The feeling of security provided by an ocean was breached on December 7, 1941. The war would do what the New Deal had been unable to do—end the Great Depression. As a result, Texas entered the postwar industrial economy and modernity.

Texans in World War II

By war’s end, the state of Texas had furnished a proportionally larger percentage of men and women for military service than any other state. Thirty-six Texans won the Congressional Medal of Honor and two of their number were the most decorated American servicemen—Audie Murphy and Samuel Dealey. Distinguished names included Allied Supreme Commander in Europe Dwight David Eisenhower, Pacific Fleet Admiral Chester A. Nimitz, and Oveta Culp Hobby, commander of the Women’s Army Corps.

Many Mexican Americans and African Americans served proudly amidst discrimination and segregation. Doris (Dorie) Miller manned a machine gun at Pearl Harbor and was still a messman when killed in action in 1943. Felix Z. Longoria was killed in the Philippines during World War II but was refused burial by the Anglo-run funeral home in Three Rivers in 1949. Both Mexican Americans and African Americans returned to domestic life determined to fight for equality.

Private enterprise reaped profits with new industries (aircraft factories in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and shipyards in the Orange-Beaumont-Port Arthur region as well as Galveston, Houston, and Corpus Christi). The Houston area became home to the world’s largest petrochemical industry. Wages rose, although disparities remained, and labor shortages were filled by migration of the rural population, in particular minorities and women, into urban areas. Meanwhile, white insecurities were fueled by the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Commission. The heavy black migration into the cities also intensified tensions but, overall, support for the war effort was high.

Even the modern agricultural economy grew enormously, supplying food to a world at war. Mechanization became a necessity when farm owners faced a shortage of labor and an expanded market. The mechanical cotton picker revolutionized the cotton industry and spurred the movement of cotton and cereal crops into the Rio Grande Valley and the High Plains. Irrigation and the new agricultural economy redistributed crops geographically.

Politics during World War II

Committed to conservative political and financial policy, Coke Stevenson opposed the central planning focus of New Deal programs. His accomplishments, however, included funding and improving the state highway system, raising teacher salaries, expanding the University of Texas system, and improving public awareness of the need for soil conservation. He sympathized with labor, negotiating a no-strike agreement with the unions but imposing a total ban on political contributions. He cooperated in creating a Good Neighbor Commission for Texas that focused on improving relations between Anglos, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans but showed no similar sentiment for African Americans. Wartime prosperity allowed him to leave office with a $35 million surplus.

The tenor of national politics was hardly harmonious, however. Conservative opposition peaked with the “No –Third -Term Democrats” movement of 1940 and John Nance Garner’s break with the Roosevelt administration. Eventually, Smith v. Allwright’s outlawing of the all-white primary and the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Commission caused anti-New Dealers to bolt the party and organize a third party, the Texas Regulars. Endorsing states’ rights, the party offered no candidates and only a list of uncommitted electors. The Regulars’ return to the Democratic party was an indication of the internal fighting that lay ahead.

Texas Economic Life

World War II brought irreversible changes to the state’s expanding economy. The Texas Gulf Coast became the state’s leading exporter of petroleum and accounted for 80 percent of the products going through Texas ports in the 1940s. Thirteen deep-water ports were built, including the Port of Houston that surpassed all other Texas ports in total tonnage handled and ranked second nationally in 1950. New strikes led to an increase in population in the Midland-Odessa area.

Manufacturing and government employment in military bases and the defense industry spurred the economy as the Korean War and the Cold War era intensified. Texas took a giant step in 1961 when the manned-spacecraft center was located near Houston and Texas Instruments’ silicon microchip stimulated defense spending in the state. Automotive assembly and boat manufacturing that had been non-existent in Texas prior to 1945 were third in employment and fourth in manufacturing value. Older industries—agriculture and lumber and wood products—decreased in value and in the number of workers employed.

Banking grew exponentially but never came close to matching the assets of New York and Chicago financial institutions; eastern capitalists loaned much of the money for the state’s future growth. The interstate highway system determined the future of many communities and impacted negatively on rail passenger traffic and track laid. The Texas Aeronautics Commission was created to stimulate airport and aviation development, resulting in a boom in air travel. By 1951, 638 airports existed in Texas and eleven airlines operated in the state.

Urban migration also defined the state’s economic life, exacerbating social tensions. School integration, mandated by the courts in the 1950s and 1960s, hastened urban “white flight.” Per capita income rose in the south, particularly in Texas, to about 90% of the national average, but inflation doubled after World War II and during the Korean War. Although economic opportunities improved, wage disparities were evident among black and Hispanic workers albeit Mexican Americans living in cities fared better. There was, however, a dramatic increase in the number of black professionals in the 1960 census even though they served a “detached community” and lacked capital to expand black-owned businesses.

