Page 1 of 103

THE TRIUMPHALIST WHITE

SUPREMACY OF FAIR PARK
– Ed Sebesta 7/30/2019

Introduction

Figure 1 - Ticket to the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition

The 1936 Texas Centennial was understood at the time as a tool to teach Texas students
across the state Texas history and what a Texas identity should be and also to teach
future generations of Texans the same lessons. This would be a white nationalist history
of Texas and white nationalist identity.

DMN 1936 article, “Inspiration to Future Ages,” explains that, “the newly completed
Hall of State stands at the Centennial as a magnificent Texas shrine at which this and
future generations may find inspiration towards mighty deeds.”1

1
Griffing, Aaron Birdwell, “Inspiration to Future Ages Seen in Showy Texas Shrine,” DMNF, 9/26/1936, page 4.
 Page 2 of 103

Wylie A. Parker, Principal of Forest (Forrest)2 Avenue High School had a lengthy DMN
article, “Educational Opportunities of the Texas Centennial.” One of the educational
opportunities he sees is learning Texas history stating:

Since this is a Texas Centennial, large emphasis on history and kindred studies
would naturally be expected. No one need be disappointed in this regard, either,
for there is history everywhere in the exposition, but Texas history is emphasized
in the Hall of State, the spacious $1,000,000 building with its $200,000 worth of
equipment.

Parker also recommends the Humble Hall of Texas History.3

A considerable effort was done to make sure this lesson of Texas history would be taught
to as many students as possible.

DMN 1936 article, “1,500,000 Pupils May Be Sent to Fair,” reports that the Governor
and the State Superintendent of Schools are working on a plan, “to make it possible for
most of the 1,500,000 school children of the State to see the great fair.”4

The bringing of students to the 1936 Centennial exposition receives considerable

attention in the press.

There is the DMN article, “Reduced Fare Brings Pupils to Centennial,” is about bringing
as the subheading states, “1,000 Panhandle School Children at Fair.” Another
subheading announces the expectation, “Whole Scholastic Population of State Expected
to Attend Exhibit.” The article explains with how reduced train fares had brought
students of the Texas Panhandle from such a distance. The article mentions that there
will be a series of days for groups of students from different parts of Texas to visit. 5
Another article is titled, “Pupils Arrive For Inspection of Centennial: Vanguard of Hosts
From All Over Texas Put in Appearance for Educational Visits to Fair.”6

2
There seems to have been some contest over the name of the street and as late as 1981 Dresser Industries in a
DMN employment ad was spelling their location as “1000 Forrest Avenue.” (March 10, 1981). The DMN seemed to
carefully take a neutral position on this, for example, one article refers to the “New Forest Avenue High School”
and it is on “Forrest Avenue.” (Dec. 25, 1915, Page 6). A 1932 article, “Music Group Gives Awards,” uses the term
“Forrest Avenue High School,” (May 8, 1932, page 6) as well as a DMN obituary, “Bogie, Thomas Martin,”
(6/18/2009). The DMN article, “Time’s March Changes Names of Streets, Dims Memory of Persons They Were to
Honor,” (August 7, 1939, page 1) states that the street was named for Nathan Bedford Forrest, but had changed
for some reason over time. It also discusses how some of the names of individuals are misspelled or have more
than one spelling in the records. It does seem that both names were in use and the street was named after Nathan
Bedford Forrest, but the full explanation will be in another paper by the author.
3
Parker, Wylie A., “Educational Opportunities of the Texas Centennial,” DMN, 9/13/1936, page 11.
4
No author, “1,500,000 Pupils May Be Sent to Fair,” 8/14/1936, pp. 1, 16.
5
No author, “Reduced Fairs Brings Pupils to Centennial,” DMN, 10/2/1936, pp. 1, 16.
6
No author, “Pupils Arrive for Inspection of Centennial,” DMN, 10/1/1936, pp. 1, 14.
 Page 3 of 103

Fair Park is visited by over two million people each year for the Texas State Fair 7 and
over 7 million for the State Fair and other events at Fair Park.8 In ten years that is over
20 million attendees for the Fair and over 70 million for all attendance at Fair Park.
That is a lot of people who are receiving the lessons about Texas history and Texas
identity taught by the art and architecture of Fair Park that the original 1936 Texas
Centennial intended to teach during a period which white supremacy was supremely
dominate in the culture and politics of Texas.

We need to understand the white supremacist lessons the art and architecture of Fair
Park teaches the public about race and Texas history. Understanding these lessons we
need to act accordingly to see that these lessons are no longer taught.

Attention has been drawn to Fair Park for its Confederate images, figures and statues.
What has gone unnoticed is how the art and architecture of the 1936 Texas Centennial is
used to portray a triumphalist white nationalist historical progression. Unrecognized or
ignored is that the 1936 Texas Centennial explicitly defined itself as an empire
exhibition in the period of late world imperialism of the 1930s with its multiple empire
exhibitions and colonial expositions.

In the Hall of State in the State of Texas Building in a mural of Confederate military
officers in the mural over their head flies the Confederate battle flag. Above this seen are
figures of three women, in an allegory of the three Fates of Greek mythology, but labeled
South, Columbia, and the North, thus representing one of the Fates as the Confederacy
and the Union government not being American, which instead represented by another
figure labeled Columbia.

At the Hall of State also there is a huge gold medallion with an allegorical figure
representing the Confederacy with a seal of the Confederacy. The walls on either side of
the entry way have places for three flags to be flown, and on the right side of the entry is
the 1st National Confederate Flag.

For the Hall of Transportation, also known as the Automobile building, there is a twenty
foot tall draped female figure as the statue of the Confederacy on a twelve foot pedestal.9
It is at the center entry to the building along the Esplanade. Inside the portico behind
the statue on the outside wall is a painted medallion with the First National Confederate
flag and a stalk with a cotton ball. Under the seal is the text, “Confederate States of
America, 1861 1865, Texas the Seventh State Admitted to the Confederacy.”10

7
State Fair of Texas website, “Daily Attendance,” https://bigtex.com/about-us/daily-attendance/, printed out
7/17/2019.
8
“About Fair Park,” https://fairpark.org/index.php/en/about-fair-park, printed out 7/17/2019.
9
Measurements from, Parsons, Jim, Bush, David, “Fair Park Deco: Art and Architecture of the Texas Centennial
Exposition,” TCU (Texas Christian Univ.) Press, Fort Worth, 2012, pp. 35. This is a book entirely unconscious about
any issue regarding race which is fairly amazing given the year it was published.
10
Photo documented by author.
 Page 4 of 103

Additionally the four bronze lanterns in front of the State of Texas Building. Each have
six figures representing the nations as defined in the six nations of Texas concept one of
which is a figure representing the Confederacy.

A frieze on the Federal building is a representation of the progression of Texas history

with what appears to be three Confederate soldiers.

Though these Confederate elements might be what an observer first notices as racially
problematic elements in the built environment of Fair Park and raise concerns, there is
the risk that only these elements will be seen as being problematic. A casual observation
might conclude that these Confederate elements are the unacceptable elements from a
racist past in an otherwise acceptable Fair Park. There is a risk that inquiry and
examination starts and stops with the Confederate elements and misses the larger
framework of a historical progression of a triumphal white supremacy. Also, these
Confederate elements operate within this larger framework and they can’t be
understood without understanding this framework in which they exist.

The entire set of art deco buildings with their art, and the Texas building and the Hall of
State make up a superstructure supporting white supremacy and without recognizing
this, the city of Dallas might just put a few inane plaques purporting to be
contextualizations and which won’t acknowledge the triumphalist white supremacy of
Fair Par and the 1936 Texas Centennial as one of a set of empire exhibitions and colonial
expositions of the period of late imperialism. Unrecognized will be how Art Deco and
modernist architecture was used in the Texas Centennial the same way as in other 1930s
colonial expositions and empire exhibitions given elsewhere to assert racial hierarchy.

This essay will have four sections following this introduction. One section will discuss
the individual Confederate elements. It will be followed by the second section which will
discuss Fair Park as whole, how the art and architecture of the centennial was used to
portray a triumphalist white nationalist history. The third section will describe empire
exhibitions and colonial expositions of the 1930s and show the similarities of the 1936
Texas Centennial to them and how all of them used similar or the same methods, in
particular Art Deco and modernist architecture, to justify white supremacist political
systems. The forth section will discussed motivations to tear down the Hall of Negro
Life since it challenged the white triumphalist narrative by its very existence.

A special note about the Six Flags, Six Nations theme.

This six-flags six-nation theme is the idea that there was six nations with sovereignty
over Texas in a rough historical progression and the representation of the this idea with
six flags, with each nation represented by one flag.

The six flags, six nations theme has multiple aspects which needs to be considered. First,
there is its origin as a defined six flags set and its historical validity and the six-flag
design on the obverse of the state seal which will be discussed in an Appendix. Second,
 Page 5 of 103

there is the issue of how the six-flags six-nation idea is used to legitimize and present
the Confederacy at the Texas Centennial. Third, there is how the six-nation theme as a
progression is used to structure the comprehension of history. Fourth, there is how the
six-nation theme is used to arrange the layout of the buildings at Fair Park. Fifth, there
is the origin of the six-nation six-flag idea. All of them are not going to be discussed in
one section, but in different parts of this essay as they are relevant.

Confederate Fair Park

Sydney Smith Memorial Fountain

Figure 2- Gulf Cloud Memorial Fountain at Fair Park.

