HemisFair, held in San Antonio, Texas in 1968, was the first and only world’s fair to be held in the American Southwest. Jerome K. Harris (a local San Antonio business owner) originally proposed the idea of a “HemisFair” that would focus on Latin America. The idea was endorsed by Congressman Henry B. González, also a San Antonio native, who is most frequently credited with the proposal for the fair. [1] The theme of the fair became “The Confluence of Civilization in the Americas”, as part of the Pan-American trend that had dominated world’s fairs since 1901 with the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. The world's fairs have been an avenue to display and share culture since Great Britain’s Crystal Palace exhibit in 1851, however, early fairs often displayed indigenous peoples or other nationalities as oddities and exotics as a way to establish superiority and cultural dominance of the Europeans and Americans who were hosting the fairs. The Pan-American-themed fairs had sought to move away from this discriminatory display and celebrate the many cultures that made up the Americas, most however were unsuccessful in portraying these cultures accurately. The potential for San Antonio to adequately represent and include the Latin Americans in their fair was incredibly high considering Texas’s heritage with Mexico and with San Antonio having the largest Mexican American population in the United States. [2] With this previous trend of inadequately representing other cultures in the world’s fairs, was the 1968 HemisFair successful in displaying the “Confluence of Civilization in the Americas” in regard to the Latin American communities? Yes. HemisFair was successful in accurately representing Latin Americans, fair organizers went to great lengths to extend diplomacy and involve Latin American countries in a world fair for the first time. Yet, despite the upward mobility middle-class Mexican Americans of San Antonio experienced from the fair, lower-class Mexican Americans found little to no benefits from HemisFair. Lower-class Mexican Americans specifically faced exclusion and discrimination throughout the organizing, building, and execution of the fair. [3]

The design of HemisFair was more inclusive than previous Pan-American fairs and organizers put substantial thought into representing the confluence, or merging, of civilizations that created the Americas. This effort is best exemplified in the logo created for the fair, a swirling circle set to the left side of an outer circle. It is symbolic of the creation of the world and men traveling West where they merge and create the “Confluence of Civilizations in the Americas”, the theme for the fair. Additionally, HemisFair had four sub-themes: The Legacy, The Harvest, The Promise, and The Folklore. “The Legacy” became the main theme, which centered around becoming citizens of the Western Hemisphere through immigration. HemisFair organizers felt that this was a common ground between people of the Americas “all of whom sprang from the same common heritage-immigration.” [4] This symbolism and focus on immigration was exclusionary to the indigenous people of the Americas but was unique in the sense that it did not assign Otherness to any ethnicity. Whereas previous fairs intended to exhibit their superiority and excellence to the people attending, HemisFair intended to celebrate the cultures, specifically Latin cultures, that established the Americas.

In addition to the inclusion of Latin Americans in the design of the fair, many middle-class Mexican Americans took on leadership positions within HemisFair’s organization committee, San Antonio Fair, Inc. (SAF). Henry B. González, the first Mexican American from Texas to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, became the face of HemisFair. [5] He proposed the idea for HemisFair and oversaw its approval by Congress. González was able to use his place on the SAF committee to incorporate more Mexican Americans into leadership positions. Two of those men, Ed Castillo and Carlos Freymann acted as public relations, interpreters, and liaisons between the US and Latin American countries to promote HemisFair. Castillo and Freymann were given the position of ambassadors to Latin American countries, their ability to speak Spanish “reaffirmed the notion of Pan-American unity and helped mediate cross-cultural interactions.” [6] Henry A. Guerra, Jr., a San Antonio radio and television personality, introduced designs for a Plaza de Libertad (Liberty Plaza) that would showcase significant figures that contributed to America’s liberation. Although his designs did not make it into the final designs for the fair, Guerra contributed significantly by serving as “international department liaison” where he facilitated participation with Latinos during the fair preparations. [7] The contribution of these men was instrumental in the success of HemisFair’s goal of confluence between the United States and Latin American countries.

Not only was HemisFair unique in its goal of equal representation of Latin America, but many Latin countries collaborated in the organization and design of the fair. The Latin American Committee was formed to ensure San Antonio’s Latino community was involved and consulted. Further, the Pan-American Public Relations Association “included two representatives from each of the twelve major ‘Latin’ civic organizations”, who were consulted on ways to accurately incorporate Mexican culture and heritage into the fair. Henry Guerra also suggested collaboration with the Mexican Consulate which later led to the creation of a Mexican American Friendship Committee. Several Mexican architects and artists as well as the Brazilian landscapist, Roberto Burle Marx, were consulted and included in the designs for HemisFair. [8] Mexican artist and architect Juan O’Gorman was commissioned to create a piece for the fair. He created “Confluence of Civilizations in the Americas” and it welcomed guests at the entrance. [9] The Foreign Participation Area was created to provide exhibition space for other countries and “numerous” Latin American countries participated. [10] Mexico acted as a major contributor and sponsor of HemisFair. They boasted one of the largest exhibits. A pamphlet from the Mexican Pavillion boats of the rich history of Mexico as well as technological advancements the country had achieved in modernity, something Latin American countries had been denied in previous fairs that only incorporated their wild and indigenous past. [11] Coincidently, Mexico hosted the Olympics later that year, which both countries used to their advantage. Mexican and American officials wanted to encourage travel between the two events. The Pan-American Highway was advertised to promote this transportation. U.S. immigration officials were instructed to practice “goodwill” towards Mexican and Latin Americans traveling to HemisFair. However, this was not always observed when it came to working-class Mexicans because of the increased illegal migration that resulted from the Bracero Program that lasted from 1942-1964. [12]

With the intentional inclusion of Latin Americans, such as The American GI Forum and League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), in the design and organization of the fair by the SAF, many Latin and specifically Mexican American organizations saw the fair as an opportunity to “achieve full integration and… first-class citizenship.” [13] Texas officials hoped that the theme and the fair itself would “ease racial tensions between civil rights groups”, this garnered the help of Mexican American and African Americans activists with the expectation of increased jobs and economic opportunities for their communities. [14] Mexican American organizations and officials sought the use of pluralism, or incorporation with other Latin American communities, to increase their social and political identities. They began identifying themselves as “Latin American” rather than “Mexican American”, as in LULAC. [15] Although LULAC and the NAACP originally supported the fair, they realized that it did not provide the job opportunities and equality that were promised. Further, younger Latin organizations, such as Chicano activists and the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), protested the fair from the beginning because of the racial inequality it highlighted, believing that “mega-event” like HemisFair only furthered class divisions. [16]

Although HemisFair provided leadership opportunities for middle-class Mexican Americans and Latin American countries, lower-class Mexican Americans experienced discrimination and exclusion by the SAF. The construction of the fairgrounds for HemisFair created ethnic tensions as it “emerged out of a process of ethnic erasure and urban cleansing.” [17] The city was still heavily segregated, as housing segregation had not ended in Texas until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. [18] The site chosen for the fairgrounds destroyed a 92-acre multiethnic community and displaced over 2,300 residents. [19] In addition to losing their homes, lower-class Mexican Americans were largely excluded from participation in the fair because of the cost of the fair. A study done by Richard Harris demonstrates that despite the progress displayed towards the larger Latin American community in regards to HemisFair, the following generations of Mexican Americans experienced little upward mobility in socioeconomic status. Harris analyzed statistics for jobs held by different ethnicities in San Antonio and compared their annual incomes from different years throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. In the conclusion of his study, he stated, “At present, it must be concluded that San Antonio Mexican Americans have not attained equal chances for occupational success even in the city's relatively favorable environment… Judging from the evidence of this analysis, no progress has been made toward the greater occupational integration.” [21] As a result, we must conclude that lower-class Mexican Americans remained lower-class and therefore received little to no benefit for the inclusivity of Latin Americans during HemisFair.

Despite the unfortunate exclusion of lower-class Mexican Americans in HemisFair ‘68, the fair was largely successful in achieving a “Confluence of Civilizations in the Americas.” Several Latin Americans not only participated in the fair but held leadership positions. They were accurately represented by the people of San Antonio and the multiple Latin Americans that were commissioned to assist in the design of the fair. Regarding the exclusion of lower-class Mexican Americans, it is difficult to argue that the exclusion resulted from racial discrimination since the SAF went to such great lengths to justly consult many facets of the Latin American community. Further research into this argument might include data about the participation of lower-class citizens of other ethnicities to determine whether the experiences of lower-class Mexican Americans was the result of racial discrimination or simply class discrimination.

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Born to Emmanuel and Helen Sterne in Cologne, Germany, on April 15, 1801, Adolphus Sterne spent his childhood in a community torn by religious and political discord. While working in a passport office at age sixteen, he learned that he would soon be conscripted into the military. Rather than submit to such service, he forged a passport for himself and left Germany for the United States. He landed originally in the port of New Orleans in 1817. Raising funds for a few years, he worked as a peddler and a store clerk until 1824. He then won appointment from the Mexican government to sell goods to soldiers stationed in Nacogdoches, a new settlement in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. By 1826, Sterne had established a profitable general merchandise store in the area.

Although Sterne swore an oath of allegiance to Mexico and joined the Catholic Church, he agreed in 1827 to assist Hadan Edwards and other Anglo immigrants involved with the Fredonia Rebellion against Mexico. Sterne contributed to the effort by using his contacts to smuggle ammunition and coffee from New Orleans to the rebels in Nacogdoches. When the rebellion was put down, however, Sterne was arrested and tried for treason. He was initially imprisoned at the “Old Stone Fort” in Nacogdoches before being moved to Mexico City. Later, he won his release by promising that he would never again take up arms against the Mexican government.

