Donald Gladden: Civil Rights Attorney and Texas State Representative (1930–2002)

Donald Charles “Don” Gladden, civil rights attorney, state representative, and activist, son of James Matthew and Rhea Pearl (Mount) Gladden, was born in Lookeba, Oklahoma, on February 19, 1930. The Gladden family moved to Fort Worth in the early 1940s. In 1946 Gladden joined the United States Navy. He was only sixteen years old, but his father helped him lie about his age. While stationed in California, a drunken encounter with a police officer resulted in an arrest and a bloody nose and inspired him to become an attorney. On May 27, 1950, Gladden married Wilhelmina Muriel Shields. In 1951 he graduated with a bachelor of science degree from Texas Wesleyan University and entered the University of Texas School of Law, where he served as vice president of the freshman class. After graduating in 1954, he worked as an attorney.

In 1956 Gladden campaigned for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives but was defeated by Dixon Holmann in the Democratic party primary runoff. While he lost his first election, he ran successfully in 1958 and served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives (Fifty-sixth, Fifty-seventh, Fifty-eighth, and Sixtieth legislatures). As a representative for Tarrant County, Gladden served on numerous committees, including those on Penitentiaries, which he chaired; Criminal Jurisprudence; Judiciary; Education; Military and Veterans’ Affairs; and Aeronautics. He was a leader in the House on labor issues. During his time in office he sponsored or cosponsored 127 bills, twenty-eight of which passed. In 1961 Gladden was the primary author of six successful bills. Among these was an act that abolished fees, paid by witnesses in criminal cases who came from outside of a county, to process travel reimbursements when their claim was less than three dollars. Additionally, in 1959 he sought to remove obstacles to school desegregation by introducing a bill to repeal a 1957 law that withheld state funds from school districts that desegregated without first holding a public election. While the bill was not taken up by the House in 1959, Gladden introduced a similar bill, with forty-six cosponsors, in 1963. He argued that the 1957 law made school districts “reluctant to carry out desegregation orders.” The measure did not pass. Gladden also authored successful bills that created the first domestic relations court in Tarrant County, required certain counties to employ a medical examiner to perform autopsies, and created a forty-hour work week for sheriff's deputies.

Gladden made an unsuccessful bid for the Texas Senate in 1964. He remained active as an attorney and continued to engage in public service in Fort Worth and Texas at large. In 1964, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy the previous year, he chaired the Citizens Committee for a Kennedy memorial, which successfully advocated that the Tarrant County Convention Center’s auditorium be named after the late president. That same year Gladden was appointed to the board of directors of the newly-formed Texas Civil Liberties Union. In 1966 Gladden participated in a rally of Mexican American farm workers from the Rio Grande Valley, who had marched 491 miles to Austin to demand a minimum wage increase to $1.25.

In 1966 Gladden launched another successful campaign to represent Tarrant County in the Texas House of Representatives. Soon after being inaugurated in January 1967, he introduced a bill to repeal the state’s “right-to-work” law. Gladden had campaigned on opposition to the law, which he argued restricted collective bargaining power in Texas. The bill failed to pass. During his fourth term, Gladden sponsored four successful bills, one of which provided pension payment to former Texas Ranger Charles Hagler. His political career came to an end in 1968 with an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor.

Gladden continued to work as an attorney and argued before the United States Supreme Court several times. In 1972 Fort Worth held a $6.8-million bond election for a new library. A majority of voters approved the measure, but it still failed due to the “dual ballot box” system in which bond issues needed to be approved by both a majority of all voters and by a majority of property owners in the election. Gladden and Marvin Collins filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of this limitation on the voting power of non-property owner. In 1973 the two attorneys also challenged Tarrant County’s multi-member state legislative districts. They argued that multi-member districts diluted the voting power of racial minorities. Gladden successfully argued both cases before the U.S. Supreme Court in early 1975. After three more years of legal and legislative battles, on February 27, 1978, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court judgment that Tarrant County must adopt the “Gladden Plan” (actually drafted by Betty Fischer) for redrawing the country’s nine legislative districts. As a result of the new districts, in the November 1978 elections, Tarrant County elected a historic delegation that included three Republicans, two African Americans, and a representative from Arlington. In 1979 Gladden followed up his push for legislative redistricting with a lawsuit to redraw Tarrant County’s commissioners court precincts to increase Black representation on the court. The county agreed to the redistricting in an out of county settlement. Gladden’s work as a civil rights lawyer also included fighting wrongful arrests, illegal searches, and improving public housing. In 1980 he unsuccessfully ran for the State Board of Education, District 12.

On Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday in 1980, the Fort Worth Minority Leaders and Citizens Council awarded Gladden the Martin Luther King Achievement Award. In 1999 he and Winfred Hooper were jointly honored by the Tarrant County Bar Association with Blackstone Award in recognition of their prolific legal careers. In a 1975 interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Gladden described his legal philosophy, saying “I always kind of identified with the old 9th grade concept . . . that our government belongs to us.” Don Gladden died in Fort Worth on February 14, 2002, and was buried at Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park in Fort Worth.