At Fair Park there is a huge Sydney Smith Memorial fountain with a plaque mentioning
that it is named after “Capt.” Sydney Smith.
 Page 6 of 103

The plaque gives Sydney

Smith a Confederate
identity since the title
“Captain,” comes from
his service in the
Confederate army and
the monument
remembers him as a
Confederate.

He had moved to Dallas

in 1878 and became the
secretary of the Fair in
1886 until his death in
1912.
Figure 3- Plaque by Gulf Cloud Fountain.
Sydney Smith was a slave owning plantation
owner in Mississippi in 1860, and then
enlisted in the Confederate army under
Nathan Bedford Forrest, then was a staff
member of Gen. W.H. Jackson and was a
Captain. In Dallas, Texas he was the member
of the racist neo-Confederate organization
the Sterling Price Camp of the United
Confederate Veterans (UCV).

This was a vicious racist organization which

passed unanimously a resolution in 1909
asking the President Taft to pardon Sheriff
Shipp of Hamilton Country who had been
found guilty by the Supreme Court of the
United States of America, in the only
criminal trial ever conducted by that court, of
aiding and abetting a lynching of an African
American prisoner in his jail.11

When Smith died the Dallas Morning News

(DMN) credited him for the entirety of its
Figure 4- Book Contempt of Court.

11
No author, “Camp Sterling Price Asks Pardon for Shipp,” Dallas Morning News, 11/22/1909, page 12. The text of
the resolution was published in the DMN, “Wants Petitions to President,” by William Lewis Cabell, 11/21/1909,
page 29. The details of the case are online and can be read at this URLs. “United States of America v. John F. Shipp
et al.” provided online by Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/203/563. A more detailed account is provided by the American
Bar Association online at this address.
 Page 7 of 103

operation. From the statement of J.J. Eckford, president of the State Fair at the time of
Smith’s death:

This mammoth enterprise, grand in its whole effect, is the result of his master
hand. So perfectly has he worked out all, even its petty details, so through in its
organization, that it moves as by its own impulsion.12

In the 19th and early 20 Century expositions and other cultural institutions put non-
white people in exhibitions, which have been denounced as human zoos. An example
was Ota Benga who was exhibited in 1906 at the Bronx Zoo where he, “spent time with
the chimpanzees in the Monkey House.”13
Figure 5 Advertisement for Texas State Fair Dallas always striving to keep up with
1898 Dallas Morning News. world trends had its own human zoo.
This project with which Smith was
involved with including its petty details
was the State Fair’s Antebellum Negro
Village which was an exhibit of African
Americans portraying slaves on an
antebellum plantation and which was

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/a_supreme_case_of_contempt. There is also a book on the case,

“Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching,” by Mark Curriden and Leroy Phillips, Jr. Anchor Books,
1991.
12
“Capt. Sydney Smith is Claimed by Death,” Dallas Morning News, March 14, 1912, page 6. I am not going to
correct and pepper quotations with [sic] for spellings that were in usage then and are not considered correct now.
13
Zielinski, Sarah, “The Tragic Tale of the Pygmy in the Zoo,” Smithsonian Magazine, online Dec. 2, 2008,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-tragic-tale-of-the-pygmy-in-the-zoo-2787905/ printed out
4/9/2018.
 Page 8 of 103

announced in a series of advertisements for the upcoming 1898 State Fair.14

In the advertisements Sydney Smith was listed as the Secretary and W.H. Gaston as the
President of the State Fair. There is also a W.H. Gaston Middle School in the Dallas
Independent School District.

The DMN did run the ads but did not describe it in any way.15 However the Dallas Time
Herald (DTH) did have an article describing it and recommending the exhibit. I am
going to quote it in its entirety so that the appalling nature of the Antebellum Negro
Village is fully perceived.

“Sat’day Eve Befor de Wah,” is one attraction on amusement row which is

receiving the attention of nearly all the visitors to the Fair, especially the ladies.
And it is pronounced by them to be one of the most attractive features of the Fair.
The scene represents the old time negro quarters on a big Southern plantation on
Saturday evening, after the day’s work is done. All the old uncles and aunties and
the little pickaninnes on the plantation are assembled in front of the cabins, and
then the evening’s frolic begins. There’s an old plantation break-down ending
with a cake walk as cake walks were in ante-bellum days. There’s buck and wing
dancing by young negroes and negresses, banjo solos, songs, etc., and as an old
uncle draws his bow across the strings of a fiddle that may have seen better days
but has lost none of its sweetness of tone, the young negroes seem magically
touched and such dancing and cutting of the pigeon wing has never been seen
since the days of ’61. The negro village is just as true to nature as anything can
be, there’s not an objectionable feature to the entertainment, and if any person,
especially ladies, wish to enjoy a half hour and at the same time get a glimpse of
negro life in the South before the war this is the place to go. [Bold face added.]16

Not much is yet known about this exhibit besides this one article.17 In an 1899 article we
are informed about some stuffed birds Smith is adding to the Antebellum Negro Village,
the article states that, “A group of crows and blackbirds Capt. Smith will place in the
negro village.” One advertisement in 1899 refers to “Negro quarters” at the State Fair. 18
However, when and why the “Negro village” was discontinued is not known. It might
have continued but not been featured in Fair advertisements or it might have been
continued with a different name. So far images for the “amusement” haven’t been
located or any other information besides what the author has discovered.

14
Advertisement, “The Texas State Fair and Dallas Exposition,” Dallas Morning News, Oct. 5, 1898, page 3. Also,
advertised Sept. 30, 1898, page 3; Oct. 1, 1898, page 3; Oct. 3, 1898 page 3; Oct. 4, 1898, page 3.
15
The author looked using the search database through DMN articles using different terms but could not find
anything nor going through the microfilm.
16
No author, “Another Great Big Crowd,” Dallas Daily Times Herald, Friday Oct. 7, 1898, page 4.
17
More might be in the Dallas Time Herald, but we don’t have it word searchable.
18
Advertisement, Dallas Morning News, Sept. 29, 1899, page 5.
 Page 9 of 103

Figure 6 - W.H. Gaston Middle School DISD

The effort to erect a memorial to Smith was supported by the Sterling Price Camp who
passed the following resolution.

“That Camp Sterling Price heartily approves of the move of the Fair and leading
associations in the city and the citizens of Texas to erect a monument to the
gallant Confederate and good business man, Capt. Sydney Smith, and that Col.
J.A. Orr of Columbus, Miss., the only living member of the Confederate Congress,
be selected to participate at the unveiling of the monument at the next State Fair,
in October.”19

The Dallas Sterling Price chapter of the United Confederate Veterans understood this
memorial to be a Confederate monument. Orr Street in Dallas is named after J.A. Orr.

The Dallas Daily Time Herald obituary sought to represent him as a noble example of
the Antebellum South of plantations and slavery and service of the Confederacy in the
terminology of the Lost Cause interpretation of history. From the obituary.

… All through his long and useful life he lived up to those ideals of the old-time
Southerner and was as courteous as any cavalier of old. When the tocsin of war
sounded in 1861, Captain Smith responded to the call of his native Southland and

19
No author, “Confederate Veterans Meet, Dallas Morning News, 5/6/1912, page 16.
 Page 10 of 103

fought gallantly on the Confederate side until the surrender of Lee at

Appomattox. He entered the army as a member of Company D, First Mississippi
regiment, and served throughout the entire four years’ strife. When the war
ended he was an aide-de-camp with the rank of captain and on the staff of
General Jackson. After the war he returned to his Mississippi plantation and
followed the life of a planter …20

The Capt. Sydney Smith monument glorifies a Confederate identified vile racist.

Figure 7- 20th century 20s to 30s. Gallas East Africans exhibited with zebras.
Garden Zoological of Acclimation in Paris.

20
No author, “Captain Sydney Smith Died This Morning,” Dallas Daily Times Herald, 3/13/1912, page 1, last page of
section.
 Page 11 of 103

Figure 8-- Garden of Acclimation exhibiting African women.

Figure 9- French tourist observes African drinking a beer at the Garden of

Acclimation.
 Page 12 of 103

Texas Under Six Flags and Six Flags Over Texas

The Six-Flags Texas idea is used

extensively by the 1936 Centennial on
artifacts, its printed material, artwork,
the in art work, and in the layout of
the architecture along the Esplanade.
The meaning of this Six-Flags Texas
idea needs to be discussed since the
1936 Centennial sought to be its
physical manifestation. The issue of
what six flag designs were selected to
make up the Six-Flags Texas idea in
the appendix.

