While it's said that behind every great man is a great woman, with the Malone's, they both stood together, equally at the forefront of Black Huntsville/East Texas history. As with all the "great men" of Huntsville, their wives helped and worked with them in their achievements and endeavors. However, Dorothy Crawford Malone stood on her own. Born to one of Walker County's earliest Black families, the Crawford family historically took a lead in the Black society of Huntsville, including holding religious meetings before the establishment of a Black church. The Crawford family-owned property throughout the emerging Black business district, on Avenue M and parts of 14th and even 13th Streets. Other members of the Crawford family-owned businesses, including her brother Ed Crawford, who along with their father Robert Crawford owned and operated the Crawford Barbershop. [3] [4] [5] [6]

To Dorothy's credit, she contributed much to the youth of Huntsville and Walker County. After graduating from college and teaching, she led the Huntsville chapter of the National Youth Administration (NYA), a program originally started by President F. D. Roosevelt in 1935, to provide part-time employment to students to help them remain in school. This organization also helped build the local community literally. Young men in the program completed building on Emancipation Park, cleared forests, built roads, and even built the brick wall around SHSU on Sam Houston Avenue (unfortunately with no recognization). Decades later, she became the first Black person employed at the Walker County Courthouse. She worked as a deputy for 15 years (from 1970 to 1985), helping with voter registration. Moreover, she worked with her husband K.H. Malone, on many projects dealing with economic and community development. [4] [5] [6]

K.H. Malone, the namesake of the K.H. Malone Grocery and Washeteria (opened in 1950), was a business owner, county agent, and entrepreneur. In 1932, Malone became the first Black person to occupy the position of the Agricultural Demonstration Agent for Walker County. During his tenure, he helped Black farmers and provided services and information for them. In addition to his bureaucratic position in agriculture, the Malone's together purchased a farm in 1946, on FM 1791, (also known as Richards Road). The Malone Dairy and Poultry Farm produced eggs, cheese, poultry, and milk, which was sold to local Huntsville grocery stores, and even a co-op in Houston. After K.H. retired from his county job in 1970, the farm continued through the Malone's children. However, K.H. continued serving the community and became a building contractor. Over 22 years, the Malone's (though primarily K.H.) built over 160 homes and 15 churches in Walker County and surrounding East Texas counties. His work enabled low-income families to obtain financial support and financial and practical construction knowledge to move into a real home. K.H. Malone and Dorothy Crawford Malone died in 2000 and 2006, respectively. However, their work and legacy still live on in many communities of Huntsville and East Texas. [1] [2] [5] [6]

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Born in 1925, Willie Jerry Jones Sr. owned and managed the Willie Jerry Jones Insurance and Bonding Agency for over four decades. His businesses provided life insurance and bail bonding services to many in the Black Huntsville community. Growing up in Huntsville, TX, he attended the local high school for non-Whites, Sam Houston High School. He participated in many extra-curricular activities, academic and athletic. Then, in 1943, he both married and left for service in the US Navy, serving in Pearl Harbor. After he returned from leave, he owned and operated a barbershop on Avenue M. Next, he worked at the Atlanta Life Insurance Company for 14 years, before opening his own insurance company. [3] [4] [6]

However, his economic achievements pale in comparison to his social/political achievements and endeavors in service of his community. He helped lead the desegregation movement in Walker, and in 1961, became president of the first local chapter of the NAACP in Walker and Trinity Counties. Under his tenure, the Walker County Courthouse facilities, several local businesses, the city hospital, and Sam Houston State Teachers College desegregated. In about four years, almost all of the county removed public segregated spaces. He served as President for over 20 years. For his work and the work of the chapter, he and his wife Mary went to the inauguration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Governor John B. Connally. Speaking of politics, Jones was the first black candidate to run for a county office in Huntsville. He won the Democratic primary election for county commissioner in 1964 but lost in the runoff by only 52 votes. The Huntsville City Council, Alpha Phi Alpha, and the St. James United Methodist Church, among others, awarded him bountifully. Jones, with the help and co-partnership with his wife Mary, helped better not only the Black society but the greater local society. [1] [2] [5] [6]

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The history of Sam Houston State University is very long and rich with unique students, faculty, and different kinds of stories. It was founded in 1897 and was called Sam Houston Normal Institute. The environment that students are in every day has changed a tremendous amount since then. The campus itself has grown immensely, and the subject matter that is taught has matured and grown into some of the best in the state. Today, SHSU has a department that produces graduates that go into, what some would say would be, the most diverse areas of work out of the entire university. The Engineering Technology Department sends graduates to construction companies, electric companies, the armed services, computer companies, the robotic industry, teaching, and there are even SHSU students who have worked on space satellites for NASA. There are so many things that Sam Houston State Engineering Technology graduates do with their degrees once they leave Sam Houston State University that there is no definite path a student is pushed down; he/she will be able to explore many paths.