After his release, on June 2, 1828, Sterne married Eva Rosine Ruf, whom he had met on frequent travels to Louisiana. The two and their seven children worked and established his store again in Nacogdoches, becoming one of the wealthiest families of Texas. Their home became legendary as a refuge for such figures as Sam Houston and Davy Crockett.

In 1832, Sterne once again broke his oath to Mexico by assisting in the Battle of Nacogdoches, smuggling supplies, providing information, and even helping to bury dead enemy soldiers. A strong supporter of Texas Independence and a personal friend of General Sam Houston, Sterne travelled as an agent of the provisional government of Texas to New Orleans. Once out of Mexican territory, he was able to personally raise and finance, although he never took up arms himself, two militia companies. Known as the “New Orleans Greys,” Sterne’s men were instrumental in the battles of the Texas Revolution. In fact, he continued to help supply and assist the revolution until the victory in San Jacinto.

After Texas secured its independence, Sterne became an active leader in the Lone Star republic. He served in the Constitutional Congress of 1833 and later commanded a company at the Battle of the Neches in 1839, helping to expel the Cherokee Indian tribe from East Texas. In 1840, he became the Nacogdoches postmaster, while also serving as a deputy clerk, an Associate Justice, as a member of the Board of Health, and as Overseer of Streets for the county. He became an elected representative of Nacogdoches to the House of Representatives for the Second Legislature in 1847 and followed in the Third Legislature. In 1851, he was elected to serve in the Texas Senate. At the age of 56, Sterne passed away, most likely due to pneumonia, while on a business trip to New Orleans in March 1857. Adolphus Sterne is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Nacogdoches, Texas.

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The African American Library at the Gregory School is a library and archival site in Houston’s fourth ward dedicated to preserving the origins of Freedmen’s Town and the fourth ward in downtown Houston. Opened as a school for Houston’s African American youth, the Gregory school was built by the members of Freedmen’s Town and served the community for several years. The school was burned down and rebuilt, and now serves as a museum and archive to preserve the items of some of Houston’s most prominent African American residents of Houston’s past and present.

After President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in the Union-held territory were set free. It was not until June 1865 that slaves in Texas would be freed after Union Army General Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas to announce that all slaves in the state were free. The former slaves in the Houston area left local plantations and about 1000 newly emancipated slaves settled in downtown Houston’s fourth ward along the Buffalo Bayou. This area was chosen because the land was swampy and cheap. Although the residents were free, they were not allowed to use facilities and services for whites. Led by Jack Yates, they built a community that provided its own services and utilities. The residents built their own homes and churches. The town’s members included doctors, lawyers, teachers, and bricklayers. Some of the prominent leaders of the town included Jack Yates, his son Rutherford B. H. Yates, Ned. P. Pullum were ministers. In 1875, Antioch Baptist Church was built by the Freedmen’s Town residents and Jack Yates served as its pastor. The church served the community for many years and is the only original building still in existence from the Fourth Ward.

In addition to the services the community provided, the Gregory School was built to educate the children of Freedmen’s Town. The Texas Legislature authorized the creation of public schools for Freedmen's Town by 1870. The Gregory Institute, named after Edgar M. Gregory, opened in 1872. Gregory was an officer in the Union army in the U.S. Civil War and the assistant commissioner of the Texas area's Freedmen's Bureau. For many years, the institute served the African American community and ensured the success of Freedmen’s Town and became a beacon for the community by providing a place where African Americans could learn basic literacy skills. These skills allowed many of them to join the workforce and support themselves or to open their own business. Sadly, in 1893 a destructive storm left the school with severe damages, forcing the Gregory students to relocate to Colored High School on West Dallas Street, now known as Booker T. Washington High School, while builders repaired the affected areas. Unfortunately, it would take 10 years before the school was operational again. In 1903 the Gregory School opened as an elementary school, earnestly welcoming back a new generation of students at its present-day location between Cleveland and Victor Streets. Structural issues with the second building led to the construction of a multi-building complex that opened in 1926 with 20,000 square feet of space. The Gregory Elementary School was formally decommissioned in 1984 with its teachers and students transferred to Lincoln Elementary. The Gregory building was left as a forgotten relic for many years, facing encroachment by the cities developers who began eyeing its desirable downtown location.

Facing an erased history, historians, preservationists, descendants of former residents, and activists began discussing a way to preserve this historic building. The restoration project received $11 million dollars from the City of Houston and the Houston Public Library to preserve the building, and it was decided that it would be re-purposed as a research library. Renovation of the Gregory School began in 2008. Developers then began asking African American residents of the area for any memorabilia to use in its exhibits and to fill the archives. It took about one and a half years for renovations. The library formally opened in November 2009. Renovations included the removal of the school’s windows so they could be restored and reinstalled, and the brick cleaned and preserved in an effort to match its original 1926 appearance. The library features galleries, an oral history recording room, archive rooms, and an original classroom. Many of the materials in the library's possession are digitized so that they may be viewed online.

The presence of the African American Library at the Gregory schools pays homage to the people who lived in Freedmen’s town and who created the community. In 1985, Freedmen’s Town was placed on The National Register of Historic Places. Antioch Baptist Church was added to the registry in 1976. In 2019, the African American Library at the Gregory School along with other significant historic African American sites were placed on the UNESCO Slave Route Project, an international registry of locations associated with the transatlantic slave trade.

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A landmark on the "Old Colony Road" between Huntsville and Ryan's Ferry on the Trinity River. Named for Thomas Akin (1828-78), a native of Mississippi, who came to Texas in 1853 with his wife, Ruth Leakey Akin, whom he met and married in Bienville Parish, Louisiana., along the way. Akin, a horse trader, farmer, and singing teacher, came to this area in 1854, settled in the rural community of McGuire, and built a cabin at the base of the hill. While Akin served in the Civil War as a courier for Confederate Gen. John B. Hood, Mrs. Akin moved the family a few miles to the east. The couple had 7 children.

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Sitting on the south side of the Angelina National Forest, the Aldridge Sawmill stands as a reminder of a once prosperous period in the history of East Texas. In operation from 1905 to 1923, the Aldridge mill at one time churned out 125,000 board feet of lumber a day. With this type of output, it proved to be one of the largest lumber producers in the state of Texas.

Founded by Hal Aldridge in 1903, the Aldridge sawmill was complete and fully operational by 1905. Two years later, the BFB&C Railroad had tracks reaching the mill site and production was in full swing. However, in 1911, the mill's original wooden buildings were destroyed in a fire and replaced with concrete buildings, the remnants of which still stand today.

After its infrastructure was rebuilt, the Aldridge mill’s production increased, going from 75,000 to 125,000 board feet per day. At it’s peak the Aldridge site employed 500 workers, which made it the largest mill operation in East Texas. With the employees came their families and the population of Aldridge swelled to between 1,000 and 1,500 people by 1913. The mill families lived in 200 company houses that made up the town. The men were mostly paid in company scrip in the form of tokens which could be used at the company store to purchase food and other household goods. The surrounding town also grew and eventually had a hotel, post office, blacksmith shop, train depot, two schools, shops and saloons.

A second fire hit Aldridge in 1914 resulting in Hal Aldridge giving the business to his brother F.W. and moving to El Paso. However, due to the overcutting of the forest around the town, the Aldridge mill was on the decline. After another fire in 1919, F.W. Aldridge sold what was left of the once prosperous mill town to Kirby Lumber Company. Kirby kept the mill operating for another three years and the town of Aldridge lingered on for another four years after that. When the railroad spur was closed in 1927, however, there was no longer any reason for people to stay in Aldridge, and the town was abandoned, eventually being included in the Angelina National Forest in 1936.

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Two enterprising brothers, Augustus and John Allen, came to Texas from New York in 1832 to make their fortunes through land speculation. After failing to offer enough money for Clopper’s point (present day Morgan’s Point), and hoping to avoid any ownership disputes like the one over nearby Harrisburg, the Allen brothers finally purchased 6,642 acres of land at the junction of Buffalo and White Oak Bayous. They promptly named their fledging town Houston City (very quickly shortened to Houston) after General Sam Houston, the hero of the Battle of San Jacinto. This fantastic promotional move and the Allens' marketing skills soon led to Houston’s population boom, which rose rapidly from approximately 200 residents in 1832 to an astounding 2,073 by 1836.

The Allen brothers had a grand vision for their new town and were confident Houston would become the commercial center of the Gulf Coast. Five days after acquiring the townsite, the Allen brothers ran an advertisement in the Columbia Telegraph and Texas Register stating, “The town of Houston is located at a point on the river which must ever command the trade of the largest and richest portion of Texas, and when the rich lands of the country shall be settled, a trade will flow to it, making it, beyond all doubt, the great interior commercial emporium of Texas.” The forward-thinking Allens also predicted Houston's growing importance to the wider Gulf Coast region, stating in other advertisements, “As the country shall improve rail roads will become in use, and will be extended from this point to the Brazos, and up the same, also from this up to the head waters of San Jacinto . . . and in a few years the whole trade of the upper Brazos will make its way into Galveston Bay through the channel.” These advertisements led directly to the spike in Houston's population, even prompting several additional speculators to travel to the region with hopes of creating the next commercial boom town.