The Bullock Museum states that

origin of the Six-Flag theme is not
known but became popular with the
1936 Centennial.21

It seems though that the concept of

Texas being under at different times
the sovereignty of six nations appears
to originate or was first popularized
with the book, “The Story of Texas
Under Six Flags,” by Mollie Evelyn
Moore Davis, who was often listed as
M.E.M. Davis, a school textbook
published by Ginn & Co. in 1897. She
Figure 10- The Story of Texas Under Six was born in 1844 and died in 1909.
Flags by M.E.M. Davis 1897. She was the author of twelve books,
the first one, “In War Times at La Rose
Blanche,” in 1888.22

Her school history is a white and Texan nationalist history whose many failings won’t be
discussed here, however a section which represents the perspective of the book would be
a section titled, “Dying Races,” where she wistfully discusses the extinction of the buffalo
and Native Americas as equivalent, “With the Red Man, another race, as wild, as noble,
and as free as his, was as slowing drifting to its end.”23

21
“The Six Flags of Texas: We weren’t always under the Lone Star,” website of the Bullock Museum,
https://www.thestoryoftexas.com/education/texas-six-flags, printed out 4/18/2018.
22
Wilkinson, C.W. “Davis, Mollie Evelyn Moore,” Texas State Historical Association Handbook, online,
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fda44, 7/19/2019.
23
Davis, Mollie Evelyn Moore, “The Story of Texas Under Six Flags,” Ginn & Co., Boston, 1897. The section, “Dying
Races,” is pp. 142-43.
 Page 13 of 103

She was a “negro dialect” writer who

depicted African Americans in a derogatory
way. Her first book, “In War Times at La
Rose Blanche,” set during the Civil War has
loyal slaves supporting the Confederacy. In
this dialog from the book a slave Dandy is
asked by the plantation owner what he
would want, and what Dandy wants is to
accompany the owner’s son Tom who is
leaving to join Confederate army and be
Tom’s servant.

“Well, Dandy,” he said as he dropped it,

“what do you want most of everything in the
world?”

And Dandy replied: “Please, Marse, I wants

to go to de war ‘long o’ Marse Tom.”

Father broke into a queer little laugh, “All

right, Dandy, you can go,” he said.

Figure 11- In War Times at La Rose Brother Tom gave a wild whoop. Dandy
Blanche by M.E.M. Davis. made a respectful “curchy” and backed down
the steps, his dark eyes shining. He darted
around the end of the gallery where Mandy and I looking over the railing saw him
throw himself on his hands and lift his heels in the air cracking them jubilantly
together.24

The United Daughters of the Confederacy has a chapter named after her.25
The primary symbol of Texas, that is the Six-Flags symbol, and the primary historical
idea of Texas, the Six-Nation historical theme originates from a racist ex-Confederate
author.

Six-Flags and Six-Nations and the Confederacy

The whole Six-Flags, Six-Nations idea is a historical fabrication. The flags weren’t
officially determined until the 1990s so that flag manufacturers would have a known set
to manufacture to enable a supply of six-flags sets. Which six flags were used for the six-
flag theme has varied greatly in the past and during the Texas Centennial of 1936.
However, dwelling on the historical fabrications obscures the use of this theme in the

24
Davis, Mollie Evelyn Moore, “In War Times at La Rose Blanche,” D. Lothrop Co., Boston 1888, pp. 22-23.
25
https://www.molliemooredavis.org/, printed out 7/19/2019.
 Page 14 of 103

support of white supremacy. So the review of the Six-Flags is given in an appendix to

this paper.

The theme of Six-Flags for the Six-Nations has a two-fold agenda. One is to define the
history of Texas in terms of the agency of white people which will be discussed in
another section of this essay. The other is to legitimize the Confederacy as a nation and
not as an insurrection which will be discussed here.

The official Federal name for the Civil War was “The War of the Rebellion” which was
used by the Congressional Record and by the U.S. War Departments 127-volume
collection, which is titled, “The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official
Records of the Union and Confederate Armies,” published from 1881 to 1901. The term
“Rebellion” defines the Confederate effort as an insurrection. A rebellion is subject to
criminal prosecution and hence implies that the Confederacy was a criminal effort.
Congress didn’t adopt the term “Civil War” until 1907.26 Likely this was a concession to
neo-Confederates who would no longer be criminal insurrectionists in this new name for
the War of the Rebellion.27

No nation recognized the Confederacy as a nation during the Civil War. There has been
neo-Confederate claims that an obscure tiny German state, Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and
Gotha, which you can find on a very large map of 19th century Germany, but whether
this is true is contested and not historically clear. Even if this was true, it is only, to use
the cliché, the exception that proves the rule, that overwhelmingly no nation of
significance and many of no significance recognized the Confederacy as a nation.

Figure 12- Six-flags symbol with gold seal in Foreword of Official Souvenir Guide

26
Spillman, Scott, “War, Civil War, or Revolution?” The New Republic, Aug. 30, 2017. Book review of “Civil Wars: A
History in Ideas,” by David Armitage, Knopf, 2017.
27
The author of this essay doesn’t know what the politics were behind this name change as a documented fact.
This is a topic that needs to be pursued.
 Page 15 of 103

The six-Nation and six-Flag theme is expressed in multiple ways at Fair Park in different
forms. There are six-flags hanging in the Hall of State in the Texas Building. Also, in the
Hall of State is a giant gold medallion with six figures one for each nation, including a
figure for the Confederacy with the Seal of the Confederacy.

Figure 13- Hall of state flags from left to right, France, 1st National Flag of the
Confederacy, United States of America. On your right when entering Hall.
 Page 16 of 103

On the way to the Hall of State the art

deco lanterns have six figures and one
of them is a Confederate soldier with
the Confederate seal.

Further the six porticos along the

Esplanade are individually assigned the
identity of one of the six nations with
both title and art work. One of the
porticos is designed for the Confederate
States.

Figure 14- Lanterns with a military figure

for each of the six-nations. The figure on
the left is a Confederate soldier standing
on the Seal of the Confederacy.
 Page 17 of 103

Artifacts of the Centennial frequently used a six-flags theme, such as postcards and
Centennial dishes.

Figure 15- Dish sold at Centennial with six-flag theme.

Figure 16- Postcard Texas Centennial.

 Page 18 of 103

By adopting this this six-flags and the associated six-nations, the Confederacy is
elevated as a nation equal to other great nations, Spain, France, Mexico, and United
States of America.

The Centennial Fair adopted this six-flags, six-nations theme and in 1936 there would
be many still alive remembering the term “War of the Rebellion,” and this six-flag, six-
nation would be a rejection of the idea that the Confederacy was a criminal insurrection,
but instead was a legitimate nation.

Figure 17Cover and publication page of State of Texas Building.

But the six-flag, six-nation theme was used also to demote the United States of America
to the level of the Confederacy or below. This is reveals in the text for the book “State of
Texas Building.” It is a leather volume with the title and the giant medallion embossed
on the cover. It uses a curious mix of scripts, some to be ancient, some modern, and
others artistic inventions. Paragraphs are started with an artistic illuminated initial
letters. It is meant to be a precious sacred volume like a Bible. The title page announces
that the book is “Presented by Commission of Control for Texas Centennial Celebration
and The State Board of Control,” in an archaic script. It is “Vol. 1” in the series “Shrines
of Texas,” also in archaic script. There is also on another page a dedication by the “State
Board of Control” that also determines that this book is an expression of official opinion.
 Page 19 of 103

The book repeatedly demotes the

United States of America. In a
front page with a color
illustration of six-flags is an
explanation of the six-flags with
the following reference to the
Confederate flag:

In 1861 the Lone Star

became the seventh in the
banner of the United
States of the Confederacy
until the Stars and Bars of
the Lost Cause bowed to
the Flag of the Union.

Note that it is the “United States

of the Confederacy,” instead of
the “Confederacy,” and instead of
referring to the United States of
America,” there is the term, “Flag
of the Union.”

Figure 18- A front page in the book State of

Texas Building.
 Page 20 of 103

Figure 19- Hall of State Medallion description in State of Texas Building pages 20-
21

In the description of the gold medallion in the Hall of State, the text in the book states:

At the top left, the ‘Union,’ an energetic figure holds the seal of the United States
of America. At the upper right, ‘Texas,’ wearing the traditional frontier costume,
gazes proudly at the seal of the Republic of Texas.

At the center left, the ‘Confederacy,’ in a stately and dignified pose, hold a garland
of flowers, as by her side we see the seal of the states united in purpose at an
important period in our history…

The figure with the seal of the United States of America is called the “Union figure”
instead of the American figure. The Confederacy is made to be a heroic figure equal to
the “Union figure.” 28 This demotion of the United States of America also occurs in one
of the murals in the hall of state as previously mentioned by having three fates
representing the South, North, and Columbia. The Confederacy is made to be a nation
while the United States of America is demoted to being a faction.

28
Adams, Frank Carter, Editor, “State Building of Texas: Central Exposition, Texas Centennial Celebrations, 1836
Dallas 1936,” for Commission of Control for Texas Centennial Celebrations and The State Board of Control, The
Steck Company, 1937, Austin, Texas.
 Page 21 of 103

Confederate Mural in the Hall of State

Figure 20Detail of Mural at Hall of State

The first thing that is noticed is the Confederate battle flag and it is a part of what is held
to be the heroic epic of Texas.

What may not be noticed is that the three Confederate soldiers on horseback facing in
profile to the right are not generic Confederate soldiers but are portraits of specific
individuals who have been considered Texas Confederate heroes by Texas neo-
Confederates.
 Page 22 of 103

On the mural are

the texts,
“Dowling,
Johnston, and
Hood.” The
portraits are of
Confederates
Major Dick
Dowling, Gen.
Albert Sidney
Johnston and
John Bell Hood.

