TX Chap 1: Texas Political Culture and Diversity

Ranchero culture

quasi-feudal system whereby a property's owner, or patrón, gives workers protection and employment in return for their loyalty and service

East Texas

social and cultural extension of the Old South. It is primarily rural and biracial. Despite the changes brought about by civil rights legislation, African American "towns" still exist alongside Anglo "towns," as do many segregated social and economic institutions.

Liberal's Ideology of Texas

A distinct minority in Texas, liberal believe in using government to improve the welfare of individuals; they favor government regulation of the economy, actively support the expansion of civil rights, and tolerate social change. Liberals believe state government can be used as a positive tool to benefit the population as a whole. Most Texas liberals accept private enterprise as the state's basic economic system but believe excesses of unregulated capitalism compromise the common good. They endorse state policies to abate pollution, increase government investment in public education and health care, protect workers and consumers, and prevent discrimination against ethnic/racial minorities and members of the LGBT community, among others. Liberals often believe that a great deal of social inequality results from institutional and economic forces that are often beyond a single individual's control. As a result, they support the use of government power to balance these forces and to promote a better quality of life for middle- and lower-income people. For example, liberals argue that it is fair to tax those with the greatest ability to pay and to provide social services for the community as a whole.

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

A treaty that has helped remove trade barriers among Canada, Mexico, and the United States and is an economic stimulus for the Texas Border because it is a conduit for much of the commerce with Mexico.

What happened because of the semitropical South Texas climate

Because of the semitropical South Texas climate, The Valley (of the Rio Grande) and the Winter Garden around Crystal City were developed into (and continue to be) major citrus and vegetable producing regions by migrants from the northern United States in the 1920s. These enterprises required intensive manual labor, which brought about increased immigration from Mexico.

What the 1960s were known for

1960s are known for the victories of the national civil rights movement. Texan James Farmer was cofounder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins, was one of the "Big Four" African American leaders who shaped the civil rights struggle in the 1950s and 1960s. Farmer, who followed the nonviolent principles of Mahatma Gandhi, initiated sit-ins as a means of integrating public facilities and freedom rides as a means of registering African Americans to vote. The first sit-in to protest segregated facilities in Texas was organized with CORE support by students from Wiley and Bishop Colleges. The students occupied the rotunda of the Harrison County courthouse in the East Texas city of Marshall.

Rights African Americans had in Texas

African Americans were legally denied the right to vote in the Democratic white primary, the practice of excluding African Americans from primary elections in the Texas Democratic Party. Schools and public facilities such as theaters, restaurants, beaches, and hospitals were legally segregated by race. Segregation laws were enforced by official law enforcement agents as well as by Anglo cultural norms and unofficial organizations using terror tactics. Although segregation laws were not usually formally directed at Latinos, who were legally white, such laws were effectively enforced against them as well. The white supremacist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), members of local law enforcement, and the Texas Rangers actively participated in violence and intimidation of both Latinos and African Americans to keep them "in their segregated place." Lynching was also used against both groups, often after torture.

Why Anglo Americans became culturally important in South Texas

Anglo Americans first became culturally important in South Texas when they gained title to a large share of the land in the region following the Texas Revolution of 1836. However, modern South Texas still retains elements of the ranchero culture, including some of its feudal aspects. Large ranches, often owned by one family for multiple generations, are prevalent; however, wealthy and corporate ranchers and farmers from outside the area are becoming common.

Who sat on the top of the pyramid status in Texas

Anglo male Texans initially resided atop the pyramid of status, wealth, and civil rights in organized Texas society. They wrote the rules of the game and used those rules to protect their position against attempts by females, African Americans, and Latinos to share in the fruits of full citizenship. Only after the disenfranchised groups organized and exerted political pressure against their governments did the doors of freedom and equality open enough for them to come inside.

What replaced cotton in East Texas (+ results)

Cotton—once "king" of agriculture in the region—has been replaced by cattle, poultry, and timber. As a result of the general lack of economic opportunity, young East Texans from cities like Longview and Palestine migrate to metropolitan areas, primarily Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston. Seeking tranquility and solitude, retiring urbanites have begun to revitalize some small towns and rural communities that lost population to the metropolitan areas. Fundamentalist Protestantism dominates the region spiritually and permeates its political, social, and cultural activities.

