Waco History Podcast

Between 1875 and 1900, Waco experienced significant growth and transformation as it evolved from a frontier settlement into a key regional hub of commerce, education, and culture. The city grew from around 3,000 to over 20,000 as the town transformed into a vital Texas city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between 1875 and 1900, Waco experienced significant growth and transformation as it evolved from a frontier settlement into a key regional hub of commerce, education, and culture. The city grew from around 3,000 to over 20,000 as the town transformed into a vital Texas city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between 1875 and 1900, Waco experienced significant growth and transformation as it evolved from a frontier settlement into a key regional hub of commerce, education, and culture. The city grew from around 3,000 to over 20,000 as the town transformed into a vital Texas city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between 1875 and 1900, Waco experienced significant growth and transformation as it evolved from a frontier settlement into a key regional hub of commerce, education, and culture. The city grew from around 3,000 to over 20,000 as the town transformed into a vital Texas city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their journey through Waco's first 175 years, hosts Stephen Sloan and Rick Tullis tackle the founding era of Waco 1850 to 1875. Here, they start their countdown of the top five events, issues, or topics from the first 25 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their journey through Waco's first 175 years, hosts Stephen Sloan and Rick Tullis tackle the founding era of Waco 1850 to 1875. Here, they start their countdown of the top five events, issues, or topics from the first 25 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their journey through Waco's first 175 years, hosts Stephen Sloan and Rick Tullis tackle the founding era of Waco 1850 to 1875. Here, they start their countdown of the top five events, issues, or topics from the first 25 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their journey through Waco's first 175 years, hosts Stephen Sloan and Rick Tullis tackle the founding era of Waco 1850 to 1875. Here, they start their countdown of the top five events, issues, or topics from the first 25 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their journey through Waco's first 175 years, hosts Stephen Sloan and Rick Tullis tackle the founding era of Waco 1850 to 1875. Here, they start their countdown of the top five events, issues, or topics from the first 25 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host Stephen Sloan and guest host Rick Tullis launch a new season exploring the top events, issues, and individuals from each generation of Waco's History. They also debut the new song, Wacotown by Wes Cunningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guest host Rick Tullis sits down with Dr, Stephen Sloan as they explore the long history of banks in town with fourth-generation Waco banker David Lacy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During WWI in Waco, the puttering, sputtering sounds of biplanes filled the skies. The area around today's Extraco Events Center had been converted into an airfield to serve as a military training facility, and by the time the war ended, Rich Field had graduated some 400 flyers, many of whom served in France. Lee Lockwood, the son of a Waco banker, remembers how the financial community, knowing the training center would be good for Waco, offered its support: "The field could not be obtained without having railroad facilities. It was a long distance from the main line—railroad line. But arrangements were shortly made to buy the necessary property. And a spur track was run from the Cotton Belt railroad through what is now known as New Road and went on forward through to Camp MacArthur. After the war the railroad was abolished and New Road was opened which we used quite often in the city." Lockwood explains that the field provided ample free entertainment: "Aviation at that particular period of time was rather new. And we did go out quite often to watch the maneuvers and the training going on at that time." The amusements of Rich Field extended to other counties as well, as Bobby Joe Fulwiler of Waco describes: "There was one, had engine problems and landed at Calvert. And, of course, everybody in Calvert ran down to see the airplane. It was just marvelous to see an airplane on the ground." After WWI, Rich Field was turned over to the city and became a municipal airport. In a 1988 interview, Jack Flanders of Waco recalls how the airport allowed him to fulfill a dream during his student days at Baylor: "Christmastime, late '40, I told my dad they had a Civilian Pilot Training Program that I'd just give anything if I could take. I just wanted to fly. I always loved the air. Well, he came up with the money, fifty bucks, which included about fifty hours of flying, plus ground school. Ran across larger part of the semester, and we'd go out to what is now called Richfield High School. Well, it was Rich (pauses) Field. And the old office area is in what's the Lion's Den now. I learned to fly out there, [took] ground school on campus, and got my wings in the spring of '41." Two years later, Flanders entered the army air corps and flew 51 missions over Germany. The municipal airport at Rich Field closed a few years after WWII, as it was no longer able to accommodate the newest commercial planes. The Heart of Texas Coliseum, now Extraco Events Center, was built in the early fifties, and Richfield High School, now Waco High, opened in 1961. A Curtiss JN-4 stationed at Rich Field in 1918. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Numerous expressions exist about how much the devil loves to take advantage of the idle hands and minds of mortals. But while some people find trouble in their free time, or simply waste it, others use it in positive ways. Frank Curre of Waco ended up with some downtime in June of 1945, when the escort carrier he was serving on was sent to the docks at San Francisco because of engine trouble. While the carrier was being overhauled, Curre took a step that would last forty-nine years: "And I was standing on the fantail one day, and the skipper come down. We got to talking, and while we was talking, I said, ‘Man, I wish I could go do something I'd like to do.' He said, ‘What is it you'd like to do?' I said, ‘Well, I wouldn't do it earlier, but,' I said, ‘I'd like to go home and get married.' He said, ‘How you know she'll marry you?' I said, ‘Well, about three months ago I mailed her a letter and told her I didn't know when I'd get home, and it's a possibility I may not make it home. But if I get home again, we're getting married.' And I said, ‘I ain't had a negative reply yet, and I've received lots of letters.' So he give me—says, ‘Go up and tell the yeoman give you a ten-day emergency leave home.' Said, ‘You're going to have to fly.' So I flew home, we got married, and I took her back to San Francisco with us." Madison Cooper Jr. used his spare time to knock everyone's socks off in Waco, as Mary McCall of Dallas explains: "For years, in secret, he wrote a novel, a two-volume novel called Sironia, and, of course, a lot of people in Waco thought they recognized Waco (laughs) residents. He told me that it was strictly fictional. Well, I doubt that. I think writers probably write what they know about. And it became a best-seller. And, oh, he went to New York; he was interviewed. He really had a wonderful, exciting experience. And all of it was for the purpose of putting more money into his Cooper Foundation." Baptist missionary John David Hopper, from the Baton Rouge area, served in Eastern Europe for nineteen years and learned multiple languages in order to talk with locals. Hopper recalls that, in his free time, he studied Esperanto, an international language created in the late 1800s to make communication possible between people who had no other language in common: "I thought that's a great idea, so I became a member of the Esperanto Club. I met the Esperantists in Vienna and in Budapest and down in Bulgaria, and I had [a] good time. They always are friendly because you come in and you speak Esperanto with them, and they'll take you and show you their city. They'll invite you in their home. They have a meal. And I began to make Christian contacts as well. "And I'm a radio amateur. I had my radio amateur's license in Vienna. So on Sunday afternoons their Esperanto group was on there from all over Europe and from South America, if the conditions were right. And we just talked to each other for an hour, an hour and a half, and knew each other by our first names, all in Esperanto. "So that was just a fun thing. That wasn't serious. It was just a fun thing. And I still have my books, in literature and some world literature, all of it in Esperanto. I have an Esperanto Bible that I keep. And every once in a while, I'll pull it down and read a Psalm or read, you know, passage from that." When—or if—free time presents itself, we should all consider doing something that will change the future for the better. L. L. Zamenhof, creator of the Esperanto language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the war in Europe was winding down in the spring of 1945, exhausted troops probably thought they were immune to being shocked. But knowledge of the atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps was on the horizon. Nothing could have prepared them for that. Hank Josephs of Corpus Christi served in Intelligence & Reconnaissance during the war and recalls checking out reports of a concentration camp near the town of Dachau in late April of '45: "We got there, and the first thing we saw was a sign over the entrance which says, Work Will Make You Free, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei.' We went through the gate, and we shot a few Germans. They were escaping. I looked at the—at the prisoners in their striped garb, so filthy and decimated. One of them moved. And I went over to him, and he said, ‘Bist a Yid?' Are you Jewish? I said, ‘Ich bin a Yid.' I am Jewish. And then I told him, ‘Alles geet. Alles geet.' I speak a little Yiddish. ‘Alles geet. Alles geet.' All is good. All is good. And I opened my C ration and fed him a little soup. And I asked him what his name was. He said, ‘Meine namen ist Herman.' ‘Ich.' My name is Herman, too. He died two hours later in my arms." Wilson Canafax of Fort Worth was a member of the 1110th Engineer Combat Group and heard about the Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after it was liberated. He decided to go see what it was and describes encountering a former inmate: "Before I got to the front entrance, there was a young fellow, came up to me speaking perfect English. And he said, ‘I see you have a cross on your lapel. Are you a chaplain?' I said yes. He said, ‘Think you could do us a favor?' I said, ‘Well, I can try.' It turned out that this person talking to me was the young fellow Eliezer Wiesel, who's known better today as Elie Wiesel. And he said, ‘I'd like to take you through some parts of the camp here.' Went through the main entrance, and as you've heard the expression ‘dead men walking,' that's the way the people looked. I went to several of them, some who could speak English, and I'd talk a little bit with them." Canafax explains he also led Jewish worship services, which was the second request of the young man: "So many of them had—wanted nothing to do with religion, but those who were genuine in their faith and there was the opportunity to come to a worship service, they came. We got our carryalls, those big trucks, and put the people who could be carried in those things to a place where we could have a worship service. They had to be lifted on. They had to be carried on, crying. They never thought they'd be alive. And we had some little prayer books that were distributed among those that wanted them. And on one side of it was Hebrew, Hebrew prayers. The other side was English. So as they went through the service in Hebrew, then I could follow along in English itself. They cried. They shouted. When they got through, they just raising hands, sort of like our Pentecostals today raise their—they were just raising their hands in joy." When the Nazi camps were liberated in Europe, Americans were encouraged to visit them, creating thousands of witnesses to this dark chapter of history. This edition of Living Stories was made possible by a grant from the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission to the Institute for Oral History. Josephs recalls the first time he entered the infamous gate into Dachau Concentration Camp. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During cold weather, most people want to huddle inside around heat sources, but some jobs force people to brave the elements. Waco businessman and historian Roger Conger delivered groceries for J. C. Crippen & Sons as a teenager in the 1920s. He recalls a winter delivery to Waco High English teacher Marie Leslie that can only be described as a learning experience: "Her house was on the west side of North Eighteenth Street right across from Providence Hospital. And I pulled across the street to the wrong side of the street, it was. In other words, I was heading north, and it's a steep, downward hill there. And I pulled against the curb, and there was ice on the curbs that particular Saturday. Was a cold, cold day. I left my engine running, and I pulled the combination clutch release and brake of a Model T, which is to your left hand. I pulled that up and thought that I had locked the brakes. Left the engine running, went around to the back, got her order off, and went inside Miss Leslie's house and delivered her groceries. And when I came back out of her house, to my consternation, I couldn't see any truck. I hurried out to the curb, and I looked down the hill, and there was a filling station at the foot of the hill down there, and I saw a crowd of people around in this gasoline station. And with my box in my hand I ran down the hill and found that my truck, still loaded with Crippen groceries, had careened down this icy hill into that filling station, crashed into the back of an automobile that was getting some gasoline in it, and had thrown my load of groceries all over that end of Waco. (laughter)" Fortunately, both the driver of the vehicle and Mr. Crippen were very understanding. In the late thirties, George McDowell of Houston, a recent West Point graduate, was stationed at Fort Sill in Oklahoma with the 18th Field Artillery, a horse-drawn regiment. One of his assignments concerned a horse-drawn unit at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, the 12th Field Artillery, which was becoming motorized and had equipment and horses it no longer needed: "Our battery was designated to drive down from Fort Sill to Fort Sam Houston, pick up 246 horses, 8 guns, and 16 wagons and march them overland back to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, right in the dead of winter. When we got down to Fort Sam Houston, we found out that half of these horses we were going to take back had never been in draft pulling a gun or wagon or anything. So after we left Fort Sam Houston, we—first day, we only made about sixteen miles; the next time, about twenty-four. And we were hitting about thirty to thirty-two miles a day. But we'd try to bivouac by three o'clock in the afternoon. But then it got below freezing at times, and we weren't sleeping worth a damn. And you didn't have sleeping bags in those days. You just wrapped up in blankets and other things like that and did the best you could. The horses were not taking that cold weather. So every morning we'd have a—almost a rodeo getting hitched up. It was dark, and daylight didn't come till about seven o'clock. And so that march taught me, I said, ‘Well, I sure don't want to go to war with horses.' (laughs)" Shortly after this operation, McDowell was transferred to the army air corps as an ordnance officer and served in North Africa, Italy, and the Pentagon in World War II. During a wintertime assignment, George McDowell saw firsthand the challenges of using horses in combat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many memories from our youth are intertwined with those of school, the place where we were making friends and developing interests. Waco native Helen Geltemeyer shares a treasured memory from her schooldays: "My earliest memories of Bell's Hill is going to school, walking every morning and with our dog, Tex, following my sister and I and maybe my brother. And the dog would stand at the door of this far end, the east end of the school, and we'd say, Tex, go home! And he'd finally go home. Every day that dog went to school with us. And I loved that school because you could see one end to the other. And the floors were just so clean and nice, and we had such a good time. All my teachers were—seemed to be so lovely." She recalls her older brother Ross and his friends: "And a lot of them had donkeys around there across the street. My brother was one of them. They loved to take their donkey to school, Hardy Jones and he, to feed—they were under these mesquite trees. They'd go over there and water them. We thought that was so funny for them to get to do it. It was just for the fun and heck of it. (laughter) They finally quit that, but I always would beg my brother to let me sit on his donkey. And he'd let me sit, and all his boyfriends would be standing around." Manuel Hernandez, whose family moved from Mexico when he was three years old, describes his school years at Mt. Carmel and Elm Mott and his struggle to learn English: "The teacher's didn't want to travel to that school. One of them decide to stay the whole week, and they rent the room. It was a nice community. But I couldn't learn English because half of the kids were Mexican people, and the others were white. We get along okay, but we separate on, kind of, the language. That was my problem, that I couldn't learn the English language until I moved to Elm Mott, where it was only three Spanish people in the school. So we had to learn it. And I was already about eleven years old, and being in the first grade, it make you feel bad. Of course, we had some Czech people that had same problems I had because they were speaking at home Czech and English at school. So it was kind of combination of language." Hernandez left the Elm Mott school during the early days of the Great Depression to find work and help his family financially. Geltemeyer eventually graduated from Waco High in the mid-thirties. Through the years, they carried with them the memories of those formative days in school. A Southern 1920s classroom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pawnbroking—or lending money on portable security—is one of the world's oldest professions. It can be traced back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire in the West and to China three thousand years ago in the East. Hank Josephs of Corpus Christi remembers he got the idea to change his family's dry goods store into a pawn shop during WWII: "Our sergeant would lend the guys five bucks on their watches, their service watches, and when they got paid two weeks later, they'd pay him back ten dollars. I said, ‘That's a hell of a deal. I want in on that deal.'" Josephs recalls one of the more bizarre stories that came out of the shop: "The one in which a guy walked in and said, ‘I want to borrow five bucks on my eye.' Had a prosthetic eye. Pulled it out of his head. He had gotten it in the service. He says, ‘I want five dollars; I need a—need a bottle of wine.' I loaned him five dollars on the wine. Some people came in later—he never did come back. People came in later and said, What's the strangest thing you ever took in? I pull out the box with the eye in it. I said, ‘Here,' and showed them the prosthetic eye, which was a beautiful brown eye with veins running through it. So we had some farmers come in and they had seen the eye, and they were looking for a wedding set. I told them, I say, if they bought the wedding set, I'd give them the eye. So sure enough they bought a wedding set, I gave them the eye, and that was the last of that." Robert Cogswell of Austin explains a problem he had in the 1970s: "I had this sophisticated instrument, but I was not a sophisticated guitar player. And I worried about my guitar. It was such a nice instrument that I didn't want it to get stolen. So I carried it with me a lot of the time, even when I was riding bicycles, and I was worried about it getting smashed or broken or damaged. It was an unhealthy relationship for a person who was already married. It was like I had this guitar on the side." Cogswell describes finding a $15 answer to his dilemma hanging in a pawn shop: "This Gretsch was made of something like three-eighths-inch plywood. It didn't pick up sound very well. In other words, it's a very quiet guitar, which is perfect for a person who can't play well." He relates how he was a bit apprehensive at first to purchase it: "I said, ‘This guitar is not the way it was when it was built. It's much better. The person who owned it really loved it because it's worn at this point, and it's worn at that point, and he has adjusted the nut and he's adjusted the strings so that they fit this guitar right. So that person loves this guitar, and I don't want to buy it out from under that person, if he's coming back to get it.' And he said, ‘No, you can buy this one. The guy who left that guitar has pawned it here five times. And he brought it in this time and said, "Okay, you can sell it this time because I'm taking this money straight to the bus station, and I'm going back home to Kentucky."'" The recent economic slump has boosted business for pawn shops and has led to the appearance of online pawnbrokers. The industry has also been aided by popular TV shows like Pawn Stars. Robert Cogswell found a guitar perfectly suited for his needs at a pawn shop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some of the clearest memories from our youth usually include times we got in trouble. Victor Newman of Waco grew up amidst cowboys in West Texas. In 1923, at the age of ten, he came to live at the recently opened Waco State Home. Newman explains how the home reacted to his cowboy ways: "Well, every time I turned around, well, somebody would grab me up and give me a spanking because of something that I said. And so finally, well, one man there, he spanked me one day. He said, ‘Do you know why I spanked you?' I says, ‘Yeah, because you're bigger than I am.' He said no. He—but they realized the language I was using was what I had heard all my life out there on the ranch. I didn't know I was saying anything wrong." Benny Martinez of Goliad recalls getting caught in his brief life of crime in the 1940s: "I remember once, my brother and I were stealing watermelons—and that's