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Almost forgotten by history, Tuscaloosa once served as a port on the Trinity River in Walker County. For centuries, the Trinity River served as a mode of transporting goods and people across East Texas. In fact, at 423 miles, the Trinity is the longest river located entirely within Texas. It rises on the North Central Plains and flows for most of its course through the Coastal Plains. The total drainage basin area is 17,969 square miles. The upper Trinity basin consists of narrow stream channels. Its soil supports plants and trees such as elms, sycamores, willows, oaks, junipers, mesquites, and grasses. The middle and lower basins consist of flat terrain and shallow stream channels, with soils that support water-tolerant hardwoods, conifers, and grasses. [1]

Spanish explorer and future governor of Coahuila, Alonso de León, first named the river “Trinity” in 1690. The Caddo Indians originally identified it as Arikikosa in central Texas and Dakota near the coast. French explorer René Robert Cavalier, in 1687, called the river “the River of Canoes” due to the large number of Native Americans and their canoes he saw navigating it. However, the name "Trinity" was adopted by both Spanish and American settlers and has persisted since 1690. [2]

By the early 1800s, settlements began to develop along the Trinity River. By the time of the Texas Revolution, the area was well populated. The immense increase in settlements was due to boats on the Trinity River transporting goods such as cotton, sugar, cowhides, and deer skins. Before 1874, approximately 50 boats ran on the Trinity River, traveling as far north as Trinidad and northern Navarro County. However, the Trinity River's popularity declined as railroads appeared in the region. Nevertheless, the Trinity River remained recognized as a key part of Texas's economic history throughout the 1800s. [3]

Tuscaloosa, Texas, located 12 miles north of Huntsville, on a bend in the Trinity River, had a natural landing for Trinity River steamboats and was a popular port in Walker County during the 1860s. It was regarded as the most important connection between Walker County and the rest of the state. The town was founded by refugees fleeing a yellow fever epidemic in the nearby community of Cincinnati. Tuscaloosa was first briefly referred to as Osceola, named after John C. Calhoun’s property in South Carolina. The name Wyser’s Bluff came about in 1853 when Gustavus A. Wyser acquired one-half of the property on the big bend of the Trinity River. However, as many residents came from Alabama, the town eventually became known as Tuscaloosa. The community on the riverbend even had a post office from 1858 to 1869. However, the popular port eventually dwindled with the construction of the railroad, as had the rest of the Trinity River ports. [4]

Tuscaloosa is now a ghost town with a population of 0. Many residents moved to towns near the railroads. The Trinity Mining and Development Company attempted to organize a lignite mining operation, but it abandoned the project due to the mineral’s poor quality. Although Tuscaloosa is no longer a town, it remains an important part of Walker County history, offering insights into the county and its connections to the Trinity River and the rest of Texas. [5]

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Generations before the founding of Huntsville and the establishment of Walker County, the land along the Bedias Creek was home to Native communities whose histories shaped the region in lasting ways. Among these Native communities were the Bidai, a small but significant tribe that depended on the creek and the resources in the nearby surrounding forests for hunting, trade, and daily life. They lived along the Brazos and Trinity Rivers, and the main settlements were in present-day Grimes County, extending all the way up to Walker County. [1]

In earlier times, the Bidai maintained contact with the Spanish settlers, influencing their trade in bison and deer, despite laws prohibiting trade with Native Americans. Growing trade and expansion led the Spaniards to form alliances with other Native tribes, such as the Comanche, Wichita, and Hasinai, who aided their preparations to expand into Lipan Apache Territory. The Bidai were instrumental, as they had been supplying the Lipan tribes with French-made firearms and ammunition, leading the Lipan to break into smaller bands as the governor learned that the Bidai were also communicating with the English, who were experiencing rising tensions with the Spaniards. [1]

In 1776, the Bidai population declined by approximately 50 percent, and by 1820, only a few small groups survived, moving into the Akokisas, Koasatis, and other tribes, woven into the Caddo and into the Brazos Indian Reservation, which is present-day Young County. Many of the last tribal members followed the Indian Territory of Oklahoma, where, in 1830, Jean Berlandier studied them and noted that the tribe had become very dependent on hunting, as their lives depended on it, and that they lived simply, as their means were poor, leading to a significant loss in their identity and people. [2]

In another context, the Bidai were known as the oldest Natives, and both perceived themselves as different from the English and Spanish, as the English Americans found the Spanish to be right. As reported by early European explorers, the Bidai claimed to be aborigines of their territory, beggars for subsistence, and savages who wanted more from the French and yet were “friendly, peaceful, and poor,” wanting to learn the Christian way with the English. The Bidai influenced policymaking and alliances, as they seemed to follow what brought them benefits, and their trade shaped how the Spanish responded to the French. Eastern tribes such as the Apache and Hasinai, along with the Bidai, challenged the Spanish efforts to build an anti-Apache line of alliances, causing the formation of Spanish-Indian diplomacy to protect their goals, and changed how they came to negotiations with Native groups. [3]

Before settlers encountered the Bidai, they lived along the Bedias Creek and Trinity River, using their resources for food, hunting, transportation, and trade with nearby tribes and practicing seasonal movement that combined gathering and small-scale agriculture. The effects of the expansion and settlement of the French, Spanish, and Anglo included increased trade in resources such as weapons and goods, as well as pressure on Native alliances as Spain and France competed for influence. European diseases also drastically reduced the Native population; hunting grounds shrank with settlers claiming land, and many were forced to relocate, merge with other tribes, and assimilate. [4]

Ultimately, the Bidai story is one of transformation, as Walker County's growth depended on removing the people who knew the land best. The same creeks and forests that once sustained Native tribes came to support farms, crops, and ranches, integrated with roads for transportation. The Bidai were displaced from the waterways that had sustained them and other tribes for generations. Recognizing this history and the Bidai presence challenged the idea of an “empty” frontier and revealed that East Texas settlement was a landscape shaped by Native knowledge and survival.

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As player, manager, team owner, and league president, Andrew "Rube" Foster organized and improved black baseball in America during the 1910s and 1920s. Foster was born in 1879 in the cotton town of Calvert, Texas though his career would quickly take him to the urban centers of the North. At seventeen his abilities first led him to the Waco Yellow Jackets, a semi-professional black team. Talk of Foster's skills quickly spread and carried him to Hot Springs, Arkansas where he earned the nickname "Rube" after defeating Rube Waddell of the Philadelphia Athletics, a white major league team. Between 1902 and 1907 Foster moved in and out of professional black baseball shuffling between teams before finally landing with the Leland Giants in Chicago. During this time his reputation and prowess on the mound grew to mythic levels fueled by his near perfect winning percentage.

Foster's contributions to baseball far exceeded a winning record. His article in "Sol White's Official Base Ball Guide" shared his strategy for pitch selection and his forward-looking ideas about conditioning and stretching, advice that impacted both black and white pitchers. Foster became manager of the Leland Giants and began altering the business model of Negro League baseball, negotiating higher profits for his team and scheduling games to maximize revenue. Foster eventually left Frank Leland in 1909 with legal rights to the name, the Leland Giants, and most of the team's star players to create his own franchise. From his position as owner of the American Giants, Foster doggedly pushed for control of all Negro League baseball to ensure organization and wide-spread financial success. Other owners, some of whom were white, resisted Foster's efforts to organize the different teams for fear of additional costs and restrictions on play that might impact profits.

In February 1920 Foster would achieve his goal of a unified black baseball league. Meeting in Kansas City, owners of professional black baseball teams met to create the Negro National Baseball League and named Foster as the league's president. As president, Foster set the schedule of the league and even moved players around to promote competitiveness, understanding that teams with miserable records hurt attendance and everyone's revenue. Foster significantly impacted black baseball in Texas by encouraging his league teams to conduct spring training and exhibition games in the state, which stimulated local excitement for the game. The matches also placed local talent on display for Negro League organizations, a significant economic opportunity for small town African Americans.

Between 1920 and 1926 Foster led the Negro National League, creating a tradition that would last through the 1960s. Foster's leadership ended in 1926 with his involuntary commitment to the Kankakee Asylum after a mental breakdown. He would die in the institution four years later.

Rube Foster's vision of Negro League baseball never centered on segregation, but on integration. "We have to be ready when the day comes," he reportedly told a friend. Foster's purpose in playing and leading the Negro League was to ensure that black players were competitive on the day that major league finally reopened its doors to African Americans. Foster would not live to see the integration of baseball, but his creation and cultivation of organized professional black baseball would ensure a home for greats like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson and a training ground for future major league greats like Ernie Banks and Willie Mays.

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Huntsville’s Andrew Female College was founded in 1852 and chartered by the Texas Conference of Methodist Churches on February 7, 1853. Its creation mirrored that of Austin College, a men’s institution in Huntsville that had admitted its first class in the fall of 1850. The women’s college was named after the controversial Methodist bishop, James Osgood Andrew, whose ownership of African American slaves had caused a split in the Methodist Episcopal Church and helped to birth a new Southern branch of that denomination. Despite Andrew’s divisive reputation with abolitionists in the North, he was popular in Texas, and the residents of Huntsville were proud to name a school after him.

Andrew Female College held its first five-month session in May 1853 at Huntsville’s old “Brick Academy” under the leadership of its first president, James M. Follansbee. At a time when there were few educational opportunities for women, enrollment was high and the college soon outgrew the cramped quarters at its initial site. Local residents supported the school, however, and contributed funds for a larger, two-story building that was completed in 1855. Eighty students, primarily from Walker County and surrounding areas, were enrolled at the college in 1856-1857.

The college offered young women what was considered an appropriate education for the mid-nineteenth century. Courses focused on classical literature, languages, art, music, and domestic life. The school also hosted annual concerts and exhibitions, sponsored by the Music and Art departments. These events garnered widespread attention in Walker County, and brought guests from miles around to see the work that the young women of Texas were producing.