There might be some confusion when one hears “Engineering Technology”. It is different than “Engineering”. A student that graduates with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering will have studied more theoretical subjects, therefore, more math, more physics, more “pen on paper” classes. Whereas, a student who has graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Technology will have studied the basic theoretical subjects that engineering would require, but students will do a lot of more-hands-on classes, where things will actually be built, electric circuits will be created, etc. An engineer will get an entry-level job with a company as an engineer, and a technician will get an entry-level job that involves designing and application of engineering concepts. Either degree is a good one, but they each have their pros and cons. [1]

Sam Houston State University was created in the late 1800s to teach adults how to be able to teach the people of their town’s basic subjects, like reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, geography. It all helped keep the townspeople somewhat educated. Later in the development of the school, more classes were added. Classes such as agriculture, home economics, blacksmithing, leatherwork, woodwork, etc. became popular since it helped people execute daily tasks that they would have at home (most people worked ranch type lifestyles or simply upkeeping their homes). These classes, that helped students with their everyday lives, were the foundation of some parts of the Engineering Technology department at Sam Houston State University that can be seen today. There were several name changes to the department, some of the names were Manual Arts and Industrial Vocational Education. Some big changes came into the department after World War II. It became more of an Industrial Education Department. The department has always stayed updated with the newest, most useful subjects. As was mentioned earlier, in the beginning, things were more of a sustainability education, and as the years went on, the subjects changed to fit the lives of the people. In the 1960/70s, the department changed into Industrial Technology. In this era, subjects like robotics, the beginning stages of computer science, etc. were taught. Things were mainly focused on the computer aspect of technology; some electronics were taught as well, but people were more interested in the computer science side of the department since computers were a new thing to the world. Things stayed pretty constant in the 1960s and 1970s, maybe some slight changes to the department, but nothing major. In the early 2000s, the number of students in the department dropped down low enough that Sam Houston State University was on the brink of dropping the department from the school entirely. There were only about 150 students in the department, and there were only a few tenured professors. SHSU’s very own Dr. Ullrich, who is still working here today, was the interim chair when this happened. He convinced the school administration to simply give the entire department to the Agriculture Department. From there the Agriculture Department would take over everything: new teachers, recruitment of students, anything that involved the Engineering Technology Department, the Agriculture Department would handle. The new name would be “ The Department of Agricultural and Industrial Sciences”. The student count in the department began to grow each and every year. With the new growth of the department, new professors were hired to account for all the new students. Dr. Yildiz, who is now the chairman of the department, was hired to run the Engineering Technology side of the department. Grants helped get new instruments to use in class and to hire more good professors. Eventually, the Agriculture Department and Engineering Technology Department split back up, due to the growth of both departments. Since about 2016, with the division of the two departments, there have been multiple majors added to the department. There is now Construction Management, Engineering Technology: Concentration in Electronics, Engineering Technology: Concentration in Safety Management, Design and Development, Electronics & Computer Engineering Technology, and Engineering Technology with Teaching Certification. In the next few years, there will also be a master’s program, a mechanical engineering technology major, and others as well.

The Engineering Technology Department has a new building; specifically, for the Engineering Technology related courses and students. One alumni, Fred Pirkle, who invented a widely used and necessary valve. It has changed the way the railway industry has changed over the years. He created a company, Term Omega Tech, which continues to succeed today. Mr. Fred Pirkle passed away in 2012, due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). However, he left his estate to Sam Houston State University. $25 million was donated from the estate; which has built The Engineering Technology Center, hire new faculty, bring in new machines for students, and to give scholarships to students. After two years of construction, the building opened up in early Spring 2017. [2] Today, students use every last bit of the resources that have been donated. Students and faculty use the first floor for different labs; including The Clean Manufacturing & Rapid Prototyping Labs, The Electronics, Power Systems and Automation & Control Labs, the Manufacturing Labs, an Innovations Lab, and offices for students to collaborate while doing extra work. The second floor has a lot of classrooms, The CAD Labs, The Energy Systems Lab, The Wind Tunnel and Robotics Lab, and a memorial for Fred Pirkle and other memorable alumni. The third floor is filled with more classrooms and professor offices, and the fourth floor is for professor offices and administrative offices as well. None of this would be possible without the great donation from Mr. Pirkle. He has left his legacy with SHSU, and he will always be apart of the department, no matter how much it changes. [3]