something we country boys did. We used to go in the river here by the rail—where the train crossed, and we were naked as a jaybird. We'd go across the river, up the hill, and we'd go down and crawl in the grass, and go in and grab a couple of watermelons. And this man had hundreds of them. And we'd crawl back and get in the river and let them cool off, and then we'd break them open, you know, and we'd eat them. And the old man told my daddy, ‘Your boys are coming over and stealing my watermelons. They think I don't see them, but I see them.' ‘I'll take care of them.' "'I don't want you boys going over there and stealing any—' ‘No, sir.' That put an end to that. My father put that strap on me once. One time he whipped me, and that was it. He made a believer out of me. I didn't want no more of that." Waco native Helen Geltemeyer describes a scrape she, her youngest brother, and two of his friends got themselves into in the 1930s: "One day my brother, oldest brother, had a brand new car—Ford. And I don't know why he left it at home, but Mama had gone to town shopping. And there that car sat, so my brother decided he wanted to go out to the lake, go swimming. That's before the big lake was built." Interviewer: "Right, right." "I said, ‘If you go, I'll tell on you. You'll have to let me go.' He called Bubby, and he called Allah B. And we picked them up on Twentieth and then right here on Seventeenth. He got his daddy's watch. Away we went out Twenty-fifth. And at Twenty-fifth and Maple, he was turning there, and he—wasn't very smart—we turned over. (laughter) Here I was barefooted with shorts, and I was screaming. I had Bubby's watch. And they said, Helen! Helen! You're stomping me! They let me out first. Bubby said, ‘Where's my daddy's watch?' I had it just aholding on to it. Anyway, we wrecked my brother's car. We finally got somebody to get us home, and my brother left town, and I had to face the consequences. He joined the circus. It had just been here. But he came home. He saw how easy it was. And these boys were good boys. We were just going to go swimming for a little while and come back. That's why we took the watch." Stories of getting in trouble when we were little can make good icebreakers, for we all have them in common. Benny Martinez remembers when his father found out he and his brother had been taking watermelons from a nearby patch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bullies are people who try to harm or intimidate others who they perceive as weaker. It starts in childhood. Maggie Langham Washington moved to Waco in the fifth grade and remembers how she was an easy target for bullies: "If you were a minister's child that's new in a school, you saw hard time, a real hard time because kids would do things to you just because they felt like you weren't supposed to do anything back to them because you were a minister's—you were preacher's child, preacher's brat. And after a while that got a little old with me. I decided that I wanted to be a regular person." Washington recalls a story involving a girl who others had told her was cruel: "And we were playing pass ball, and I was a tomboy. I could jump, leap high, and get that ball. So she decided, let me guard her, and I heard her. I trembled in my boots. I kept letting her get the ball, and finally I decided this is just not going to work. So when I knew they were throwing the ball to her, I just stepped in front of her and jumped up and got it, and she hit me. When I realized what was happening, the lady that was supervising the game, Mrs. Bevis, one of the teachers, was tapping me on my shoulder saying, ‘Langham, Langham, that's enough.' So that called for a spanking. I knew that. So it was reported to my homeroom teacher; we were both in the same class. And my homeroom teacher carried me into the cloakroom and she says, ‘Every time I hit something, you holler.' (laughter) And I did. And then when it came time to get Henrietta, every time she hit she needed to holler. So nobody in my class ever knew I didn't get a spanking." Interviewer: "Uh-huh. Yours was all dramatics." "Yes." Mary Darden of Waco describes an encounter with a bully in sixth grade in Connecticut that helped shape her passion for social justice: "And he was beating the crud out of this kid. I mean, the kid was bleeding, and nobody—everybody was standing around, nobody doing anything about it. I went running in, and I pushed the kid out of the way he was beating up and I got in a fight with him. And I started fighting with him, and he—he hurt me. He—I mean, I had a black eye, I'm sure. And, I mean, my face showed it. I mean, you could tell for a week afterwards I'd been in a fight. But I stood there and fought him until the teacher came out and broke us up. And I realized at that point that I was not probably going to draw a line between my personal safety and, you know, that I would take a stand." Bullying shows no signs of dissipating, especially with today's cyberculture that offers even more methods of terrorizing others. Although bullying is often dismissed as a normal part of growing up, it is harmful, and in some cases the effects last a lifetime. At Maggie Washington's school, a bully took advantage of a game of pass ball. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Swimming is a favorite summer activity in Texas, as it provides respite from sweltering temperatures. Charles Armstrong grew up in the Bell's Hill area of Waco and describes where he and other boys would go to cool off: "And from Twenty-ninth Street over where the Baylor stadium is now, there was a fence across there, and it wasn't anything but mesquite patch up there where the stadium is. And it had a little—back over there by the railroad track, had a creek come through there, and it was pretty clear water and had swimming hole up there called Little Lake. And we'd go up there and go swimming in Little Lake. And it was—you had to cut across that pasture there by where the stadium is now to get down to it." The swimming hole was isolated, and the boys were very informal, as Armstrong explains: "If you had some swimming trunks, fine. If you didn't, fine. You could just go in naked, whatever. (laughter) And when a train come along, we all got up and paraded for them as they come by. They'd [be] sitting there with white tablecloths on them tables and little things like we keeps on the table here, little—look like a little lamp there with a candle in it, you know, sitting on a table and people all dressed up in suits and everything. We'd stand out there naked [and] wave at them. (laughter) But we did that—we did that many, many times." Alva Stem, former director of Waco Parks and Recreation, remembers the role of swimming in his childhood in Waco: "My father worked for the police department as a detective, and they were given a pass to the municipal swimming pool, or ‘the beach,' over on North Fourth Street. This was a season pass to go swimming free, and so my brother and I—my brother Jack and I—always went down to the swimming pool once a day to go swimming. Later on in the years, when I became about twelve years old, I was hired as the basket boy, and the basket boy is a young man that takes the baskets that they had there and they would give to the patrons to put their clothes in when they changed into their bathing suits. Then it was my job to put their baskets in the proper numbers in the proper location in the basket room with the swimming pool, and to give the patrons their basket when they came back." John Lott Jr. of Goliad recalls that escaping the heat was sometimes a family affair: "Well, we went to the river every summer for about a month: Cousin Henry and Cousin Ella and Virginia Mae, Aunt Helen and Happy and Butch and our family and Aunt Hattie and Atch. And we had tents, and we'd camp down there at the bend, and Cousin Willy even came down and made a swimming suit out of a gunny sack: cut holes in it and put his feet in it and rolled it up and tied it around here. And we had a diving board and a swing. I know we had a—Dad made them a canvas house, partition with canvas, to where women and men could put on their bathing suits." Swimming helps make the summers in Texas bearable and more enjoyable. That initial splash every time erases all discomfort from the stifling heat. Boys enjoying a swimming hole. (Courtesy of Library of Congress) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An annual tradition for many students and teachers is looking for summer employment. During the 1940s, these jobs were becoming easier to find, with a recovering American economy and the war overseas. Jane Martin, former missionary in East Africa, lists a few of the summer jobs that she held in the 1940s to pay her way through Mars Hill College in North Carolina: "I worked for the government at the Department of Interior, and I worked for the Department of Navy." Interviewer: "In Washington, DC, those things are possible." "You know, but you don't say that I—you were sorting mail and things like that. (both laugh) You weren't—yes. I worked one summer for a community program for underprivileged children. I worked for a department store, but I wasn't working in the store; I was in the warehouse. And to my amazement, they came to me one day, and I thought, Oh my, have I done something wrong? They said, Come with us. We want to talk to you about something. And they put me on the loading dock, as a fourteen-year-old, to receive the trucks as they came in. Their concern was—I had a—I was sitting in a little enclosed room. Their concern was that the language would be pretty bad. But when the truckers arrived bringing in the goods for the department store, they see this young teenager, (both laugh) and they—they minded their language." Dr. Eugene Jud, former executive director of Caritas in Waco, remembers an encounter he had while teaching in Corpus Christi: "At the end of that year, we had a big PTA meeting on the end of the year. A man came up, was a big old guy; name was George Bellows. He said he just wanted to meet the teacher that helped his son become a public speaker. I accepted his comments, and that was fine." Jud describes how that meeting helped him in the summer of 1941, when he was looking for a temporary job: "Teachers always do a little moonlighting. So I went out to the naval air station. Just everybody would be going out there from all over the country; they—they were applying. So we'd go to the personnel department, and I sat there a long time waiting for my turn. And one of the guys who came in, I said, ‘Who are you waiting for?' And he said, ‘I come—I'm waiting to see George Bellows.' And I said, ‘Who's he?' He said, (laughs) ‘Oh, he's the guy [who] runs this place.' I said, ‘Is he George Bellow Jr.'s dad?' He said, ‘Yeah—that's'—and said, ‘I'm George's good friend.' So I—that gave me an idea. So instead of going and seeing a personnel man or filling out all the forms, well, I went in to see George Bellows. (laughter) "I introduced—he remembered me. And he asked what I wanted, and I told him I wanted a summer job. And he just said—he buzzed his little buzzer and called for his personnel director. And he says, ‘Put this man on.' (laughter) The personnel director was very smart. He asked me a question or two, and he said, 'I'll tell you what: you report here tomorrow, and you report in my department. You'll be one of the personnel.' So I became one of the members of the personnel staff." As long as a college education is not free and educators are underpaid, many students and teachers will continue to seek out temporary jobs during the summer months. Sorting mail in the 1940s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Originally Aired 06/2019 In this episode In one afternoon, 114 people lost their lives and Downtown Waco's skyline was forever changed. Eric Ames, Assistant Director for Marketing & Communication for the Baylor University Libraries and ITS, walks us through the day the 1953 tornado touched down. We talk about the damage the storm caused, stories of hope in the aftermath, and ways the tornado's effects are still felt today. You can find Eric's book on Waco on Amazon, and most places books are found. Be sure and follow Waco Walks to learn about other historic walks in town.  