20th-century Baptists

Wendell Hampton Ford (September 8, 1924 – January 22, 2015) was an American politician from Kentucky. He served for twenty-four years in the U.S. Senate and was the 53rd Governor of Kentucky. He was the first person to be successively elected lieutenant governor, governor, and United States senator in Kentucky history. He was the Senate Democratic whip from 1991 to 1999, and was considered the leader of the state's Democratic Party from his election as governor in 1971 until he retired from the Senate in 1999. At the time of his retirement he was the longest-serving senator in Kentucky's history, a mark which was then surpassed by Mitch McConnell in 2009. He is the most recent Democrat to have served as a Senator from the state of Kentucky.
Born in Daviess County, Kentucky, Ford attended the University of Kentucky, but his studies were interrupted by his service in World War II. After the war, he graduated from the Maryland School of Insurance and returned to Kentucky to help his father with the family insurance business. He also continued his military service in the Kentucky Army National Guard. He worked on the gubernatorial campaign of Bert T. Combs in 1959 and became Combs' executive assistant when Combs was elected governor. Encouraged to run for the Kentucky Senate by Combs' ally and successor, Ned Breathitt, Ford won the seat and served one four-year term before running for lieutenant governor in 1967. He was elected on a split ticket with Republican Louie B. Nunn. Four years later, Ford defeated Combs in an upset in the Democratic primary en route to the governorship.
As governor, Ford made the government more efficient by reorganizing and consolidating some departments in the executive branch. He raised revenue for the state through a severance tax on coal and enacted reforms to the educational system. He purged most of the Republicans from statewide office, including helping Walter Dee Huddleston win the Senate seat vacated by the retirement of Republican stalwart John Sherman Cooper. In 1974, Ford himself ousted the other incumbent senator, Republican Marlow Cook. Following the rapid rise of Ford and many of his political allies, he and his lieutenant governor, Julian Carroll, were investigated on charges of political corruption, but a grand jury refused to indict them. As a senator, Ford was a staunch defender of Kentucky's tobacco industry. He also formed the Senate National Guard Caucus with Missouri senator Kit Bond. Chosen as Democratic party whip in 1991, Ford considered running for floor leader in 1994 before throwing his support to Connecticut's Christopher Dodd. He retired from the Senate in 1999 and returned to Owensboro, where he taught politics to youth at the Owensboro Museum of Science and History.

Ronald Clark O'Bryan (October 19, 1944 – March 31, 1984), nicknamed The Candy Man and The Man Who Killed Halloween, was an American man convicted of killing his eight-year-old son Timothy (April 5, 1966 – October 31, 1974) on Halloween 1974 with a potassium cyanide-laced Pixy Stix that was ostensibly collected during a trick or treat outing. O'Bryan poisoned his son in order to claim life insurance money to ease his own financial troubles, as he was $100,000 in debt. O'Bryan also distributed poisoned candy to his daughter and three other children in an attempt to cover up his crime; however, neither his daughter nor the other children ate the poisoned candy. He was convicted of capital murder in June 1975 and sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection in March 1984.

Clymer Lewis Wright Jr. (July 24, 1932 – January 24, 2011) was a Texas conservative political activist and journalist. He brought term limits to Houston municipal government and encouraged Ronald Reagan to run for president.

Herbert Hal Reynolds (March 20, 1930 – May 25, 2007) was an American academic administrator who worked as the president of Baylor University from 1981 to 1995.

Herman Paul Pressler III (born June 4, 1930), is an American judge who was a justice of the Texas 14th Circuit Court of Appeals in his native Houston, Texas. Pressler was a key figure in the conservative resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention, which he initiated in 1978. He has been accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least six men, some of whom were underage at the time of the alleged activity.

Jack Thomas Chick (April 13, 1924 – October 23, 2016) was an American cartoonist and publisher, best known for his fundamentalist Christian "Chick tracts". He expressed his perspective on a variety of issues through sequential-art morality plays.
Many of his tracts accused Roman Catholics, Freemasons, Muslims, and many other groups of murder and conspiracies. His comics have been described by Robert Ito, in Los Angeles magazine, as "equal parts hate literature and fire-and-brimstone sermonizing".Chick's views have been spread mostly through the tracts and, more recently, online. His company, Chick Publications, says it has sold over 750 million tracts, comic books, videos, books, and posters designed to promote Evangelical Protestantism from a Christian fundamentalist perspective. They have been translated into more than 100 languages.Chick was an Independent Baptist who followed a dispensationalist view of the End Times. He was a believer in the King James Only movement, which posits that every English translation of the Bible more recent than 1611 promotes heresy or immorality.

Clinton Williams Murchison Jr. (September 12, 1923 – March 30, 1987) was a businessman and founder of the Dallas Cowboys football team. A son of Clint Murchison Sr., who made his first fortune in oil exploration and became notorious for exploiting the sale of "hot oil", Clint and his surviving brother inherited their father's wealth and business interests to which Clint Jr. added ventures of his own. These included the establishment of the NFL's Dallas Cowboys franchise, real estate development, construction, home building, restaurants and financing the offshore pirate radio station called Radio Nord.

Lynn Merrick (born Marilyn Llewelling; November 19, 1919 – March 25, 2007) was an American actress who appeared in over 40 films during the 1940s, mainly for Columbia and Republic Studios.

James Edwin Lyon, Jr., known as Jimmy Lyon (August 25, 1927 – May 1, 1993), was a banker, real estate developer, and Republican politician from Houston, Texas. Member of the Council for National Policy (not the Center for National Policy).

Thomas Edward "Edd" Mayfield (April 12, 1926 – July 7, 1958) was a Bluegrass singer and guitarist, mostly known for being a member of Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys band during the 1950s. Edd Mayfield and two of his brothers, Smokey Mayfield (1924–2008) of Spearman and Herbert Mayfield (1920–2008) of Dimmitt, were part of the Mayfield Brothers Country band in West Texas.