthur. He was
elected to the state senate in 1937, at age twenty-seven the youngest person ever elected to that
chamber. Shivers married Marialice Shary, daughter of a wealthy South Texas rancher and banker.
He served in World War II and rose to the rank of major with five battle stars and the Bronze Star.
In 1946 Shivers won the race for lieutenant governor, and became governor in July 1949 upon
the death of Governor Beauford Jester. Shivers won reelection three times, eventually serving
seven and one half years, the longest tenure of any governor until that time; only Governors Dolph
Briscoe and William P. Clements, each elected to two four-year terms, have served longer.
Governors served two year terms during Shivers’ tenure.
Shivers’ administration led the state in a conservative, state’s rights direction. Though elected
as a Democrat, in 1952 and 1956 he supported Republican presidential nominee Dwight
Eisenhower and helped carry Texas for the GOP.
Shivers later served as president of the United States Chamber of Commerce and managed the
investments his wife inherited from her wealthy father. Shivers died on January 14, 1985.
to illegal gambling, alcohol violations, and
prostitution, all tolerated by some law
enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges
because of payoffs. Stories of Beaumont’s
notorious Dixie Hotel, operated on Crockett
Street by Rita Ainsworth, and Meyer, led the
news, but Grace Woodyard’s and Marcella
Chadwell’s red-light houses, two of fourteen
known prostitution parlors in Port Arthur, also
attracted the attention of media and the James
Commission. As a result, Meyer, the district
attorney, and the police chiefs lost their jobs,
and Ainsworth, Woodyard, and Chadwell
temporarily went out of business. Such illegal
activities resumed, of course, but not so
blatantly or so openly in conjunction with
law enforcement.
The Supreme Court ordered racial
integration of public education “with all
deliberate speed” in May 1954, but schools
operated by Port Arthur Independent School
District did not begin integration until 1961,
and then only for kindergarten and first grade
under a plan that advanced one grade each year.
School faculties and staffs integrated in 1965,
and the United States Department of Justice
ordered abandonment of the one grade per year
38 ✦ WATER, RAILS & OIL