The Engineering Technology Department is helping bring great workers into the world after graduation. Each year, there are alumni going all over the country and some go to other countries to work. Everyone surely hopes to be able to make the department proud. And in the future, there will hopefully be more alumni that want to help Sam Houston State University’s Engineering Technology Department. There will most likely be more innovations and updates to the department as the years go by. The subject matter may change every now and again, but there will always be a special part of the history of the school for today. Every day, students add to this history. Sam Houston State is a growing University, and there is major growth in the coming years for this school, it can be seen already. However, the traditions and culture of this school will stay far longer than any student.

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On any given day, one may have to stop for the rare chicken who has wandered its way onto the road from the Sam Houston Memorial Museum. The grounds that the chickens call home rest on fifteen acres of the original 200 acre farm owned by General Sam Houston and his family between 1847 and 1858. Here, one can feed the ducks in Lake Oolooteka, an artificial pond honoring the adoptive Cherokee Indian father of Sam Houston, or meander over the footbridge to the Woodland Home, where one can walk up the same steps that Sam Houston took more than a century ago. Nearby, one can walk to the single room log cabin that served as Houston’s study and law office. And, a short distance away, one will find the Steamboat House, the location of Houston’s death and funeral.

Additionally on the grounds, one can find two period piece double-pen log cabins named Bear Bend and Guerrant Cabin. Only one, Bear Bend, has a direct relation to Sam Houston. The cabin served as the family’s hunting lodge during the 1850s. In 1974, preservationists B. Carroll and Mae Tharp bought the cabin and relocated it from its original site, an area now located under Lake Conroe. The task was not easy, as Carroll and Tharp dismantled and numbered each piece individually in order to rebuild it exactly as it was – a task the pair completed in 1987. The Tharps maintained this and five other historic properties on their land until they donated the entire lot to Sam Houston State University. Unfortunately, due to the remote location of the cabins, upkeep proved costly and the decision was made to once again relocate the buildings. In October 2010, Bear Bend Cabin was uprooted and relocated to the memorial grounds were it was restored and rededicated the following March. The other four buildings owned by the Tharps were relocated to Montgomery’s Fernland Historical Grounds. Across from Bear Bend, the Guerrant Cabin dates from the 1840s and was built by Daniel Boone Guerrant, an early settler of Walker County. Like Bear Bend, Guerrant Cabin was moved to the museum in the twenty-first century to be used for demonstrations.

Sitting just north of the Steamboat House, the Wigwam Neosho Museum Store, offers visitors a chance to shop, watch an introductory video, and pay admission into the museum. It is strongly recommended that one visits the exhibits inside the Memorial Museum. Each year the museum develops new programs, activities, and exhibits on the history of Sam Houston, the Texas Republic, and the fight for Texas Independence. Admission to walk and tour the grounds is free year round. However, if you are interested in looking into the buildings, receiving a tour, or going into the store or museum, then you will have to do it during business hours between 9A.M – 4:30 P.M Monday-Saturday, excluding holidays, and 12 P.M – 4:30 P.M on Sundays also excluding holidays. Demonstration times and dates can be found on the museum website.

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Located in Huntsville, Texas, the Sam Houston Memorial Museum and attached grounds are spread across eighteen acres of the original two hundred-plus acres once owned by Sam Houston and family from 1847 to 1858. Preservation of this historic site started in the first decade of the twentieth century, when Bertha Kirkley, a history professor at Sam Houston Normal Institute, worked with her students to revive the property and return the “Woodland Home” and Sam Houston’s law office to their original site. The initial stage of this work was completed in 1911, but a lack of funds and public indifference meant that the property was poorly maintained. Indeed, as journalist Gregory Curtis has pointed out, various “inauthentic embellishments were added” to the Woodland Home during this period, and local “agricultural students were using it as a hay barn.”

