Yarborough was distinguished first of all for his voting record on civil rights. Just months
after he had entered the Senate, he was one of only five southern senators (including LBJ)
to vote for the watershed Civil Rights Act of 1957. In 1960, Yarborough was one of four
southern senators- again including LBJ- who cast votes in favor of the Civil Rights Act of
- Yarborough would be the lone senator from the eleven states formerly composing
the Confederate States of America to vote for the 1964 civil rights bill, the most sweeping
since Reconstruction. This is the bill which, as we will see, provided Bush with the
ammunition for one of the principal themes of his 1964 election attacks. Later,
Yarborough would be one of only three southern senators supporting the Voting Rights
Act of 1965, and one of four supporting the 1968 open housing bill. [fn 5]
After Yarborough had left the Senate, his bitter enemies at the Dallas Morning News felt
obliged to concede that "his name is probably attached to more legislation than that of
any other senator in Texas history." Yarborough had become the chairman of the Senate
Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Here his lodestar was infrastructure,
infrastructure in the form of education and infrastructure in the form of physical
improvements.
In education, Yarborough was either the author or a leading supporter of virtually every
important piece of legislation to become law between 1958 and 1971, including some
nine major bills. As a freshman senator, Yarborough was the co-author of the National
Defense Education Act of 1958, which was the basis for federal aid to education,
particularly to higher education.
Under the provisions of NDEA, a quarter of a million students were at any given time
enabled to pursue undergraduate training with low-cost loans and other benefits. For
graduate students, there were three-year fellowships that paid tuition and fees plus grants
for living expenses in the amount of $2200, $2400, and $2600 over the three years--an
ample sum in those days. Yarborough also sponsored bills for medical education, college
classroom construction, vocational education, aid to the mentally retarded, and library
facilities. Yarborough's Bilingual Education Bill provided special federal funding for
schools with large numbers of students from non-English speaking backgrounds. Some of
these points were outlined by Yarborough during a campaign speech of September 18,
1964, with the title "Higher Education as it relates to our national purpose."
As chairman of the veterans' subcommittee, Yarborough authored the Cold War GI Bill
of Rights, which sought to extend the benefits accorded veterans of World War II and
Korea, and which was to apply to servicemen on duty between January, 1955 and July 1,
- For these veterans Yarborough proposed readjustment assistance, educational and
vocational training, and loan assistance to allow veterans to purchase homes and farms at
a maximum interest rate of 5.25% per annum. This bill was finally passed after years of
dogged effort by Yarborough against the opposition of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy,
and Johnson. Yarborough was instrumental in obtaining a five year extension of the Hill-
Burton act, which provided 4,000 additional beds in Veterans Administration Hospitals.
In physical improvements, Yarborough supported appropriations for coastal navigation.
He fought for $29 million for the Rural Electrification Administration for counties in the