Richard Coke (18 March 1829-14 May 1897) was the Democratic Governor of Texas from 15 January 1874 to 1 December 1876 (succeeding Edmund J. Davis and preceding Richard B. Hubbard) and a US Senator from 4 March 1877 to 3 March 1895 (succeeding Morgan C. Hamilton and preceding Horace Chilton).
Biography[]
Richard Coke was born in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1829, and he became a lawyer in Waco, Texas in 1850. He served as a delegate to the 1861 secession convention, in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, became a district court judge in 1865 and a Texas Supreme Court judge in 1866 (being fired by Governor Phil Sheridan a year later for impeding Reconstruction), and served as Governor of Texas from 1874 to 1876 (disenfranchising Blacks, Mexicans, and poor whites through poll taxes and white primaries), and in the US Senate from 1877 to 1895. He died in 1897 at the age of 68.