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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 Gulf Coast 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:
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Improved the state highway system
Raised teachers' salaries
Building program at the University of Texas
Improved soil conservation
Sympathy for the labor movement
Manford Act (1943) labor organizers must register, no union political contributions
Showed concern for discrimination against Mexican Americans; no sympathy for African
Americans
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
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1944 presidential election: the anti-Roosevelt coalition got new members during the war.
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Wartime controls broadened federal powers
Smith v. Allwright (1944) outlawed the all-white primary
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
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3.
Lack of capital
Competition of white establishment for black customers
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."
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Wanted to attract industrialization with cheap labor
Suspicions of rural populations
Unions linked to radical politics
Politicians bashed unions to gain votes
Union support for New Deal and Fair Deal
Problems confronted by labor organizers
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2.
3.
Right-to-work laws
Service and high tech industries difficult to organize
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 fivefold to nearly $50,000."
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Problems for small farmers
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Capital investment was impossible for most family farmers.
The return on investment was higher in other businesses.
Mechanical cotton picker increased the size of farms.
Irrigation opened new land in West Texas.
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:
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Many Tejanos moved to cities because of low agricultural pay and urban job opportunities.
Bracero program: contract labor agreement between the USA and Mexico
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
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Established a state board of education
Required nine-month school terms
Set minimum training standards for teachers
Mandated improved facilities
Established a formula for minimum teachers' salaries
Results
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4.
Teachers went back to school meet requirements
Teachers' salaries went up
Black teachers received equal pay
Began special equalization funds to aid poorer school districts
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Along with better roads, spurred school consolidation. Independent school districts outnumbered
common schools.
Criticisms
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3.
Consumer taxes were inefficient to support reform
Teachers' salaries still too low
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)
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Poll tax drives
Delgado v. Bastrop Independent School District (1948)
Hernandez v. The State of Texas (1954)
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
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3.
Re-drew school boundaries
Instituted very gradual integration
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"
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2.
Television and radio evangelists (Life Line, Billy James Hargis)
The 1960 presidential election (John F. Kenned)
Leisure activities
San Antonio the leading tourist destination.
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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