Led by a bevy of prominent Huntsvillians -- including Charles Keenan, Daniel Baker, Henderson Yoakum, and Thomas Ball -- the board of trustees at Andrew Female College ensured that the school operated without interruption throughout the Civil War. Despite this success, Huntsville’s disastrous 1867 yellow fever epidemic claimed the lives of the college president, several members of the faculty, and a number of the students. Although the school limped on for another twelve years after the epidemic, it never fully recovered. The opening of Sam Houston Normal Institute in Huntsville in 1879 finally caused Andrew Female College to close in 1880. The school’s property was conveyed to the city of Huntsville and reopened later that year as the community's first public school. The structure eventually was relocated and became a public school for African American children.

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Anna Hardwicke Pennybacker (1861-1938) was an accomplished suffragette, educator, author, and advocate for progressive causes. Born in Petersburg, Virginia, she attended Sam Houston Normal Institute and graduated in 1880 as part of its first class. She married classmate Percy V. Pennybacker in 1884, but their marriage proved to be a short one. He died in 1899, leaving her free to follow her passion for advocacy. Prior to his death, they worked together as educators and she wrote and published A New History of Texas in 1888. This textbook, known as “the Pennybacker text” was the standard for teaching Texas history for the next forty years.

Pennybacker started her career in advocacy in the Texas club movement, founding one of the first Texas women’s clubs, the Tyler Woman’s Club in 1894. From 1901 to 1903 she led the Texas Federation of Women, with which she raised $3,500 for women’s scholarships at the University of Texas and successfully lobbied for the creation of a women’s dormitory there. She is also responsible for the creation of many libraries in Texas, a legacy of a travelling library and art collection that she funded. Pennybacker held many positions with the General Federation of Women's Clubs, culminating in two terms as president, from 1911-1912 and 1912-1916.

From 1919 to 1920, Pennybacker served as an associate member of the Democratic National Committee where she began a close and influential relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt. She worked as an unofficial analyst for the Roosevelt presidential campaigns, helping to gauge political sentiments in the Southwest. Pennybacker and Mrs. Roosevelt worked together on a number of issues including the advancement of women, world peace, and the furthering of the progressive reforms of the Democratic party. As a frequent guest of the White House, Pennybacker convinced both the first lady and her husband, President Franklin Roosevelt, to speak on behalf of her causes. In fact, President Roosevelt helped to fundraise at the Chautauqua Institutes’ Women’s Club in 1936, and Eleanor Roosevelt became the first and only First Lady to speak at Sam Houston State University in 1937.

Anna Hardwicke Pennybacker remained active throughout her entire life working for the causes that she felt passionate about. She was a frequent lecturer around the country and became the first woman in history to give the commencement address to the city of Houston’s combined high schools. She had such a prolific and diverse record of contributions, from Food Administration of Texas in World War I to acting as a special correspondent to the League of Nations, that when she died in her home in Austin on February 4, 1938, she was respected throughout the country for her work in social causes.

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American-style chattel slavery in Texas arrived with the first Empresario settlers in 1824 and legally continued until June 19, 1865. During this time frame, over 180,000 individuals were enslaved on different types of plantations, in private homes, and in trade shops across the regions. Henry Probasco represented one such individual. [1]

Born into slavery on a plantation in Walker County, Probasco worked the land with 50 other enslaved people, including his family, until he was 17 years old. In his younger years, he was not yet able to work in the fields, so his duties included collecting eggs and gathering kindling for fires. Since he was required to collect eggs every day, Probasco quickly learned how and where to find them. In addition to searching the hen coop, he learned that chickens would lay on the ground under the nests, under the house, and even outside in the grass. Nevertheless, each day he would find a quantity of eggs and return them to his mother and his master. [2]

In 1865, U.S. Major General Gordon Granger declared enslaved African Americans to be free. At this time, Probasco would be 7 years old. While some of his family left the plantation, most stayed. After the first year of being free, his father left the plantation and moved to Waco, Texas, and opened a shoe shop. However, Henry stayed with the rest of his family on the plantation for another decade. [3]

At 17 years old, Probasco moved to Ellis County, Texas, near Files County and found work on a cattle ranch owned by Judge Weakly. There, Henry learned how to round up and brand cattle, as well as how to ride a horse. He expressed many times that learning to ride was one of his favorite things to do on the ranch, and even had monetary bets placed on him to win riding contests. He later left the ranch to work in meatpacking plants. After many years in this industry, Henry stated that the company let him go due to his age. [4]

Throughout his life, Probasco married three times. The first marriage lasted over 20 years, the second for only one season, and the last for only 2 years. With his first wife, Probasco had eleven children. However, seven tragically died before Henry, and he lost contact with the remaining four. Probasco did not have children with his second or third wife. After his last divorce, Henry stayed single, stating that he had had enough of marriage. He then lived out his life alone and content. [5]

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Born in Buckingham County, Virginia.; came to Texas, 1847. Settled in Huntsville; entered law practice with Henderson Yoakum. Married Amanda Smith, 1849. Served in the 8th State Legislature, 1859-61; the Confederate army, 1862; and the Congress of Confederacy, 1863-65. U.S. Congress refused to seat him, 1866, because of his Confederate service. A friend of Sam Houston, he was named as co-executor of Houston's will. Branch died in yellow fever epidemic of 1867.

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Nestled in the midst of skyscrapers and the hustle and bustle of the busy metropolitan of Houston, Texas, lies an inconspicuous, hidden historical gem, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church. The beauty of this iconic church captures the observer’s eye, but so should its impressive history. The declaration of the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing those enslaved in the Confederacy, was made by President Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862, and declared to go into effect on January 1, 1863. However, it would not be read this far south in Texas until 1865, when it was read in Galveston on June 19, known today as ‘Juneteenth’. Once the enslaved citizens of Houston were freed, a select few began this first African American church in Houston. It was originally located at 313 Robin Street as part of the Fourth Ward, also known as Freedmen’s Town, a community of freed men created after the close of the Civil War. Today, its modern address is 500 Clay Street and it is still used for worship in the city of Houston today.

Prior to the emancipation of slaves, only two churches in Houston were known to have allowed enslaved men and women to attend their services: the Methodist church and the Baptist church. Once freed, two white missionaries, Reverend W. C. Crane and Reverend J. B. Link, from the local First Baptist Church and German Baptist Church would assist a handful of men and women to form their own church, in the back pews.

The use and attendance of these two churches would only last approximately seven months as renovations of the host churches, First Baptist Church and German Baptist Church, would cause complications for the recently freed black attendees to continue at the back. This would cause seven African American members to initiate the beginnings of what would later be called Antioch Baptist Church. They gathered under a self-assembled “Brush Arbor” at the modern-day location of Rusk and Bagby Street on the edge of the Buffalo Bayou, which is about six blocks north of the modern-day location of the church. Within a years’ time, this makeshift church would build a simple one-story rectangular building to hold their worship in, known as “Baptist Hill”. The church would move to its current location in 1873.

Itinerant preacher and black missionary, Reverend I. S. Campbell of the Northern Baptist Missionary Association, was dispatched to these newly freed congregants in 1867 to provide spiritual guidance and training. Along the way he encountered John Henry (Jack) Yates, a former African American slave who was capable in reading the Bible, leading prayer and hymns. After being ordained by Campbell and Elder J. J. Ryanhart, this godsend would become the first pastor of the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church. Attendance would dramatically increase under Yates’ leadership, causing the need for a new, larger location for the congregants to meet. He would oversee the construction of the current church, but would leave in 1891 over a dispute on borrowing money to complete the remodeling and enlargement of the church.

While the status of being the first African American Church in the Houston area is monumental enough, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church has also been significant in assisting in the success of its community members of Freedmen’s Town. It not only aided in the spiritual needs of its community, but also in the economic, educational, and social needs. Antioch was active in the promotion of newly freed slaves’ education. In 1885, together with Northern Baptist missionaries Miss Peck and Miss Dysart, Antioch began the first private school for freedmen. Known as the Houston Baptist Academy, and later as the Houston College for Negros, these would be the predecessors to the current Texas Southern University in Houston today. At the academy students would learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. They would also have the opportunity to learn specific trades. This allowed the students to start their own businesses within the community. It would continue to support the education of African Americans in the Houston community throughout the 1920s. Pastor Yates ensured that through the church, recently freed slaves could also learn how to buy homes, pay taxes, vote, and raise gardens.

In 1882, along with Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, members of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church purchased Emancipation Park, Houston’s first black park. It was utilized as a place for blacks to voice their civic concerns and host social gatherings, as well as a park for their children to play safely. The church began the annual Juneteenth celebration in this park, which is still held to this day. This park is still located in Houston’s Third Ward.

As time progressed, the Antioch building was expanded and renovations were made. New programs were created, such as youth outreach programs and Vacation Bible Schools. While the historical significance of the church continued to grow, its true desire to reach souls for Jesus was never lost. In 1931, under Reverend Thomas J. Goodall, Jr. many modern updates were made and the land adjacent to the church was purchased. Known today as Antioch Park, the iconic sign “Jesus Saves” was placed and still exists today.

