Chapter 121
Demographics
Between 1940 and 1960 increase in urban dwellers from 45-75%
By 1960, women outnumbered men
Between 1940 and 1960, blacks proportion of the population declined from 14 to 12.5%. Hispanics grew from 12 to 15%.
Second World War
"Texas furnished proportionally a larger percentage of men and women for military service than did any other state."
Thirty-six Texans won the Medal of Honor.
The two most decorated American servicemen were Audie Murphy and Samuel Dealey.
Other Texans included Dwight D. Eisenhower, Chester A. Nimitz, and Oveta Culp Hobby, who commanded the Women's Army Corps.
Black troops stationed in Texas were expected to conform to demands of Jim Crow segregation. Training camps had separate and inferior facilities for African Americans. Doris Miller won a Navy Cross for his service at Pearl Harbor.
The wartime economy benefited all Texans. Fifteen army posts. Forty air bases. Over thirty prisoner of war camps.
New aircraft factories; shipyards, steel mills, tin smelter plant, oil fields, paper and lumber products. Need for new refineries and synthetic rubber turned the GulfCoast new Houston into the largest petrochemical industry in the world.
The number of wage earners tripled. 500,000 moved from rural areas to cities. New work for blacks and women. Higher standing of living for Texas families.
The number of black industrial workers doubled; most unskilled jobs; faced discrimination; segregated assembly lines. Race riot Beaumont 1943
Patriotism: scrap drives, war bonds, victory gardens, civil defense; rationing
Farms: 1) hastened conversion of many farms to machinery, 2) growth in farm size, 3) farm tenancy declined, 4) cotton leading crop, but diversification, 5) shift of cotton production from East and North Texas to the High Plains and South Texas, while East Texans raised more cattle in 1945 than did West Texas ranchers.
Coke Stevenson 1941-47: conservative financial policies and limiting the power of the national government.
Stevenson's administration:
1.Improved the state highway system
2.Raised teachers' salaries
3.Building program at the University of Texas
4.Improved soil conservation
5.Sympathy for the labor movement
6.Manford Act (1943) labor organizers must register, no union political contributions
7.Showed concern for discrimination against Mexican Americans; no sympathy for African Americans
8.Turned the state's deficit into a surplus
1940 presidential election: No-third term Democrats, John Nance Garner, Henry Wallace (too liberal, concerns for midwest corn farmers), Jeffersonian Democrats, Wendell Wilkie
1944 presidential election: the anti-Roosevelt coalition got new members during the war.
1.Wartime controls broadened federal powers
2.Smith v. Allwright (1944) outlawed the all-white primary
3.Roosevelt issued an executive order that forbade discrimination in defense industries.
Texas Regulars: state's rights and white supremacy; W. Lee O'Daniel, Harry Truman
Texas Industrialization
". . . the decade of the forties nevertheless marked the state's transition to an industrial economy."
Texas replaced California as the leading oil producer
Oil became the state's leading export. No natural deep-water ports; thirteen built over the years; Port of Houston ranked second nationally in total tonnage handled in 1950; for every ten jobs in the oil industry, another thirty-seven were created in other economic areas
Government employment tripled; third nationally in income derived from the federal government; 1961 manned-spacecraft center; 1958 invention of silicon microchip by Texas Instruments' Jack Kilby
Food processing third largest industry
Houston became the center of oil trade
Most suburbanites were white. Blacks tended to move to cities. By 1960, 75% of blacks, like whites, lived in urban areas.
Problems confronted by African American businessmen
1.Lack of capital
2.Competition of white establishment for black customers
3.Small businesses could not compete with larger stores
Women working outside the home: 23% 1940; 33% 1960
Labor Unions
". . . public sentiment in Texas worked against union growth."
1.Wanted to attract industrialization with cheap labor
2.Suspicions of rural populations
3.Unions linked to radical politics
4.Politicians bashed unions to gain votes
5.Union support for New Deal and Fair Deal
Problems confronted by labor organizers
1.Right-to-work laws
2.Service and high tech industries difficult to organize
3.Competition from Mexican immigrants
Texas Farms
By 1960 only 10 percent of the population were farming.
"The number of farms had dropped to 227,000 by 1960, but over the same period, the size of the average farm had risen from 367 to 630 acres, and the total value of land and buildings per farm had increased five-fold to nearly $50,000."
Problems for small farmers
1.Capital investment was impossible for most family farmers.
2.The return on investment was higher in other businesses.
3.Mechanical cotton picker increased the size of farms.
4.Irrigation opened new land in West Texas.
5.Farmers could more easily apply pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers to large contiguous areas could be more easily.