Dick Dowling
rented slaves for
his business
prior to the Civil
War. He is
considered a
Figure 21 - Enlargement of photo taken from other side of the pillar. hero for winning
the Battle of
Sabine Pass which prevented emancipation from reaching Texas much earlier in the
Civil War. Some of the African American soldiers were sold into slavery. Others were
forced to labor at the Texas State Penitentiary. Both of these acts are crimes against the
laws of war.29

29
The Fondren Library of Rice University has an excellent online website titled, “Slavery and the Battle of Sabine
Pass,” which details what happened to captured African American troops and Dowling’s involvement with slavery.
https://exhibits.library.rice.edu/exhibits/show/dick-dowling/slavery-and-sabine-pass 7/26/2019.
 Page 23 of 103

Albert Sidney Johnston’s son William

Preston Johnston wrote a biography
of him published in 1878, and in the
biography W.P. Johnston wanted the
reader to know that Johnston was
pro-slavery and a white supremacist.
Quoting W.P. Preston:

General Johnston’s views in

regard to slavery were those
generally held in the South …
With no great respect for political
abstractions, and perceiving
clearly the differences that mark
race and condition, he rejected
with scorn the generalizations
which overlook all existing facts,
and confound all the relations of
life… But he could not ignore that
the manifest inferiority of the
negro fitted him for the place he
held, and that time alone could fit
him for any other.30

In another section of the book W.P.

Johnston quotes antebellum letters
from his father to show that his
father was pro-slavery as W.P.
Johnston states:

Figure 22-Title Page The Life of Gen. Albert

Sidney Johnston
During the summer and fall of 1856 all other interests were subordinate to the
political struggle which resulted in the election of Mr. Buchanan, the Democratic
candidate, over Fremont, the nominee of the Antislavery party. The following
letters are inserted, because they clearly define General Johnston’s views on the
subject of abolition and his apprehensions at that time.

Indeed they do. An extract of a Sept. 12, 1856 letter from San Antonio is as follows:

I notice with sorrow the progress of fanaticism in the North. What do they want?
We want the Union with the Constitution. We want to share in its glorious,

30
Johnston, William Preston, “Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston,” D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1878, p. 258.
 Page 24 of 103

benevolent, civilizing mission, and its high and magnificent destiny. Our whole
hearts are devoted to its support and perpetuity. We want the rights and
independence of the States and the security to individuals guaranteed by the
Constitution; we claim immunity from intervention and intervention. Do they
want these things? Let them then cease to agitate a question which produces a
feeling of insecurity which is intolerable. With whatever sorrow, however heart-
felt and agonizing, we will not hesitate to encounter separation with all its
attendant horrors rather than bear the evils and degradation relentlessly heaped
upon us by the heartless folly of fanaticism.

Hypochondriac persons, without a single cause of unhappiness, by cherishing

insane ideas, contrive to make themselves truly miserable. So with our people of
the North. A merciful and beneficent God has placed within our grasp every
source of human happiness. He has given us the finest country on earth,
embracing every variety of climate, soil, and production, affording the means of a
perfect independence of the rest of the world; a government more free than any
other, and laws whose extreme benevolence hardly restrains individual action
sufficiently for public safety; and the right to worship even according to our
fancy. Yet with all these gifts — surely divine — they cannot be happy unless their
Southern brothers will consent to lie upon the Procrustean bed they have
constructed for them. They must adopt some other basis for the settlement of the
question in agitation than passion. Why not let reason again resume its sway?

W.P. Johnston follows with this letter from his father.

Writing on the 23d of November, he says, in allusion to the same topic, and the
election of Mr. Buchanan as president:

My Dear Will: We are all well, and contented with the results of the
election. If our Northern brethren will give up their fanatical, idolatrous
negro-worship, we can go on harmoniously, happily, and prosperously,
and also gloriously as a nation. We hope this, although we fear it is making
too much of poor human nature. It is more in accordance with human
experience to believe that they will cherish their unhappy delusion. Wat a
people? what a destiny! Great, almost without limit we would be, if they
would employ all the energy, all the talents, all the genius, and all the
resolution, to build up, beautify, adorn and strengthen our Government,
which they have used from the beginning to cripple and destroy it.31

This is an extract from an irate letter by Confederate John Bell Hood to U.S. General
William Tecumseh Sherman.

31
Johnston, William Preston, “Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston,” D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1878, p. 189-
190.
 Page 25 of 103

You came into our country with your army avowedly for the purpose of
subjugating free white men, women, and children, and not only intend to rule
over them, but you make negroes your allies and desire to place over us an
inferior race, which we have raised from barbarism to its present position, which
is the highest ever attained by that race in any country in all time. I must,
therefore, decline to accept your statements in reference to your kindness toward
the people of Atlanta, and your willingness to sacrifice everything for the peace
and honor of the South, and refuse to be governed by your decision in regard to
matters between myself, my country, and my God. You say, "let us fight it out like
men." To this my reply is, for myself, and, I believe, for all the true men, aye, and
women and children, in my country, we will fight you to the death. Better die a
thousand deaths than submit to live under you or your Government and your
negro allies.32

Albert Sidney Johnston died in battle during the Civil War. Dick Dowling and John Bell
Hood died of yellow fever after the Civil War. Dowling died Sept. 23, 1867 and Hood
died Aug. 30, 1879.

More subtle in this section of the

mural are the three goddess that are
the fates and they are labeled “South,”
“Columbia,” and the “North.” This is a
“War between the States,” concept of
the Civil War in which the United
States government is made equal to
the Confederacy and reduced to a
faction within the United States of
America as being just the “North”
with the United States of America
being represented by Columbia. The
Union during the Civil War is made to
be something different and just a
faction in the United States of
America.

Figure 23- South, Columbia, North figures in

Confederate section of mural in the Hall of
State

32
Hood, John Bell Gen., extract from letter to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, Sept. 12, 1864; O.R. Ser. 1 V. 39
Bk. 2, page 419-422.
 Page 26 of 103

The Giant
Golden
Medallion

The giant gold

medallion in the
hall of state
opposite the
entry way has an
allegorical female
figure draped in
robes to
represent the
Confederacy. The
seal of the
Confederacy is on
a shield which
she is holding.
She rests upon
clouds which
Figure 24- Medallion in the Hall of State makes her a
divine figure in
the heavens. As stated earlier the medallion elevates the Confederacy to be a nation
rather than a rebellion and demotes the United States of America to be the
Confederacy’s peer.

Making a Sacred and Beautiful Confederacy

Figure 25 - View of the Confederate Portico and the Confederacy statue

 Page 27 of 103

Figure 26 Two views of the Confederacy Statue

The portrayal of the Confederacy in front of the Confederate States portico as a statue of
a beautiful figure, like a goddess, or a high priestess, in front of the Confederate portico,
and the beautiful figure on heavenly clouds on the great medallion, and art work on
advent garde buildings works to make the Confederacy beautiful, sacred and timeless.
Set in an idyllic setting it entices the viewer to love the Confederacy. It erases the
suffering of slaves and the massacre of African American troops by the Confederate
army during the Civil War. The figure of the Confederacy on the gold medallion in the
Hall of State, along with the Confederacy statue seeks to make the Confederacy divine.
 Page 28 of 103

Figure 27-- Confederacy statue

Seventh State and Seven Stars

Inside on the
portico is a
painted
medallion for
the
Confederacy.
It shows a
Confederate
flag with
seven stars
and balls of
cotton. The
first national
flag of the
Confederacy,
known as the
Figure 28- Crown of the
Figure 29 Medallion inside Stars and Confederacy statue
Confederate States Portico Bars, has
 Page 29 of 103

thirteen stars. A seven star flag would be a flag briefly used in 1861 until another state
seceded. As mentioned earlier, under the medallion is the text, “Confederate States of
America, 1861 1865, Texas the Seventh State Admitted to the Confederacy.” The statue,
Confederacy, in front of the portico has seven stars in her crown to indicate that Texas
was the seventh state to join the Confederacy. An attempt is made to give Texas joining
the Confederacy some special numerological and mystical connection by emphasizing
this fact.

It isn’t some prosaic fact or a recounting of the chronicles of history, it is symbolized in

the statue’s crown who is a either a goddess or high priestess. None of the three national
flags of the Confederacy were selected, but a flag that was only in brief use.

Texas Women in the Civil War Plaque

Figure 30- Location of the Texas Women in the Civil War plaque
Near the entry way for the Grand Place building is a plaque “Texas Women of the Civil
War.” The plaque, erected in 1964 states in all capital letters:

Civilian Duties of 90,000 Texas Men Fighting for the Confederacy fell to wives
back home in land of few factories and an enemy blockade that cut down on
imports. Women had to run businesses and farms for their absent men who
committed to the uncertain mails their letters of instructions. Yet with the help of
children, old men and loyal slaves, furnished army and the Confederacy with
grain, meat and cotton for home consumption and foreign exchange for guns,
gunpowder, factory goods, drugs and other supplies.
 Page 30 of 103

Ran newspapers. Loaded Shells. Made

Gun Caps. Did “Man’s work” of many
kinds, in addition to homemaking,
sewing, nursing, teaching and child care.

Made medicines from herbs and plants.

Grew poppies and squeezed the seed
pods to supply opiates to the hospitals.
Carded cotton and wool, spun and wove,
then dyed the homemade cloth with
bark or roots. Plaited palmetto or corn
shucks to make hats. Made coffee of
acorns or vegetables, tea of sage or
orange leaves.