As the city of Houston grew to the metropolis it is today, all of Freedmen’s Town, north of interstate 45 slowly gave way to newer and bigger structures. Antioch Missionary Baptist Church now stands as the only building representative of the Fourth Ward north of the interstate, as of 2012. Its iconic Gothic features and “Jesus Saves” sign stands as a testament to the achievements of the formerly enslaved men and women who began a church, not just to service the spiritual needs of blacks in Houston, but also their social, economic, and educational growth. In 1976 the church became the tenth structure to be part of the National Register of Historic Places in Houston. In 1991, the church received international notice as an ethnic icon when Queen Elizabeth II of England visited. Then in 2019, the cultural agency UNESCO of the United Nations listed Antioch Baptist Church as part of their Slave Route Project in the South. Also included in this list, was Emancipation Park.

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In 1729 Antonio Gil Y’Barbo was born in Los Adaes, Louisiana, to Mathieu Antonio and Juana (Hernández) Ibarvo. The Spanish Government had sent his parents from Andalusia, Spain, to the then province of Texas, in 1725, where eventually the spelling of Ibarvo changed to Y’Barbo. [1]

Antonio Gil Y’Barbo was a Spanish lieutenant governor. In 1779 he settled at an old abandoned Spanish mission, where he built a town called Nacogdoches, which today is known as the oldest town in Texas. The new town was at the intersection of El Camino Real De Los Tejas and La Calle de Norte. When accused of smuggling in 1791, Antonio Gil Y’Barbo left Nacogdoches, forbidden to return. [2]

Before his exile in 1791, Antonio Gil Y’Barbo had built a stone house used as a trading post. The original stone house was demolished in 1902 and then reconstructed in 1907. In 1936, as a part of the Texas Centennial Celebration, the state built a replica of the original building on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College. Today, the Old Stone Fort is a museum on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University. [2]

Friends of Historic Nacogdoches, Inc. sponsored the bronze statue sculpted by Ernest Roberge Jr. (1936-2013), and he completed it in 2000. Visitors can view the statue in downtown Nacogdoches in front of the Charles Bright Visitor Center (Nacogdoches Convention and Visitors Bureau). [3]

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In the mid-1800s, the small frontier town of Huntsville, Texas, became the starting point for the creation of Austin College. Chartered in 1849 by the Brazos Presbytery of the Old School Presbyterian Church, Austin College represented part of a larger movement to build up educational institutions in the early Republic of Texas. To bring the college to their town, Huntsville’s citizens offered $10,000 and 5 acres of land, demonstrating strong local support for higher education. [1]

Governor George Wood signed the college’s charter in 1849. Leading institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton inspired early promoters of the college. In time, Austin College would be the oldest higher education institution in Texas still operating under its original charter, even though it later moved to a new location. The college was named after Stephen F. Austin, the “Father of Texas.” [2]

From the beginning, Austin College held a close connection to important figures in Texas history. Two former presidents of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston and Anson Jones, both served on the original board of trustees, giving the new college both scholarly stature and institutional power. Houston’s involvement went beyond just lending his name. He took part in the dedication of the original building, later called Austin Hall, in 1851, and his support helped raise the college’s profile in a young state still shaping its institutions. [3]

Dr. Samuel McKinney, an Irish-born Presbyterian minister with educational experience, became the first president of Austin College. He led the college from its opening in 1850 until 1853 and returned for a second term two years later during the Civil War. McKinney’s first term ended after a personal disagreement with Sam Houston, which caused him to resign and return to Mississippi. Although the details of their conflict are rarely detailed in general histories, the loss of the founding president at such an early stage highlighted the difficulties of running a school on the frontier, where strong personalities, politics, and the school’s mission often clashed. [4]

Despite changes in leadership and the challenges of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Austin College did well in its early years and played a major role in shaping Huntsville’s identity and growth. The college offered more than just liberal arts. In 1855, it became home to the first law school in Texas, which showed the school’s ambition and influence in the region. [5]

The original Austin College campus, centered on what is now called “Austin Hall,” became one of Huntsville’s most distinctive landmarks. This building, constructed in the Greek Classical style between 1851 and 1852, stood as a symbol of intellectual aspiration on the Texas frontier. However, by the 1870s, a combination of economic strain from yellow fever epidemics, low postwar enrollment, and denominational clashes pushed the college to relocate to Sherman, Texas, in 1876. [5]

But Austin College’s story in Huntsville did not end when it moved. In 1879, Texas established the Sam Houston Normal Institute, the state’s first tax-supported teacher-training school, on the old Austin College campus. Named after the same Texas hero who had supported Austin College, Sam Houston Normal Institute, later evolved into Sam Houston State University, continued Huntsville’s tradition of education. The school opened with 110 students and four teachers, marking a new chapter in the city’s growth as a polished educational center. [6]

As it changed from a Presbyterian liberal arts college to a state-supported teacher-training school, Austin College helped shape Huntsville’s culture, economy, and population. By building connections with Texas leaders and creating both physical and institutional foundations, Austin College played a key part in establishing higher education in Huntsville’s early years. This legacy can still be seen in the city’s schools and colleges today.

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Austin Hall, the original building of Austin College, erected in 1851 and used continuously for educational purposes by Austin College to 1876, by a private academy from 1876 to 1879, and by Sam Houston State University from 1879.

The Presbyterian Church established Austin College in Huntsville in 1849 and erected this structure in 1851-52. Austin College moved to Sherman in 1876, and in 1879 this building was deeded to the state for use by the newly-established Sam Houston Normal Institute (now Sam Houston State University).  The Greek revival-era building features a three-bay front facade, two-story portico, and Doric columns. A third floor, added in 1882, was removed in 1926-27.

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Bath Cemetery, near Union Hill Church, was established in the 1870s. The earliest recorded burila is that of William Arnold in 1877. The burial ground has served the Bath Community, locally called Possum Walk, since that time, and area residents and descendants of settlers continue to maintain the property. Bath Cemetery is shaded by trees planted more than 100 years ago, and the community's history can be found in the Cemetery's markers, inscribed with the names of teachers, veterans, ministers, postmasters and other early Bath residents.

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Ima Hogg, a collector of American antiques, and architect John Staub collaborated on the mansion's design, combining elements from southern plantations, the Spanish creole architecture of Louisiana, and 18th century Georgian architecture. Construction on the mansion, intended to showcase Hogg's collection and serve as a residence for Hogg and her brothers, William and Michael, began in 1927. The decoration, layout, and color scheme of the Bayou Bend's 27 rooms challenged Hogg's and Staub's combined creative efforts, with no detail too small for consideration. Hogg's private rooms include woodwork and a mantel from 18th century houses in Ipswich and Salem, Massachusetts. The floors are wide, hand-hewn planks re-purposed from old houses along the eastern seaboard. The house was completed in 1928, but by 1930, Hogg was the sole resident due to William's untimely death and Michael's marriage.

The 14 acres surrounding Bayou Bend also fell under its mistress's critical eye. Hogg planted several formal gardens around the house, each with a different theme. The cultivated landscapes contain grass terraces, flowering plants, hedges, trees, statues, and fountains, creating a picturesque country ambiance despite the proximity to downtown Houston. Hogg took great pleasure in planning and caring for her gardens; however, in 1961 the River Oaks Garden Club assumed responsibility for their maintenance.

Hogg donated the house and surrounding property to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts in 1957, despite lawsuits from several residents of the River Oaks neighborhood who objected to opening the property to the public. A footbridge was built over Buffalo Bayou to address neighbors' concerns about increased traffic. Hogg moved out of the house in 1965 and the collection opened in 1966. When asked about Bayou Bend, Hogg said, "While I shall always love Bayou Bend and everything there, in one sense I have always considered I was only holding my collection in trust." Hogg continued adding to the Bayou Bend collection until her death in 1975.

The home and gardens are open year-round except on Mondays and holidays. Inside the home, visitors will find over 4,700 pieces dating from 1620 through 1870. The grounds are also home to the Lora Jean Kilroy Visitor and Education Center, which houses an orientation center, an exhibit about the Hogg family, meeting rooms, and the Kitty King Powell Library and Study Center. Comprised of over 9,000 volumes, the non-circulating Powell library collection is open to the public and includes the Hogg Family Collection of books along with works about American art, periodical volumes, and auction catalogs.

The Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens welcomes thousands of guests annually and provides several guided and unguided tours of the property and grounds. In 1973, the Texas Historical Commission placed a marker on the site and, in 1979, Bayou Bend was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1999, the City of Houston designated the property an official Houston landmark.

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Bernadine Oliphint was born in Huntsville, Texas, in 1933 to Tom and Catherine Bolden Oliphint. She was one of eleven children and was raised in the Smith Hill community. Both of her parents were educated and taught school prior to the birth of their children. Her mother retired to care for their family, and her father acted as a school principal for several black community schools.

Oliphint’s family belonged to the First Baptist Church in Huntsville, and both her father and mother valued music. After graduating high school at Samuel Walker Houston High School, she attended Texas Southern University with plans to become a teacher. After earning her bachelors, she taught music at Grambling University in northern Indiana. Needing to further her education in order to teach performance, and drawn to the stage herself, she continued her schooling, earning her masters from Indiana University.

As a young woman, Oliphint traveled throughout Europe and the United States performing as an operatic soprano. Throughout her career, she spoke of her love of Mozart and Strauss, who she felt wrote especially well for soprano voices. While in German and Italy, she worked in some of the major opera houses of the mid-century, and was even featured on a German postage stamp. She marveled at Germany’s appreciation for black opera singers at a time when, in America, the civil rights movement had taken hold. "They figured that, if you made it out of America as an African-American, you must be really something," Oliphant said.