The economic, social and political elite in South Texas

Creoles, who descended from Spanish immigrants

How DOMA defined marriage

DOMA defined marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman and further stipulated that the federal government would not recognize same-sex marriages for purposes of benefits such as social security, veterans' benefits, and income tax filings

Women's divorce rights in Republic of Texas

Divorce laws were restrictive on both parties, but a husband could win a divorce in the event of a wife's "amorous or lascivious conduct with other men, even short of adultery," or if she had committed adultery only once. He could not gain a divorce for concealed premarital fornication. On the other hand, a wife could gain a divorce only if "the husband had lived in adultery with another woman." Physical violence was not grounds for divorce unless the wife could prove a "serious danger" that might happen again. In practice, physical abuse was tolerated if the wife behaved "indiscreetly" or "provoked" her husband. Minority and poor Anglo wives had little legal protection from beatings because the woman's "station in life" and "standing in society" were also legal considerations.

What Federal District Judge ordered of all Texas public schools

Federal District Judge William Wayne Justice in United States v. Texas (1970) ordered the complete desegregation of all Texas public schools. The decision was one of the most extensive desegregation orders in history and included the process for executing the order in detail. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals largely affirmed Justice's decision but refused to extend its provisions to Latino children.

How Governor Ferguson aided the women's suffrage movement during WW1

Governor James "Pa" Ferguson (1915-17) unwittingly aided the women's suffrage movement during the World War I period. Led by Minnie Fisher Cunningham, Texas suffragists organized, spoke out, marched, and lobbied for the right to vote during the Ferguson Administration but were initially unable to gain political traction because of Ferguson's opposition. When he became embroiled in political controversy over funding for the University of Texas, women joined in the groundswell of opposition. Suffragists effectively lobbied state legislators and organized rallies advocating Ferguson's impeachment Texas women continued to participate actively in the political arena although they lacked the right to vote. They supported William P. Hobby, who was considered receptive to women's suffrage, in his campaign for governor as "The Man Whom Good Women Want." The tactic was ultimately successful, and women won the legislative battle and gained the right to vote in the 1918 Texas primary.

What Houston's initial growth after World War II was fueled by

Houston's initial growth after World War II was fueled by a flood of job seekers from East Texas and other rural areas of the state. This influx gave the Gulf Coast the flavor of rural Texas in an urban setting. Houston's social and economic leadership was composed of second- and third-generation elites whose forebears' wealth came from oil, insurance, construction, land development, and/or banking.

Type of migration US transformation from industrial to postindustrial attracted

Houston's rural flavor diminished over the years as the U.S. economy transformed from industrial to postindustrial. This transformation attracted migrants from the North. This migration included both skilled and unskilled workers and brought large numbers of well-educated professionals to Houston from across the country and globe. Today, the Gulf Coast has become a remarkably vibrant and dynamic region, and Houston, the energy capital of the world, boasts many corporate headquarters along with the largest medical complex on earth (the Texas Medical Center).

What happened when Heman Sweatt applied for admission to the University of Texas Law School

In 1946, Heman Sweatt applied for admission to the University of Texas Law School, which by Texas law was segregated (see Chapter 2). State laws requiring segregation were constitutional as long as facilities serving African Americans and whites were equal. Because Texas had no law school for African Americans, the legislature hurriedly established a law school for Sweatt and, for his "convenience," located it in his hometown of Houston. Although officially established, the new law school lacked both faculty and a library and, as a result, the NAACP again sued the state. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that education at Sweatt's new law school, in fact, was not equal to that of the University of Texas Law School and ordered him admitted to that institution. It is worth noting that "separate but equal" facilities remained legal after this case because the Court did not overturn Plessy v. Ferguson, which granted the constitutional sanction for legal segregation. Instead, the Court simply ruled that the new law school was not equal to that at the University of Texas. The U.S. Supreme Court did not finally outlaw segregation until the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

What happened when a sheriff deputy found two men having sex in 1998

In 1998 a Harris County sheriff's deputy discovered two men having intimate sexual contact in a private residence, and the men were arrested and convicted for violating a Texas anti-sodomy statute. Their conviction was appealed and eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Lawrence v. Texas. In Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion, he stated that the Texas law violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which does not protect sodomy but does protect personal relationships and the ability to have those relationships without fear of punishment or criminal classification. The Texas statute intended to control the most intimate of all human activity, sexual behavior, in the most private of places, the home. The Lawrence decision simultaneously invalidated sodomy laws in thirteen other states, thereby protecting same-sex behavior in every state and territory in the United States.