On 2,000 miles of coastline and frontier,

faced personal hazards from invasion or
Indian raids. Elsewhere were in peril
from marauders. Through the four years
won admiration for their pluck, and
maintained faith enough to help rebuild
the defeated South. (1964)
Figure 31- Texas Women in the Civil
War plaque

This plaque misrepresents history, erases history, and falsifies history. First this plaque
is about white women supporting the Confederacy and African Americans are made to
be outside of history. Second, Texas had a significant opposition to secession and the
Confederacy, particularly in some communities and areas, such as among German
immigrants and in North Texas, and so not all white women supported the Confederacy.
The plaque serves to erase the resistance by Texans against the Confederacy by having
an underlying assumption that all Texas women in the Civil War were supporters of the
Confederacy. The title should be “Pro-Confederate White Texas Women in the Civil
War.”

However, there is another falsification that deserves special notice. This narrative
pushes the idea of women in an unsafe environment with challenging circumstances
straining to maintain their livelihoods and eke out production to support the
Confederate war effort. The reality was quite different.

John H. Cochran in his history, “Dallas County,” a history published in 1928 and widely
accepted by Dallas residents, in his chapter on the Civil War describes how Dallas
flourished and enriched itself from selling supplies to the Confederacy during the Civil
War. He states that the prosperity of the Civil War era is what gave Dallas its boost and
subsequent success. These are key extracts from the book.
 Page 31 of 103

But Dallas County, from 1859 to 1861, had made such rapid and successful progress
in the production of wheat, corn, forage meat and other necessary supplies of food,
she was recognized as the center of the food-producing counties of Texas, so much
that the Confederate Government established and maintained a general
quartermasters and commissary headquarters at Dallas for the collection of food
and supplies for the army of the Trans-Mississippi Department. Also, established
a transportation and recruiting department there and a manufacturing department
at Lancaster, where arms were repaired and pistols manufactured. Dallas was
general headquarters for all these departments, so the officers and their families
and all necessary details made Dallas their temporary home during the war, thus
supplying the places of the enlisted soldiers.

Dallas was hardly reduced to marginal economic circumstances and with the
Confederate military stationed there, there wouldn’t be a security problem. As to how
Dallas County was able to produce so much food and support the supply of war
materials to the Confederate army Cochrane explains:

Besides, large numbers of negroes were brought into Dallas County for food and
for protection during the war, and were gladly hired to the citizens for their food
and clothes. Nearly every family, which had no negroes of their own, hired one or
more of these negroes and were thus enabled to cultivate all of their land in
wheat, corn and oats, so Dallas County continued to be the great food producing
center of Texas. Its reputation in this respect became so great that many desirable
citizens were attracted by its prosperity and permanently settled in the county
and contributed much to its future development.33
During the Civil War slaveholders sent their slaves to Texas to prevent their
emancipation by the American army and their slaves fleeing to the American army lines.
Dallas had an abundance of cheap slave labor to exploit.

The success of Dallas starts with war profiteering supplying the Confederate armies with
food, supplies and war materials in their fight to preserve slavery by exploiting cheap
slave labor. For those who marvel at the wealth of Dallas looking at the great buildings
of downtown Dallas and northward, should also go visit the Greens, Pinks, Whites, and
Browns, on Highland Village Dr. to see where some of the descendants of the exploited
slaves live.

33
The extracts are from a special double edition published by The Aldrege Book Store in Dallas in 1966. This
volume has, “History of Dallas County, Texas,” by John Henry Brown, and “Dallas County: A Record of its Pioneers
and Progress,” by John H. Cochran. As the front page states, “The Two Major Chronicles of Early Dallas County Now
Republished Together,” with a foreword by Sam Acheson. Cochrane’s book was originally published in 1928 and
printed by Direct Advertising and Printing Co., Dallas, Texas. The volume has the original pages and the quotes are
on pages 87-88.
 Page 32 of 103

AN EMPIRE EXHIBITION: The White

Triumphalism of Fair Park
The Confederate elements are only elements, among other elements, in a larger scheme
of art and architecture of triumphal white supremacy.

Empire Exposition

In the 1930s and

earlier imperial
powers had empire
exhibitions and
colonial expositions.
The 1936 Texas
Centennial defined
itself as an empire
exhibition. These
multiple references
to “Empire” is in a
time, 1936, of world
domination by the
American and
European empires in
a nearly world-wide
system of white
supremacy.34

Figure 32- Cover of Official The “Official Figure 33- Foreword to Official
Souvenir Guide. Souvenir Guide,” Souvenir Guide.
announces on its very
first page that the exposition has been designed to communicate a message of triumph.
The guide’s Foreword introduction announces:

This is the official guidebook of the Texas Centennial Exposition. It has been
designed to tell you the complete story of An Empire On Parade, the location
of the buildings, attractions and exhibits. Something of the glamorous history of
Texas has been included although no book, no exposition, can do justice to that
thrilling story. [Boldface added.]

34
The Japanese Empire also had expositions. The Japanese imperial expansion can perhaps be seen as another part
of their program of Westernization and copying the West.
 Page 33 of 103

“An Empire On Parade,” capitalized in the text of the foreword, announces the
triumphalist intention of the Centennial Exposition and that the guide will do so, and is
“designed” to do so, by telling the reader of the “location of the buildings, attractions,
and exhibits.” The art and architecture is explained as being the vehicle to express this
triumphalist empire theme. Above this Foreword is a six-flags design with a gold seal
for the Dallas Centennial stamped over the flags poles would intersect thus making the
six-flag element integral to the 1936 Texas Centennial.

Under the Foreword were the signatures: Nathan Adams, Chairman of the Board; Fred
F. Florence, President; and the Management Committee, R.L. Thornton, Chairman;
Harry A. Olmsted and Arthur L. Kramer.

This Foreword is followed by a letter to “TEXAS CENTENNIAL VISTORS,” by Texas

governor James V. Allred which concludes with the sentence:

I say, “Welcome to AN EMPIRE ON PARADE.”

Capitalization and quotes are in the original. 35

Figure 34- Texas Gov. Allred letter of
welcome in Souvenir Guide Book

35
“Official Souvenir Guide: Texas Centennial Exposition * Dallas, June 6 to November 29,” cover title, front piece
gives the title as the “The Official Guide Book: Texas Centennial Exposition, June 6 1936 Nov. 29,” published by the
Texas Centennial Central Exposition, copyright 1936 by John Sirigo. Pagination on the Souvenir Guide doesn’t start
until page 9. Both quotes are prior to pagination. This reference will hence be OSG, for Official Souvenir Guide.
 Page 34 of 103

In the Souvenir Guide book there is a section titled,

“An Empire On Parade.” It explains how the Texas
Centennial Exposition is a medium to explain how
great and heroic Texas history is in its achievement of
empire. The essay concludes with the following:

Against a background of history made brilliant by the

story of mission priest and Spanish Don, pioneer and
frontiersman, the sharp imprint of Texas will be
revealed, Art and Science, Commerce and industry
have been merged in the Texas Centennial Exposition
to tell, in graphic reality, of the thrilling climb up the
steep heights of empire.

Thus the Texas Centennial Exposition becomes more

Figure 35- "Empire on Parade"
section in Official Souvenir Guide.
than a World’s Fair, more than the joyous celebration
of a land honoring a noble past. It is a drama that was
born in mountains and on the plains of Texas. In its oil
fields and on the broad ranges the scenes were
rehearsed. Workers in cotton fields, farmers on the
fringe of the wilderness and all the gallant host of men
and women who have made Texas are the authors of
this fast-moving spectacle, Texas, through the medium
of the Texas Centennial Exposition, presents an
Empire On Parade.36 37[Boldface added.]

The essay, “Touring the Exposition,” opens as follows:

As you enter the grounds of the Texas Centennial Exposition through the main
gate, facing Parry Avenue, there stretches away from you one of the most
beautiful and imposing vistas of An Empire on Parade. It is the Esplanade of
State, 300 feet wide and 1,000 feet long, leading from the main entrance to the
stately Texas Hall of State, the centerpiece which dominates the entire scene. 38
[Boldface added.]

The guide defines the architecture and layout as a progression and an empire exhibition.

In a following section titled, “The Esplanade of State,” this idea is repeated stating:

36
OSG, “Early History of Dallas,” pp. 15-16.
37
The capitalization of the phrase, “An empire on Parade,” varied, with usually, but not always “An” capitalized but
“on” roughly was capitalized half the time and not capitalized half the time. Not reason for this can be discerned by
the author.
38
OSG, “Touring the Exposition,” pp. 17-18.
 Page 35 of 103

As you stand at the western end of this promenade and look toward the
$1,200,000 Texas Hall of State, the full power and scope of An Empire on
Parade is impressed upon you.39 [Boldface added.]

Then follows a description of the Esplanade of State with focus on its impressive size
and its illumination. The “Empire on Parade” was to be understood as being very grand.

Along the Esplanade on each side are buildings about the length of the reflecting
pool. On the right side viewing from the entrance was the Varied Industries,
Electricity, and Communication, and on the left side was the Hall of Travel and
Transportation.

In the section, “Story of Texas” we are told that Stephen F. Austin had a “dream of
empire.” 40

In the section “The Electrical Hall,” again a reference to the empire is made. The guide
states:

The Hall of Communication presents the extensive display of the American

Telephone and Telegraph Company. You will find this one of the outstanding
attractions of the commercial exhibits of An Empire on Parade. [Boldface
added.]

The “empire” theme is repeated in describing the exhibit of the Western Union, a
telegraph firm:

You will find this one of the most intriguing and of the most unique in your tour
of An Empire on Parade.41 [Boldface added.]

Further in the section, “The Varied Industries Building,” it is stated:

The wide variety of the exhibits in the Varied Industries Building gives you a
splendid idea of the scope of An Empire On Parade.42 [Boldface added.]

