Allan Shivers
Shivers in 1955
37thGovernor of Texas
In office July 11, 1949 – January 15, 1957
Lieutenant	Vacant (1949–1951) Ben Ramsey (1951–1957)
Preceded by	Beauford H. Jester
Succeeded by	Price Daniel
Chair of theNational Governors Association
In office June 29, 1952 – August 2, 1953
Preceded by	Val Peterson
Succeeded by	Daniel I. J. Thornton
33rdLieutenant Governor of Texas
In office January 21, 1947 – July 11, 1949
Governor	Beauford H. Jester
Preceded by	John Lee Smith
Succeeded by	Ben Ramsey
Member of theTexas Senate from the4th district
In office January 8, 1935 – January 14, 1947
Preceded by	William R. Cousins Sr.
Succeeded by	Wilfred R. Cousins Jr.
Personal details
Born	Robert Allan Shivers (1907-10-05)October 5, 1907 Lufkin, Texas, U.S.
Died	January 14, 1985(1985-01-14) (aged 77) Austin, Texas, U.S.
Resting place	Texas State Cemetery
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Marialice Shary ​ (m. 1937)​
Children	4
Education	University of Texas at Austin (LLB)
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch/service	United States Army
Years of service	1943–1945
Rank	Major
Battles/wars	World War II

Robert Allan Shivers (October 5, 1907 – January 14, 1985) was an Americanpolitician who served as the 37thgovernor of Texas from 1949 to 1957. Shivers was a leader of theTexas Democratic Party during the turbulent 1940s and 1950s and developed the lieutenant governor's post into an extremely powerful perch in the state government.

Born inLufkin, the seat ofAngelina County inEast Texas, Shivers was educated at theUniversity of Texas at Austin and earned alaw degree in 1933. There, he was a member of theTexas Cowboys and theFriar Society, and he served as the student body president.

In 1934, he was elected to theTexas State Senate, its youngest member ever. He served there from 1934 to 1946, except for two years' service in theUS Army duringWorld War II from which he was discharged with the rank ofmajor.

In 1946, he was elected as the 33rdlieutenant governor of Texas by defeating the Republican nominee, John A. Donaldson, in a landslide margin, with Shivers garnering 344,630 votes (91.54%) to Donaldson's 31,835 votes (8.46%). Shivers was re-elected in 1948 by garnering 1,050,163 votes (87.47%) to the Republican Taylor Cole's 143,887 votes (11.98%).

He is credited with developing the "ideas, practices, and techniques of leadership" that made the office the most powerful post in Texas government although the governor's powers are limited by the state constitution more than in other states.

In office, Shivers initiated the practice of appointing state senators to specific committees and setting the daily agenda. Later, the Senate passed aright-to-work law, reorganized the public school system with the Gilmer-Akin laws, appropriated funds for higher education including the Texas State University for Negroes (nowTexas Southern University), and provided money for improvements of state hospitals and highways.

When GovernorBeauford Jester died on July 11, 1949, Shivers succeeded him, the only lieutenant governor in Texas history who has gained the governor's office by the death of his predecessor.In 1950, Shivers won election as governor in his own right by defeating Republican Ralph W. Currie. There were 355,010 votes (89.93%) for the incumbent governor, and Currie garnered 39,737 votes (10.07%)

In 1952, Shivers proved so popular that he was listed on the gubernatorial ballot as the nominee of both the Democratic andRepublican parties (Democrat Shivers handily defeated Republican Shivers). Between both parties, Shivers garnered 1,844,530 votes (98.05%) to "No Preference" getting 36,672 votes (1.95%). Texas law was later changed to remove the "No Preference" option.

Shivers then set the three-term precedent by running again and winningin 1954. He garnered 569,533 votes (89.42%) to the Republican Tod R. Adams's 66,154 votes (10.39%).

TheShivercrats were a conservative faction of theDemocratic Party inTexas in the 1950s. The faction was named for Shivers, who was criticized byliberals in the party, particularlyRalph Yarborough, for his corruption and conservatism.

Shivers supported Republican presidential nomineeDwight Eisenhower instead of Democratic nomineeAdlai Stevenson II during the1952 election.^[1]

Corruption during the Shivers administration damaged his reputation and endangered his chances of re-election in 1954. Land Office CommissionerBascom Giles was convicted of committing rampant fraud against Texas warveterans, with a disproportionate number of African-American veterans in particular, by a veterans land program under theTexas Veterans Land Board of theTexas General Land Office. Giles was the only member of the Shivers administration to go to prison, but Shivers and the state attorney general, John Ben Shepperd, asex officio members of the Veterans Land Board, were implicated in the scandal, which occurred under their watch.