What US Supreme Court decided about same sex couples

In 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case United States v. Windsor, in which it held that federal discrimination against same-sex couples violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. And in 2015, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on same-sex marriage, such as that in force in Texas as the result of a 2005 amendment to the Texas State Constitution, were unconstitutional because, as was the case in Windsor, they violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

Gulf Coast

In addition to being an industrial and petrochemical center, the Gulf Coast is one of the most important shipping centers in the nation. Investors from the northeastern states backed Spindletop, and its success stimulated more and more out-of-state investment. Local wealth was also generated and largely reinvested in Texas to promote long-term development.

D.W. Meinig seminal study of Texas culture

In his seminal study of Texas culture, D. W. Meinig found that the cultural diversity of Texas was more apparent than its homogeneity and that no unified culture had emerged from the various ethnic and cultural groups that settled Texas. He believed that the "typical Texan," like the "average American," did not exist but rather was an oversimplification of the more distinctive social, economic, and political characteristics of the state's inhabitants. Meinig viewed modern regional political culture as largely determined by migration patterns because people take their culture with them as they move geographically. Meinig believed that Texas (circa the 1960s) had evolved into nine fairly distinct cultural regions. However, whereas political boundaries are fixed, cultural divisions are often blurred and transitional. For example, the East Texas region shares a political culture with much of the Upper South, whereas West Texas shares a similar culture with eastern New Mexico. The effects of mass media, the mobility of modern Texans statewide and beyond, and immigration from abroad and from the other 49 states blur the cultural boundaries within Texas, with its bordering states, and with Mexico. Although limited because it does not take into account these modern-day realities, Meinig's approach still provides a useful guide to a general understanding of Texas political culture, attitudes, and beliefs based on geography and history.

Jobs Latinos could have

Like most African Americans, Latinos were relegated to the lowest-paid jobs as either service workers or farmworkers. The Raymondville Peonage cases in 1929 tested for the first time the legality of forcing vagrants or debtors to work off debts and fines as labor on private farms. The practice violated federal statutes but was commonplace in some Texas counties. The Willacy County sheriff stated in his defense that Latinos often sought arrest to gain shelter and that "peonage was not an unknown way of life for them." The trials resulted in the arrest and conviction of several public officials and private individuals. The outcome of the trials was unpopular in the agricultural areas and contrary to the generally accepted belief that farmers should have a means of collecting debts from individual laborers.

maquiladoras

Mexican factories where U.S. corporations employ inexpensive Mexican labor for assembly and piecework

When Texas ratified the 19th Amendment

National suffrage momentum precipitated a proposed constitutional amendment establishing the right of women to vote throughout the United States. Having endured more than five years of "heavy artillery" from Cunningham and the Texas Equal Suffrage Association, legislative opposition crumbled, and in June of 1919 Texas became one of the first southern states to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Texas women received full voting rights in 1920.

The first Texas cowboys who did the ranch work in South Texas

Native Americans or Mestizos of mixed Spanish and Native American heritage

Where North Texas is located

North Texas is located between East and West Texas and exhibits many characteristics of both regions. Early North Texas benefited from the failed French socialist colony of La Réunion, which included many highly trained professionals in medicine, education, music, and science. (La Réunion was located on the south bank of the Trinity River, across from what is today downtown Dallas.) The colonists and their descendants helped give North Texas a cultural and commercial distinctiveness. North Texas today is dominated by the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, often referred to as the Metroplex. The Metroplex has become a banking and commercial center of national and international importance.

What Texas Farm Workers Union began a march to Austin about in February 1977

On February 26, 1977, members of the Texas Farm Workers Union (TFWU), strikers, and other supporters began a march to Austin to demand a $1.25 minimum wage and other improvements in working conditions for farmworkers. Press coverage intensified as the marchers slowly made their way north from the U.S.-Mexico border. Politicians, members of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and the Texas Council of Churches accompanied the protestors. Governor John Connally, who had refused to meet them in Austin, traveled to New Braunfels with then-House Speaker Ben Barnes and Attorney General Waggoner Carr to intercept the march and inform strikers that their efforts would have no effect. Ignoring the governor, the marchers continued to Austin and held a 6,500-person protest rally at the state capitol. The rally was broken up by the Texas Rangers and other law enforcement officers. The TFWU took legal action against the Rangers for their part in the repression of the rally. The eventual ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court held that the laws the Rangers had been enforcing were in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The Texas Rangers were subsequently reorganized and became a part of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

How Garcia started the war

To begin his war, Dr. Garcia needed recruits for his "army." With other World War II veterans, Dr. Garcia organized the American G.I. Forum in a Corpus Christi elementary school classroom in March 1948. This organization spread throughout the United States and played a major role in providing Latinos with full citizenship and civil respect.

What East Texas politics are dominated by

Politics and commerce in many East Texas counties and cities are frequently dominated by old families, whose wealth is usually based on real estate, banking, construction, and retail.