During the Texas Centennial Exposition a theatrical performance, “Texas Cavalcade,”

was performed twice a day. The “Guide Book” has a section devoted for it. The opening
sentence is:

39
OSG, “The Esplanade of State,” pp. 19-20.
40
OSG, “The Story of Texas,” pp. 9-12.
41
OSG, “The Electrical Hall,” pp. 21-27, “Empire” on pp. 23, 24.
42
OSG, “The Electrical Hall,” pp. 75-79, “Empire” on pp. 75.
 Page 36 of 103

The spectacle of an empire marching to its destiny through four hundred years
is to be a feature of the Texas Centennial Exposition at Dallas, June 6 to
November 29. 43 [Boldface added.]

Repeatedly the Guide Book defines the Texas Centennial as an Empire Exposition and
the art, architecture and Texas Cavalcade are to celebrate a Texas empire.

The guide book clearly and repeatedly wants to instruct the reader that the assemblage
of architecture and the displays within the buildings making up the assemblage are an
empire exposition.

Texas White Nationalism

The introductory essays in the guide book reveal a neo-Confederate and white
nationalist viewpoint and a white Texas identity. The essay “The Story of Texas” uses
the phrase, “War Between the States,” to refer to the Civil War and Texans are held to be
supporters of the Confederacy with the statement, “The War Between the States fell like
a clap of doom, and again the tall men with long guns shouldered their rifles and fell in
step with the Confederacy.”

The essay repeatedly refers to “the tall men,” which are clearly identified to be white
American immigrants, with a imagined distinguishing racial characteristic, as those who
successfully make Texas a triumph. The essay positions the current Texas as a triumph
of white, primarily Anglo-Saxon, men.

The introduction states:

The first men to range the plains and peaks of Texas were Red men with bows
and arrows, but the debt of the free citizens of Texas today, is a debt to tall men
with long rifles, American frontiersmen.

After describing what they hold to be the failure of the Spanish and French to effectively
colonize Texas, the essay states, “they drove the wedge of civilization into a land of such
expanse that it was destined to greatness beyond imagination. It was the tall men with
long guns who carried on.” As mentioned earlier the essay further explains that these
men realized Stephen F. Austin earlier “dream” of “empire.”

After the struggle the essay explains, “Sam Houston, leader of the tall men with long
guns, was the popular hero of the young free land.”

The term “young” shows that the narrative has as its year zero the triumph of these
white men. In terms of human settlement, Texas was over ten millennia old prior to
Europeans reaching the Western hemisphere, additionally it had been settled by

43
OSG, “Cavalcade,” pp. 63-64, “Empire” on pp. 63, 64.
 Page 37 of 103

Spanish and was part of the Republic of Mexico. This narrative exists in an Anglo-Saxon
white space-time universe. This freedom is defined as that for white people and not
relevant to African Americans who were enslaved.

The term “free” also reveals the narratives whiteness. Mexico abolished slavery shortly
after independence and it was the attempt to assert over the territory of Texas the
abolition of slavery was one, if not the one issue, that drove the secession of Texas from
Mexico. In this definition of being “free” it is American whites being free, but not slaves
or Latinos in Texas, and it also is being “free” from the multi-racial Mexicans.

The reader is told, “Surviving the Reconstruction era, the Texans began in the early ‘70s
the real development of the Lone Star State.” The multiracial democracy of
Reconstruction is posed as something that Texans survived.

However, the essay primarily concerns itself with independence from Mexico as a heroic
effort of the “tall men,” white Anglo-Saxon men, against what was understood by Texans
in 1936 as the multi-racial Mexicans.44

The subsequent essay, “Early History of Dallas,” starts with eliminating Native
Americans, the essay explains:

When the Republic of Texas won its spurs on the battlefield of San Jacinto in
1836, it turned its attention almost at once to the opening of the rich interior still
dominated by the red men.

Victory over the Mexican government is a prelude to the consolidation of white

supremacy by genocidal wars against Native Americans as the essay further explains:

Beginning in 1837 the Congress of Texas laid the basis for this development by a
series of laws. These were designed to improve communication with the United
States to the northeast, to eliminate the Indians in the area and to populate the
prairies with white families.

The essay uses the term “War Between the States” in reference to the Civil War. The
essay states that “Dallas and surrounding territory were overwhelming pro-Southern in
sentiment and turned their major energies to aiding the Confederacy.” The actual
historical record was that the surrounding territories didn’t support secession. Support
for secession in Dallas was due to inflammatory editorials in the Dallas Herald.
Randolph B. Campbell in “Grass-Roots Reconstruction in Texas,” notes:

Eight north-central Texas counties that, like Dallas, grew relatively little cotton
and had small numbers of slaveholders and slaves opposed secession in 1860 and
1862. For example, voters in Collin County, located immediately north of Dallas,

44
OSG, “The Story of Texas,” pp. 9-12.
 Page 38 of 103

cast 70 percent of their ballots in favor of the Union. Dallas County residents,
however, being influenced by the pro-secession stance of local leaders such as
John J. Good, the ultrasouthern editorials of Charles R. Pryor’s Dallas Herald,
and a supposedly abolitionist-inspired plot that resulted in the burning of the
town square of Dallas in July, 1860, supported disunion by a vote of 741 to 237. 45

Even before the Civil War Dallas was a reactionary outlier. Dallas has a Pryor Street and
a Good-Latimore Expressway.

The importance of Dallas to the Confederate war effort is explained as if that was a
laudatory accomplishment. The essay describes Reconstruction as a time of oppression
and states “but its citizenship regained political control in 1874.” However, African
Americans lost their rights to vote then, and so how Dallas conceives of itself, as a body
of white people, who make up this “citizenship,” is revealed.46

All these essays have an erasure of the genocidal wars against Native Americans, the
brutality of slavery, and the atrocities of the violent white terrorism during
Reconstruction and the oppression and the lynchings of racial oppression, and the
brutalities against Latinos.

Violent White Masculinities

Figure 36- Mural in West Texas Room Texas Building with enlarged detail.

45
Campbell, Randolph B., “Grass-Roots Reconstruction in Texas, 1865-1880,” Louisiana State Univ. Press, Baton
Rouge, 1997, pp. 62, 65.
46
OSG, “Early History of Dallas,” pp. 12-14.
 Page 39 of 103

In the West Texas Room there are at opposite ends of the room, two murals. One is of a
pioneer family traveling in a covered wagon sitting in the front. You notice that it isn’t
the stereotypical family of one father, one mother, one son, and one daughter. There is
no daughter portrayed. It is instead a patriarchal unit with a patriarch and the
patriarch’s wife and his son. Their faces are grim and they do not look very friendly. The
other mural has a cowboy and his face is not friendly and he seems angry.

Figure 37- Mural in West Texas Room of Texas Building with enlarged detail.
 Page 40 of 103

At Fair Park Texas identity is represented by “Big Tex” a white cowboy wearing cowboy
boots. The Texas identity is that of a cowboy. So these murals represent Texas identity.

The book, “Description of Texas,” Oran M. Roberts,

governor of Texas 1878 to 1883,47 was published in
1881 and has a short history of Texas. The book has a
section titled, “Delay In Settling: Inhabited by
Indians, then by Mexicans,” in which Native
Americans and Mexicans are denigrated.

In the introductory paragraph Robert’s explains the

elimination of Native Americas as part of a larger
global pattern white domination and extermination
of non-whites from the planet. Referring to the
continuing resistance of Native Americans to the loss
of Texas, Roberts writes:

They are careful, however, to keep us reminded of

their existence, by their savage depredations upon
our frontier people. This, however, cannot last long;
for this very savage nature, which causes them to
strike back as they recede before a superior race,
Figure 38-- A Description of draws upon them their gradual, though ultimate,
Texas by O.M. Roberts extermination. This is simply one of the processes at
work, by which the higher order of man is, and will
continue to be, forced in self-defence, willing or not, to take possession of, and
use the earth everywhere, carrying out the inexorable and perpetually operating
law of races, and of nations, — to elevate or die.

Roberts stating the racial identity of Mexicans argues that they are failures in both
settling Texas and having an inferior “manhood” in failing to carry out a successful
campaign of genocide against Native Americans. Roberts states:

The Mexicans during a hundred years, under the Spanish monarchy, and
afterwards under the Mexican Republic, made some progress in settling a small
part of Texas, and in disputing its dominion with the Comanches and other
tribes. They were, for the most part, a race of native Indians of copper color,
slightly intermixed with Spanish blood. They were partial, in their industrial
pursuits, to hunting for game, and to the care of herds of cattle, sheep and horses;
and their arts were, in the main, confined to a level with their occupations. Their
cultivation of the earth was very limited in quantity, and rude in manner. …

47
Dixon, Ford, “Roberts, Oran Milo,” Texas State Historical Association Handbook online,
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fro18, 7/18/2019.
 Page 41 of 103

With their standard of manhood, and arts of war, the struggle with the wild
savages was long, and often doubtful in maintaining their position in the country.
That difficulty, perhaps, contributed largely to their invitation of the Anglo-
Americans to share with them their lands and dangers; which, commencing
formally in 182, resulted in establishing numerous colonies for the settlement of
white men.

The Texas insurrection is understood as an inevitable racial conflict.

