Marvin Alonzo Childers, Sr.: Lawyer, Judge, and KKK Leader (1885–1965)

Marvin Alonzo Childers, Sr., lawyer, judge, church leader, high-ranking Mason, and leader of the Texas Realm of the Ku Klux Klan, was born on August 19, 1885, in Stephenville, Erath County, Texas, to James Jefferson Childers and Martha Elizabeth (Moore) Childers. His father was a farmer. Marvin A. Childers married Jettie Jones, daughter of Henry Pledger and Sarah Lucinda “Lou” (Cornelius) Jones, about 1907. The Childers had three children: Marvin Jr., Herschel, and Naomi.

Childers graduated from North Texas Normal College (now University of North Texas) in Denton, Texas, in 1906 and was admitted to the State Bar of Texas in 1910. That year he taught in Eldorado, Oklahoma. Four years later, Childers and his family lived in Sinton, Texas, and he was elected county judge of San Patricio County, where he served from 1914 to 1918. In 1918 he was elected district judge of the Thirty-sixth Judicial District, where he served until he resigned in 1922 and moved to San Antonio to practice law.

A dedicated Mason, Childers was made a Master Mason on April 18, 1914, in Sinton Masonic Lodge No. 1012 and in 1917 was elected Worshipful Master, serving the Sinton Lodge for the 1917–18 Masonic year. In November 1918 he went through the degrees of the Scottish Rite bodies in a reunion held in the Valley of San Antonio and later served as degree master of the Thirty-first degree of the Consistory. He was a Knight of Rose Croix; a member of the York Rite Bodies of San Antonio Chapter No. 381, Royal Arch Masons; and Royal and Select Masters No. 14. In 1922 Childers was appointed Grand Orator of the Grand Lodge of Texas by Grand Master Mike H. Thomas of Dallas for the year of 1923. In December 1926 Childers was elected Grand Master of Masons in Texas and served for the year 1927. He served as Grand Worthy Patron of the Order of Eastern Star in 1936–37 and also served the Grand Lodge for a two-year term on the Committee of Masonic Education and Service Committee (see FREEMASONRY).

Childers served many lay positions in the Methodist Church both at Sinton and Travis Park Methodist Church in San Antonio. He was a conference leader from 1914 to 1926 and on the Conference Board of Mission, Southwest Texas, from 1918 to 1960. He served the General Board of Lay Activities from 1914 to 1934 and was on the Judicial Council beginning in 1934—all positions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He was president of the Judicial Council from 1948 to 1956, when he had a forced age retirement. Childers was a member of the board of trustees of the Kerrville Methodist Assembly from 1923 to 1960 and was a member of the Conference of the Board of Pensions, a position he held until his death. Childers served the Methodist Church as Sunday school superintendent and ex-officio chairman of the council.

As the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) attempted to and often did influence state and local politics in Texas and elsewhere in the early 1920s, Childers, an active Knight of the Ku Klux Klan, pushed Klan-influenced politics. As a delegate to the 1920 Democratic National Convention, he took part in a failed attempt to support William Gibbs McAdoo, Jr., as the Democratic presidential nominee when the Texas delegation confronted Klan power.

Marvin A. Childers became grand dragon of the Realm of Texas of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in December 1924 and served into April 1926. He was appointed to the position after the resignation of Zebina “Zeke” E. Marvin and in the wake of what the KKK regarded as several political election failures (namely the gubernatorial nomination of Miriam “Ma” Ferguson) and the burning of the “Klavern” in Fort Worth and attempted arson of Beethoven Hall, the leased headquarters of San Antonio Klan No. 31. Childers moved the headquarters of the Realm to San Antonio, marking an end of Dallas Klan influence (see DALLAS KU KLUX KLAN NO. 66). After his term, the Klan influence of San Antonio diminished. Prior to the election of Dan Moody as Texas governor in 1926, Childers travelled throughout the state and spoke to Klan lodges and other functions endorsing strong support for Moody as the lessor of two evils (the other being Miriam Ferguson in the Democratic primary and subsequent runoff). In the 1928 presidential election, Childers was considered a “Hoovercrat” for has position with the “Anti-Al Smith Democrats of Texas.” Smith, a Catholic, opposed prohibition and had denounced the previously Klan-endorsed McAdoo, which contributed to Childers’s opposition against New Yorker Al Smith.

For more than the next three decades, Childers continued to practice law in San Antonio up into an advanced age. He received an honorary law degree from Southwestern University in 1949. Judge Marvin A. Childers, Sr., died at eighty years of age, on December 25, 1965, in Colorado City, Texas, while he was visiting his daughter. His funeral was held at Travis Park Methodist Church in San Antonio before burial with Masonic rites took place at Mission Burial Park South in the same city.