Representative Fontaine Maury Maverick

Fontaine Maury Maverick Sr. (October 23, 1895 – June 7, 1954) was an American lawyer, soldier, and Democratic politician who represented Texas’s 20th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1935 to 1939. He is best remembered for his independence from his party’s conservative leadership and for coining the term “gobbledygook” to describe obscure, euphemistic bureaucratic language. His congressional service occurred during a significant period in American history, the era of the New Deal, during which he contributed to the legislative process over two terms in office and represented the interests of his San Antonio–area constituents.

Maverick was born in San Antonio, Texas, the son of Albert Maverick and Jane Lewis (Maury) Maverick. He came from a prominent Texas and Southern family with deep political and military roots. His paternal grandparents were Samuel Maverick, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and the source of the word “maverick” for an independent-minded person, and Mary Ann Adams Maverick. Through his mother’s Maury lineage, he was related to a number of notable Southern families and figures, including Matthew Fontaine Maury and Dabney Herndon Maury, and to the early and prominent Fontaine, Dabney, Brooke, Minor, Mercer, Herndon, Slaughter, and Slayden families of Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas. Another ancestor, Samuel Maverick (colonist), was one of the earliest settlers of Massachusetts, one of the largest original landowners there, and is noted as the first to bring enslaved Africans to Massachusetts. He was also a cousin of congressmen Abram Poindexter Maury and John W. Fishburne of Virginia and a nephew of Texas congressman James Luther Slayden, who married Ellen Maury at a Maury family home called Piedmont in Charlottesville, Virginia, now part of the University of Virginia.

Maverick was educated at Texas Military Institute in San Antonio, the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, and the University of Texas. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1916, beginning the practice of law in his native San Antonio. His legal training and early practice laid the foundation for a career that would combine law, business, and public service, and his military-school background reinforced the discipline and sense of duty that later marked both his wartime service and his political life.

During World War I, Maverick served as a first lieutenant in the infantry. He was assigned to the 28th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Division of the American Expeditionary Forces and saw combat in major operations, including the Meuse–Argonne offensive in 1918. For his service and bravery, he earned the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. After the war, he returned to San Antonio, resumed the practice of law, and in the 1920s became involved in the lumber and mortgage businesses, broadening his experience in commercial affairs and local economic development.

Maverick’s formal political career began at the local level. From 1929 to 1931, he served as the elected tax collector for Bexar County, Texas, a position that gave him direct experience with public finance and local administration. Building on his growing reputation, he sought national office in the midst of the Great Depression. In 1934 he ran for Congress and was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-fourth Congress, with strong support from the Hispanic population of his district. During this campaign, he enlisted the help of a then little-known congressional secretary, Lyndon B. Johnson, to work for him during the Democratic primary. Maverick was reelected in 1936 to the Seventy-fifth Congress, serving in the House of Representatives from January 3, 1935, to January 3, 1939.

In Congress, Maverick was an ardent champion of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and quickly aligned himself with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. His outspoken support for New Deal reforms and his independent stance angered the conservative Democrats who dominated the party organization in Texas, including Vice President John Nance Garner. Maverick distinguished himself further by being the sole Texas Democrat to vote for the Anti-Lynching Bill of 1937, a stand that underscored both his commitment to civil rights and his willingness to defy powerful elements of his own party. A widening split between Roosevelt and Garner over the proposed reorganization of the Supreme Court placed Maverick in an increasingly precarious political position. Garner’s conservative allies in Maverick’s district worked actively to unseat him, and the resulting loss of financial and organizational support contributed to his defeat in the Democratic primary for a third term in 1938.

After leaving Congress, Maverick returned to Texas and quickly reestablished himself in public life. He was elected mayor of San Antonio in 1939, again drawing significant support from minority voters, and served in that office until 1941. As mayor, he pursued reformist and progressive policies, but his outspoken liberalism and independent style provoked strong opposition. In the subsequent mayoral election he was labeled a Communist by his opponents and was defeated. During this period, Lyndon Johnson, by then a rising political figure running for the United States Senate, secretly made a pact with Maverick’s local enemies: Johnson would assist in Maverick’s defeat in exchange for their backing of Johnson’s Senate ambitions, illustrating the complex and often ruthless nature of Texas Democratic politics in the era.

During World War II, Maverick moved into federal wartime administration. He worked for the Office of Price Administration and the Office of Personnel Management, and he served on the War Production Board and the Smaller War Plants Corporation, agencies central to the mobilization and regulation of the wartime economy. It was while serving at the Smaller War Plants Corporation that he issued a now-famous directive to his staff urging clarity and brevity in official communications. He instructed that memoranda “should be as short as clearness will allow,” that the subject matter and conclusion should appear in the opening paragraph and the whole story fit on one page, and that staff should “stay off the gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up.” This admonition introduced the term “gobbledygook” into the American political and administrative lexicon and became one of his most enduring contributions to public discourse.

After the war, Maverick returned once more to San Antonio and resumed the practice of law. He remained a figure of note in Texas liberal circles, known for his earlier congressional record, his New Deal advocacy, and his colorful, independent political style. He married Terrell Louise Dobbs, and they had a daughter and a son, Maury Maverick Jr., who became a well-known San Antonio newspaper editorialist and civil libertarian and who died in 2003 at the age of 82. Maverick died on June 7, 1954. Following his death, his widow Terrell Louise Maverick later married the distinguished Texas author and historian Walter Prescott Webb, further linking the Maverick family to the intellectual and historical life of Texas.