Texas Iconoclast: Maury Maverick, Jr.

Few people who know him or read his Sunday column in the San Antonio Express-News are neutral about Maury Maverick Jr., not only one of the twentieth century’s most outspoken iconoclasts but an individualist who helped shape American constitutional history. Many of Maverick’s columns continue his efforts to achieve civil rights guarantees for the disadvantaged. They draw heavily on what he learned from his previous professional careers as a politician, a teacher, and, more significantly, a successful civil-rights lawyer.

The legal issues which most deeply interest Maverick are free speech, due process of law, separation of church and state, world peace, and preservation of human dignity.

Using the press as an avenue to express his political, economic, social, and religious views has kept Maverick active in public life. He has observed: “Journalism gives me a kinship with sculptors who start out with a big blob of nothing and try to make it into something. . . . Because of journalism, I feel that artists, poets and musicians are my spiritual cousins. I never had that feeling about the law.”

But occasionally Maverick gets tired of politics, and then he writes about pinto beans, poetry, music, birds, abandoned dogs, and gardening. He has a special fondness for stray dogs, many of whom he adopts, and purple martin shelters, which he urges people to build.

Allan O. Kownslar has selected Express-News columns to reveal Maverick’s views on a variety of topics, from heroes to the Red Scare, Maverick relatives to war. The result is a look at important events in history and selected individuals.