While working throughout Europe, she received many grants to continue her studies there, including the Martha Baird Rockefeller Grant and the Fulbright Fellowship for study in Germany and the G. Verdi Plaque from the Verdi Foundation. She also testified before the U.S. Senate sub-committee hearings on the reauthorization of the Arts and Humanities Act, representing the State of Indiana’s opera houses and singers.

Oliphint never married, and instead devoted herself to performing and teaching. Having taught at Grambling, Fisk, and Indiana University, she retired from Texas Southern University in 2005. While at TSU, she directed the opera workshop and taught many students who went on to work as professional singers, including students who went on to study at Yale and Juilliard. Throughout her career, she also taught and served to preserve historic black music, especially spirituals.

Bernadine Oliphint is now professor emeritus of voice and opera at TSU. When asked how she would spend her retirement, she responded, "I'll do what I darn well please, when I darn well please to do it."

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A tributary of the Trinity River, Bethea Creek (pronounced Buh-thay) is named for John and Elizabeth Bethea, pioneer settlers of the area. John settled in present-day Walker County in the 1830s and was an early gristmill operator and postmaster in the nearby riverport settlement of Newport, now a ghost town. Soon after Riverside was established along a rail line in the early 1870s, the Betheas moved to the town and operated a gristmill. This stream, which bears their name, remains as a symbol of the contributions made by the area's earliest settlers.

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Established in 1881 by the American Baptist Home Mission Society, Bishop College was named in honor of Nathan Bishop, a white attorney and Society board member who supported the creation of a Baptist college for African Americans in Texas. The Society acquired the former Beverly LaFayette Holcombe estate in Marshall, Texas, for the Bishop campus in 1880 and later expanded it by purchasing adjacent land from white and black property owners.

In its early years, Bishop operated a grammar and high school and offered industrial training, like carpentry and wood-working, but its primary mission was to educate African Americans to be teachers and preachers. By 1898, most of the college level students at Bishop were enrolled in the school’s normal program, which prepared students to teach and allowed them to practice their training in the college’s grade school.

In 1901, the Texas Department of Education awarded Bishop its top rating, certifying the quality of its academic offerings. Then, in 1930, when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) began accrediting institutions for African Americans, it assigned Bishop College a B rating. This certification confirmed what many black residents of Marshall and East Texas already knew: that Bishop College offered a rigorous educational program that prepared black students to excel in the South despite the limitations of Jim Crow segregation.

In 1929, on the eve of Bishop’s SACS accreditation report, the school hired its first African American president, Joseph J. Rhoads. A Marshall native and Bishop graduate, Rhoads instituted a period of significant growth and transformation during his two decades of leadership at the campus. For starters, he discontinued the college’s secondary school and emphasized collegiate programming. In 1931, he also introduced an annual institute for ministers, which soon attracted hundreds of clergy to Bishop’s continuing education initiative. Other advancements included partnerships with New Deal agencies, such as the Works Progress Administration, which helped to establish a nursery school at Bishop in 1937, allowing students to gain experience teaching kindergarten-aged children.

Rhoads also saw Bishop through the challenges associated with World War II, like decreased enrollment and funding. After the war ended, Bishop thrived, opening a junior college in Dallas in 1946 and earning an A rating from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 1948. At the same time, Rhoads became an active opponent of segregation. He served as head of the Texas Council of Negro Organizations, spoke out in support of Sweatt v. Painter, and encouraged desegregation of colleges campuses across the state.

Following Rhoads' death in 1951, the next president of Bishop College continued to improve its physical plant, even building a football stadium for night games, but some members of the school's board supported moving the college to Dallas. The United Negro College Fund, which offered financial support to the college and its students, wanted to avoid duplication of services and questioned whether Marshall, also home to Wiley College, should have two black colleges when Dallas had none. In 1957, Bishop College announced it would close its Marshall campus and relocate to Dallas. The last Bishop class in Marshall graduated on May 26, 1961, and the college reopened in Dallas that summer.

The Marshall campus was sold in August 1961 and its buildings were demolished. Despite its initial success in Dallas, Bishop later lost its accreditation and facing financial problems, it closed in 1988.

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From 1862-1877, the United States underwent the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Reconstruction. During this period, both Black and white Texans experienced significant changes in politics and society. The end of slavery and the freedom of African Americans represented two of the greatest challenges [1].

The federal government set up the Freedmen's Bureau in 1865 to "bring about social change for African Americans." A significant portion of its responsibilities involved broadening educational opportunities, viewed to ensure "long-term protection for freedmen." But many white Texas lawmakers were against these efforts because racism was still a formidable problem in Texas politics. After the Civil War, African Americans in Texas fought back against oppression by working to make schools more accessible and expand educational opportunities. Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) also began appearing in Texas around 1878, despite some resistance from white officials. [2]

The African Methodist Episcopal Church built on these early efforts by starting a city-wide campaign to teach African Americans in Huntsville, Texas. Church leaders bought 54 acres from the S.R. Smith family to build one of the state's first HBCUs. Episcopal Church leaders Richard Cain, Thomas Ward, and Charles Porter oversaw the project. Joshua Houston, whom Texas Governor Sam Houston had once enslaved, also played a major role in founding the school. On September 13, 1883, the Bishop Ward Normal and Collegiate Institute opened on Smith Hill in Huntsville. It was the fifth HBCU in Texas. Professor Charles W. Luckie was responsible for the school. The curriculum focused on the classical liberal arts, with a particular emphasis on "teaching Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and Grammar." It also trained students to become teachers, thereby improving education for African Americans across the state. The school offered classes in home arts and manual labor to meet the needs of students with different interests. [3]

The Bishop Ward Normal and Collegiate Institute closed after seven years due to insufficient funding. This closure paralleled the financial problems that many Black schools faced during the Reconstruction Era. [4]

The school's closure brought attention to the ongoing funding problems in African American education, but its inability to secure ongoing funding limited its lifespan. The school was open for only a short time, but it had a significant impact on higher education for African Americans in Walker County, Texas, and across the country. In 1907, Samuel Walker Houston, Joshua Houston's son, continued his father's work by opening the Sam Houston Industrial and Training School, a primary school. The Texas Historical Commission erected a historical marker in 2018 to highlight the institute's importance. The Bishop Ward Normal and Collegiate Institute proved crucial in providing local African Americans with more opportunities to obtain an education. It also helped inspire more HBCUs across the country. [5]

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Chopping firewood might not seem like a fun closing activity for most school students today, but for John Mosely, it was neither a punishment nor a chore. It was one of the highlights of his school day.

Mosely, a student at the all-black Jackson School in Smith County, Texas in the 1950s, remembered having a sense of pride when he got to go to a nearby thicket with other boys his age to break tree limbs and gather kindling to feed the large wood stove which heated his classroom.

As he recalled decades later, it was a responsibility he was proud to take on. “It was a privilege,” Mosley said. “You had to have all your work done, and you couldn't be in any trouble. After school, you would get the wood so it would be ready the next day. You'd come early, while it was still dark outside and start the fire.”

Mosley was not alone when he willingly sacrificed his time and effort for his school. Jackson School was one of 72 schools that opened in the early twentieth century to serve East Texas county’s black populace. Like many black schools at the time, the state only partially funded the school, so the community had to work together to see to the students’ needs.

Unable to afford football uniforms, school officials decided to start a basketball team as it only required the purchase of a ball. Men from the community then carved out a dirt court in the school’s lawn and mounted two metal hoops to serve as goals. On game days, a local farmer would quit work early so he could pick up the players on his wood-sided truck and drive them to the games.

That sense of pride and willingness to sacrifice for your school was not unique to Jackson School. Historian James Smallwood noted that enthusiasm for public education by Texas’ black residents began immediately after the Civil War. In the Antebellum years, most slave owners did not approve of slaves having an education. In June 1865, when Union forces occupied Texas at the conclusion of the war, about 95 percent of the state’s black population were illiterate. Understanding the power of education and the role it could play in “economic advancement, social equality, and political power,” blacks enthusiastically embraced the opportunities for providing their children with an education.

Henry Bullock, the first black professor hired by the University of Texas, stated that the black education movement in the state was not “imposed” on blacks by “overzealous Northerners” but seized by them as they sought to help themselves.

Smallwood noted that the “self-help” philosophy was ubiquitous among black residents of Texas in the early twentieth century. Many wanted to “do all possible” to improve the lives of their children through education.

Even before the Freedman’s Bureau established its presence in the state in September 1865, blacks began pooling together their monies to purchase writing slates and primers. Soon after they began organizing their own schools.

This was especially true in East Texas, which was home to about 90 percent of Texas’ black populace. Those who had previously received some education as free blacks or as slaves served as the first teachers at these early schools.

By the time the Freedman’s Bureau opened its first office in Tyler in 1867, blacks had already established their first school in Smith County. The first black public school in Smith County opened in 1887.

By the start of the 20th century, there were seventy-two public and private schools in Smith County.

In addition to Jackson, another all-black school in the area was Emmett J. Scott High School. The original school, which served first through tenth grades, opened in 1888 and had just four classrooms. When Scott High School opened in 1949 it had 26 classrooms and facilities that many of the rural all-black schools lacked such as an auditorium, band hall, gymnasium, administrative suites.

Edward Moore, a student at Scott Junior High, remembered how proud parents and students were in having the opportunity to gain an education.

“All these teachers at Emmett Scott Junior High School, they were concerned about us getting an education,” Moore said. “The dropout rate was pretty low. I think it says a lot for our community and our teachers back in the day.”

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the segregation of public schools to be unconstitutional in 1954, segregation was banned.

