Robert Lee Thornton (often R. L. Thornton; August 10, 1880 – February 15, 1964) was an American banker and politician who served as the 47th mayor of Dallas from 1953 to 1961. A child of tenant farmers, Thornton's early years were divided between school and farm labor. After holding several jobs and starting two unsuccessful business ventures, Thornton began a banking operation in Dallas in 1916. The bank progressed to be a Texas-wide institution, and by 1923 it had a national charter. Thornton served as president (1916–1947) and board chairman (1947–1964) of the bank he founded, the Mercantile Bank and Trust Co.
Thornton became a prominent businessman and community figure, serving as president of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce from 1933 to 1936, and as president of the State Fair of Texas from 1945 to 1960. He played a major part in securing the Texas Centennial Exposition for Dallas. From 1953 to 1961, Thornton served as mayor of Dallas. His vigorous promotion of the city and its development earned him the soubriquet Mr. Dallas in the media. His avuncular and countryfied manner saw him often referred to and addressed as Uncle Bob by locals and associates.
Beginning in 1994, claims that Thornton had been a Ku Klux Klan member in the early 1920s have arisen. Records of any Klan association are scant and have been contested. His family argue that although Thornton was a highly scrutinized public figure, as mayor and prominent business leader, no allegations of Klan affiliation surfaced during his lifetime, nor for thirty years after his death. Thornton's involvement in the city's desegregation and civil rights matters in the 1950s and 60s provided an opening for criticism from African American and other civil rights campaigners; however there are no contemporary, nor later, accusations on record, prior to the one surfacing in 1994.
Thornton married in 1905 and settled in Dallas with his wife, where they raised four children. Thornton died in 1964. Various roads and places in Dallas are named for him. Since the 1990s there have been intermittent calls for these place names to be changed on the basis of Thornton's perceived involvement with the Klan. Although little firm evidence of such involvement appears to exist, the claim of his membership is repeated from time-to-time in various publications.
Robert Lee Thornton was born to tenant farmer William Travis Thornton and Polly Ann (née Weatherby) in a sod-roofed, half-dugout in Hamilton County, Texas, near Hico. His childhood time was divided between farm work, such as picking cotton, and attending school. He discontinued schooling at the eighth grade because his family needed him to work full-time farming. Formal business education was limited to an eight-week bookkeeping course at the Metropolitan Business College in Dallas. His first visit to Dallas was as an eight-year-old; he traveled by wagon with his father and a brother to visit the State Fair of Texas. The experience made a life-long impression: his involvement with the State Fair, and Dallas, lasted for more than 75 years.
Other than picking cotton, Thornton's first job was as an $18-a-month store clerk in Heelstring (now Bristol) in Ellis County, Texas. Thornton then worked as a traveling candy salesman, supplying the Oklahoma Indian Territory. By 1912, Thornton returned to Dallas and became involved in two business ventures – a bookstore and a mortgage banking company – both of which were unsuccessful.
In 1916, at the age of 36, with loans from family and friends, he organized a private bank in Dallas in an 18-foot (5.5 m) office that had formerly housed the Blue Goose restaurant. It was from this first successful venture that Thornton launched his four-decade banking career as president of Stiles, Thornton, and Lund, which eventually would become the third-largest bank in Dallas. A year later, the bank reorganized as the Dallas County State Bank.
Many of Dallas' business leaders joined Thornton on the bank's board of directors. They included former Dallas mayor W. M. Holland, business leaders John W. Carpenter, Jewish business leader Julius Schepps, Catholic-community leader John Vilbig Jr., and Sanger–Harris department store general manager Charles L. Sanger. Thornton's fellow bankers recognized his business talent early in his career when they elected him president of the Texas Bankers Association in 1924–1925.
By 1923 they had outgrown the name "Dallas County State Bank" and became the "Mercantile Bank and Trust Co.", with a national charter. Two years later, the bank's capital hit the $1 million mark. Thornton served as president from 1916 to 1947, when he became chairman of the board until 1964. It would eventually become MCorp Bank through a merger and was then acquired by Bank One Corporation. The current successor is JPMorgan Chase & Co., who acquired Bank One in 2004.
Shortly after Dallas County State Bank opened, Thornton joined the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, serving as president of the Chamber from 1933 to 1936. In 1923, he was named to the Dallas Plan Commission and later to the economic development organization, Industrial Dallas, Inc. that toured the Southwest encouraging businesses to move to Dallas.
He served as a member of the board of directors of a range of Dallas organizations. They included nonprofits: Children's Development Center, Greater Dallas Council of Churches, Texas Research Foundation, Scottish Rite Hospital, and the Southwestern Medical Foundation, as well as the citizens' advisory Trinity Improvement Authority, and the Texas Turnpike Authority agency. He volunteered to head the World War II Dallas War Chest to raise money through war bonds, chaired the Big Gifts division for the Dallas County United Fund, and chaired the campaign to approve the Dallas County courthouse complex. His greatest love was Dallas' Fair Park. He spent more than three decades involved with the [city-owned] park and the State Fair of Texas beginning with his election to the Fair board in 1929. He became chairman in 1945, serving until 1960, when he was elected board president.
In 1933, while serving as chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, he joined with his close friend Fred Florence of Republic Bank and Nathan Adams of First National Bank to pursue hosting the Texas Centennial and Exposition at Fair Park in 1936. The first world's fair in the Southwest hosted more than six million people including U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was credited with cushioning Dallas from the Great Depression. According to historian Michael V. Hazel, "The man most responsible for securing the central Centennial Exposition for Dallas was Robert L. Thornton, head of the Mercantile Bank." In his history of the Dallas Citizens Council, author Darwin Payne noted: "Despite financial losses, the Centennial was the crowning event in the city's history. The public relations value alone was incalculable, and the economic benefits enormous." Payne wrote: "Dallas had become a different city, different in self-awareness as well as in its new national image as a prosperous, sophisticated city. That image was relayed to the nation in glowing articles in such prestigious publications as Fortune and Atlantic Monthly. Dallas almost overnight became Big D."
To host the Centennial, Dallas leaders promised to raise millions of dollars for the effort. According to The New York Times, "The businessmen of the city had worked hard to raise $3.5 million for the event, but the experience had shown them how loosely organized their city was." Thornton told the Times that committee members "had to report back to their companies before making financial commitments. We needed people who could say 'yes' or 'no' right away to determine if a project could be done quickly and efficiently". In 1937 this concern drove Thornton to organize the Dallas Citizens Council (not to be confused with the "White Citizens Councils in the South") made up of only the chief executive officers and decision-makers in Dallas. Since that time, the Council has put its collective money and expertise into projects deemed important for the city.