All the Way from Yoakum

One of the founders of the modern Republican Party in Texas, Marjorie Meyer Arsht served as a state party committee woman and was the first Jewish woman to run as a Republican for the state legislature. Becoming active in politics in the 1950s, she was closely involved in the early career of George H. W. Bush. A member of the prominent Texas family that owned Foley Brothers department store and gave Cohen House to Rice University, she recalls the contentious mid-century division in the Jewish community over the issue of Zionism. Formerly president of the Temple Beth Israel Sisterhood, Arsht served as a national spokesperson for a major American anti-Zionist organization. When she turned seventy, Arsht was working in the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington while also serving as a regent of Texas Southern University and running the energy development and investment company founded by her late husband. From her childhood as a member of one of the few Jewish families in small-town Yoakum, Texas, to her years of political activism and social involvement, she offers a moving account that will provide both inspiration and an understanding of how the Republican Party came to dominate Texas politics.