Enjoy these Texas history excerpts from the Texas State Historical Association
6/4/1897: Booker T. Washington speaks at first Prairie View graduation
On this day in 1897, black leader Booker T. Washington delivered the first commencement address at Prairie View Normal Institute, the future Prairie View A&M University. Washington, president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, was the leading advocate of black advancement through self-help and solidarity programs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His trips to Texas included an appearance at the State Fair and visits with prominent black families such as the Covingtons of Houston and the Watsons of Dallas. Washington inspired a generation of black Texas leaders, including Emmett Jay Scott and Laurine Cecil Anderson.
6/6/1936: Texas Centennial Exposition opens
On this day in 1936, the Central Centennial Exposition, part of the Texas Centennial celebration marking 100 years of Texas independence, opened in Dallas’s Fair Park. Construction on the exposition began in October 1935 with George L. Dahl as the architect. The official $25 million central exposition occupied fifty buildings and was the first world’s fair held in the Southwest. The “Cavalcade of Texas,” a historical pageant depicting four centuries of Texas history, became one of the exposition’s most popular attractions. The Hall of Negro Life marked an exposition milestone, the first recognition of black culture at a world’s fair. The competing unofficial Fort Worth Frontier Centennial Exposition opened on July 18. The Fort Worth exposition closed on November 14, the Dallas exposition on November 29. Although attendance at both fairs (Dallas, 6,345,385; Fort Worth, 986,128) fell far short of expectations, civic leaders felt the publicity they brought to both the area and the state was well worth the cost. The Dallas exposition reopened in June 1937 as the Greater Texas and Pan American Exposition and closed in October. Many of the exposition buildings, including the Hall of State, are still standing and were renovated along with Fair Park in the 1980s.
6/8/1969: New airport opens in Houston
On this day in 1969, Houston Intercontinental Airport officially began operations. As of 12:01 that morning, it replaced Hobby Airport, which ceased commercial flights. (Hobby was reopened to commercial traffic a couple of years later.) Some 80,000 visitors attended the opening ceremonies. The new airport had its origins in 1957, when the Civil Aeronautics Administration recommended that the city of Houston replace the overloaded Hobby Airport. By 1963 planning for a $125 million facility, on Houston’s north side, was under way. The new airport opened only after a succession of eight projected opening dates. By 1972 it was apparent that IAH needed many changes. The terminals were not adequate, the runways needed strengthening, the terminal people-carrying systems were in need of major repair, and the parking space was far too small. A third terminal was completed in the early 1980s. Plans for a fourth were scrapped in favor of a $95 million international facility, which opened in 1990. In acres, Houston Intercontinental (renamed George Bush Intercontinental Airport in 1997) is Texas’s second largest airport, behind Dallas-Fort Worth.
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