Ideology of Texans on government

Social conservatives support energetic government activity to enforce what they view as moral behavior and traditional cultural values. For example, social conservatives, who often are evangelical Christians, usually advocate for the use of state power to limit abortion and narcotics or marijuana usage.

Ideology of Texans on business

Some conservatives accept an active role for the government in promoting business. They are willing to support direct government subsidies and special tax breaks for businesses to encourage economic growth. They may also support state spending for infrastructure, such as transportation and education, that sustains commercial and manufacturing activity.

What Texas has to enforce certain conservative social values (+ examples)

Texas also has used the power of the state to enforce certain conservative social values. It has, for instance, passed legislation designed to reduce the number of abortions and to impose stiff penalties on lawbreakers. It also has maintained a ban on casino gambling (unlike its neighbors) and resisted efforts to allow the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes (unlike a majority of the U.S. states).

How Texas was an economic colony before 1900

Texas was effectively an economic colony before 1900—it sold raw materials to the industrialized North and bought northern manufactured products. However, in 1901 an oil well named Spindletop drilled near Beaumont, in an area that because of its oil wealth quickly became known as the "golden triangle," ushered in the age of Texas oil, and the state's economy began to change. Since the discovery of oil, the Gulf Coast has experienced almost continuous growth, especially during World War II, the Cold War defense buildup, and the various energy booms of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Records Houston holds (____ most populous county)

The Houston area especially flourished, and Harris County (Houston) grew to become the third-most-populous county in the United States, behind Los Angeles County in California and Cook County (Chicago) in Illinois.

What Texas Border serves as

The Texas Border also serves as a major transshipment point for drug cartels as they bring illegal drugs such as marijuana and heroin from Mexico for sale in the thriving U.S. market for illicit narcotics. In addition, a significant share of undocumented immigration into the United States occurs in the Texas Border region.

What the Texas branch of the NAACP served as during WW2

The Texas branch of the NAACP remained active during the World War II period and served as a useful vehicle for numerous legal actions to protect African American civil rights. African Americans eventually won the right to participate in the Texas Democratic primary when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Smith v. Allwright (1944) that primaries were a part of the election process and that racial discrimination in the election process is unconstitutional. Twenty years later, the first African Americans since Reconstruction were elected to the Texas Legislature.

What majority of Texans favor

The Texas brand of conservatism is skeptical of state government involvement in the economy. A majority of Texans favor low taxes, modest state services, and few business regulations. Because they support economic individualism and free-market capitalism, Texans generally value profit as a healthy incentive to promote economic investment and individual effort, while they see social class inequality as the inevitable result of free-market capitalism. For them, an individual's quality of life is largely a matter of personal responsibility rather than an issue of public policy.

what happened when the Mansfield Independent School District, just to the southeast of Fort Worth, was ordered to integrate in 1956

The political and social fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education (1954) public school desegregation decision did not bypass Texas. When the Mansfield Independent School District, just to the southeast of Fort Worth, was ordered to integrate in 1956, angry Anglos surrounded the school and prevented the enrollment of three African American children. Governor Allan Shivers declared the demonstration an "orderly protest" and sent the Texas Rangers to support the protestors. Because the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower took no action, the school remained segregated. The Mansfield school desegregation incident "was the first example of failure to enforce a federal court order for the desegregation of a public school." Only in 1965, when facing a loss of federal funding, did the Mansfield ISD finally desegregate.

White primary

The practice of excluding African Americans from primary elections in the Texas Democratic Party.

Texas state taxes burden

The state's tax burden is low compared to other states, and the state proportionally devotes fewer financial resources to public services than most other states. Texas is known nationally for its low tax and limited government model that contrasts with the higher tax and more active government model seen in states like California and New York.

How a boomtown psychology was created in Houston

Though volatile, the state's petrochemical industry, which is concentrated on the Gulf Coast, has experienced extraordinary growth, creating a boomtown psychology. Rapid growth fed real estate development and speculation throughout the region. The Houston area especially flourished, and Harris County (Houston) grew to become the third-most-populous county in the United States, behind Los Angeles County in California and Cook County (Chicago) in Illinois.

When and How Abortion was legalized

Until 1973, as in most states, abortion was illegal in Texas. In that year, Texas attorney Sarah Weddington argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that still stands at the center of national abortion debate: Roe v. Wade. The Roe decision overturned Texas statutes that criminalized abortion and in doing so established a limited, national right of privacy for women to terminate a pregnancy. Roe followed Griswold v. Connecticut, a 1965 privacy case that overturned a state law criminalizing the use of birth control.

