Al Lipscomb

Albert Louis "Al" Lipscomb (15 June 1925 – 18 June 2011) was a seven-term Dallas City Council member and a longtime civil rights advocate. He was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit in the 1970s that successfully challenged Dallas's system of electing every council member citywide, forcing the city to change to a mostly single-member district system.

D Magazine called Lipscomb, the first black person to run for mayor, "the Jackie Robinson of Dallas city government". Several African-American officials credited him with opening doors for them. He won eight council elections and was one of the longest-serving council members in Dallas history at 14 years.

In 2000, Lipscomb was convicted of federal bribery charges stemming from what prosecutors said were improper payments from a taxi cab company owner. The conviction was overturned on appeal in 2002.

Dealing with discrimination at early age Lipscomb was born in southeast Dallas and grew up in a home built by family members. In 2002, he described how, as a child, he often witnessed his grandfather having to get off the sidewalk and doff his hat when a white person passed. Lipscomb was also the frequent target of racially motivated violence by other children.

Lipscomb said these events helped mold him into a civil rights advocate. His mother, Lucille Jeffrey, was an organizer for Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty who also greatly influenced him.

Lipscomb graduated from Lincoln High, working part-time as a busboy at the Adolphus Hotel during high school. He joined the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1943 during World War II, serving in California with the military police. After being discharged, he remained in California and said he "got involved in drugs". He was arrested for selling heroin and incarcerated for ten months of a one-year prison sentence.

In the early 1950s, Lipscomb moved back to Dallas, where he waited tables in restaurants. He met his future wife, Lovie Lipscomb, when they worked for the same hotel. He eventually became the headwaiter at the executive dining room of First National Bank. Among the restaurant's patrons was the oilman H. L. Hunt, who brought his lunch in a sack and requested only water and a phone. Lipscomb said Hunt sometimes worked on a novel there and tipped the waiters well.

Joining the War on Poverty

In 1966, Lipscomb became a neighborhood organizer for the Dallas Community Action Agency, a nonprofit organization founded to work in the War on Poverty. He had previously volunteered on some projects to challenge segregation launched by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, attending protests to open drugstore counters and other facilities to black people. He organized with Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and co-founded the Dallas chapter. He founded a clearinghouse for community problems, the South Dallas Information Center, and said he was the first person to be arrested and thrown out of Dallas City Hall.

A major cause of the time was stopping developers from buying out black homeowners at unfair prices for a proposed expansion of the State Fair of Texas in Fair Park. In 1969, Lipscomb, the SCLC's Peter Johnson and other community activists organized out of Mount Olive Lutheran Church. They negotiated with then-Mayor J. Erik Jonsson for more favorable home buyout prices after threatening to stage a large demonstration during the nationally televised Cotton Bowl Parade.

While trying to get a meeting with the mayor, the group endured bomb threats to the point that the police chief went to the church basement where the activists prepared for the protest and told them it was unsafe to stay there. Johnson said he drew a line across the church basement floor and told everyone present that they were free to leave with no hard feelings. Anyone willing to brave the threats was asked to cross the line. "The first person to walk across that line was Albert Lipscomb", Johnson said. The mayor soon agreed to the meeting.

Suing the city, winning council elections In 1971, Lipscomb became Dallas's first black candidate for mayor, finishing third in a field of seven. He ran for city council and other offices several more times before he was elected to the Dallas City Council in 1984.

Also in 1971, Lipscomb became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit to challenge the City Council's method of electing members all at large. He and others argued in court that the system effectively discriminated against minorities and had resulted in very few nonwhite council members. In January 1975, U.S. District Judge Eldon Brooks Mahon found that the all at-large system was unconstitutional because it was "intentionally adopted and maintained to dilute the voting strength of African-Americans…. When all members of the City Council are elected at-large, the significance of this pattern of blacks carrying their own areas and yet losing on a citywide basis is that black voters of Dallas do have less opportunity than do the white voters to elect candidates of their choice."

Lipscomb won several more elections and became mayor pro tem in 1991. He left the council in 1993 due to a term-limit rule. In 1995, he was reelected to the council and remained until he resigned in 2000 amid a scandal over alleged improper payments by a taxicab company owner.

Lipscomb and his attorneys denied the charges. Richards's attorney Reed Prospere also denied that Richards paid Lipscomb "bribes with intent to improperly influence or reward" him and said any payments were considered "aid and assistance" to Lipscomb. "The list of people and companies that have provided aid and assistance to Mr. Lipscomb would read like a who's who of Dallas", Prospere said.

But the council-manager form led to excesses, such as charges that the mayor and council voted on contracts and issues that benefited their companies. In addition, lower-income citizens, such as Lipscomb, who had families to support had to make substantial sacrifices if they wanted council representation. In trying to make ends meet while advocating for issues important to lower-income people, some accepted payments from wealthier citizens. Sometimes payments were made in cash and sometimes they were diverted through a business they or a family member ran. Lipscomb said the payments he accepted came with "no strings attached".

Miller ran for mayor of Dallas in 2001. Lipscomb told a reporter, "If Hitler, Satan, and Miller were running, I wouldn't vote for her". In 2003, Miller told a television reporter about a closed-door council session in which she objected to a Fantroy family company handling security for a proposed housing development, even though Fantroy recused himself from proceedings. While the city attorney said his recusal resolved any conflict, Miller still gave details to a reporter, whose broadcast reportedly caught local FBI agents' attention. Investigations ensued, and Fantroy was convicted of embezzling money and council member Don Hill convicted of bribery.

Some black leaders and their lawyers charged that Miller herself took improper payments as a council member and mayor, including from the same housing developer who accused Hill of improper payments. Federal authorities said the payments to Miller were documented campaign contributions, while Hill received improper funds.

Lipscomb and his wife, Lovie, had eight children, four from Lovie's previous marriage. D Magazine listed him as one of "50 People Who Made Dallas" in a 1991 feature, calling him "the Jackie Robinson of Dallas city government", and writing that he was "capable of passionate argument, unintentionally comic rhetoric and honeyed homilies from the Bible, but few doubt his commitment to social justice".

Death and legacy After battling diabetes and other health problems, Lipscomb died in 2011, aged 86. Longtime friend Eddie Sewell called him his hero. "He was my Malcolm X. He was my Nelson Mandela. He was my Martin Luther King."