Frances Tarlton "Sissy" Farenthold (born 1926), commonly referred to as Sissy Farenthold, is an American Democratic politician, attorney, activist, and educator. She is most well-known for her run for Texas Governor and for her nomination for Vice President in the 1972 Democratic National Convention.
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Farenthold was born in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1926, and she graduated from Vassar College in 1946. In 1949, she graduated from the University of Texas School of Law. She was only one of only three women in a class of 800. Farenthold comes from a line of lawyers and judges. Her grandfather was Judge Benjamin D. Tarlton, Sr., Chief Justice of the Texas Court of Civil Appeals state legislator, professor at the University of Texas School of Law, and namesake of the UT Tarlton Law Library.[1] Her father, B. Dudley Tarlton, Jr., was also an attorney.
Farenthold started her illustrious political career in the 1968 when she was elected to the Texas House of Representatives, in which she represented Nueces and Kleberg counties. She was the only woman serving in the Texas House at the time. Senator Barbara Jordan was then the only woman serving in the Texas Senate. They co-sponsored the Equal Legal Rights Amendment to the Texas Constitution.[2]
Farenthold was the third woman whose name was put into nomination for Vice President of the United States at a major party's nominating convention (the first was Lena Springs, who was not a public official and whose 1924 nomination was a gesture of affection, and the second was India Edwards in 1952, whose nomination was also a gesture of gratitude for her influence over Harry Truman). At the Democratic National Convention in 1972, she came in second to the presidential nominee's choice, U.S. Senator Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri. She garnered more delegate votes (404.04) than then-U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska, Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana, and future U.S. President Jimmy Carter of Georgia, among others.
In both 1972 and 1974, she unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Governor of Texas, having been defeated both times by Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde, a more conservative Democrat. In 1973, she was elected as the first chair of the National Women's Political Caucus.[3] She later served as president of Wells College in Aurora, New York, from 1976-1980.
During her tenure at Wells, Farenthold expanded her work with women’s groups and anti-nuclear, peace, and human rights groups. She was an active member of Helsinki Watch, the predecessor to the organization Human Rights Watch and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.[4]
Farenthold left Wells College in 1980 to return to Houston, where she opened a private law practice and taught law at the University of Houston. She also continued to devote significant time to the international women’s movement and began a collaboration with her cousin, Genevieve Vaughan, that would last the next decade.[5]
Farenthold and Vaughan organized the Peace Tent at the 1985 U.N. NGO Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, in conjunction with the third U.N. World Conference on Women. [6] They also were founding members of Women For a Meaningful Summit, an ad hoc coalition of female leaders voicing concerns for nuclear disarmament at the Reagan-Gorbachev summits. Farenthold worked with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a progressive multi-issue think tank devoted to peace, justice, and the environment. With IPS, Farenthold made trips to investigate human rights violations in Central America and Iraq.
She is an emeritus trustee for IPS and serves on the Advisory Board of the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas.
Her cousin, Genevieve Vaughan is a feminist writer and philanthropist and has written on the philosophy of the gift economy. Her step-grandson, Blake Farenthold, a conservative Republican, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010.