The photo in the album artwork for this episode was used with permission by the Texas Collection at Baylor University. The Texas Collection is Baylor University's oldest special collections library and serves as the University Archive that collects, preserves, and provides access to materials on the history, heritage and culture of Texas. Learn more on their website.  About the podcast The Waco History Podcast is co-hosted by Randy Lane and Dr. Stephen Sloan. Randy Lane is the great-grandson of Waco architect Roy E. Lane. He's also a former American Forces Network Radio DJ and is currently the host of the High Performance Leadership and Charity Champions Podcasts.  Stephen heads the Oral History Institute at Baylor University. He's authored several books and created and developed WacoHistory.org, a website and free mobile app for learning more about Waco's history.  Together they're telling the known and unknown stories of Waco's past.   Find out more at wacohistorypodcast.com. Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wacohistorypodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wacohistorypodcast Support the show here: https://anchor.fm/waco-history-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since its dedication in 1910, Waco's Cameron Park has grown from 125 to more than 400 acres, with land gifts from the Cameron family, and has provided children with countless hours of exercise and enjoyment. Charlie Turner of Hewitt recalls playing in the park as a young boy in the 1950s and 60s: "There were some little wading pools we would go play in, and then, of course, I would get in trouble every now and then because after I got in the wading pool, I'd get back in the dirt by the flowers but had a real good time. And, you know, it was just a great place to play because where I lived, there was no grass in the backyard. So going into a park like Cameron Park, it was like a kid's dream because there were all the trees down near the Pecan Bottoms. There were these big swings that I remember and this merry-go-round and the seesaws, and then there was a climbing ladder and then the monkey bars. "Every now and then—I had an old Tonka truck. It was a moving van Tonka truck that I had a string on, and I'd take it with me once in a while and pull it around on the—on the street part that was paved. If I had a ball, I could throw it as hard as I wanted to and not get in trouble because it was in the neighbors' yard. I could play ball; I could hit the ball as hard as I could. Cameron Park was a paradise to me." He describes the many adventures the park afforded him: "There were these trees there, there was vines growing through the trees, and I remember moss down there—whether it was there or not. As a kid, I remember it. And I remember seeing pictures in books about these forests and all, and so when I'd get in Cameron Park I'd go looking. And here were these forest-like-looking areas that I remembered from reading the books. And I could be in England, or I could be in Germany, or I could just be in the Brazilian jungle, or—so Cameron Park took on a new personality each time. I was in the Amazon one time. I was in Nottingham Woods the next time, the Sheriff pursuing me, and then, trying to get away from the piranhas in the little wading pools and all, you know. I had a—well, we'll say I had a fertile imagination." Frank Curre of Waco shares memories of Cameron Park from the 20s and 30s: "Proctor Springs. Being able to go down there and get that cold water coming out of that hill and get in that little pool. And we could take watermelons down there in the summer and put them in that cold water and get them good and cool and break them open and eat. They had duck pens with exotic ducks in them for you to visit and a little pool for them to swim in. It was just great to be in the park." Curre explains that some of his favorite activities involved the Brazos: "Mama used to tell us, ‘You boys don't get into that water down—' talking about the river. And we'd spend hours in the water and come home in the afternoon, and our eyes are bloodshot. And she'd say, ‘Y'all been in that water?' ‘No, ma'am.' And your eyes are bloodshot. (laughter) But we had ropes tied off the trees hanging over the river, and we'd swing into the river. We'd swim from one side to the other. We just had a ball. We'd play piggy-wiggy or something: touch each other and try to swim away and all that stuff. But we had a great time. We loved fishing. We always kept throw lines in the river." Today, Cameron Park remains mostly undeveloped and is one of the largest municipal parks in Texas. No matter what new technology and toys come along, nothing will replace exploring and playing in the great outdoors. A vintage postcard of Cameron Park in Waco, Texas. It's easy to see how the park could transport Charlie Turner to other places and times. (Photo courtesy of The Texas Collection) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Among southern states, Texas was a leader in the desegregation of public education. In 1964, Texas accounted for approximately 60 percent of integrated school districts in the South. Robert Lewis Gilbert was the first black teacher to be hired in a white school in Waco and describes taking on that position: "Everybody was telling me before I went, Well, you know, white kids, you're going to really have to do something to teach them, you know. And—and there was a kind of a question in my mind as to whether or not I would be able to keep up with these kids if they were so smart. But after a few moments of observation during my student teaching, I detected that there were some—some geniuses, some average, and some mediocre whites just as there were blacks. And, boy, I said, ‘Well, you know, this is'—it dawned on me that, you know, people are people. And those kids, many of them, they'd looked for guidance toward knowledge, and they were looking for me to pour it out. And many people had me under the impression that I was to go there and these children were going to ask me certain questions and things that I wouldn't be able to answer them, and it would show me as inferior." Maggie Washington pioneered teacher integration in the Midland Independent School District. She recalls the reactions from her new white co-workers: "Even the custodian tried to give me a hard time. A lot of teachers were so disgruntled that they were working with a black teacher that they went to the principal. He was a Christian man. And he said, ‘Now, anybody who doesn't want to work with Maggie Washington, put your request for transfer on my desk.' So several of them put their request for transfer on his desk. And one man on my wing, he went to the principal and said, ‘I just want to know something. What criteria did you use to get Maggie Washington here?' And the principal told him; not only told him, he let him read it." At a PTA meeting, that teacher made sure Washington spoke last: "But, baby, I spoke. And I was talking about my favorite subject as related to everyday life. I brought it right on down front to them. When that meeting was over, the white parents just rushed up. Girl, you couldn't see me. And there was a—a teacher whose husband was there, and he was a doctor. He said, ‘Oh, put her on the air. She is good.' So the principal called me in the next morning and just fell out laughing. (laughter) He said, ‘You fixed them good.' I said, ‘I wasn't trying to. I just discussed social studies.'" Washington also faced a challenge in winning over some of her students. She recalls an encounter with a girl in her fifth-grade class: "I said, ‘Eldemina, what's wrong, honey?' ‘My mama doesn't like Negroes.' I said, ‘Oh, why?' She said, ‘She said they steal and fight.' I said, ‘Are those Negroes that live in Mexican town that—that's doing all that stealing and fighting?' ‘Oh, no ma'am.' (interviewee laughs) ‘Okay,' I said, ‘you tell your mother that.'" The Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education is more than half a century behind us. But since then, de facto re-segregation has become a growing concern, especially in large cities in the Northeast and Midwest, where the most segregated schools today are located. Teacher integration typically took place in areas where student integration was under way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Waco History talks with Justice Matt Johnson on the history of the McLennan County's Courthouse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The mission of Historic Waco is to preserve the heritage of Waco and McLennan County, Texas for future generations and to present enriching diverse historical experiences for audiences of all ages. Our mission is fulfilled through educational programming, community lectures, diverse exhibitions, and through our three interpreted house museums that are open to the public: Earle-Napier-Kinnard House, East Terrace House, and McCulloch House. President of Historic Waco Eric Ames Executive Director: Erik Swanson https://www.historicwaco.org/strategic-plan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Waco.. A Fantastical History with Ashley Bean Thornton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sloan talks to Waco Civic Theater Interim Executive Director Kelly M. about upcoming and past events Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In August 1910 on the corner of Fifth & Austin in downtown Waco, construction began on a state-of-the-art, steel-frame office building. Founders and board members of the newly formed Amicable Life Insurance Company had originally planned a structure with eight stories, but that number soon rose to seventeen and then twenty-two. Construction on the building, known as the "ALICO Building," lasted a year and was the talk of the town, with crowds of onlookers common. Lee Lockwood remembers being in those crowds: "They would carry those big steel beams clear up to the top of that building, and we'd just stand there with our mouth open." Mary Sendón recalls the town's attitude toward the structure: "My dad said, ‘That's crazy! What are they going to do? Put up one skyscraper in this little town?' And everybody made fun of it right at first because it was so tall. And when Will Rogers came to Waco and spoke at the auditorium—the old auditorium—he said that Waco was a tall skyscraper surrounded by Baptist churches. (laughter) And I think somebody else mentioned that it was a lonely spire surrounded by Baptists. Of course, the Baptists always got the brunt of the jokes. But my dad finally—they finally realized that Waco did need some growth. And, you know, they began to build other buildings, some six-story buildings. And they thought it was pretty good. Then they began to be proud of it. And the fact that it withheld the tornado was another