The antagonism of races soon commenced, and was kept up from various
grounds, until the Anglo-Americans, by the aid of some noble Mexicans,
remained masters of the field and established in Texas an independent Republic
in 1836. …

Roberts explains that white Texans, in contrast to Mexicans, are ready to violently seize
Texas with a campaign of genocide against Native Americans.

The Anglo-Americans, when permitted to come to Texas, as colonists, and

otherwise, adopted a very different mode of settling a new country. They went out
boldly, spreading themselves over the country, irrespective of military posts, or
priests, or towns, and with guns in hand, confronted the dangers of the Indian
scalping knife and tomahawk; formed settlements, built cabins, opened and tilled
farms, and gathered around them their stocks of hogs, sheep, cattle and horses.48

The Dallas Independent School District has an Oran M. Roberts Elementary School. In
2017, in a 3,000 plus word essay, it was one of the schools that Dr. Michael Phillips and
Ed Sebesta said needed to have its name change.49

Figure 39 - Oran M. Roberts Elementary School Dallas ISD

48
Roberts, Milo Oran, “A Description of Texas: Its Advantages and Resources,” Gilbert Book Col., St. Louis 1881 ,
pp. 17-21.
49
Phillips, Michael, Sebesta, Edward, Dallas Morning News, Aug. 4, 2017, online at:
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/04/dallas-confederate-memorials-scream-
white-supremacy
 Page 42 of 103

The Official Souvenir Guide wasn’t so direct, but communicated the same message. In
the section “The Story of Texas,” the phrases “the tall men with the long rifles” and “the
tall men with the long guns” is used repeatedly in the following sections:

The first men to range the plains and peaks of Texas were Red men with bows
and arrows, but the debt of the free citizen of Texas today is a debt to tall me
with long rifles, American frontiersmen. [Boldface added.]

After explaining the attempts by the Spanish and French to colonize Texas and their
failures, the Guide explains.

These men, however, blazed the trail. Under the Cross and the colors of their
kings, they drove the wedge of civilization into a land of such vast expanse that it
was destined to greatness beyond imagination. It was the tall men with long
guns who carried on. [Boldface added.]

As part of relating a narrative of the Texas insurrection:

Sam Houston, leader of the tall men with long guns, was the popular hero of
the young free land. [Boldface added.]

In mentioning the Civil War:

The War Between the States fell like a clap of doom and again the tall men with
long guns shouldered their rifles and fell in step with the Confederacy.
[Boldface added.]

After describing how Texas is a triumph after a hundred years since independence from
Mexico, the section concludes with this sentence.

The tall men with long rifles wrought well in the wilderness.50 [Boldface
added.]

“Tall men” is a way of saying white men from America or “Anglo-Americans.” “Long
guns” and “long rifles” are instruments of violence by which “the tall men” were able to
conquer and settle Texas. The history of Texas is the triumph of violent white men. The
failure of Mexico to extensively occupy Texas is not discussed, and the failures of Spain
and France are asserted to be due to having the wrong objectives. Given that a Pan
American Exposition was planned for 1937 it would be bad policy to assert that
Mexicans were racially inferior because they were racially mixed, an argument of white
supremacy that would apply to almost all of Latin America.

50
OSG, “The Story of Texas,” pp. 9-12.
 Page 43 of 103

The racial nature of this “parade” is made clear in official Centennial materials.

In the “Official Souvenir Guide,” there is a section, “Cavalcade of Texas.” This was a
theatrical performance on a huge stage, 170 X 300 feet, of Texas history at the State
Fair. The section repeats the empire theme, and also makes it clear that history begins
and is all about what white people do. It also has a less direct expression of Robert’s
ideas of racial violence.

From the introduction:

The spectacle of an empire marching to its destiny through four hundred years is
to be a feature of the Texas Centennial Exposition at Dallas, June 6 to November
29.

This panoramic extravaganza is “Cavalcade of Texas,” written and produced as a

living saga of the inexorable advance of civilization, by blood and iron and the
enduring will of the white man, in what was only the wild land of the naked
savage.

The Guide wishes to inform the reader that by “blood and iron” the “white man”
violently takes possession of the land from the “naked savage.”

The section explains that the “Cavalcade” starts with “… Pineda, the Spanish explorer of
1519,” to U.S. President Tyler admitting Texas as a state. The essay explains why it starts
with Pineda:

Moving across a great stage … will march the men who shaped the destiny of
Texas: Pineda, the first White Man to set foot on the soil of Tejas (Indian for
“friendly) of the Indians.

Note the capitalization of “White Man” in the text. The authors wish to impress upon the
reader that this beginning was when “the first White Man,” appeared in Texas.

Again making reference to “empire” the drama also involves gender roles in its portrayal
of Texas history as explained.

The story is episodic in that it is told in scenes and eras through “cut backs” taken
from two central and modern young characters, the inevitable boy and a girl.
Their wills clash; the girl abominated Texas, the boy, a cowhand, defends it – and
the march of an empire springs there before the eyes of the spectators, visitors to
the $25,000,000 World’s Fair of 1936.51

The triumph of Texas is also a triumph of men over women.

51
OSG, “Cavalcade,” pp. 63-64, “Empire” on pp. 63, 64.
 Page 44 of 103

Figure 40- Dallas did not tolerate

racially mixed casts for theater
productions so "Native
Americans" were created for the
Cavalcade by air brushing with
pigment.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy Shuts Down the Oak Cliff Little
Theater

Though it is not stated, the cast for “Cavalcade” would be all white. In 1936 in Dallas a
mixed race cast for a theatrical production would be angrily opposed. In 1935 the
United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) led a successful campaign against the Oak
Cliff Little Theater for attempting to produce a play with a racially mixed cast which
“horrified” the Texas Division president. The UDC’s campaign not only prevented the
production of the play, but the Oak Cliff Little Theater shut down. The president of the
Texas Division of the UDC, Mrs. C.C. Cameron, exulted in this triumph in the annual
minutes of their 1935 convention.

In the Dallas Time Herald, May 28, 1935 is an article, “Death of a Theater,” which gives
details into the harassment which drove out of existence the Little Oak Cliff Theater. The
article reprints the official notice of theater announcing its closure.

Whereas public co-operation of the Oak Cliff Little Theater has diminished to
such a point that further operations are both impractical and inadvisable, and
whereas, the present management of the Oak Cliff Little Theater recognized this
sentiment and believes it desirable no longer to operate contrary to the manifest
sentiment of the community.

Therefore, be it resolved by the directors of the Oak Cliff Little Theater

assembled, That effective at once, it is the sense of the this body that such
organization should cease to exist …
 Page 45 of 103

The article explains that “Tuesday morning a fuller statement on the passing of the
theater was released by the group’s board of directors.” The statement issued by the
Little Oak Cliff Theater was that they had earlier ran an article in the paper in the first
week in May announcing that they were going to perform the play “Jute” with a racially
mixed cast and had only received positive responses. Then it states:

On or about May 20 we received a letter from the United Daughters of the

Confederacy, protesting and stating the show must not go on, as it would disgrace
the city and the state. The following day we received a letter from one of the local
camps of the United Confederate Veterans, an affiliated organization also
protesting the show. The following day letters from several other organizations
and individuals were also received.

All told, the opposition was such minority, we refused at first to take it seriously.
On Friday morning we received a telephone call from the secretary of the
commercial association, stating he was besieged with telephone calls and that
something must be done.

The Oak Cliff Little Theater in response told the commercial association that they would
have a board meeting and get back to them, but on the following day of this first call
they received another call refusing to allow the Oak Cliff Little Theater the use of the
building. The Oak Cliff Little Theater shut down shortly thereafter.52

One notable thing about the shutdown of the Oak Cliff Little Theater you will not find
this reason for the shutdown in local histories, which are obscure or just wrong
regarding its closure.53

As stated, the Texas Division UDC President C.C. Cameron gloated over defeating the
Oak Cliff Little in her address to the Texas Division UDC 39th Annual Convention in San
Antonio Oct. 29 – Nov. 1, 1935.

In her address she takes care describing the many different colors of the flowers
blooming in Texas on her travels calling out each type of flower and its color. The
purpose of this become clear when she starts discussing their triumph over the Oak Cliff
Little Theater. Describing returning to Dallas after visiting Elgin, Texas she states:

On my returning to Dallas our Daughters were horrified that a Dallas Little

Theatre had announced the production of a play using a mixed cast of whites and

52
Lovell, Jimmy, “Death of a Theater,” Dallas Time Herald, 5/28/1935, page 12.
53
I plan on writing up a complete history of the shutdown of the Little Oak Cliff Theater and also how the history
has been omitted from local histories. I have also purchased a copy of the play “Jute.” It is a racist play and was
performed by an all-white cast and an all-African American cast in Dallas previous. It was the proposed
performance of an interracial cast where white people would play the white characters and African Americans
would play the African American parts that infuriated the neo-Confederates.
 Page 46 of 103

blacks. Joining other patriotic bodies, after some little controversy we finally
convinced the Little Theatre that this must be stopped and the production of the
play was withdrawn. We would encourage in every way a Negro Little Theatre as
we would a white, but we believe God was wise and had a purpose in mind when
he gave us colors in people as well as colors in flowers, and as a group of
Southern people we wish to return to Him His colors as He intended them to
be.54

In this Cameron is asserting that white supremacy is like making a floral bouquet.55

