Marshall and Eternity

Marshall is a city of firsts: first wired connection from Texas to the wider world, first department store in Texas, and the first Klingon woman—ever! It is no wonder that its leaders became so obsessed with greatness that a call to “…strive, throughout eternity” was written into the Marshall High School fight song. For over a century, its eternal glory seemed assured. Marshall did not have an auspicious start when its founder pulled a jug of whiskey out of a tree hollow and passed it around the men sent to investigate his land as the site for a new county seat, but it did have an ambitious one—perhaps best epitomized—when its illiterate founder scrawled his X on a legal document establishing Marshall’s first school. The city became one of the largest in the Republic of Texas and backed the Confederacy with such zeal that a Marshallite’s image was put on Confederate money and the Confederate treasury was en route to Marshall when it was captured. Marshall’s Freedmen’s Bureau and garrisoned Union troops brought the promise of peace and security to African-Americans subject to violence and terrorism in the outlying areas of East Texas. African-Americans were elected to city and county offices; several African-American Marshallites served in the state-legislature—even helping draft the current state constitution. Wiley University and Bishop College were established to provide education to African-Americans after Emancipation; their graduates would later establish the first public library and public schools in Marshall—they even educated the first black cabinet secretary. Reconstruction ended with the “Redemption” of Marshall for white supremacy, but the totality of “Redemption” was complicated by a growing white and black Catholic population, the arrival of civic-minded Jewish immigrants, savvy African-American leaders who built hushed multi-racial alliances by appealing to order and economic interests, and new talent bringing their families from places like Lebanon and Italy. Marshall became the starting point for a new southern transcontinental railroad to San Diego. The Boogie Woogie genre of music—that birthed both rhythm and blues and rock and roll—originated in Marshall among African-American railroad workers. Marshall Pottery was founded, followed by nearly a dozen other potteries, eventually giving Marshall a claim to being the “Pottery Capital of the World.” However, The Shops of the T&P Railroad were the heart of Marshall’s economy until it was joined and then eclipsed by the energy industry and, to a lesser extent, the defense industry. Even as African-Americans found employment or established business of their own, the secret collaborations between African-American and some white leaders could not stop the full brutality of Jim Crow. An African-American laborer could be told by his boss to drink from a dog’s dish, and over two-dozen lynchings were documented between Reconstruction and World War I. As the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War approached, self-declared “Anglo-Saxon protestant” Marshallites celebrated the “Lost Cause” mythology even as they realized they lagged behind African-American Marshallites’ educational institutions and increasingly relied on cooperation with Marshall’s Catholic and Jewish population. Once they decided to establish a white institution of higher education, the College of Marshall (now East Texas Baptist University)—unlike Wiley or Bishop—it took them a further six years before buildings were raised and classes began. Similarly, the decision to establish a hospital and nursing college moved forward only after a civic-minded donation from the estate of one of the city’s Jewish leaders. Before the Depression, Marshall was a city with gas lights, street cars, three hospitals, two colleges, a university, and a Carnegie Library. The Depression did not destroy Marshall, but WPA artists documented poverty and decay throughout the city and its environs. World War II and the Cold War were a boon to Marshall’s economy, with many Northerners moving to Marshall to work for defense and aerospace contractors. African-Americans returning from wars were once again confronted with the reality of Jim Crow after fighting for freedom. City censors objected to the Paramount Theatre showing the film Pinky because it depicted interracial love and violence against African-Americans by whites. The matter went to the Supreme Court, which ruled against the city. Students and faculty from Bishop and Wiley organized the first sit-ins in Texas; while the colleges’ alumni challenged segregation through the courts, lobbying, and protests around the country—one alumnus was even one of the Big Six leaders of the movement. As the Civil Rights Acts were signed into law, the President’s Press Secretary, cook and confidant, and—incidentally—his wife were all Marshallites. Just as Marshall reached the zenith of its influence: The Shops closed, Bishop moved to Dallas, the 1980s oil glut devastated the local economy, and the thawing of the Cold War put even more Marshallites out of work. However, the city was not dead and continued to punch-above its weight: Marshall became the sister-city of Taipei, the documentary Marshall, Texas: Marshall, Texas about the city won an Emmy, potters from Marshall Pottery demonstrated their art in Smithsonian exhibits, and a special wing was added to a local hotel to accommodate recurring visits from Soviet delegations. As Marshall’s economy imploded its industrial identity became unsupportable; a group of civic-leaders—who were mostly women—began to realize the potential in Marshall’s culture and heritage for a new integrated identity.  These “Refounding Mothers,” as I like to call them, were and—in some instances—are institution builders who created the Harrison County Historical Museum, Michelson Museum of Art, Starr Home State Historic Site, brought Texas State Technical College to Marshall, and founded or re-imagined over a dozen other organizations. It was from the spirit kindled by these Refounding Mothers that editor of the Marshall NewsMessenger called on Marshallites to wrap the Old Courthouse in thousands of Christmas lights as a symbol of hope at a time when entire blocks of downtown were abandoned. The community rallied behind this “Wonderland of Lights,” and tourists came by the thousands—causing traffic jams. Business began to return to downtown after a Gay Latino restaurateur demonstrated that it was once again a viable location. Wonderland, when combined with Marshall’s other festivals as well as Marshall’s cultural and educational institutions, made it seem that tourism would be the key to saving the city. However, it was the Twenty-first century that was to see Marshall’s greatest decline. Marshall Pottery was bought out—its retail arm shuttered, and its production scaled back, its last hospital passed through a number of hands—shedding its maternity ward and ICU, Wiley’s legacy reached international prominence only to see its existence threatened, and the Federal Court developed a controversial niche in patent litigation only to see the niche closed and properties around downtown again vacated. For almost two-hundred years, there was a tradition of civic-leaders who had imagined Marshall as a light worthy of eternity. Marshall’s founders, Freedmen legislators, ambitious industrialists, civic-minded Jewish immigrants and their descendants, Wiley and Bishop graduates, the Refounding Mothers and their allies were the visionaries who shaped Marshall into a city that produced cabinet members, governors, Olympians, generals, and civil rights heroes at rates unseen by cities ten-times its size. In the third decade of the Twenty-first century, Marshallites increasingly find themselves wondering if eternity was an illusion, how much longer will the light stay on?

 

Fun fact: Marshall’s location was in the rift zone formed by the break-up of Pangaea. #eternitymeanseternity

Whetstone Square, Marshall Texas. From left to right: Old First National Bank Building, First Methodist Church, Hotel Marshall, Old Harrison County Courthouse, Sam B. Hall Federal Courthouse. Original work.

Whetstone Square, Marshall Texas. From left to right: Old First National Bank Building, First Methodist Church, Hotel Marshall, Old Harrison County Courthouse, Sam B. Hall Federal Courthouse. Original work.

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