Homer Rainey; Texas Educator

Services for Homer Price Rainey, who was ousted as president of the University of Texas in a battle over what he saw as academic freedom, were held here Monday.

The former president of four institutions of higher learning died Thursday at 89.

In 1944, the Texas Board of Regents fired Rainey, after he protested board actions that he said had limited academic freedom. He had been appointed president of the South’s largest university in 1939, after gaining a reputation as a education critic.

The regents fired Rainey after he refused to repudiate his charges that the board had made 16 attempts to limit academic freedom at the school. Much of the dispute centered around the appearance of some Texas professors at a meeting to protest work stoppages at war plants. The professors tried to defend the minimum wage law and were subsequently dismissed by the regents.

Before his appointment at Texas when he was only 42, Rainey was director of the American Youth Commission of the American Council of Education.

After his ouster, Rainey, a former minor league baseball player and Baptist minister, ran as a Democrat for governor of Texas in 1946 but lost in a runoff.