Jackson School was eventually absorbed into the all-white Chapel Hill school district that same year. The other all-black schools closed through the 1960s and the 1970s. Scott High School closed in 1970 after a federal court ordered all Tyler public schools to integrate.

Still, for many who attended one of Smith County's all-black schools, having attained education at one of the schools remained a source of pride.

Sarah Ryder, who was in the inaugural ninth-grade class at Jackson School in 1926, remembered that in those critical days before the Civil Rights movement, having a school in your community – even with all the challenges – provided its students and the community with a sense of dignity.

"It was important to have the school in your district because your community has an identity,” she recalled. “A school was more than just a place to learn. It meant you had teachers living in your community. Teachers were important people. They were your leaders.”

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It was a cool morning on October 17, 1955. The 7:00am temperature reported at Dallas Love Field airport registered at a crispy 46.9° Fahrenheit, with NW winds at 3.31mph and no cloud cover.[1] The events occurring later that day signaled the day when thousands of black families would converge upon the State Fair of Texas fairgrounds in Dallas for their annual Negro Achievement Day, a day designated for blacks to attend the segregated fairgrounds. No cloud cover on that date was also the perfect backdrop for all to see the Youth Council of the Dallas Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and their unprecedented plans to challenge those segregated practices.

Led by their Youth Director Juanita Craft, at 7:00am, the young black students prepared to demonstrate and picket against the segregated practices of the beloved fair. (Burrow, 23). Craft was no stranger to the fight for racial equality in Dallas and was known throughout the State of Texas. She experienced racial discrimination before, but perhaps her greatest achievement was leading the youth council that day, in a match which pitted them against the white State Fair officials and some local blacks. (Hazel, 3). Although the segregated policies of Fair Park did not immediately end because of the Youth Council’s protest and demonstration; the blurred lines of desegregation became clearer as the threshold of segregation was challenged. The slow process began to open the State Fair of Texas for all races to enjoy the fun during its annual run.

World’s fairs and state fairs were designed to attract attention to a particular state or town by effective boosterism meant to draw crowds. Some fairs ended with debts, but overall, they were intended to show the modernity and progress of the region where the fairs were held. The current site of the State Fair of Texas in Dallas began in 1886. (Dingus, 2003). There were several fairs within the state during the mid-to-latter part of the nineteenth-century and well into the twentieth-century. The idea and foundation for the first fair in Texas was not located in Houston, TX, nor in Dallas, TX. The concept and later formation of a Texas State Fair debuted in Corpus Christi, TX.

As early as 1851, Colonel Henry L. McKinney, the founder of Corpus Christi, began advertising for a state fair. His notions of a fair began on May 1, 1852, in what he later called the “Lone Star Fair.” Complete with races and a circus, the fair also included an appearance by Don Camerena, the celebrated bullfighter from Mexico. In attendance at the Lone Star Fair that year were Mexicans, Comanche and Lipan Indians, and formerly enslaved blacks. (Warner-Ward, 167-168). Five years after the end of slavery, the city of Houston held a state fair in 1870, but by the end of the decade it no longer existed. (Simek, para 4). Reconstruction was over and many of the freedoms gained by blacks were overshadowed by violence and lynchings. Racial tensions increased near the end of the nineteenth-century after the 1896 U. S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of “separate but equal” laws in Plessy vs. Ferguson.[2] The State Fair of Texas was initially called the Dallas State Fair and Exposition. It began as a private corporation by some Dallas businessmen on January 30, 1886. Factions of the group split to form their own entity called the Texas State Fair and Exposition. By October of that year, the two groups held separate fair events on October 25th and October 26th, respectively. Attendance was estimated at over 100,000 people. The two opposing sides eventually merged in 1887 and officially became the Texas State Fair and Dallas Exposition.[3] Blacks would not attend the fair until their designated Colored People’s Day in 1889.

Designated days were set aside for blacks and other groups. Colored People’s Day and Negro Achievement Day were designed to highlight the gains and achievements of blacks, but the seething reality is that many of the world’s fairs and state fairs, particularly in the United States, were segregated. After the decision to have a segregated Colored People’s Day in 1889, prominent blacks made efforts to secure Booker T. Washington, whose address at the 1895 Atlanta Cotton States Exposition of 1895, sparked much of the racial drama and tension seen in Atlanta. (Perdue, 3). The 1900 Colored People’s Day at the Texas State Fair and Dallas Exposition included Washington, a former slave, founder of the Tuskegee Institute, and a leading black figure of the era.

In 1904, the City of Dallas became the executor of the Texas State Fair and Dallas Exposition and forged a path by which the fair could be more profitable. The arrival of rail lines in 1873 spurred population and economic growth in Dallas and sparked a new period of local promotion and boosterism by Dallas’ business elite. The new period of local boosterism was highlighted by urban development. (Bennett, 32). Promotion of Dallas was the enthusiastic goal of the city’s white businessmen and citizens, but blacks were not involved. By 1910, Colored People’s Day was non-existent. (Burrow, 21). Other groups were also given designated days at the fair.

In 1923, there was a Ku Klux Klan Day, which attracted more than 100,000 Klan members and boosted their overall numbers. Blacks would not participate in fair activities again until 1936. (Simek, para. 7). The occasion for black participation in 1936 was to highlight their accomplishments for Negro Achievement Day, which coincided with the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition held in Dallas that year. Despite the continuity of segregation in Texas, Blacks were up for the challenge and sought an opportunity to highlight their achievements.

Blacks began to assert themselves in the fight against disenfranchisement and discrimination. Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, a black elite and one of the founders of the NAACP, prepared a ten-page pamphlet for the Centennial. Entitled, What the Negro Has Done for the United States and Texas, DuBois wrote, “… all that is necessary is justice and freedom and understanding between men.”[4] DuBois’s proposed understanding between men was apparent in the planning efforts of the 1936 Centennial. Blacks were allowed to take control of the exhibits to be housed in the Hall of Negro Life building. Jesse O. Thomas, a protégé of Booker T. Washington, served as General Manager of the building. He wrote, “Notwithstanding that there are approximately 900,000 Negroes in the State Of Texas, there are approximately 48,000 in the City of Dallas, neither the State of Texas nor the City of Dallas appropriated a single dime to cover Negro participation in the Texas Centennial.”[5] Blacks had grown accustomed to their needs and wants being ignored. Black participation in Negro Achievement Day at the 1936 Texas Centennial and Exposition opened on June 19, 1936.

Despite attempts by local white newspaper accounts to discredit the attendance and monetary gains of the day, the 1936 Negro Achievement Day and the Hall of Negro Life drew 403,227 visitors. (Thomas, 36). Of those visitors to the Hall of Negro Life building, many of them were white. Lisa Munro, in Investigating World’s Fairs, notes the importance of fairgoers’ perception of their experiences, an area of which scholars know little about. (Munro, 89). Jesse O. Thomas argued that visitation to the building by white citizens was approximately sixty percent. (Thomas, 37). After the Centennial and Exposition ended, the Hall of Negro building was demolished. (Simek, para. 13).

There were no fairs held in Dallas between 1942 – 1945 due to the country’s participation in World War II. The Negro Chamber of Commerce in Dallas worked with State Fair officials and semi-officially ended segregation in 1953, but blacks could not eat at the restaurants and some rides were restricted. (Burrow, 23). By 1957, State Fair officials removed race designations, such as Colored People’s Day, Negro Day, and Negro Achievement Days. On October 12, 1957, the day was labeled as Achievement Day, albeit still segregated. Achievement Day was no longer in use by 1961. Segregation policies and practices at the State Fair of Texas officially ended in Dallas on October 7, 1967. (Burrow, 26).

Desegregation of the fairgrounds allowed people from all races and diverse levels of society to enjoy the food and rides together. The blurred lines of segregation were still blurry, but the threshold had been crossed, at least, as it pertained to the desegregation of the State Fair of Texas in Dallas.    

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Located at 515 Rusk Street in downtown Houston, the Bob Casey Federal Courthouse was named after U.S. Representative Robert R. Casey. The United States District Court for Southern Texas resides in the Casey building, and it serves a broad region of southeastern Texas, including the cities of Corpus Christi, Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo, Victoria, Houston, and Galveston.

In recent times, the Casey building has served as home to six beautiful murals that were re-discovered in the basement of the Houston Parcel Post Building in 1976. The story of the paintings, their disappearance, and re-discovery offers a revealing look into the history and politics of twentieth century Houston.

The murals’ tale began in the mid-1930s, when Dallas artists Jerry Bywaters and Alexandre Hogue submitted an unsuccessful bid to paint the Dallas Post Office Terminal as part of an ongoing New Deal public works project administered by the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture. This program supported national artists who decorated more than 65 post offices in Texas with nearly 100 murals depicting scenes of local history, culture, and industry. Although Bywaters and Hogue were turned down for the Dallas project, they were later awarded a similar job painting the Houston Parcel Post Building.

Williamson Gerald (Jerry) Bywaters was born in Paris, Texas, on May 21, 1906, and he studied art at the New York Art Students League. Bywaters specialized in landscapes, portraits, lithograph prints, and murals. According to Francine Carraro, Bywaters' style was indicative of a larger national movement in the 1930s, called the "American Scene," which inspired local artists to create works that honored their community's heritage.

Alexandre Hogue was born in Memphis, Missouri, on February 22, 1898, and he moved with his family to Denton, Texas, in the early twentieth century. Hogue attended Bryan Street High School in Dallas and graduated in 1918. He then traveled to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design for one year before returning to Texas, where he worked as an illustrator for the Dallas Morning News. As an artist, Hogue became known for his abstract landscape paintings and murals.

