Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,342
By This is the grave of Fritz Lanham.
Born in Weatherford, Texas in 1880, Lanham grew up in a locally powerful family. His father Samuel was an eight-term congressman and later the governor of Texas. So it’s hardly surprising that Fritz would go down this path too. He was in DC with his father during his school years but came back home for college at Weatherford College. Interesting choice for a DC kid. Weatherford College sort of still exists, but only as a community college. It was hardly some elite college then. In any case, he was only 17 when he graduated from that college, in 1897. I don’t think it was a real four year college then anyway, because he then to Vanderbilt and the University of Texas, where he was the first editor of the student newspaper there.
Lanham was kind of an interesting guy. He had work for his dad for awhile at the family bank, but he didn’t like that. So he worked at the Texas School for the Deaf for awhile, wrote a bit for the Dallas Morning News, learned magic and took jobs doing it, wrote some musical comedies with his brother, and toured with a stage show. Oh, was this act a minstrel show? You know it was. He finally decided to take the bar exam, which he passed in 1909 despite not having a law degree. He became a locally prominent lawyer, did a lot of World War I propaganda work locally, and got serious about his own political career.
Lanham did not have local success at politics, but had more when he moved to Fort Worth. He became an assistant county attorney for Tarrant County in 1917 and then ran in a special election to fill a congressional seat in 1919. He won that and spent the next 28 years in Congress. As a congressman, he was mostly kind of whatever. He had his issues and he pursued them. He was very big into copyright law. His biggest legislative accomplishment was the Lanham Act of 1946, which mostly had to do with trademarks. Not so exciting stuff, but this stuff is actually important. A recent book actually called him “The Father of American Trademark Protection.”
He was the author of the Lanham Act of 1940 as well, which provided federal money to the communities that were getting jobs from the growing defense industry to build housing and other infrastructure. Of course, the bill was written to promote segregated housing. There was no way Lanham was going to do anything to fight segregation. In terms of committee assignments, he topped out by being chair of the House Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, which is a great place to store a long-tenured minor member. Lanham was also super racist. He worked with scumbags such as Martin Dies to make sure that no New Deal work relief went to immigrants, which in Texas included a lot of Mexican farmworkers who people such as these guys wanted to keep subservient to white domination.
Lanham decided not to run for reelection in 1946. Lobbying cash made more sense to him at this point in his life. He became a lobbyist for the National Patent Council and the American Fair Trade Council. He was also named the VP of the Trinity Improvement Association of Texas, which was a state development group seeking to expand their DC presence. He eventually retired to Austin.
Lanham died in Austin in 1965. He was 85 years old.
If you would like this series to visit some of the other racist congresscritters who worked with Lanham on this immigration issue, you can donate to cove the required expenses here. Martin Dies is in Lufkin, Texas and Henry Stubbs is in Santa Maria, California. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.