1960 census; no croppers; 20% of farmers were tenants. Agriculture income second only to California
Agribusiness: ". . . commercial agriculture and the supplying, manufacturing, processing, and merchandising industries that serviced it. . . ."
Rural political power
"This meant that Texas urbanization differed from that of the Northeastern United States, where big cities were politically dominant. The widely scattered urban areas of Texas tended to promote their own regional interests. Therefore, Texas cities quarreled over legislative priorities, and their lack of unity allowed representatives of rural areas to dominate the legislature, which ignored urban problems until the late 1960s."
Why the number of Mexicans working in Texas increased:
1.Many Tejanos moved to cities because of low agricultural pay and urban job opportunities.
2.Bracero program: contract labor agreement between the USAand Mexico
3.Rise of corporate, vertically integrated farms that preferred cheap migratory labor from Mexico
Operation Wetback: 1954, round-up of foreign-born Mexicanos
Texas Family
End of the Depression and return of veterans led to a rise in both marriages and births in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Nationally, the divorce rate increased and percentage of divorced Texans exceeded the national average. Many divorced, widowed, or separated women lived in poverty. Black women exceeded white women in being divorced, widowed, or separated. The collapse of African American families began in the 1930s and by the 1960s 24 % of African American families had female heads of household. The average family size decreased. The sharpest decline was in rural areas where children were no longer economically beneficial.
Texas schools
Business progressives argued ". . . would invite new industry into the state by making it more attractive to prospective migrants and by providing a better-educated workforce." These ideas contrasted with the traditional demand that taxes should be low and teachers should receive minimum pay.
Claud Gilmer, A. M. Aikin, Gilmer-Aikin Laws of 1949
1.Established a state board of education
2.Required nine-month school terms
3.Set minimum training standards for teachers
4.Mandated improved facilities
5.Established a formula for minimum teachers' salaries
Results
1.Teachers went back to school meet requirements
2.Teachers' salaries went up
3.Black teachers received equal pay
4.Began special equalization funds to aid poorer school districts
5.Along with better roads, spurred school consolidation. Independent school districts outnumbered common schools.
Criticisms
1.Consumer taxes were inefficient to support reform
2.Teachers' salaries still too low
3.Those districts that made the least effort to raise taxes received the greatest amount of state aid.
"Possibly, the best evaluation of the Gilmer-Aikin acts would be that they at least moved the state educational system into the early twentieth century."
"These measures began the era of direct aid to students." G. I. Bill of Rights, Ralph Yarborough, 1958 National Defense Education Act
Increase in college enrollment: veterans, Baby Boom, integration, women
LULAC, American G. I. Forum (1948)
1.Poll tax drives
2.Delgado v. BastropIndependentSchool District (1948)
3.Hernandez v. The State of Texas (1954)
4.Self-help drives, Little School of 400 (1959)
Integration
Schools were considered "agents for social advancement." Thurgood Marshall, Heman Marion Sweatt, Sweatt v. Painter (1950), Del Mar Junior College, Texas Western University, University of Texas, Southern Methodist University, Texarkana Junior College, Lamar State College
Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (1954)
1955 Whites opposed integration 4-1
Blacks supported integration 2-1
Resistance
1.Re-drew school boundaries
2.Instituted very gradual integration
3.Delayed through court appeals
1957: 120 districts some form of integration
Texas Regulars, university faculties, Homer Price Rainey, Beauford Jester, Daily Texan, Willie Morris, Joseph McCarthy, McCarthyism, W. Lee O'Daniel, Martin Dies
Religion
In terms of church membership, "Texans undoubtedly matched national averages and probably exceeded them." Roman Catholicism was the largest single denomination. The Southern Baptists was the largest protestant denomination.
Influences on the rise of the "religious right"
1.Television and radio evangelists (Life Line, Billy James Hargis)
2.The 1960 presidential election (John F. Kenned)
Leisure activities
San Antonio the leading tourist destination.
Southwest Conference football: Sammy Baugh, Davey O'Brien, , John Kimbrough, Doak Walker, John David Crow, Darrel Royal
Abner Haynes, Sid Blanks, Jerry LeVias
Dallas Texans, Lamar Hunt, Bud Adams, American Football League, Clint Murchison, Tom Landry
Houston Colts, Astros, Astrodome, Frank Robinson, Ernie Banks
Texas Western, 1956, NCAA championship in 1966
Ben Hogan, Jimmy Demaret, Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias
George Foreman
Mary Martin
Ornette Coleman, Teddy Wilson
Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightin' Hopkins, T-Bone Walker
Bob Wills, western swing, Tex Ritter, western music, Ernest Tubb, Ray Price, George Jones
J. Frank Dobie, Walter Prescott Webb, Roy Bedicheck, Katherine Ann Porter, William Humphrey, Willie Morris, Larry McMurtry