When Bywaters and Hogue joined the Dallas Nine -- a group of prominent painters and sculptors in the early 1930s -- they discovered a mutual love and respect for the culture of East Texas. After receiving their Houston commission from the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture, Hogue and Bywaters researched the history of the city’s shipping industry for two years before painting six murals on the subject. On July 6, 1941, Bywaters and Hogue's murals were presented to the Houston Parcel Post Building during a highly publicized ceremony. At six feet by eighteen feet, each of the massive murals encompassed an entire wall of the Parcel Post building.

The Bywaters and Hogue murals explored the day-to-day workings of the Houston Ship Channel. For example, Hogue’s “The Diana Docking" featured a colorful tableau showing a riverboat docking on the Buffalo Bayou. In the painting, a group of passengers wait to board, while African American men prepare to load goods onto the ship; a statue of a Native American man stands behind the group, smoking a long pipe. According to historians Nancy Young, William Pederson, and Byron Daynes, another of Hogue’s painting, "Houston Ship Channel--Early History," showcases early river boat traffic, as well as efforts to "survey, clear, dredge, and build the Houston canal.” Likewise, Bywaters’ murals, "Loading Cotton" and "Loading Oil," depict strong dock workers loading bales of cotton and oil onto shipping vessels in the Houston Ship Channel.

Taken together, Hogue and Bywaters' murals highlight the determination and dignity of everyday people who worked in Houston’s shipping industry. Yet, sometime in the 1950s, the murals were removed from the Parcel Post Building. The images, which had once represented the hope and determination of the American working-class, became symbols of organized labor and socialism during the Cold War hysteria that swept through Houston during the 1950s and 1960s. Luckily, the paintings were re-discovered and moved to the Casey building before Bywaters passed away in 1989 and Hogue died in 1994. In fact, the paintings were restored in 2006 so that future generations could enjoy them and the story they tell.

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Edward ("Mr. Ed") Boettcher moved to Huntsville in 1928 to begin new logging operations in the nearby pine forests. His Boettcher Mill supplied the lumber for the fine interior woodwork in this house, which was built in 1933-34 for Boettcher and his family. A notable example of its style, the Tudor bungalow features classical elements in its palladian entry and the broken-pedimented gables. The house remained in the family after Boettcher's death in 1967.

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German immigrant Baldwin Boettcher established a sawmill at Westfield, north of Houston, in 1898, along the International and Great Northern rail line. Boettcher and his mill workers produced 15,000 board feet of yellow pine, gum and cypress lumber daily. Using vertical integration, Boettcher owned every part of his operation, including timberland, tram and rail equipment that moved logs to production, milling equipment, kiln, planer, and the lumberyards where he sold his products. The business included a grist mill and cotton gin, and employees and their families, primarily from the Martinez and Zamora families of Mexico, lived in a mill town. When Boettcher died in 1912, his widow, Elzora, and their son, Edward, took over the business. Four other sawmills operated nearby during what was a timber bonanza era in Texas.

In 1929, Edward Boettcher bought land at this site and relocated the mill and employees. By October, the mill produced 40,000 board feet per day. The stock market crash later that month and the onset of the Great Depression led to the closing of many east Texas sawmills. Boettcher continued operations, though, storing large stocks of dried dimensional lumber. The mill saw a boom in the late 1930s, and Boettcher's decisions throughout the next several years kept the mill going. His sons and grandson worked with him at the mill, but due to his death in 1967, as well as increased federal regulations for the industry, the family closed it in 1969, greatly impacting the local economy. The city annexed the property in 1984, and the mill remains a key element in Huntsville's history.

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Located in Fanning County northeast of Dallas, Texas, Bonham State Park consists of 261 acres in the northern region of the Blackland Prairie. The park includes a sixty-five-acre lake, rolling hills, and scenic woodlands. It has been in operation for more than 75 years and provides visitors with a variety of activities and sightseeing opportunities.

Commissioned in 1933, the park was built in the home county of the powerful Democratic congressman, Sam Rayburn. After the land for the park was donated to the National Park Service by the City of Bonham, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) took over the day-to-day construction and landscaping at the site. Young men between the ages of 18 and 25 signed up for the CCC, and they received work assignments, housing, and $30 per month for their labor. This public works project was a major feature of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which sought to combat the ravages of the Great Depression by helping people help themselves.

The men of CCC Company 894 implemented the plans of architects Joe C. Lair and William Caldwell that incorporated local natural resources like limestone and red cedar. The men used these resources to landscape the rocky terrain and to establish erosion control measures around the park. They also constructed the earthen dam that set off a new sixty-five-acre, man-made lake. This new water feature and the rustic buildings and landscaping that the CCC put in place remain central to the park today and allow visitors to get a glimpse into the park’s 75 year history.

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The story of Booker Thomas Bonner, generally known as B.T. Bonner, B.T. would begin his life in the town of rural Wallis, southwest of Houston, in 1927. Unlike G.J. Sutton or Moses LeRoy, Booner came from a non-leading family and was not originally a successful union leader like LeRoy himself. B.T. was a son of a sharecropper and seamstress who made ends meet; eventually, Bonner would be known as one of the state's most recognizable civil rights activists in 1963. The educational background of Booner would be sent away to school by his mother and eventually graduate from high school in Houston in 1944 before joining the service at the end of World War II. Bonner began attending Texas Southern University while using veterans' benefits but short-lived; B.T. would need to drop out of school to take care of himself when it came to the sudden passing of his mother in 1950. The death of B.T.'s mother would drive him to crave alcoholism and, eventually, send his well-being into a catastrophic state of having to recuperate from being run over by a car on a highway one late night. While attending the University of Texas, B.T. would find himself a cook job and begin working his way through school, majoring in history and government to become a successful teacher.

In 1960, Bonner was kindly invited to a "stand-in" movie theater on the university's drag, later to find out that both San Antonio and Austin Students for Direct Action (SDA) are corrupt. The SDA has similar intentions towards limiting members of all races by having them approach the ticket windows and then ask if the employees would sell tickets to all races. Eventually, Black students stood forced to go to the back of the line, and this process would be repeated countless times in one night. Bonner believed that this ideology of removing all races from attempting to attend a movie was obscured. With how abrasive B.T. indeed was when it came to being an observer and leader, he would try with the SDA leaders three times to let him into the movie theater. Later, he would be removed each time and try to be convinced by the SDA of their intentions towards all racial students. Given the circumstances of the 1960 stand-in movie theatre situation, Bonner would make himself predominantly known in his course for the ongoing desegregation struggle in March 1961. Booner would also stage a one-man hunger strike outside the Texas Theater that would last over sixty hours, making B.T. the lone wolf for challenging the SDA for the wrongdoing of treating Black students horribly. From this point, B.T. would be known as one the most radical Black in the state of Texas for drawing attention towards the SDA in demonstrating that any race should try to prevail upon a person's mind.

In 1962, like activists around Texas, Bonner supplemented his idea for civil rights activities by venturing into electoral politics. Bonner would also get involved with Don Yarborough's gubernatorial campaign for wanting a more established position within the political world. Oddly enough, Bonner would be proven to be a brilliant wildcard against white students, white liberal organizers, black ministers, and traditional elites when organizing African American civil rights and political action. Bonner and his pickets, composed of twenty students from the predominately white University of Texas, would protest outside Governor John Connally's office for wanting an eight-point set of civil rights proposals heard in the acceptance of a meeting by Connally himself. Surely enough, Bonner would get his appointment from Connally in 1963, around the same time that the Democratic Coalition was taking place in 1962-63.

"The March on Austin" depended upon the ongoing vibrancy and salience of multiracial collaboration. Bonner wanted the governor to capitalize on removing racial references from all applications for state employment, immediately integrate state jobs, and withhold state funds from contractors who practiced discrimination. G.J. Sutton would question and criticize Connally on all accounts, bringing attention to the governor's hypocritical actions for involving himself with the United Political Organization (UPO). Bonner's character would be jeopardized, leaving him convicted of mail theft in 1945 at the early age of seventeen, forcing him to serve a three-year sentence in prison. Bonner would remain the undisputed leader of the March on Austin, eventually forming the Freedom Now Committee that would obtain a permit for a two-mile parade route from Rosewood Park in all-Black East Austin to rally in Wooldridge Park downtown.

In August 1966, when local elites refused to accept the job demands of Huntsville Action for Youth (HA-YOU), Bonner called on the youth organization to stage its protest march in front of the capitol. Like the Mexican Americans in the NFWA, the African Americans led by B.T. Bonner walked a thin line to highlight ongoing segregation and economic misery facing Blacks throughout East Texas. B.T. Bonner identified as also a leader of the Huntsville Demonstrations and staffer of SCLC, Bonner called out the white liberals for not truly being committed to the Black freedom struggle. B.T. reignited the black civil rights movement in Texas and also brought about tremendous pressure upon Governor Connally. Bonner's vital attributes are ambiguous class status, self-styled radicalism, and criticism of traditional black leaders. Bonner declared that he represented no organization, considered himself well to the left of the NAACP, and had no reason to disdain the UPO at all costs. B.T.’s succession in his rogue sit-in at the capitol had immediate political implications, especially regarding the ongoing debate between the more militant and conservative factions of African American leaders. Booker Bonner became a successful educator and leader in the military and throughout school, eventually following the footsteps of a civil rights activist. Booker Thomas Bonner would pass away at eighty-nine, and the burial site holds B.T.'s body in Harris County, Houston, at the Houston National Cemetery.

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