Although women also found more job opportunities, teaching, nursing, and clerical work were still considered “women’s work.” Labor organization grew steadily, but women were seldom allowed to join. Texas maintained its anti-labor bias. Factors that insured Texas would never reach national levels of union strength included the availability of cheap, unskilled labor and the growth of service and “high tech” industries that did not conventionally attract unions.

“Agribusiness,” a term economists began to use in the early 1960s, was clearly in place in 1962 when annual receipts totaled $6.2 billion. Food processing was the state’s leading manufacturing employer as major agricultural distribution centers developed in the High Plains and South Texas. Improvements in communications and transportation decreased rural isolation and brought Texans (white Texans, at least) into closer contact.

Agricultural laborers moved into West Texas, lured by the bracero program. In many instances, cheap migratory labor from Mexico was transformed into a permanent local workforce. However, a severe forced repatriation drive occurred in July 1954. The Border Patrol and local and federal police authorities began roundups of foreign-born Mexicans. Civil liberties were denied and many were illegally forced out of the country, including many children born in the United States.

The Texas Family

The Texas family was greatly impacted by the Great Depression.  Black Texan women were affected more than white women; unemployment and discrimination continued to exact a toll on black males, psychologically as well as physically and financially. By the mid-1960s, 24 percent of all black families in Texas had female heads of household. 

Overall, the average size of the family in the state decreased, the median age for marriage declined, and the divorce rate climbed. The new urban economy and the Baby Boom caused a major demand on the public education system. Reforms implemented included a state board of education, a nine-month school year and a formula for determining minimum teachers salaries based on both local and state funding. Overall, insufficient funding continued to plague the state’s educational system and the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union placed inordinate pressure on the system. Salaries and state per-pupil expenditures increased but could not catch up to national averages.

World War II, however, was a boon for higher education in Texas.  The G.I. Bill provided college tuition for veterans and the National Defense Education Act, passed in response to Sputnik, loaned money and gave outright grants to college students and institutions and faculty involved in military and other research projects. Total enrollment increased and the Baby Boom fueled higher education’s growth until the 1980s.

Although affordable, the opportunity to attend public colleges was not equally accessible. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), joined by the American G.I. Forum founded by Dr. Hector P. Garcia, sued in federal court. The illegality of segregating Mexican Americans was upheld in Delgado v. Bastrop Independent School District (1948) and qualified Mexican Americans were upheld as legal jurors where they lived by Hernandez v. The State of Texas
(1954).

The issue of racial segregation was much harder to overcome. U.T.’s law school was ordered integrated by the U.S. Supreme Court as a result of Sweatt v. Painter (1950), but many battles still remained—minority faculty appointments, integrated dormitories, increased minority educational opportunities. Fueled by the deep anxieties of the Cold War, the racial divide intensified as did the anti-labor bias in Texas in the 1960s. The second Red Scare initiated by Senator Joseph McCarthy and other landmark national events were duplicated in Texas by W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel and Martin Dies who “laid the groundwork of militant anti-Communism in the Lone Star State before the end of World War II” (373). Although the second Red Scare was short-lived, it had long-term effects.

Texas Society and Culture at Midcentury

Industrialization also transformed Texas society and culture. Society was impacted by a decline in European immigration, the emergence of a consumer culture and even a drop in church attendance. Although Roman Catholicism doubled its membership and remained the largest single domination, the state retained a strong Protestant presence and fundamentalist values were espoused on television and radio. The 1960 presidential election was notable in that religion played a significant role.

Sports, especially Southwest Conference and Friday night football high school games, were and still are an extremely important part of the Texas culture. Professional football franchises emerged in the 1950s as did strong minor-league baseball teams and competitive basketball teams. By the 1960s, names like Clint Murchison, Jr., Tom Landry, George Blanda, and Lamar Hunt were well known; other names included Ben Hogan and Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias in golf and George Foreman in professional boxing.

Cultural activities included theater (especially in Dallas and Houston), art (out of the Federal Arts Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration), music and ballet.  Music, in particular, was diverse—from jazz to blues (catering to whites and blacks alike), country-and-western music, and tejano folk music.

Meanwhile, Texas history was enriched by the works of Carlos E. Castaneda (Our Catholic Heritage) and Ruben Rendon Lozano (Viva Tejas) who contributed the story of ethnic groups in the making of Texas. Joe B. Frantz, J. Evetts Haley and others introduced new approaches to western history; and J. Frank Dobie, Walter Prescott Webb, and Roy Bedicheck became luminaries of Texas literature. Americo Paredo (“With His Pistol in his Hand,” a study of the corrido) and J. Mason Brewer (elected the first black member of the Texas Institute of Letters) made efforts to rectify Dobie’s “unscientific approach to folklore.”