thing. They thought, Well, that was a good contractor. He knew—he knew what he was doing." During that devastating storm on May 11, 1953, Victor Newman was in his office on the 4th floor of the ALICO Building with business partner Floyd Casey. Newman describes their experience: "Well, I looked up and, oh, the wind was blowing, and it was getting bad. But I'd been in storms, but I had never been in a storm like that. And Mr. Casey and I—he was there, and we were sitting there and looking. And I said, ‘Look, Mr. Casey,' and a telephone pole come down the street. It wasn't turning over or anything, but all the wires were hanging on it. And it was just floating just about right by our office, just going down. And when Mr. Casey saw that he said, ‘Vic,' said, ‘We have a tornado.' And so I said, ‘Well, what are we going to do?' He said, ‘I'm going to get under my desk.' And I said, ‘Well, I believe I'll get under mine,' and so we did. And we could hear all the noises upstairs. I thought that the building had broken in two, people just running down the stairs screaming and this, that, and the other. But when we—it was over—well, you know, that was plastered walls and things. But when it was over, there were no cracks in there, but it was just little sand, plaster, all over the top of our desk[s]. In other words, it was shaken that much. And they said up above that—up on the top floors—it was swaying enough that the desks was going from one side of the office to the other." The building was one of the few downtown to survive the tornado. Portions of its façade were altered in the 1960s, and today the ALICO Building continues to tower over downtown Waco and serves as the home office for American-Amicable Life Insurance Company of Texas and its corporate family, in addition to offering rental office space. It's also a comforting landmark to locals, its neon lights visible for many miles at night. The ALICO Building remains the tallest structure in downtown Waco. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the Great Depression, newspapers struggled alongside other businesses throughout the country, as many of their customers were having to pinch pennies like never before. At the time of this 1974 interview, Harlon Fentress was chairman of the board of directors of Newspapers Incorporated, which owned the Waco Tribune-Herald. He recounts his days in the advertising department of the Waco News-Tribune during the early thirties: "We had a good many promotions because business was bad in those days, and we would create events which would supply advertising. Well, let's say we had a Father's Day coming up. Most of the merchants didn't pay much attention to it. We would create a Father's Day special edition or a special section of the paper. Things of that nature." In addition to the Waco papers, in the 1930s Newspapers Incorporated owned several small-town newspapers in Texas. Fentress recalls the challenge of collecting payments in Breckenridge, where the bulk of distribution was rural: "Our circulation man would start out with some old model car—it was probably an old Willys-Knight or something like that—with a half stock trailer on behind it. He would come back in the evening with a couple of sheep, a dozen chickens and four or five dozen eggs and slab of bacon. (laughs) They paid for their subscription that way." Longtime Waco newspaper editor Harry Provence describes the Waco Times-Herald, the afternoon paper, during the Depression years: "The staff was trimmed to the very bone, and the people who were still there, who'd been there during the early thirties, recalled 10 percent salary cuts more than once just to keep the thing going. As a matter of fact, in 1938 we had a 10 percent salary cut—out of a clear blue sky in June of '38. I got married and got a salary cut all in one easy operation. (laughter) They never got to the point of requiring us to buy our own pencils, but they doled them out like they were selling them to us. And it was just against the rules to spend any money that you could possibly get out of. The papers were small; there wasn't enough advertising to—well, if we got a sixteen-page paper we just thought the millennium had come. Most of the issues, if you go back through our files, are eight, ten, and twelve pages, year after year, during—all during the thirties." Provence explains the journalism term close editing and its importance during the thirties: "The minimum number of words to convey the—the story. As I said awhile ago, we had small newspapers; our standing orders were to get all the news in the paper, and that meant that the superfluous language just had to go. And we wore out a—many a black pencil marking through whole paragraphs and sentences and words." The Waco News-Tribune and Waco Times-Herald weathered the economic slump of the 30s and merged together in 1973 to form the Tribune-Herald. No doubt Fentress and Provence could have drawn parallels between the Great Depression and the recent Great Recession concerning their impact on the newspaper industry. Throughout the 1930s, newspaper employees had to make do with a shoestring budget and no-frills work environment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Even with its dry spells, wind, and blistering heat, Waco has enjoyed a bounty of flowers over the years. Mary Sendón recalls the Cotton Palace expositions held in the early 1900s in the Bell's Hill area: "They kept the grounds so beautiful. You never saw so many chrysanthemums in all your life as you would see at the Cotton Palace. They planted those things early. Every row that led up to the new—there were several different areas—they led to the main building—and every one was bordered with chrysanthemum flower beds. And they had the flower building, the florist building there, with all of the flowers. Florists came together even from outside and had beautiful arrangements." Florist Harry Reed describes a few of the local flowers his family sold before it became common to import flowers from all over the world: "We raised a lot of marigolds in the summertime. That's a crop that you can—an outdoor crop that you can grow. We grew dahlias, a lot of dahlias, because we couldn't get much else. And the flower now known as lisianthus, grows wild down around Willis, Texas. And we used to ship those wildflowers. About the only two flowers we had during July and August, that time of the year, was bluebells and marigolds, and we sold lots of them. (laughs) But now nobody would think about using those things." Alva Stem, former director of Waco Parks and Recreation, tells about some of the vegetation added to Cameron Park during his tenure: "The vinca vine that grows wild on the slopes, we transplanted that into various hills for soil erosion as well as color because in the springtime it would come out with a beautiful blossom. And then we would plant bluebonnets out there; these would be along the scenic right-of-way. One of them was going up toward the Cameron Park Clubhouse. That was one of the big areas that we put the bluebonnets. And it bloomed for years until the drought just got it all." With funding from former Congressman Bob Poage, Miss Nellie's Pretty Place was created in Cameron Park in the 1980s. Max Robertson was Waco Parks and Recreation director during that time and describes the implementation of the site: "I remember the first year had the most magnificent show of wildflowers, and I've not seen it look anywhere near as good as it looked that first year. [In] fact, we had, in our research—and Mr. Poage was highly involved in that—we were hooked up with, at the time, one of the top wildflower persons in the state, a fellow by the name of John Thomas who owns a company called Wildseed. This John Thomas came in and seeded the park. It was a beautiful red—it was a poppy that actually was not a native species that Mr. Thomas said, ‘This is going to be a sure-fire flower so you'll have it when you open.' And he was absolutely right; it was a beautiful sea of red over that Miss Nellie's." Perhaps because of the frequent harsh weather conditions in Central Texas, residents can enjoy the contrasting beauty of the area's flowers all the more. Texas bluebells, once a popular item at Reed's Flowers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé. In 1881, Southwestern Telegraph and Telephone Co. formed with the purpose of operating exchanges in Arkansas and Texas. The company took over exchanges in Galveston and Houston and started several others across the state. Waco's very own telephone exchange opened in the fall of 1881 with 45 subscribers. Robert Lee Lockwood remembers the calling situation in the early 1900s: "We had two telephones in Waco. There were two different and separate telephone systems. We called it at that time ‘the old and the new phone.' And they were just as separate and independent as could be. And we had two telephones, and I remember our phone number: 2-2-5. It was a low number. And that's when—when we got our phone, that was how many phones were in the city of Waco on that system, and then the other system came in. And it was really—you almost had to have two phones if you wanted to reach everybody that had a phone because some had what we called ‘the new phone' and some had ‘the old phone.' But on account of the various work my father was always in, why, he felt he needed both phones, and we always had that." Mary Sendón recalls the first telephone installed in her family's home: "Was one of these that hangs on the wall; you know, you had to crank it. We hadn't had that telephone a week until it was raining hard one day, and they had lightning and thunder. And lightning struck that telephone, and it started burning. (laughs) I wish we could have had videos in those days. Everybody in the family was running for a pan of water or a glass of water trying to put the fire out." Sendón explains the ins and outs of using an exchange during that era: "Telephones were kind of hard to get in the first days. You had to take a party line. The first one we got we had to take a party line. It was very ineffective because I would get on a line with somebody else, and somebody else would start talking to me like he thought that was the person he was talking to. And, boy, you'd just be surprised how much gossip we heard! (interviewer laughs) I solved a scandal there on the telephone one day because I was calling my plumber, and the plumber's daughter was having an affair with some important man downtown. And when I got the line, it was the plumber's wife talking to that man, and so I found out the whole story. (laughs)" She describes a great-aunt who worked at the telephone building at Fourth & Washington: "She made a—quite a hit with all the businessmen because she had a beautiful voice and she had such a kind voice that the businessmen said she was the perfect telephone operator. And my mother used to tell me that on Christmas Eve she would take my mother and another one of the cousins with her to work so they could help her carry home all the gifts that the businessmen would send her up there at the office." In 1949, the Waco exchange, which comprised nearly 26,000 telephones, switched over from a manual switchboard to the dial system. With this new setup, customers could dial a number themselves and no longer had to go through an operator. With early crank telephones like this one, users turned the handle on the side to ring for an operator. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sloan talks with guest Rick Tullis about Wacoan WD Custead and his claim of being the first in flight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sloan chats with Sean Sutcliffe about the history of the Waco Fire Department. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The sport of basketball was created in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a teacher at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. Since that very first game that involved a soccer ball and two peach baskets, the sport has undergone many changes. Baylor football coach Grant Teaff recalls when a high school coach in Snyder, Texas, drove him to basketball tryouts at San Angelo College in the early 1950s: "We go to the gym, report in. Then they take us into the gym, and Coach [Max] Baumgardner, who was a UT guy, and his assistant was Phil George, a UT guy, and brought us in there and said, ‘Looks guys.' Said, ‘We got five scholarships. They're actually partial scholarships. You have to work if we give you one. We give you a job and give you a partial scholarship. Only have five of them. And so we're going to have a tryout for those five.' And I'm thinking, Well, I wonder how this is going to work. Said, ‘Okay, guys. In a moment, Coach George is going to come up here, and he's got two big boxes. Those boxes are filled with boxing gloves. And you pick you a pair of boxing gloves, put those on, and this is a basketball,' he said. ‘Now, we're going to just split you up. Half of you take your shirts off and half of you leave your shirts on. We'll be shirts and skins, and we're going to have a basketball game.' He said, ‘All right, when Coach George throws the ball up, we want to see who the last five standing are.' So there was my chance for an education. And you better believe I was one of the last five standing. And I got the scholarship. Had nothing to do with basketball. It was brawl." Interviewer: "A fight broke out, yeah." "It was brawl. That's all you can say about it. Now, of course, you'd be in twelve thousand lawsuits, and the NCAA would send you to somewhere else. (laughs)" Wilma Buntin played on the girls' basketball team at John H. Reagan High School in Houston in the 1920s. She describes the uniforms: "We had a sweater that came over, and it had to have long sleeves. And then we had these black bloomers that were box-pleated. And I spent every Saturday getting that attire ready for the next week. We had electric irons by that time, but it would have been rough if it'd been before that. Let me tell you, before it was all over we began to have the shorts, but they came right here at the knees. I imagine they'd call them clam diggers now." Buntin explains how the court differed for girls during that era: "It was divided into thirds. When it was divided in thirds, that was much more difficult for us because the stops and starts were so sudden. There were certain lines you didn't go over; it was called a foul. But they soon realized that was harder to play than what the boys were playing because the boys could get stretched out, and there we had to observe all those lines. And then they had the toss-up, and if you happened to have somebody tall as you are, well, this poor little fellow on the other team never had a chance. So—and you had to stay on your side of the line. The ones who were standing waiting had to be quick enough to know where that person was going to tip the ball, and they'd try to get around there and get it. And they've come a long way in kind of evening that out. They thought they were making it easier on us, and they weren't." Over the years, many new rules and regulations have been put in place to make men's and women's basketball the sports they are today. Who knows what changes are in store for the future. In the 1920s, as Buntin explains, female basketball players wore significantly more clothing than their male counterparts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The wedding industry, movies, and TV have created fantasies about lavish proposals and ceremonies that will ensure lasting marriages. But if the love and compatibility are there from the start, simplicity will get the job done. Gloria Young of Waco started dating F. M. Young, the brother of her best friend, the summer before she went off to college. She reflects on their courtship: "Used to, I was kind of - I would really like a boy until he liked me, and then I wasn't interested anymore. I'd like somebody else, you know. And I was never sure he liked me. So, I think that was part of the thing, that he was kind of a challenge, you know. (laughs)" Young explains when marriage came into the picture: "I'm not sure that he ever officially proposed to me. I think we just kind of, you know, knew we were going to get married. What he asked me was, 'If I buy you a ring, would you wear it?' (laughs) Actually, when I got that ring, I was a senior in college. I had had my wisdom teeth - I had embedded wisdom teeth, and I had had them taken out. My jaws were all swollen up kind of like a chipmunk. And one of his best friends was getting married to a girl that her parents had a big ranch out of Walnut Springs. And they were having the wedding up there, and he was the best man. And he had come by. He was late. And we got in the car, and we were driving up there. And, of course, I had the chipmunk cheeks and could barely open my mouth to talk or anything. And the romantic way I got my ring was he said, as we're driving about a hundred miles an hour down Highway 6 headed for Walnut Springs, 'I think there's something over there in the glove compartment you might like.' And so I open up the glove compartment, and there was my engagement ring." Cathryn Carlile of Waco describes her marriage in December of 1947 to Woodrow Carlile, the brother of a close friend in Edgefield: "I think we planned a June wedding. And I know I went to work and told my boss that I was going to get married in June. And he said, 'Well, I don't want you to be off in June.' He said, 'It'd be better if you took off (laughter) now.' We went ahead and we had our wedding, and I married at home by choice. For some reason, I was - had never been really interested in the big, traditional, formal wedding, although some of the things that I remember most were beautiful weddings that I had observed at Edgefield. I wore a tailored suit. Woody and I decorated our own wedding cake. We were probably thinking about the cost and the money. Richard Philpot, who was pastor at Edgefield for a long, long time, probably one of the - if not the most, the second-most admired preacher down there through our years, performed the ceremony. And we had family." In 2011, the Youngs celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary, and the Carliles their 64th, proof that simplicity can stick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 1911 Texas Almanac reported that approximately 15,000 automobiles were in service in the Lone Star State. The Almanac went on to say, "Although the automobile is counted a luxury and in the majority of cases, is used for pleasure, or as a means of transportation from the home to the office, the automobile is found in practical everyday life in all parts of the State." Businessman Robert Lee Lockwood remembers his family was one of the first in Waco to own a car: "We bought an E-M-F 30. And I doubt if they—many people ever heard of such a car. Course, we had to crank it with hand. It didn't have an electric starter. And we had a carbide setup where the water was in the top and the carbide below, and you'd loosen the valves so the water would drip on the carbide and create the gas for your lights. Course, the taillight was an oil lamp that was used." Lockwood describes car trips in the early 1900s: "Your tires were a constant problem. You wouldn't go to Dallas and back very often without having a puncture. And you usually had your extra tire or you'd have your patch to put on it. But they wasn't hard to get off in those days. (laughter) They wasn't—it wasn't difficult to do it. Course, you'd have to pump your tire up, and you'd carry your pump with you if you didn't have an extra. But going up there, why, it would take about four hours. The roads would—winding, and it would probably—well, you'd probably stop a time or two to get water in your car and to possibly check your oil or something. I know we drove up there many a time, but that was quite an event to drive to Dallas, and we'd usually spend the night up there and then would come back the next day. A little too much to go up and back the same day." Waco civic leader Jack Kultgen talks about his first job selling cars in Dallas in 1921: "It was a whole lot different than it is now because you took cars out and demonstrated them to people in their homes, and you had to make a dozen calls on them. And I had a little money. Where—I don't know where I got it, but I had it. And I paid list price for my own automobile to demonstrate with with this dealer. That was, it turns out, the only way I could get the job. He didn't give me a dime discount to buy a demonstrator." Many people in the 1920s were buying cars for the first time, and Kultgen recalls that salespeople often had to show customers how to operate them: "If you never taught anybody to drive a Model T, why, you got something to learn yourself. You had to throw it in low, and then you had to let it fly back, and then you—that was the left pedal, and then the right pedal was your brake. Your middle pedal was reverse. And you had to be manipulating those hand things all the time. Took a lot of coordination until you got used to it. If you got somebody that was a little clumsy—it was pretty hectic teaching anybody to drive." Once considered a luxury, automobiles soon became part of the American Dream and are now difficult to live without. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sloan continues talks with Ryan Holt, Assistant City Manager about the History of the Waco Police Department. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Traveling by train has become something of a novelty for most Americans, as the routes available from surviving lines are quite limiting. But during their heyday, passenger trains, with service offered in most cities, were the go-to mode of transportation for many Americans and offered the excitement of new faces and experiences. Mary Sendón of Waco describes a notable train ride she took with her husband, Dr. Andrés Sendón: "We were sitting there, and there was a family with a—two other children, but one of them was a little girl, cute little girl. Well, my husband liked kids, and he started talking to her. Well, she wouldn't leave him alone. She just wanted to sit with him and talk and talk and talk. So finally, two little boys came up and said—wanted to get in on the conversation. They had a book with the ABC's. Sendón said, ‘Can you say the ABC's?' They did, you know. They started off saying them. And then they told him, said, ‘Now, you say them.' Well, Sendón, to tease them, he would say, ‘A, B, D, F,'—you know, he'd skip around. And the little boy looked at him and said, ‘I thought you were a college professor.' (both laugh) Well, this little girl fell in love with my husband. Her name was Kathy. She was going to Wisconsin, and they lived in Weatherford, Texas. We got off at Detroit. They went on to Wisconsin. And when we came back we didn't see them anywhere around. I said, ‘I wonder if that family is on this train again.' Sure enough, I looked up, and there stood the father with this little girl. He said, ‘You know, I walked through every train [car] on this thing here trying to find you all. She wanted to know if y'all were here.' (interviewer laughs) "So we got her name and address, and that started a correspondence. She would write cute little things, you know. Her mother would write some for her. A friendship started there between them and us and the little girl. And she asked my husband what his name was—and they were still with the ABC's—Sendón said, ‘Oh, call me XYZ.' Well, she'd write him letters—I still have them—‘Dear XYZ.' Well, do you know, to this day, those people write to me. That was the strangest friendship that we ever made. The little girl would come to see us once a year. She always had her—make her mother make cookies to bring him cookies. And now she's married, a nurse, has children, but they're still our friends. Isn't that strange how a train will do that for you? (interviewer laughs) That was our train friendship." Marcile Sullins of Woodway recalls train travel during WWII with a trip she made to see her husband who was stationed in Colorado: "I had never been away from home; I had never been out of the state of Texas. So I caught a train at Katy Depot with a six-weeks-old baby. (laughs) And during the war they put everything that they could find on the lines. I traveled in a chair car with windows that would not close, and at that time they still had coal-driven engines, steam engines, and the coal smoke came back into the car. And when we got to Colorado Springs, he had been waiting on us eight hours. We were dirty from smoke (both laugh) and tired." Interest has renewed lately in passenger rail service, due in part to rising fuel costs and growing concerns about the environment. Perhaps one day in the future trains will flourish once more across the American landscape. Streamliners first appeared in America during the Great Depression. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three years in to World War I, a $5 million construction project began on the northwest side of Waco. A few months later in September of 1917, the new training headquarters Camp MacArthur welcomed 18,000 troops from Michigan and Wisconsin. Throughout the rest of the war, the thousands of soldiers stationed at Camp MacArthur became a part of Waco's culture. Mary Sendón remembers the impact the camp had on her father's shoe business: "The soldiers began to come to town and have their work done in town. They'd come to my dad's shop. He had a nice big shop where you could sit around and read newspapers, or maybe he'd have magazines there where they—they'd wait. And he always had that place full of soldiers. In fact, he had one of them come in there wanting to work for him one day. (laughs) But he would work late on Saturday night. He'd work day and night, not only on Saturday nights but on weeknights to catch up. Then pretty soon, the—the government gave him a contract to take care of the officers' boots. They all had to have so much done to their boots all the time. (laughs) Of course, the enlisted men would just come and have their own shoes fixed, you know. But he had a contract for those officers' boots. He made a lot of money during the war. That was a bonanza for him. And that's where he got really established." During the life of the camp, strong ties were formed, as Sendón explains: "So many of the soldiers that came to Waco at that time married Waco girls when the war was over. And some of them are still living here in Waco. I noticed two or three in the paper the other day at some reunion. And there was one of those Michigan soldiers that had married a Waco girl." Less than two months after WWI ended, the government ordered Camp MacArthur's buildings to be dismantled and reused for such purposes as the construction of US-Mexican border stations. Cathryn Carlile recalls some of the remnants were used in the Edgefield neighborhood in Waco where she grew up: "The houses in the 1C block of Hackberry were built in the early 1920s from the surplus lumber from the barracks from World War I. And all of these houses were exactly alike except the two older houses, one at 1C, which was part of the dairy, and the house next door to it. So there were ten houses just alike. And they were very sturdily constructed. Four rooms and a bath. And we did have the utilities. We had utilities." Frank Curre Jr. bought a house on former Camp MacArthur grounds and tells what he and a neighbor did soon after: "Was a black man come down the street. Had a mule and a single-disc plow and a homemade rake that they'd made. We asked him what he'd charge to plow up all that back lot all the way across and rake it down smooth. He got out there and did all that. He dug up old hard rubber tire wheels, buckets full of them brass teardrop caps off them old trucks. And we threw all that away. Look what they're worth right now." Camp MacArthur officially closed on March 7, 1919. Since 1966, a historical marker has stood at the intersection of Park Lake Drive and Nineteenth Street as a reminder of the camp's brief but indelible existence. Base Hospital, Camp MacArthur, Waco, TX. (Photo by Gildersleeve) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The worst drought in Texas in recent memory belongs to the 1950s. The seemingly never-ending dry spell started in '49. By the time it came to an end in 1956, all of Texas's 254 counties, save 10, had been declared federal disaster areas. Jess Lunsford, the founding administrator of South Texas Children's Home, describes how the dire conditions threatened the new campus near Beeville: "We hauled out thirty tremendous oak trees out of that campus that died because of that drought. Well, I found an old rancher friend, Wiley Green, in San Angelo. And he had fought a water problem all his life out in that semi-arid country. And someone had told me about Wiley Green, and I went out and told him what we were up against. I spent the night there at his invitation. And the next morning I got ready to leave; he said, "I have a little check here for you." And he said, "You go back to that campus, and you get a good well dug and a good submersible pump or whatever kind of pump you think you need, and you start irrigating those trees." And it was [a] check for ten thousand dollars. And at that time that was the largest check I'd ever seen, and I remember how—how big it looked, you know. And I thought I was a pretty brave man, but I cried. It meant just that much to me because I knew this campus had the natural beauty, but it wouldn't have if you took those trees out." Interviewer: "That's right." "And they were dying. But it saved those trees. And the only reason they have a beautiful campus today is because Wiley Green gave me ten thousand dollar[s]." Interviewer: "And the idea." "Yeah." Alva Stem, former director of Waco Parks and Recreation, recalls the attempts to maintain Lover's Leap during the drought: "There wasn't any water out there from anywhere until we ran a two-inch water line from North Nineteenth and Park Lake Drive out to Lover's Leap. But by the time that two-inch water line got to Lover's Leap, there wasn't much of a trickle coming out of it because it lost all of its pressure during the distance that it had to come. And I think that since that time it has been remedied, but we weren't able to water that. And we had beautiful plum trees up there in Lover's Leap, and every year the white native plums would bloom there on Lover's Leap, going around the circle at Lover's Leap. They produced fruit, and the people would go out there and pick it. And I think you had to use about twice as much sugar as you had plum pulp in order to make some jelly or jam out of it because it was—it was so tart. They were the wild plums, but they were beautiful blossoms. And it got so dry so long that we never could keep them watered, and they all died." Welcome rains began to fall throughout Texas in the spring of 1956, ending a seven-year drought that had devastated agriculture, parks, lakes, and reservoirs. Austin Lake in the 1950s. (Courtesy of LCRA Corporate Archives) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sloan talks with Ryan Holt, Assistant City Manager about the History of the Waco Police Department Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sloan wraps up his conversation with Historian John Kamanec about The Case and Execution of Roy Mitchell in Waco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before their vaccines were made available, measles and rubella swept through towns every few years, mostly infecting young children. Everyone was expected to suffer through them at some point. Waco native Mary Sendón recalls her and her siblings' experience with the more serious of the two illnesses: "All of us—four of us—got measles at the same time. I was even in grammar school; I didn't get it till I was in grammar school. And I remember that my grandfather and my dad—you know, the men really worried about the kids a lot. You'd be surprised how much attention they gave to them. But I know my grandfather got worried because my fever was way up high. And, you know, it was so high that my nails peeled off. And he got up and went to the drugstore and tried to get something from—there was an old Kassell's drugstore down on Eighth Street, and he got the druggist to give him something to get the fever down. And there were little powders. You had to mix them in a teaspoon of water and then drink a glass of water. Fever powders, that's what they were called. And he went down and got that. "And, I tell you, we were sick for about a week. And we had to stay in a dark room, you know, because—to protect the eyes. And my grandmother was there, my great-aunt, and my father and mother, and everybody was taking care of all the sick kids. But it did affect my brother's eyes. That's why when he went into the service, he—they wouldn't take him because of his eyes. Of course, then the draft took him and put him in the air corps." Dr. Howard Williams of Orange tells how rubella, commonly known as the German measles, possibly saved his life during WWII: "I went up to Camp Atterbury [Joint Maneuver Training Center] in Indiana and finished my basic training there as a rifleman. And then we were all packed to go—we were in the 106th Division—and we're packed, ready to go that very week. And I got up with splotches all over me. I had measles—German. They put me in the hospital there at Camp Atterbury, and the 106th left. And then after ten days, they—the day the division's gone, they reassigned me. They sent me to a artillery observation battalion, and that was down at Camp Gordon, Georgia. "Well, the 106th that I was—would have been with, was one that was totally destroyed in the [Battle of the] Bulge. They were all pre-college type, and the Germans burst across the line there, and—gosh, a division is like fifteen thousand people. And out of fifteen thousand, I think like seven—six or seven thousand were killed, and another five or six thousand were captured. So had I not had German measles, I don't know what would have happened to me." Interviewer: "A lot of people you trained with, too." "And all these people I'd trained with and all. I mean, they just disappeared." Vaccines for measles and rubella were licensed in the U.S. in the 1960s. Since then, the number of cases has dropped by 99 percent, ending the role of these illnesses as anticipated life events. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sloan talks more with Historian John Kamanec about The Case and Execution of Roy Mitchell in Waco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Each autumn in the early part of the twentieth century, many Southerners made time for hog-killing. The slaughter offered a change in diet but more importantly, yielded enough food to help families get through the winter. Longtime Waco resident Louise Murphy recalls that hog-killing was a family affair, with even children given responsibilities: "They give me the intestines. I had to go get me some water, put them intestines in a pan of water. Then I had to get me a—a jar of something, get water in, hold his intestine up, and pour till it was clean on the inside. Then I put him on the table, and I would scrape him. I'd scrape him. I'd get a hairpin and put over, and I'd bring all that stuff out until you could see through that intestine just as clear as it could be. And that's what we stuffed our sausage in." Murphy describes a few hog delicacies: "The brains. I had a brother-in-law that had to have them brains and scrambled eggs. And my dad would save the liver and the lights. And my mother would go in and put her big pan on. And she put liver and lights, cook them together." "Lights" refers to the lungs of the hog. Thomas Wayne Harvey of Waco remembers how his father handled the meat: "Dad would hang the hog up, and he would quarter it out. And he had a wooden fifty-five-gallon barrel there, and it was—about four inches in the bottom was full of salt. And then he'd put a slab of bacon and then cover that with salt and then another slab of bacon and cover that with salt. And it was always all salt, pork and salt, hog all the way up to the top. And then his hams, they put all kind of seasoning on the hams they got over there. And he had a brand new tow sack bag. And they put that ham in there, and they hung it up. He'd go out there and tend to that ham. And by the time Christmas got there, you could take a ham and cut the tow sack off, and you could eat the ham raw because it was cured. It was really definely or divinely(??) cured." The attitude in a hog-killing was waste not, want not, as Harvey explains: "Most of the hide they made pork rinds out of—hog hides, nowadays you call them, but back then you call them cracklings. And then, of course, they used the meat out of the head for mincemeat. Even the—the feet was put in a solution, and the hooves was taken off of them, the hide was taken off of them for pig's feet, and they'd pickle pig's feet. About the only thing was left of the hog that was never (laughs) cured or treated was the tail, as far as I know." Hog-killings as performed in the early 1900s have largely disappeared over the years. But some enthusiasts of homegrown, old-fashioned hog products still carry out the tradition. Neighbors work with various parts of a slaughtered hog spread out on a table. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sloan talks with Historian John Kamanec about The Case and Execution of Roy Mitchell in Waco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Junior high and middle school are not days that most people would want to relive. But awkward though they may be, these years influence the rest of our lives and hopefully provide some cherished memories. Woodrow Carlile of Waco reflects on his days at South Junior High School: "I'm left-handed, and I went in this class and I went to the blackboard and started writing with my left hand on the board. My teacher hit me a lick across the shoulder or something and said, ‘Quit playing around. Write with your right hand.' And, you know, to this day, I can't write on a blackboard with my left hand. I—(laughter) I guess I may have explained to her." Carlile's wife: "So I guess some of that—" "But I appreciated that teacher. She was—she had her problems. (laughter) But she was a good—and I especially enjoyed the woodworking and the metalworking shops and the harmonica clubs and the gym classes. And I may have related that the brother who is next to me, older, won the history medal. When he went up on the stage, they requested that he wear shoes if possible. (laughs)" Hewitt Mayor Pro-Tem Charlie Turner recalls an early experience that helped shape his outlook on life: "When you're 5' 5" and weigh 108 pounds, football—you're closer to the weight of the football than you are the other players. And the old story goes, you know, the first time I suited out for football, they snapped the ball—they had a guy against me; Kelly Smith(??) was his name, I believe. It was at West Junior High School. And when they hiked the ball, I took the ball. Coach had said, ‘Hit him hard as you can.' I did, and I'm exaggerating a little bit but not much. When I woke up, probably an hour later, I realized I was a lover, not a fighter, and so I joined the band, and I played drums ever since." Dr. Clifford Madsen, respected music scholar and educator at Florida State University, describes the impact of early mentors in Price, Utah: "In junior high school, I was kind of adopted by a couple of people in the community by the name of Brown, Dorothy Brown and her husband. They were both music teachers. Dorothy was kind of the mainstay of the community. She used to be the person that would get the Messiah together every Christmas—or parts of it. And I—I can't remember—Deene Brown was his name, and he was the junior high school vocal person. So when I got into junior high school and playing in the band, he wanted me in the chorus, too. And he was the one that first started teaching me about theory. I can remember going to his house one time and his teaching me "this is dominant, this is super dominant," you know, those kinds of things. And I thought, Goodness, you know. This sounds strange and funny, and why do they have all those names? And I guess he was thinking also that somewhere along the way I'd be a musician or whatever. And those kinds of experiences, of course, are very nurturing musically for young people." Junior high and middle school experiences leave lasting impressions. As adulthood inches ever closer, young teens are looking for answers to who they are and what that means in the big picture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the early 1900s, Texas enjoyed nearly 500 miles of electric interurban railways. The bulk of the mileage, about 70 percent, was in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. A line to Waco opened in 1913. Interurbans provided frequent passenger service between urban centers, setting them apart from what existing steam railway systems offered. Interurban lines were highly sought after, as Martha Howe recalls: "My great-grandfather, W. D. Lacy, started the—was instrumental in starting the interurban railroad that came to Waco. It was going to go in another direction, but he was very instrumental in getting it to come here." Howe remembers traveling on the interurban with her sister: "When Florence and I were little girls—and I'm thinking eight and ten or maybe a little bit older—Mother would take us down to the train station here in Waco and put us on the interurban and pay the conductor five dollars and say, ‘You watch these little girls.' We had matching suitcases, and we wore little hats. (laughter) And, 'You watch these girls, and when it—when the train gets to the big Union Station in downtown Dallas, make sure they do not get off. Let them stay on the train till you get to Highland Park station, and their grandparents will be right there waiting for them.' So. And we would go and spend like ten days to two weeks in the summer." Mary Sendón explains how important the interurban was to the annual Cotton Palace: "We had lots of visitors to Waco. Fort Worth had a day; Dallas had a day. But we had an interurban, an electric train, that ran from Waco to Dallas and Fort Worth. And you could go for a dollar and a half a round trip (laughs) on the interurban. And a lot of that—all of those people would come in on that interurban. It was stationed—the headquarters were stationed on Fourth and Washington. And that old interurban would come in loaded with people, you know, and then—because they ran on the hour. Every hour there was one leaving, so they could go back home at night. But I remember the Fort Worth and Dallas days were—oh, those were big crowds then. Had huge crowds. Clay Street—I know—you know where Clay Street is. That is such a quiet street now, (laughs) but you just couldn't go down Clay Street during the Cotton Palace; people were coming and going and coming and going." As highways improved and private car ownership escalated, electric interurban railways faded. By 1942, only two lines remained in Texas, which included the Dallas-Waco branch, but these finally succumbed in 1948, bringing an end to the interurban era. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the early 1960s, many Southerners fed up with racial discrimination were participating in restaurant sit-ins, hoping to change the status quo. Robert Cogswell of Austin, a social justice activist, recalls taking part in the movement in Houston: "It was customary for black people who were demonstrating to have a token white among them to show that they weren't exclusivists. And I was often the token white. My activism had to do with a small group of youth in the NAACP who challenged the idea that Houston restaurants were already integrated. We spent our Saturdays driving around to restaurants and walking in and sitting down and not being served. We received a lot of responses that bordered on the absurd. A waitress would ignore us for a long time and then come to our table. In one case, the waitress said to me, "Are your friends Africans?" And it developed that if they were Africans, she was willing to serve them, but if they were American blacks, she was not. "In another case, I went into a restaurant with a young man who was a—in a pre-medical program in the University of Houston. He was well-dressed and clean-cut-looking young man. And we sat down at a table, and there was a booth near us which contained a drunk old man who was abusing the waitress verbally, using language that neither I nor my friend would ever use, telling her in no uncertain terms that he would like to be having sex with her. And the waitress was polite to him and served him politely and refused to serve us because my friend was black." Arthur Fred Joe was a spearhead in the integration of Waco restaurants. He explains an early sit-in on the Old Dallas Highway: "So I sat there for three hours in this restaurant and refused. But they didn't have the volume of trade that I thought that we could march in and sit in to hurt their business. See, my angle was to hurt you in your pocketbook, and this is what the program was all about. If you couldn't hurt them in their pocketbooks, you wasn't doing no good, not far as the civil rights concerned." Joe describes his first victorious sit-in at a restaurant on Austin Avenue, where he went during his break from work: "Something said, ‘Don't you go home this morning for breakfast; go there.' I just drove my car up there and parked and got out and went in there. I sat there, and they kept walking by me, these little waitresses. So I took a newspaper in with me. And all—this the way we—I started my movement: you always have something to read so it wouldn't just—you just wouldn't look stupid." Restaurant sit-ins such as these were instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended legally-sanctioned racial segregation in the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices