 This lecture is going to look at Texas during the Depression and World War II from hard times to prosperity. When we think about the Depression, we often think about the unemployment, but there was also a great deal of under-employment. Unemployment, about 25% of the American people were unemployed. However, a lot of people had jobs, but they weren't very, they weren't full time, they weren't getting a lot of money. So it was still very difficult, even if you had a job. Towns, cities went bankrupt, banks closed. There was just very little money to go around, and this created hardship for everyone. Many farmers were put out of their homes, put out of their farms. The price of cotton went down, but the farmers are actually producing a lot of cotton. And so one of the things Texas tried to do was limit the control of cotton. Limit the amount of cotton being produced with the Texas Cotton Acres Control Law of 1931. It created a scarcity and actually increased the price of cotton. Texas also benefited during the Depression, ironically enough, because of petroleum. Dad Joiner drilled in Kilgore in East Texas, and the East Texas oil fields came in. And there were a lot of wildcatters or independent drillers out who were just dripping wells as fast as they could in order to get some of this oil. In fact, so much so that the state imposed martial law to try to control all these wildcatters. In 1931, West Texas suffered because of a drought and high winds that resulted in the Dust Bowl. A lot of this was because a lot of new farmers had moved out and were plowing up a lot of grassland that had been covered in grass for thousands and thousands of years. The drought and the windstorms came in and just carried the dirt away. And this is what created some of these worst blizzards. The worst one of all happened on April 13, 1935, and the dust was seen as far away as London, England. And so as a result, many left the farms. For minorities, it was a tough time. Mexican Americans, many were sent to Mexico. This was called repatriation. It went on throughout up until World War I. About 250,000 from Texas were sent. For African Americans, they suffered too. Last hired, first fired was the motto. They were wanted to protect white jobs. And you also see riots like in Sherman in 1930, where white communities attacked African Americans. As part of the New Deal programs, the federal government implemented to try to help out with the Depression. Two Texans stand out. Jesse H. Jones, who was head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. This was a federal agency that lent money to big businesses. Putting money in at the top and hoping that it would trickle down. Also, you had agencies that put young people to work, like the National Youth Administration, that London Johnson ran in Texas. There were also other organizations, two building projects that helped build a lot of communities. Buildings, a lot of courthouses, bridges, roadside parks. Was the Public Works Administration. And when they were declared unconstitutional, they were replaced with the Works Progress Administration. Also, the Agricultural Adjustment Act helped farmers. Help farmers who had been put out of their homes by finding new homes for them. The Rural Resettlement Act. And paid farmers to plow under their crops and kill their cattle. And they paid them for the beef, for the pigs that were killed. And for the crops that were destroyed. But many farmers resented this. Ironically, at the time of the Depression, was also the Texas Centennial. And at Fair Park in Dallas, the state spent $3 million to help celebrate its 100th anniversary. It also put up state monuments, like the San Jacinto Monument, the Alamo Cenotaph. All around the state and in every county put a marker to help celebrate the 100 years of Texas. One of the Texas governors was W. Lee O'Daniels, who was a flower-melt executive. And he started a musical group to help him sell his flower, to help advertise. It was called the Light Crust Doe Boys. Eventually, Bob Wills, who was one of the Light Crust Doe Boys, would start his own band. Papy Lee O'Daniels got his nickname because of a radio show and a song that was very popular, called Please Pass the Biscuits Papy. And O'Daniels wrote this song. And so he earned the nickname Papy O'Daniels. He was governor from 1939 to 1941, and largely due to his popularity, then ran for the Senate and served in the Senate until 49. During World War II, the war helped turn the economy around, largely because of massive industrialization. For Texas, the petroleum industry and shipbuilding were very important to the national economy. Also, you had about 7% of Texas residents who enlisted in the war. Many served 750,000, including 12,000 women. We also suffered a tremendous number of casualties, about 22,000 fatalities. Texas also benefited economically because of training camps. 15 major training camps, training about a million troops, were in Texas. We also had prisoner of war and internment camps. And the GI Bill of Rights after the war helped pay for community college and university to help retrain servicemen and women who were returning from the war. For African Americans, at first, many Africans were denied entry into the military because of segregation. Eventually, however, 80,000 served. And two of the most famous Texans were Dory Miller and Leonard Roy Harmon. Both were killed in their service and were recognized by the Navy. However, on the other hand, they were race riots. Two of those in 1943, one in Fort Bliss and one in Beaumont. For Mexican Americans, they were also segregated, but they did serve, especially the Pacific, five earned Medal of Honors. Hector Garcia, a doctor from Corpus Christi, was also well decorated. Mexican Americans, on the other hand, also had to deal with the Bracero Program. From 1942 to 1964, this was an attempt by the state to replace many of the men who were leaving the fields and farm workers who were leaving to join the war. So they made contracts with Mexico to have Mexican and former Mexican Americans come to the United States and work in the fields. However, the government in Mexico felt that there was too much racism in Texas, and so Texas wasn't allowed to participate until 1947. So the Texas government in 1943 passed two laws, one law, the Caucasian Race Resolution, which said that all members of the Caucasian race should be treated well and have no discrimination. And they also established the Texas Good Neighbor Commission to show that they were not discriminatory against Mexican and Mexican Americans. There were a lot of civil rights issues at the time. The president ordered the military to be integrated beginning with Executive Order 8802. The NAACP began fighting for court cases that would prevent segregation like the Smith v. Allright decision, which ended the white primary white control of the Democratic Party in 1944, laws that prevented schools from segregating it against Mexican students like Delgado v. Bastrop, and also the American GI form. This was an organization started by Hector Garcia that became prominent in fighting discrimination against Mexican Americans, especially in the Felix Longoria fair. Felix Longoria was denied services at a local funeral home when his body was returned from the Philippines because he was Mexican American, and so this got Lyndon Johnson involved and became a national incident that received a lot of attention. There were two parts to the Texas Democratic Party that emerged during the war years. One was the Texas Regulars. It was a conservative group, and they faced a big battle in the 1948 election. In the Senate race, LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson, ran against former Governor Coke Stephen, who was very conservative, and although it was a disputed election, Johnson won that case. You also see the development of the 51st legislature as being the billion-dollar legislature. There was not that much money to spend, and so that was its budget because Texas benefited as a result of the war. One of the laws that came out of that were a series of reforms, rather, to help modernize the school system. This was the Gilmore Aiken laws. And so what you see in Texas are conservative Democrats, state in the state, at state office, liberal Democrats go to Washington, D.C. There was a lot of opposition to the president at the time, Harry Truman, because in 1948, he ran on a civil rights platform. He was supported by people like LBJ and other Democratic Party leaders at the national level. At the state level, however, we had Alan Shivers, who was our governor, and he was the longest-serving governor that we had at the time. He won four elections, and he was marked by controversy during his administration, the Tide Lands controversy, which put him in the Republican camp. Eisenhower ran in the 1950s, promising that the Tide Lands, who controlled the mineral rights, the oil profits from land on the Gulf Coast and into the water, who owned that? Was it the federal government or the state government? And Shivers asked Eisenhower to support the states, and Eisenhower did, and so many Republicans voted for Eisenhower. But there was also an insurance scandal and a race riot in Mansfield, a Mansfield crisis after integration after the Brown decision. Mansfield, a town south of Fort Worth, was going to integrate the Klan and other people descended upon this, and it became quite a national event. Showing racism in Texas. In the 1956 election, the governor's race, a liberal price, Ralph Yarber, ran against a conservative price, Daniel, and in the end, Daniel won the election. But his administration was also marked by scandal, and in fact, one of the commissioners for the Texas Veterans Land Board went to jail for taking bribes. There were civil rights in Texas, some cases that are probably important. Operation wetback, this was kind of a downside. In 1954, the Army started rounding up somewhere around a million Mexicans to send them back to Mexico. But at the same time, organizations like Lulac, the League of United Latin American Citizens, fought discrimination. The president from Houston, Felix Tijerina, who was a restaurateur, he started a thing called the Little Schools of the 400, and this was an attempt to improve education for Mexican-American children by preparing them with 400 words of English before they got into school. There was also the sweat versus painter decision. Heman's sweat, a Houston postal worker, was denied entrance to the University of Texas because he was African-American, and the state sought many ways to avoid allowing him going to law school at UT, including creating a state college for Negroes, as it was called in 1950. This eventually becomes Texas Southern University. In the end, UT lost the case, and they were forced to allow African-Americans into their graduate programs and law programs. Another important case that happened in 1954, just a week before the Brown decision, was Hernandez versus Texas. In this case said that the 14th Amendment applied to other ethnic groups besides African-Americans, and that Mexican-Americans were considered and treated in Texas as a class apart. And so this was an important Supreme Court decision. Also in 1958, you see the changes in attitudes towards race. Hattie Mae White was elected the first African-American to serve on the Houston Independent School District Board. So the war period, the Depression War period, was a time of mixed blessings and curses. Of course, many people suffered during the Depression and during the war, but at the same time, the Texas economy during the war rebounded, and Texas came out of the war with a tremendous amount of wealth that they were able to spend on reforms and other spending that the state needed. On the other hand, there were problems for minority groups and there were successes for minority groups. You see an end to some of the racism, but you see more entrenched racism on the other hand. So altogether, Texas benefited economically. And you see some changes going on in the state, society, and culture in regard to African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and other minority groups.