In the late 1920s, Joseph Lynn Clark, another history professor at Sam Houston State Teachers College, wrote to every member of the Texas legislature seeking financial assistance to properly preserve the Woodland Home and surrounding buildings. In 1927, the legislature approved a $15,000 appropriation for restoration of the home and the construction and development of a museum at the site. A formal dedication for the museum was held on May 3, 1929. While this appeared to an unmitigated success, Clark soon complained that the Museum’s renovations at the Woodland Home changed the structure “in the interest of attractiveness and permanency,” without due regard to the historic appearance of the building.

In 1936, as Texans prepared to celebrate the centennial of the state’s independence from Mexico, Clark again lobbied officials for funds to commemorate the life and legacy of Sam Houston. This time, the Centennial Commission appropriated $35,000 to construct a new rotunda for the museum and to modernize the building. Between 1936 and 1960, construction occurred in installments, and in 1995 the Katy and E. Don Walker, Sr. Education Center was also constructed. The center, resting in the back of the museum grounds, holds a gift shop, auditorium, exhibit gallery, and activity rooms.

The museum is owned and managed by Sam Houston State University, which sits across the street from the museum and grounds. Inside the museum there are three wings holding permanent exhibits detailing the life of Sam Houston, the Texas Revolution, and other collections and exhibits housed year round. Periodic demonstrations, such as blacksmithing, pottery, and hearth cooking, occur during various times of the year including at the annual General Sam Houston Folk Festival every spring. The museum is open from 9 A.M to 4:30 P.M Tuesday thru Saturday and 12 P.M to 4:30 on Sundays.

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Rufus William Bailey, a minister and educator from New England, played a critical role in preserving the first college established in Huntsville and also was responsible for building the house where Sam Houston died.

Bailey was born in North Yarmouth, Maine, on April 13, 1793, and attended Dartmouth College where he earned his A.B. in 1813 and his Masters three years later. He studied law under Daniel Webster but then entered Andover Theological Seminary for divinity studies. He served as a minister in Congregational churches in Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut and also lived for several years in South Carolina.

While in South Carolina, he became "intimately acquainted with the state of slavery." He wrote to a northern abolitionist society in 1835 to ask that the organization not send him any publications. He added, "So far as I know, not a single Northern man here sympathises in the least with your sentiments." Further, he later wrote that the efforts of northern abolitionists were unrealistic and that blacks should be returned to Africa through the work of the American Colonization Society (ASC).

Bailey moved to Staunton, Virginia in 1842 where he established the Augusta Female Seminary, which later became Mary Baldwin College. Concerned with the presence of free blacks in and around Staunton, Bailey became involved with ACS efforts there to relocate African Americans to Liberia. He initially served as the ACS agent in Staunton while also running the seminary, but resigned from the school in 1849. By 1850, Bailey's ACS work extended throughout the Shenandoah Valley, but he suffered financial hardships due to a lack of support from ACS and he resigned in 1852.

Bailey and his family moved to Huntsville in 1854, when he became of a professor of languages at Austin College, established just four years earlier on the site where Sam Houston State University sits today. Bailey purchased a five-acre lot where he built a home that, because of its turrets and other unusual architectural features, became known as the Steamboat House.

Bailey became president of Austin College in 1858 and like the college's previous presidents, Bailey also served as minister of the First Presbyterian Church. The presidency came with challenges as the school struggled to stay open due to financial problems. According to the photo history book "Austin College," Bailey paid some creditors with his own money to keep the school solvent and later raised enough money to "retire the college's debt." Bailey continued as president until 1862 and although the Civil War limited instruction, Austin College was the only college in Texas to operate under its original charter after the war ended. The authors of "Austin College" note that this "accomplishment was in large part due to the leadership of Rufus Bailey."

Bailey did not live to see the later success of Austin College or even the end of the war; he died in Huntsville on April 25, 1863. Sam Houston died three months later in the Steamboat House, the home he had rented from Bailey.

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In 1855, Dr. Rufus W. Bailey, a Dartmouth educated minister and attorney, moved to Huntsville, Texas, to serve as a language professor at Austin College. After acquiring an eight acre tract of land in Huntsville, he commissioned a large home to be built in 1858. According to popular legend, Bailey intended to present the new structure, which he named Buena Vista, to his son and daughter-in-law as a wedding present. Upon first sight, however, the young couple refused to live in the eccentrically designed building, which featured twin front turrets and riverboat side galleries on two lengthy floors.

