Texas history from the Texas State Historical Association
8/27/1908: Future president is born in the Hill Country
On this day in 1908, Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th president of the United States, was born on a farm near the town of Stonewall in the Texas Hill Country. His father was a state legislator, and his mother also encouraged her son’s interest in public affairs. Young Lyndon graduated from Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now Texas State University) in San Marcos in 1930. The following year he became secretary to Congressman Richard M. Kleberg. Thus Johnson was set on the path of a lifetime of politics–from director of the National Youth Administration, to U. S. congressman and senator, and ultimately to the White House. His notable achievements include signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
8/27/1990: Stevie Ray Vaughan dies in crash
On this day in 1990, Texas blues musician Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a helicopter crash on the way to Chicago from a concert in Alpine Valley, East Troy, Wisconsin. Vaughan was born in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas on October 3, 1954. His exposure to music began in his childhood, as he watched his big brother, Jimmie, play guitar. Stevie’s fascination with the blues drove him to teach himself to play the guitar before he was an adolescent. By the time he was in high school, he was staying up all night playing guitar in clubs in Deep Ellum, a popular entertainment district in Dallas. Vaughan moved to Austin in the 1970s, and by the early 1980s he and his band, Double Trouble, had a solid regional reputation. His career took off in the 1980s, and his work eventually garnered four Grammy Awards. Vaughan was killed at the height of his career. More than 1,500 people, including industry giants such as Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Wonder, attended his memorial service in Dallas.
8/30/1862: Texans capture guns at Second Manassas
On this day in 1862, Hood’s Texas Brigade played a distinguished part in the battle of Second Manassas. After a Union assault was broken up by artillery fire, Confederate general Longstreet launched his First Corps, with the Texas Brigade in the lead, in one of the most successful counterattacks of the Civil War. The Fourth Texas Infantry, under the command of Lt. Col. B. F. Carter, captured a federal battery of artillery, losing eleven killed and twenty wounded in the process. After the battle the commander of the brigade, Gen. John Hood, encountered the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee, who playfully asked him what had become of the enemy. Hood answered that the Texans had chased them across Bull Run “almost at a double quick.” A regiment of New York Zouaves was shattered by the assault, and, seeing their brightly uniformed bodies scattered about the next morning, a Texan officer wrote that they gave the battlefield “the appearance of a Texas hillside when carpeted in the spring by wild flowers of many hues and tints.”
8/30/1956: Mob masses at Mansfield
On this day in 1956, an angry mob surrounded Mansfield High School to prevent the enrollment of three African-American students in what became known as the Mansfield School Desegregation Incident. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had sued the Mansfield school district over its segregation of black schoolchildren. When a federal court ordered the district to desegregate–the first time a Texas school district received such an order–many white citizens resisted. Vigilantes barred integration sympathizers from entering town, whites hanged three blacks in effigy, and downtown businesses closed in support of the demonstrations. Governor Allan Shivers authorized the Mansfield school board to transfer black students to Fort Worth, seventeen miles away, and dispatched Texas Rangers to uphold the district’s policy of segregation. The successful defiance of the federal court order helped inspire the passage of state segregation laws in 1957, delaying integration for several years. The Mansfield school district finally desegregated in 1965.
8/31/1871: “Gentleman Jim” Ferguson, future Texas governor, born in Salado
On this day in 1871, James Edward Ferguson, future Texas governor, was born near Salado, Texas. After a brief study of law he was admitted to the bar in 1897. Known as an antiprohibitionist, and running on a platform that would limit rent charged tenant farmers, he was elected governor in 1914. During his first term the legislature passed several significant measures, including the tenant law, state aid to rural schools, compulsory school attendance, and several generous appropriation bills. He won his bid for reelection in 1916 by a majority of 60,000 votes. During his second term he became involved in a serious quarrel with the University of Texas and vetoed practically the entire appropriation for the university. At the same time a number of charges involving misappropriation of public funds and other financial irregularities were brought against him. The end result was removal from office by a Court of Impeachment. Since he was subsequently ineligible to hold any public office, in 1924 and 1932 he ran the campaigns when his wife, Miriam, was elected governor. Ferguson died in 1944 and was buried in the State Cemetery in Austin.
9/1/1917: Huge law firm founded in Houston
On this day in 1917, William Ashton Vinson and James A. Elkins founded what was to become one of the largest and most profitable law firms in the world. The firm began in Houston as a small partnership. By 2001 it had grown to more than 780 lawyers, five domestic offices, and four foreign offices. Vinson and Elkins initially did business with the oil and gas industry, which continues to be the firm’s mainstay. Over the years the firm has expanded to include business, energy and environmental regulation, international law, real estate, securities, and taxation.
9/2/1945: Texan signs peace treaty with Japan
On this day in 1945, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed the instrument of surrender with Japan that ended World War II. Nimitz, born in 1885, was the descendant of German pioneer settlers of Fredericksburg. He was named commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet shortly after Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and later commander in chief of Pacific Ocean Areas as well. With authority over the entire Pacific theater except for Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific sector and the inactive southeast, Nimitz coordinated the offensive that brought the Japanese to unconditional surrender. He signed the peace treaty aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Nimitz later spent two years as commander in chief of the United States Fleet, and also served as a roving ambassador for the United Nations and chairman of the Presidential Commission on Internal Security and Individual Rights. He died in 1966. In 1964 a local citizens’ group established the Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Memorial Naval Museum in the old Nimitz Hotel in Fredericksburg. The project evolved into the National Museum of the Pacific War.
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