Rainey, Homer P. (Homer Price), 1896-

Homer Price Rainey (1896-1985) was born in Clarksville, Texas, where he grew up in a poor farming family. He was valedictorian of his class at Lovelady High School in 1913. At the age of 19, he became a Baptist minister, and he served in the United States army during World War I. In 1919, Rainey earned his B.A. degree from Austin College and taught education there for three years before attending the University of Chicago, where he earned a master’s degree in 1923 and a doctorate in 1924. Rainey taught at the University of Oregon until 1927, when he became president of Franklin College in Indiana, 1927-1931. He then became president of Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, 1931-1935, and served for four years as director of the American Youth Commission of the American Council on Education.

The board of regents of the University of Texas appointed Rainey president in 1939. Rainey often battled with the board, protesting against the regents’ firings of professors, weakening of tenure, and terminating social science research funds. He further angered the regents by attempting to bring the UT Medical Branch at Galveston into the university proper. However, the greatest conflict between Rainey and the board involved their attempts to fire a professor who placed the third volume of John Dos Passos’ USA trilogy on the English department’s sophomore reading list. Eventually the board of regents fired Rainey in November 1944, citing no reasons, and 8,000 students went on strike in response, marching from the campus to the Capitol and the Governor’s Mansion. Governor Stevenson appointed new regents and made other changes, but Rainey was never reinstated as president.

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