Barefoot Sanders, who served as a judge for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas from 1979 until his retirement at the end of 2006, died Sunday Sept. 21, 2008, at his Dallas home at the age of 83. Funeral services for Sanders are planned for 4 p.m. Sept. 24 at Northhaven United Methodist Church in Dallas. His was a legendary career. Sanders served three terms in the Texas House in the 1950s before he became campaign manager for the Dallas County John F. Kennedy-Lyndon B. Johnson campaign in 1960. The following year, then-President Kennedy appointed Sanders U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas. It was while Sanders was the U.S. attorney that he planned the fateful Nov. 22, 1963, trip that Kennedy made through Dallas. In 1979, then-president Jimmy Carter appointed Sanders to the U.S. District Court in Dallas. Among the cases Sanders presided over during his approximately 27 years as a federal judge was Tasby v. Wright, the Dallas Independent School District desegregation case. What follows is former Texas Lawyer senior reporter Mark Donald’s November 2006 article on Sanders.
— Mary Alice Robbins