The Shivercrats responded with a vicious negative campaign that tried to paint the party liberals ascommunists. Shivers also urged the Texas Legislature to pass a bill making membership in the Communist Party adeath-penalty offense and described such membership as being "worse than murder."^[2][3][4] However, a less extreme version of the proposition finally passed both Houses.^[5][6]

In 1956, Shivers ordered Captain Jay Banks of theTexas Ranger Division to block "desegregation of Mansfield High School in Tarrant County."^[7] TheMansfield school desegregation incident was the first state action resisting enforcement of the nationwide integration of public schools ordered by theUS Supreme Court inBrown v. Board of Education (1954).^[8]

Lyndon Johnson at first aligned himself with the Shivercrats, includingJohn Connally, but after becoming president, Johnson increasingly sided with Yarborough and the liberals on policy matters. Most of the Shivercrats either left public life or became Republicans after Johnson's presidency, as the liberal-moderate faction was in firm control of the state party after 1970.

Shivers was anti-integration and used the office of the governor to resist legally-mandated integration in Texas. After the US Supreme Court decision ending the "separate but equal" doctrine inBrown v. Board of Education (1954), Shivers on July 27, 1955, appointed a committee, the Texas Advisory Committee on Segregation in Public Schools.^[9][10] The charge of this committee was to "[e]xamine three major problems and present recommendations leading to their solution. The problems are: (1) The prevention of forced integration. (2) The achievement of maximum decentralization of school authority. (3) The ways in which the State government may best assist the local school districts in solving their problems."^[9] The committee members were State SenatorA.M. Aiken, Jr., Earnest. E. Sanders, Mrs. Joe Fisher, J.V. Hammett, Charles Howell, Will Crews Morris, and Houston attorney, Hall E. Timanus.^[9] A legal and legislative subcommittee of the Texas Advisory Committee on Segregation in Public Schools produced a 58-page report on August 18, 1955, detailing among other ideas ways that Texas schools could resist integration and the framework for ending compulsory public school attendance for those parents who did not want their children to attend integrated schools.^[9]

The recommendations of the committee were used as justification for Shivers's state actions in resisting integration, such as theMansfield School Desegregation Incident.^{[citation needed]}

This articlecontains alist of miscellaneous information. Please helpimprove it byrelocating relevant information into other sections or articles.(December 2023)

Shivers appeared as himself in the 1955 filmLucy Gallant starringJane Wyman andCharlton Heston.Shivers previously held the record for longest continuous service as Texas governor at 7.5 years until June 2008, whenRick Perry surpassed Shivers's record for continuous service. (Bill Clements initially broke Shivers's total service record by serving eight years over two nonconsecutive terms; Perry later surpassed that record, as well.) Both Shivers and Perry are the only two Texas governors to have been inaugurated four times.

Shivers disputed theTruman administration's claim on the Tidelands and disapproved of Truman's veto that would have vested tideland ownership in the states. Bucking the tradition of the "Solid South", Shivers delivered Texas in the 1952 presidential election forDwight D. Eisenhower, only the second time that Texas had supported a Republican for president sinceReconstruction (the other was 1928). The state Republican Party reciprocated by nominating Shivers for governor and so ran as the nominee of both parties. Shivers is believed to have lost popularity with some voters over his disloyalty to the Democratic Party. He also became less popular because of his opposition toBrown and his link to theVeterans' Land Board scandal.

Shivers helped enact laws raising teacher salaries and granting retirement benefits to state employees.

Shivers did not seek a fourth term in the 1956 elections. He retired from politics on January 15, 1957, and went into business.

In 1973,Democratic governorPreston Smith appointed Shivers to theUniversity of Texas Board of Regents. In January 1975, he was elected as chairman of the board and served for four years.^[11] He donated his Austin home,Woodlawn, the historic Pease mansion, to the university to help raise funds for its law school.

In 1980, Shivers was instrumental in securing a $5 million grant for theUT Austin Moody College of Communication, which soon established an endowed chair of journalism in his honor.

Finally, he served as a member of the University of Texas Centennial Commission, which oversaw the 100th-anniversary celebration of the university's founding in 1883.

Shivers died suddenly of a massiveheart attack inAustin on January 14, 1985.

• Mansfield School Desegregation Incident
• Allan Shivers Library and Museum
• Allan Shivers' altercation with author John Patric in college

• Black, Earl;Black, Merle (1992).The Vital South: How Presidents Are Elected.Harvard University Press.ISBN 0674941306.

• J. William Davis,There Shall Also Be a Lieutenant Governor (1967).
• Tex. Legis. Council,Presiding Officers of the Texas Legislature: 1846–1995 81 (1995).
• National Governors Association, "Texas Governor Allan Shivers".

• Allan Shivers from theHandbook of Texas Online
• Historic photographs of Allan Shivers, hosted by thePortal to Texas History
• Allan Shivers atIMDb

• 1907 births
• 1985 deaths
• 20th-century American far-right politicians
• American anti-communists
• American segregationists
• United States Army personnel of World War II
• Burials at Texas State Cemetery
• Democratic Party governors of Texas
• Lieutenant governors of Texas
• Politicians from Austin, Texas
• People from Lufkin, Texas
• Democratic Party Texas state senators
• United States Army officers
• Military personnel from Texas
• 20th-century members of the Texas Legislature

• Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from July 2020
• Articles with trivia sections from December 2023
• All articles with trivia sections