On this date in 1943, James Allen Hightower — author, columnist and political commentator — was born to working-class parents in Denison, Texas, where he grew up near the Oklahoma border. He’s perhaps most widely known for the quote “There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos,” also the title of his 1997 book.
“We considered ourselves the first line of defense against the ‘Okies’ there and I was raised in a small-business family. My mother and father both had come off of tenant farms,” he said. (Texas Legacy Project, April 9, 2002)
He worked while attending the University of North Texas State as assistant general manager of the Denton Chamber of Commerce and as a management trainee for the U.S. State Department. He served as student body president before earning a B.A. in government and later did graduate work at Columbia University in New York in international affairs.
He worked as an aide to U.S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough, a Texas Democrat, and then co-founded the Agribusiness Accountability Project in Washington before becoming editor in 1976 of the Texas Observer in Austin. He was elected state agriculture commissioner in 1982 and served until 1990, when he was defeated by Rick Perry. He launched Hightower Radio — a daily, syndicated two-minute commentary — in 1993 and it continues as of this writing in 2024 in conjunction with his print columns via the Creators Syndicate.
A monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown, has over 40,000 subscribers. His views are progressive/populist, and he doesn’t hesitate to comment about religion: “In one of their satirical songs, the Austin Lounge Lizards lampooned the ridiculous bigotry of some Christian factions, singing: ‘Jesus loves me. But he can’t stand you.’ ” (El Dorado News-Times, Dec. 3, 2023)
Commenting on a Louisiana law mandating display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, he wrote: “For us Texans, there’s nothing new about Bible-thumping politicians bedeviling us with the foolishness of their dogmatic Christian piety. A century ago, for example, a proposal was made to offer bilingual education to Spanish-speaking school kids. But it was quashed by the governor, who solemnly declared: ‘If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas.’ ” (Creators Syndicate, July 3, 2024)
“Being an agitator is what America is all about. If it was not for the agitators of circa 1776, we’d all be wearing powdered wigs and still be singing ‘God Save the Queen.’ ” An agitator, he added, “is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out.” (Americans Who Tell the Truth online biography)
Hightower accepted FFRF’s Clarence Darrow Award (video here) at its 2022 convention in San Antonio. In a speech titled “Progressives need more agitators,” he said: “It seems to me we’ve got to get out there and reach out to people, and then to try to unify them, because whether our particular issue is our labor rights or women’s rights, or climate change, abortion, or freedom from religion, our fundamental values come down to those issues of fairness and justice and opportunity for all.”
PHOTO: Hightower at the 2008 Texas Book Festival in Austin; photo by Larry D. Moore under CC 4.0.