By 1862, Bailey’s well-intentioned wedding gift -- now known the “Steamboat House” -- had sat empty for many months. This situation made it possible for Sam Houston, the recently deposed Governor of Texas, to rent the building from Bailey upon his return to Huntsville. Wartime pressures and health problems constantly plagued Sam Houston during the last year of his life. As his persistent cough turned into pneumonia, Houston’s strength declined. On June 26, 1863, the old general passed away in the front room of the Steamboat House. The next day family and friends held funeral services in the upstairs parlor of the house, followed by a burial in nearby Oakwood Cemetery.

With the passing of Sam Houston, his family moved out of the home. Rufus Bailey, who had died three months previously, left the Steamboat House to his son, Frank. Once again confronted with ownership of the unusually shaped house, Frank Bailey quickly put the structure up for auction. For the next sixty years the house would pass from one family to another, and it deteriorated over time. In 1936, J.E. Josey donated the Steamboat House to the Sam Houston Memorial Museum. The building was dismantled, moved to the museum grounds, and extensively refurbished. On March 2, 1937 the newly remodeled Steamboat House was opened to the public as part of the Texas Centennial.

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The Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville opened in 1849, one year after the state legislature created the penitentiary system. As the first state prison in Texas, the Huntsville site soon became known as the "Walls Unit" for the 15-foot brick wall that surrounds the prison yard. The initial inmate, William G. Sansom, was received at the Walls Unit in 1849 for cattle rustling. Elizabeth Huffman was the first female to be received in 1854 for infanticide.

During the Civil War, the Wall Unit housed Union prisoners of war. The most well-known Union soldiers were those captured with the United States Revenue Cutter Harriet Lane who were taken prisoner in 1863 following a naval battle in Galveston Harbor. According to legend, Sam Houston visited the prisoners of war at the Walls Unit days before his death in 1863.

In addition to being the first prison in Texas, the Walls Unit has also served as the state's official site for death row and state executions. The state took control of executions in 1924, when the electric chair was introduced. On February 8, 1924, Texas officials executed the first five prisoners to die by electrocution. The prison system continued to use the electric chair until 1964, when executions were deemed unconstitutional due to racial discrepancies in the enforcement of the law. The Texas Legislature later changed the legal statutes for execution, adopting the method of lethal injection, and the state of Texas resumed executions in 1982.

On July 24, 1974, inmate Fred Gomez Carrasco led fellow inmates Ignacio Cuevas and Rudolfo Dominguez in the longest prison siege in Texas history. Within the education building of the Walls Unit, the three inmates took ten employees and five fellow inmates hostage with three pistols that had been smuggled into the unit. For eleven days, Carrasco kept the hostages within the education building. On the night of the eleventh day, Carrasco, Cuevas, and Dominguez attempted to escape. The inmates built a moving shield from blackboards and law books from the library in the education building. They forced some hostages to serves as human shields outside the barrier and others were handcuffed to the men and held at gunpoint. During the attempted escape a gunfight erupted and two of the hostages were killed and Carrasco and Dominguez also died. Cuevas would later be executed for his participation in the eleven-day siege.

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Shortly after the town of Huntsville was incorporated, founder Pleasant Gray donated five acres of land for the creation of a school. The new institution began operations as early as 1845 and received a charter on April 11, 1846. Originally, the school offered education to both boys and girls and was known as the Huntsville Academy. Citizens in Huntsville raised the funds to build what was later described as a schoolhouse “built elegantly of red brick.” After serving as a coed school for several years, the Huntsville Male Institute broke away in either 1847 or 1848 (sources differ). From then on, they were separately known as Huntsville Male Academy and Huntsville Female Academy. When Austin College replaced Huntsville Male Institute, the remaining female school became know as the Female Academy or simply, the Brick Academy. It had an average enrollment of approximately 70 young women.

William Viser, Thomas Gibbs, M. Barrett, F. L. Hatch, and M. C. Rogers served as trustees of the school, and many famous residents of Huntsville worked for the institution. Dr. Samuel McKinney, who later became the first President of Austin College, taught at the Brick Academy as did the missionary-turned author Melinda Rankin. While in Huntsville, Rankin completed her famous book, Texas in 1850, in which she spoke very highly of Huntsville and the surrounding county.

According to records, the community occasionally used the sturdy school building for other purposes. The organizational meeting of the First Baptist Church took place in the Brick Academy, and the congregation appears to have used it to hold regular church services until a new sanctuary was built.

