Robert Ewing Thomason
El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Robert Ewing Thomason was an El Paso attorney, state legislator, mayor, U.S. Congressman and Federal Judge, who devoted more than fifty years of his life to public service. He earned a law degree from the University of Texas in 1900 and began his practice in Gainesville where he was elected district attorney and county attorney. In 1912, Thomason moved to El Paso, where he joined the law firm of Tom Lea, Jr. Thomason served in the Texas Legislature from 1917 to 1921. He was elected Speaker of the House and helped secure Texas’ support for the 19th amendment, giving women the right to vote. He told fellow legislators “i want the American woman to walk by the side of the American man to the ballot box.” In 1927, Thomason was elected mayor of El Paso on a “Clean Government” ticket. As mayor, he oversaw the construction of the first municipal airport. He was then elected to the U. S. Congress, where he served the 16th district from 1931 to 1947. He helped establish Big Bend National Park, and as a member of the house committee on military affairs, oversaw the expansion of Fort Bliss, Biggs Army Air Field and William Beaumont General Hospital. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman appointed Thomason Federal Judge for the Western District of Texas. In this courthouse, he presided over many landmark cases, including the Thelma White Desegregation Case (1955), Clinton Jencks Perjury Trial (1955), Bearden Plane Hijacking Case (1961), and Billie Sol Estes Fraud Trial (1963). Thomason died in 1973 at the age of 94, having served in all three branches of government.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Robert Ewing Thomason gave more than fifty years to public life, serving as an El Paso attorney, state legislator, mayor, U.S. congressman, and federal judge. As Speaker of the Texas House he helped win the state's ratification of the 19th Amendment, urging colleagues to let "the American woman walk by the side of the American man to the ballot box." In Congress he helped establish Big Bend National Park and expand Fort Bliss, and as a federal judge appointed by President Truman he presided in this courthouse over landmark cases, including the 1955 Thelma White desegregation case.
Why it matters
Thomason's career touched all three branches of government and two of the era's great causes — women's suffrage and school desegregation — anchoring national struggles in the life of one border city.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Robert Ewing Thomason's life spanned an era when the American Southwest was coming fully into the modern age. Born in the late nineteenth century, he earned his law degree from the University of Texas in 1900 and came of professional age just as Texas was transforming from a frontier state into a place of growing cities, expanding institutions, and national ambitions.
He began his practice in Gainesville, in North Texas, where he was elected both district attorney and county attorney — the classic launching pad of a public career rooted in the courtroom. Then, in 1912, he moved to El Paso, the far-western border city that would become his home and the stage for the rest of his life.
El Paso in those decades was a fast-growing gateway on the Rio Grande, a place where questions of government, infrastructure, and rights were being worked out in real time. It was the ideal setting for a man whose talents would carry him through every branch of American government.
People & events
In El Paso, Thomason joined the law firm of Tom Lea, Jr., and soon entered public life himself, serving in the Texas Legislature from 1917 to 1921. Elected Speaker of the House, he used that position for one of the defining causes of his generation, helping secure Texas's support for the Nineteenth Amendment and the right of women to vote. "I want the American woman to walk by the side of the American man to the ballot box," he told his fellow legislators — a line that still carries its plainspoken conviction.
His career kept climbing. In 1927 he was elected mayor of El Paso on a "Clean Government" ticket, and as mayor he oversaw the construction of the city's first municipal airport. He then went to Washington, representing the 16th district in the U.S. Congress from 1931 to 1947.
In 1947, President Harry S. Truman appointed him a federal judge for the Western District of Texas. From the bench in this courthouse he presided over a striking run of consequential cases, and by the time of his death in 1973, at the age of ninety-four, he had done something few Americans ever do — served in all three branches of government.
Its place in the American story
Thomason's career is a rare thread connecting a single border city to some of the largest currents in twentieth-century American life. In the legislature he helped Texas join the national movement for women's suffrage; in Congress he helped establish Big Bend National Park and expand the military installations around El Paso, including Fort Bliss, Biggs Army Air Field, and William Beaumont General Hospital — investments that shaped the region for generations.
On the federal bench his docket reads like a cross-section of the era's tensions. He presided over the Thelma White desegregation case in 1955, a step in the long national struggle to open higher education to Black students, as well as the Clinton Jencks perjury trial that same year, born of Cold War anxieties over loyalty; a 1961 airplane hijacking case from the early days of that crime; and the Billie Sol Estes fraud trial in 1963.
What makes the story resonate is its span. Two of the age's great causes — the expansion of the vote to women and the dismantling of segregation — passed through the hands of one man, anchoring national struggles in the life of a single city on the border.
If you visit
This marker honors a public servant, so let it turn your attention to the very idea of a courthouse as a place where the nation's arguments get settled. Standing here, you can consider that landmark cases with national weight were decided not only in Washington but in courtrooms like this one, far from the capital.
As you read, trace the astonishing arc the inscription lays out — legislator, mayor, congressman, judge — and notice how each role touched something that outlasted the man: a park, an airport, an army post, a ruling. Few careers leave marks in so many different registers of public life.
Think of this as a stop for anyone interested in how one determined life can bend toward justice across decades. You are not just learning about an individual; you are seeing how the great national causes of an era — the vote, the schoolhouse door — reached all the way to a city on the Rio Grande, and were shaped there.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Robert Ewing Thomason
- · Tom Lea, Jr.
- · Harry S. Truman
Related events
- · Texas ratification of the 19th Amendment
- · Thelma White desegregation case, 1955
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Estela Portillo Trambley
El Paso, TX
Estela Portillo Trambley (1926–1998), an El Paso native, became one of the first voices of the "Chicano Renaissance," writing fiction, plays, and poetry that centered strong, independent Mexican and Mexican American women. Educated at the University of Texas at El Paso, she taught high school for more than 40 years while co-founding a bilingual theater and seeing her plays staged across the country. In 1972 she became the first woman to win the prestigious Premio Quinto Sol, and she hosted radio and television programs that carried Chicano culture to a wider audience.
Hotel Cortez
El Paso, TX
Businesswoman Alzina DeGroff bought the hotel on this site in 1899, and by 1926 had commissioned a striking new building from the Southwest's premier architect, Henry C. Trost. Renamed the Hotel Cortez in 1935, its Spanish eclectic brick facade bristles with terra cotta busts of conquistadors. Among its guests was President John F. Kennedy, who stayed here in 1963, the year of his death. The hotel closed in 1970 and was later restored and converted to offices.
Douglass Grammar and High School
El Paso, TX
Built in 1891 and named for the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, this was the school for El Paso's African American community under a segregated system established in the 1880s. It opened as a grammar school and by 1896 offered high school classes, foreign languages, and music. As Black families prospered through work on the railroads, in smelting, and in retail, they moved to new neighborhoods and won a second Douglass School in 1920, which served until the city desegregated in 1956. Through Jim Crow's inequities — lower pay, inferior supplies — its dedicated teachers sent graduates on to careers as surgeons, engineers, and educators.
Houchen Community Center
El Paso, TX
The Houchen Community Center traces its roots to 1893, when Michigan teacher Rose Gregory Houchen backed missionary work in El Paso's Segundo Barrio, a Hispanic neighborhood on the border. Her 1910 donation built a settlement house that opened in 1912 offering English classes, daycare, and kindergarten. As Mexican Revolution refugees poured in and disease spread, the center pivoted to health care, eventually running the Freeman Clinic and a maternity hospital that delivered more than 62,000 babies.