What happens when Dr Nixon was denied the right to vote in the Democratic primary

When Dr. L. H. Nixon, an African American from El Paso, was denied the right to vote in the Democratic primary, the NAACP instituted legal action, and the U.S. Supreme Court found in Nixon v. Herndon (1927) that the Texas White Primary law was unconstitutional. However, the Texas Legislature transferred control of the primary from the state to the executive committee of the Texas Democratic Party, and the discrimination continued. Dr. Nixon again sought justice in the courts, and in 1931 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the new scheme was also unconstitutional. Texas Democrats then completely excluded African Americans from party membership. In Grovey v. Townsend (1935), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld this ploy, and the Texas Democratic primary remained an all-white organization. Although it had suffered a temporary setback in the episode, the NAACP had proven its potential as a viable instrument for African American Texans to achieve justice.

Rights women had in republic of Texas

Women in the Republic of Texas could neither serve on juries nor vote, but unmarried women retained many of the rights that they had enjoyed under Spanish law, which included control over their property. Married women retained some Spanish law benefits because, unlike under Anglo-Saxon law, Texas marriage law did not join the married couple into one legal person with the husband as the head. Texas married women could own inherited property, share ownership in community property, and make a legal will. However, the husband had control of all the property, both separate and community (including earned income), and an employer could not hire a married woman without her husband's consent.

When women were given the right to serve on juries

Women were given the right to serve on juries in 1954. Texas's voter ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972 and the passage of a series of laws titled the Marital Property Act amounted to major steps toward women's equality and heralded the beginning of a more enlightened era in Texas. The Act granted married women equal rights in insurance, banking, real estate, contracts, divorce, child custody, and property rights. This was the first such comprehensive family law in the United States.

Why Garcia felt there was another war coming after WW2

World War II Latino veterans, newly returned to the state from fighting to make the world safe for democracy, found discrimination still existed in their homeland. A decorated veteran, Major Hector Garcia, settled in Corpus Christi and became convinced by conditions in South Texas that still another war was yet to be fought on behalf of the region's Latino community. Garcia, a medical doctor, found farm laborers enduring inhuman living conditions; disabled veterans starving, sick, and ignored by the Veterans Administration; and an entrenched, unapologetic Anglo culture that continued to impose public school segregation.

Type of Texas' political culture

conservative Many Texans share a belief in a limited role for government in taxation, economic regulation, and providing social services; conservatives support traditional values and lifestyles, and are cautious in response to social change.

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

first organized in the late 1860s to intimidate freed African American slaves. A modified, enlarged version was reborn in the 1920s with a somewhat altered mission. The new Klan saw itself as a patriotic, Christian, fraternal organization for native-born white Protestants. Its members perceived a general moral decline in society, precipitated by "modern" young people, and a basic threat to the Protestant white Christian "race." Klansmen sensed a threat to their values from African Americans, Jews, Catholics, Latinos, German Americans, and other "foreigners." The Klan used intimidation, violence, and torture that included hanging, tarring and feathering, branding, beating, and castration as means of coercion. As many as 80,000 Texans (which amounted to almost 10 percent of the adult Anglo male population at the time) may have joined the "invisible empire" in an effort to make the world more to their liking. Many elected officials—federal and state legislators as well as county and city officials—were either avowed Klansmen or friendly neutrals. In fact, the Klan influenced Texas society to such an extent that its power was a major political issue from 1921 through 1925.

Far West Texas

major commercial and social passageway between Mexico and the United States. El Paso, the "capital" of Far West Texas and the sixth-largest city in the state, is a military, manufacturing, and commercial center. El Paso's primary commercial partners are Mexico and New Mexico. While the rest of Texas is located in the Central Time Zone, El Paso County and adjacent Hudspeth County are in the Mountain Time Zone.

Central Texas

often called the "core area" of Texas. It is roughly triangular in shape, with its three corners being Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and San Antonio. The centerpiece of the region is Austin (Travis County), one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the nation. Already a center of government and higher education, Austin has become the "Silicon Valley" of high-tech industries in Texas as well as an internationally recognized cultural center, whose annual South by Southwest Music, Film and Interactive Festival (SXSW) is now a global event.

Demographics

population characteristics, such as age, gender, ethnicity/race, employment, and income, that social scientists use to describe groups in society, and in Texas these characteristics are rapidly changing. Texas is one of the fastest-growing states in the nation and is becoming more culturally diverse as immigrants from other nations and migrants from other states continue to find it a desirable place to call home.