The Brick Academy served the community of Huntsville as a school for young women only for a short time. In 1853, the Methodist Church chartered Andrew Female Academy, and the older school quickly fell into disuse.

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Gibbs Brothers and Company is reputedly the oldest continuously operating family business in Texas that still resides on its original site. The business was established by Thomas Gibbs and Gardner Coffin in 1841 on the Huntsville town square. The pair purchased the lot on which they built their store from Huntsville's first resident Pleasant Gray.

After Coffin died in 1844, Thomas convinced his brother Sandford St. John Gibbs, who had left Texas after their father's death, to return to Huntsville and go into business with him. In 1847, Sandford paid $500 for a half interest in the company, which he and Thomas named T. & S. Gibbs. The brothers replaced the original log cabin that had served as a mercantile store with a new two-story, wood-frame building.

In the 1870s, Thomas moved away from Huntsville for health reasons, and Sandford bought his brother's interest in the business, renaming it the S. Gibbs Company. In the back of the store, Sandford kept a large, iron safe, and local businessmen and planters began to deposit their money there for safekeeping. Sensing an opportunity to develop a financial enterprise, Sandford soon opened a bank in the rear of the store.

After Sandford's death in 1886, his widow Sallie took over the business. A native of North Carolina and graduate of the Greensboro College for Young Ladies, Sallie had the old wood-frame business razed and replaced with a new brick structure.

With her son's assistance, Sallie is credited with developing the Gibbs business from a minor mercantile operation to a leading financial, real estate, and timber enterprise. In 1890, she worked with her eldest son and several influential Huntsville business leaders to organize Gibbs National Bank, which became First National Bank in Huntsville in 1922. Sallie retired from the business in 1917 and died a year later.

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During the twentieth century, Minnie Fisher Cunningham (1882-1964) worked as a leading reformer on women’s issues, including voting rights and equal pay. Born near New Waverly, Texas in southern Walker County, Minnie was raised by her parents, Horatio and Sallie (Abercrombie) Fisher, to be an educated, politically-minded young woman. She earned her state teaching certificate at age sixteen, but chose to further her education at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. In 1901, she became the first woman in Texas to earn her Graduate of Pharmacy degree. She began and ultimately ended her pharmacy career in Huntsville’s downtown drug store, however, where she earned less than half of what her male counterparts made. It was this experience that she credited with “making a suffragette out of me,” and once she married B.J. Cunningham in 1902, her medical career came to an end.

Cunningham first became politically active in local volunteer organizations in Galveston, where she and her husband relocated in 1907. She began her speaking and lobbying career, while volunteering for the Women’s Health Protective Association (WHPA) and helped to found Galveston’s Equal Suffrage Association (GESA). As a delegate of GESA, she participated in the creation of the Texas Woman Suffrage Association (TWSA) and helped link it to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In 1915, she was elected president of TWSA, soon called the Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA), and it was in that role that she worked for the passage of a state bill that would allow women to vote in political primaries. Although the bill ultimately failed to pass in 1917, Cunningham and her organization used their considerable influence to help impeach the sitting governor of Texas, James E. Ferguson, for corruption. When Ferguson decided to run for governor again, despite being banned from doing so, Cunningham negotiated a deal with State Representative Charles Metcalfe and Governor William Hobby to allow women to vote in the state's primary, promising that the female vote would support Hobby in his bid to remain governor.

Despite her success during the election of 1918, Cunningham and her forces were unable to secure the passage of an amendment to the Texas Constitution that would have allowed women to vote in the state. Cunningham did not give in, however, but instead worked diligently for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. She was part of the team that convinced Woodrow Wilson to openly support it during World War I, and she actively lobbied the Texas Legislature for immediate ratification in 1919. Following the successful campaign to secure women’s voting rights through the Nineteenth Amendment, Cunningham became the first executive secretary of the League of Women Voters and became active in progressive political causes, joining the Democratic Women’s Advisory Committee at the suggestion of Eleanor Roosevelt. She later became the first woman to run for the Senate in Texas, and though she lost in the primary, she later became the first woman to run for governor as well. In that latter race, she came in second out of nine candidates having been defeated by the incumbent, Coke Stevenson in the primary. She worked tirelessly for the implementation of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and was late in life a supporter of John F. Kennedy. She died in her hometown in 1964 of heart failure.

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