Robert L. Thornton
After holding several jobs and starting two unsuccessful business ventures, Thornton began a banking operation in Dallas in 1916.
His family argue that although Thornton was a highly scrutinized public figure, as mayor and prominent business leader, no allegations of Klan affiliation surfaced during his lifetime, nor for thirty years after his death.
In 1916, at the age of 36, with loans from family and friends, he organized a private bank in Dallas[12] in an 18-foot (5.5 m) office that had formerly housed the Blue Goose restaurant.
[28] The first world's fair in the Southwest hosted more than six million people including U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was credited with cushioning Dallas from the Great Depression.
[29] According to historian Michael V. Hazel, "The man most responsible for securing the central Centennial Exposition for Dallas was Robert L. Thornton, head of the Mercantile Bank.
In his book, Big D: Triumphs and Troubles of an American Supercity in the 20th Century, Darwin Payne wrote, "Thornton was widely recognized as 'Mr.
His folksy, avuncular ways earned him alternately the affectionate title of Uncle Bob,"[35] as he never forgot his country boy roots.
[36] The city was struggling with rapid economic growth challenges amid a prolonged drought that meant a severe water shortage.
Major municipal projects completed during his eight years in office included a new downtown library, a new city hall annex, construction of the Memorial Auditorium, and expansion of Dallas Love Field with a new passenger terminal.
Mayor Thornton ran unopposed in 1955 and won ahead of two other candidates in 1957, despite a major tornado that ripped through Oak Cliff and West Dallas the afternoon of election day, April 2, 1957.
[47] A National Park Service document cited the NAACP, "emboldened by the record of Black servicemen in the war, a new corps of brilliant young lawyers ... initiated major attacks against discrimination and segregation.
[51][52] Over the years, Thornton, as Mayor and State Fair of Texas president, personally brokered agreements with Craft, other African American leaders, and opponents in the Anglo community.
[54] Despite federal court decisions, the 55th Texas legislature passed a law in 1957 that required local communities to vote on school desegregation.
[56] Lacking a public mandate, "Mayor Thornton believed the situation to be so critical that the Dallas Citizens Council must exercise its power to assure success.
[58] Acceding to the mayor's request, the Citizens Council agreed in 1960 to assume as a special project the successful integration of Dallas schools.
Key steps included organizing a bi-racial Committee of 14 consisting of seven Black and seven white members to serve as a bridge between the two communities.
[64] On September 6, 1961 racial desegregation came quietly and peacefully in Dallas, as 18 Black children entered first-grade classes in eight historically white elementary schools.
[65] President Kennedy praised Dallas' peaceful school integration and acclaimed the city's "responsible, level-headed leadership," which had led the way.
[66] Roy Wilkins, executive director of the national NAACP, asserted, "If this sort of thing had been done throughout the country – people willing to sit down together and talk about the problem – we would have a different picture now.
George Wallace's order to break up protests in Selma, Alabama which led to Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
[69] In 1994, in his book Big D: Triumphs and Troubles of an American Supercity in the 20th Century, Darwin Payne wrote: "The president of Dallas County State Bank, Robert L. Thornton, [...] was a member [of the Ku Klux Klan]".
"It was simply untrue," grandson Robert L. Thornton III wrote in a 1995 letter to the editor of the Dallas Morning News.
[71] He said that not once in R. L. Thornton's 83 years of life – including his thoroughly documented roles as a businessman, civic leader, and elected official – was there ever a single mention of a KKK membership.
Payne cites it in a footnote in the revised, 2000 edition of Big D as "an undated document held by the Dallas Historical Society ... given by George B. Dealey in 1942".
Dealey, however, in his transmittal letter to the Dallas Historical Society wrote that it was an "impossibility" that "the stores enumerated are said to be Ku Klux Klan 100%.
The firm's Special Examination report of June 13, 1924 listed receipts, vendors, advertisers and individuals who provided support in exhaustive detail.
[citation needed] W. L. Thornton, a Dallas attorney and prominent judge, was active in both the Klan and the Democratic party locally,[81][82] statewide,[83] and nationally.
[84][85] Since the book's 1994 publication, some authors and journalists[examples needed] have perpetuated the accusation that Thornton was a "member of the Klan", by repeating Payne's assertion, without any apparent separate investigation or research of their own.
Their grandson, Robert L. Thornton III (born March 15, 1940), is a third-generation banker, having retired as vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase-Dallas.
[34][87] At his memorial service, Dr. William Dickinson, pastor of the Highland Park United Methodist Church, concluded, "His genius in leadership was seen not only in his limitless energy but in his ability to get other people to do things they did not know they could do.
