page_title: Jim Wright
section_title: Career in Congress
hierarchical_section_title: Jim Wright / Career in Congress
context_page_description: James Claude Wright Jr. was an American politician who served as the 48th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1987 to 1989. He represented Texas's 12th congressional district as a Democrat from 1955 to 1989.
  Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Wright won election to the Texas House of Representatives after serving in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. He won election to Congress in 1954, representing a district that included his home town of Fort Worth. Wright distinguished himself from many of his fellow Southern Congressmen in his refusal to sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto. He voted for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1960 and 1968, although he voted against the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964 and the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He also became a senior member of the House Public Works Committee.
  In 1976, Wright narrowly won election to the position of House Majority Leader. Wright voted in favor of the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday in August 1983. He became Speaker of the House after Tip O'Neill retired in 1987.
context_section_description: In 1954, he was elected to Congress from Texas's 12th congressional district, which included Fort Worth and Weatherford. He won despite the fervid opposition of Amon G. Carter, publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram newspaper and later the benefactor of the Amon Carter Museum. Carter supported the incumbent Democrat Wingate Lucas. Wright would be re-elected fourteen times, gradually rising in prominence in the party and in Congress. He developed a close relationship thereafter with Amon G. Carter Jr. Wright often said that the easiest way to "defeat an enemy is to make him your friend."
  In 1956, Wright refused to join most of his regional colleagues in signing the segregationist Southern Manifesto, and voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1960 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 signed by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, the law was pushed through Congress by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson and Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn, and Wright refused to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which required desegregation of public accommodations and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. His reason for not supporting that legislation had to do with the voting rights provision of the law, which Wright enthusiastically supported, and felt the Civil Rights Act was weak without the right to vote granted to all citizens. It was signed into law by Wright's friend, President Johnson. Wright also voted against the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Wright would later vote in favor of the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday in August 1983 as well as lead the House Democratic Caucus as Speaker in March 1988 to override President Reagan's veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987.
  In 1961, Wright finished in third place in the special election called to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by then Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Two finalists for the Senate emerged from a field of seventy-one candidates. College professor John G. Tower, then of Wichita Falls, narrowly defeated the interim appointee William Blakley, a Dallas industrialist, in a runoff election. Tower hence became the first Republican senator from Texas since Reconstruction. Wright was riding in the motorcade in Dallas on November 22, 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
  Wright continued to serve in the House and became a senior member of the Public Works Committee.  Though in line to become committee chairman, he entered the race for House Majority Leader and was elected by one vote in December 1976, defeating Richard Bolling of Missouri and Phillip Burton of California. Wright won the majority leadership position with the support of all but two Democrats from the large Texas delegation, all Democrats on the Public Works Committee, and virtually all other Southern representatives.
  In the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Jim Wright is infamous for the Wright Amendment, a contentious law he sponsored that restricted air travel from Dallas's secondary airport, Love Field. Passed in 1979, the Wright Amendment was originally designed to protect the then-fledgling Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The Amendment allows non-stop flights originating from or bound to any commercial airport within 50 nautical miles (93 km) of the DFW Airport Control Tower to serve only states bordering Texas. It was the compromise agreed to with Southwest Airlines to expand their territory beyond Texas.  This requires any flight going to or coming from a destination within that 50-mile (80 km) radius (Dallas Love Field and the now-defunct Greater Southwest International Airport in Fort Worth were the only airports affected) to land in a contiguous (bordering) state before continuing on to its destination. This effectively limited traffic from Love Field and GSIA to small, regional airlines (and provided the springboard for the later success of Southwest Airlines, which initially flew only within Texas) who were largely unab
caption: Speaker Wright, 1991
  Oil portrait by Marshall Bouldin III
exif: {}