George Berham Parr
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George Berham Parr (March 1, 1901 - April 1, 1975) was a member of the Parr political family, which controlled a Democratic Party political machine that dominated Duval County and, to a lesser extent, Jim Wells County, Texas.
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[edit] Parr family machine
The Parr machine functioned by representing carpetbagger interests primarily from New York City which funded the machine through bribery, graft, and illegal donations and by gathering large numbers of illegal votes from impoverished and largely uneducated Mexican-American majority population. As a result, the county saw its largely marginalized but large numbers of native Texan yeoman farmers slowly disappear leaving the county commission to be controlled by the Parr family and its cronies. While the Parr Machine had always asserted undue influence over the county's affairs, it was not until Archer Parr that its leadership felt safely secure to overwhelm the remaining independent white farmers by appealing directly to county's new Hispanic majority by offering them jobs (and in some cases cash directly from the county coffers) in exchange for political support.
The alliance between the Parr controlled commission and the Hispanic populace made the county a bastion of Democratic strength, but also gave the corrupt county government little reason to educate the populace. By 1940, the white educated population had been reduced to a tiny minority amongst a large Mexican population which worked the Parr networks large landed estates, making Illiteracy a major problem in Duval County by 1940.
The discovery of oil in Duval County also created ample opportunities for patronage, allowing Parr to amass a small fortune. As a result of this exploitive practice Duval County remains one of the most impoverished and illiterate counties in the country. In direct contrast stands the Parr Machine's small white elite families which live remarkably like their upper class neighbors in Mexico.
To this day, the family's network remains a factor in Texas politics giving its patronage to both Democratic and Republican beneficiaries. James Albon Mattox, successfully relied on the old Parr network in his run as the Democratic Party nominee for Texas Attorney General, garnering a majority of the vote in the county despite running against a Mexican-American.
[edit] Parr political crimes
Parr engaged in the graft, bribery and fraud that are often associated with political machines. Along with other large landowners and managers of landed estates owned by prominent Eastern businessmen, Parr helped develop the practice of working illegal aliens and later using them for advancing political interests.
He was convicted of tax evasion in 1936, but was granted a pardon restoring his civil rights by President Harry Truman in 1946, by which time he had total control of the county, soon acquiring the nickname "Duke of Duval County." Parr's most infamous act of political corruption was browbeating election officials in nearby Jim Wells County into providing invalid votes to ensure the primary victory of Lyndon Johnson in the U.S. senatorial election of 1948.
In 1950, Parr had become a thorn in the side of Governor Allan Shivers, who encouraged federal officials to investigate the Parr machine. Some 650 indictments were given against machine members, but Parr eluded indictment, and his conviction for fraud was later dismissed. Under the protection of Lyndon Johnson, Parr eluded all attempts to investigate and convict him for fraud, bribery, corruption, racketeering, and murder.
However, political candidates would time to time make him an object of their reforming campaigns. In 1956, a gubernatorial candidate, historian J. Evetts Haley, warned Parr that if Haley were elected governor, "it will be my pleasure to lock you up." Haley finished a poor fourth in the Democratic balloting and in 1964 returned to the Republican Party.[1]
With the collapse of the Johnson Administration in 1968, Parr lost his primary political protector. Under advice from Johnson and other prominent figures, he relinquished control of his machine by the early 1970s. He was found dead at his ranch in 1975, the apparent victim of suicide. When Parr's machine collapsed soon after his death, Duval County's small white large landowning minority attempted to retain control of the county politically but was unable to halt the Democratic take-over of the county by the now overwhelmingly large Mexican population. Nonetheless, the family and its network remains substantially influential so that although the county has remained one of the strongest and most consistently Democrat localities in Texas, frequently giving both national and local candidates margins greater than 70 percent.
[edit] References
George's father was Archie Parr who began the Dynasty of Duval County, Archer Parr is the third Duke of the Duval County Dynasty.
[edit] External links
- George Berham Parr from the Handbook of Texas Online
- Duval County from the Handbook of Texas Online
- Boss Rule from the Handbook of Texas Online