So to portray Native Americans the “Cavalcade of Texas Souvenir Program” shows a

naked man getting his buttock air brushed with pigments to darken him.56

Figure 41- Airbrushed white people pretending to be Native Americans. Pg. 11 Cavalcade of
Texas.
54
Cameron, C.C., “Address of Mrs. C.C. Cameron President of Texas Division United Daughters of the Confederacy,”
in “Thirty-Ninth Annual Convention Texas Division United Daughters of the Confederacy, San Antonio, October 29,
November 1, 1935,” pp. 56-61, mention of Oak Cliff Little Theater, pp. 59-60.
55
Cameron, C.C., “Address of Mrs. C.C. Cameron, President of Texas Division United Daughters of the
Confederacy,” Thirty-Ninth Annual Convention Texas Division United Daughters of the Confederacy, San Antonio,
Oct.29-Nov.1, 1935, pp. 56-62, mention of “Jute” play on pages 59-60. Officers of the UDC until the 1990s did not
go by their names and would instead use their husband’s names. The campaign against the Oak Cliff Little Theatre
is reported in the DMN: “Confederate Daughters Oppose Playing Whites And Negroes in Drama,” 5/18/1935, pp. 6;
“Another Confederacy Chapter Opposes Two Races in Theatricals,” 5/23/1935, pp. 6; “Guarantee No ‘Social
Upheaval,’ Quince Asks Protests to Cease on Mixed Cast for Play ‘Jute’”; “Quince Drops ‘Jute’ In Face of Protests,”
5/27/1935, pp. 7; “Oak Cliff Merges Membership with Dallas Little Theater’s,” 5/28/1935, pp. 14.
56
“Cavalcade of Texas Souvenir Program,” presumably published by the Texas Centennial but lists no publisher or
date. Cover says “Dallas * 1936.”
 Page 47 of 103

D.W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation, and the Cavalcade of Texas

Figure 42- Souvenir Program Cavalcade of Texas and Movie Poster for The Birth of
a Nation.
The producers of the “Cavalcade” and the Dallas Morning News worked to give to it the
prestige of another white supremacist work by pairing the production with the pro-Klan
movie “Birth of a Nation.”

D.W. Griffith was the director and producer of one of Americans most notorious, if not
the most notorious racist film “Birth of a Nation” which portrayed African American
men as rapists. Griffith visited Dallas during the Centennial. As a famous Hollywood
director he was a local news item and also was used to promote the Exposition.

The DMN on 6/8/1936, the day before the Exposition opening reported that D.W.
Griffith is advising the producers of the “Texas Cavalcade”:

Rumor that D.W. Griffith, great movie producer and creator of “The Birth of a
Nation” and other cinema epics, was called to Dallas to advise on “The Cavalcade
of Texas,” Centennial pageant, was give credibility by the fact that Mr. Griffith
and his wife were guests Sunday of high Centennial officials.57

57
No author, “Griffith Entertained by Centennial Staff,” DMN, June 8, 1936, page 8.
 Page 48 of 103

The article goes on to explain that Griffith was present at a rehearsal of the performance.
On the same page was a photo with of D.W. Griffith being meet by Centennial officials as
he disembarked from the train stating that he was in Dallas to see the “Cavalcade.” 58

The DMN, on 6/9/1936, the day of the opening of the Exposition, wishes readers to
know that Griffith has had input into the production and has praised the “Cavalcade of
Texas,” and reports

David Wark Griffith, the first of the great movie directors and responsible for the
immortal “Birth of a Nation,” Monday was furnishing the impetus which is
expected to make the opening of the Cavalcade of Texas Saturday night among
the more impressive events of the exposition.

….

The cast and their performance were pronounced excellent by the noted director
but he advised the additional expenditure on details to make the show
outstanding in every particular.59

In the DMN on 6/11/1936 is an article, “Griffith Praises Lighting” in reference to the

“Cavalcade.”60

On 6/17/1936 the DMN reports that the “Cavalcade” is almost ready and will open
Saturday the article concludes with an explanation that D.W. Griffith praised the
production as follows:

D.W. Griffith, the motion picture producer and director, whose “Birth of a
Nation” as made him immortal in film annals, left Dallas Monday with an
explanation that he had no official connection with “Cavalcade” but made several
suggestions when invited to do so. He warmly praised the magnitude of effects.”61

The DMN repeated hammers that D.W. Griffith, who they identify as the producer of
“Birth of a Nation,” the 20th century’s most notorious American racist film, a film which
is, according to the DMN, “immortal” and which according to the DMN, makes Griffith
“immortal,” approves the theatrical presentation and has helped make it even more than
excellent. In short, the DMN is instructing its readers that most famous white
nationalist movie director praises this theatrical production.

The understanding of Texas history being a racial triumph isn’t confined to the “Official
Souvenir Guide.”

58
No author, “Movie Master and Bride Arrive,” DMN, June 8, 1936, page 8.
59
“75,000 Expected to Attend Centennial during Week,” DMN, June 9, 1936, page 1, 9.
60
“Griffith Praises Lighting,” DMN, June 11, 1936, page 16.
61
“Cavalcade Almost Completed and Ready to Open Saturday,” DMN, Jun 17, 1936, page 4.
 Page 49 of 103

Figure 43- Cover of booklet Commemorating a Hundred Years of Texas History and its Preface
The booklet, “Commemorating A Hundred Years of Texas History,” published by the
Texas Centennial Commission, makes it clear that the centennial is about explaining not
only a white triumph, but an Anglo-Saxon racial triumph. In the opening Preface to the
book, Cullen F. Thomas, President of the Texas Centennial Commission explains:

It will be more than a mammoth modern exposition, whose buildings are models
of architecture, in brick and stone, housing triumphs of invention and miracles of
science and the riches of Texas soil and sun.

It will testify that Texans are not unworthy of the incomparable heritage left to
them by martyrs and patriots, dying and ready to die, that Texas might become
an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth.

It will commemorate the sacrifices of the plain pioneer men and women who first
trekked the unpeopled wilds, with ax and plow and rifle and spelling book and
Bible, to lay the mudsills of civilization.

It will life our eyes to the hilltops of our history, where cometh our help above the
bog and fog, to taller thinking and nobler living. [Boldface added.] 62

62
Thomas, Cullen, F., “Preface,” Commemorating a Hundred Years of Texas History, pub. Texas Centennial
Commission, 1936, pp. 1. Cullen F. Thomas is the President of the Texas Centennial Commission.
 Page 50 of 103

Also, note the phrase, “unpeople wilds.” Native Americans don’t even count as people
and are relegated to the non-human status of wild life in the “wilds.” History for Thomas
starts with white people, since prior to the arrival of white people, there are no people
and hence no history.

Six-Flags and Six-Nations and the Organization of Space and Time

Figure 44- 1936 Postcard of the Esplanade with the six porticos identified.
The Esplanade is the central focus of Fair Park today and was the central focus of the
Texas Centennial. The layout of the Esplanade is based on the six-nations historical
narrative of Texas history.

After passing through the main entrance of the Texas Centennial you come across a wide
pool which is as long as the Esplanade. On either side are three porticos, each one
devoted to one of the six nations in the six-nation theme.
Page 51 of 103
 Page 52 of 103

Figure 45-- The six medallions in the porticos of the Esplanade

They are laid out in a roughly historical progression. First, on the left is the Spanish
portico, and on the right is the French portico. Next, on the left is the Confederate states
portico, and on the right the Mexico portico. Finally, on the left is the Texas portico and
on the right is the United States of America portico.
 Page 53 of 103

The Texas building with its Hall of State is conceived as a shrine to Texas. The
Esplanade along with the Texas building constructs a historical progression cumulating
with a triumphal Texas. Persons entering the park, walking along the Esplanade, and
then visiting the Texas building re-enact this historical progression. The built landscape
gives this historical idea a physical and a monumentally imposing presence.

The Six-Flags idea defines the history exclusively in terms of a succession of European
style nation states. This would be white identified nations, Spain, France, Confederacy,
United States of America, and the Republic of Texas, and a nation derived from a
European nation, but not white, Mexico. These are nations conceived in the model of
modern states of the 19th and 20th century as Western states with national flags as
symbols of nation-states as opposed to the older dynastic states with their banners and
dynastic flags.

This defines the beginning and the end and the progression of Texas history as starting
and ending and being done by white people. The story of Mexico, a nation seen as non-
white is part of this narrative as a nation overthrown by white people in a triumphal
march of white supremacy. The Six-Flags idea is a white nationalist conception of Texas
history.

The Six-Flags idea also does erasure. There were Native Americans in non-European
polities (Organized but not European nation-states). Conflict with Native Americans,
and genocidal war waged against them by American immigrants to Texas and later
during the Republic of Texas, the Confederacy, and before and after the Civil War as the
state of Texas in the United States is a central feature of Texas history. This set of Six-
Flags excludes all these Native American polities.

Many Native American polities now have adopted flags, but a review of the literature
shows that this occurred in many, if not all cases, after 1936 and many cases from the
1960s to the 90s and some as recently in the 21st century.63 However, there might have
been some Native American polities that did have a flag before 1936, the author hasn’t
exhaustively searched the literature. However, it appears that by having the requirement
of a flag and a development of European ideology of nationalism, Native Americans not
having flags would be excluded which would be most if not all Native Americans in
Texas.

Similarly by defining the requirement that a historically important group in Texas have
been in existence in Texas as a nation state, large groups of Texas are excluded. Without
being nation-states they are without flags. So the Six-Flags doesn’t included African
Americans nor Latinos after 1836 and erases them as part of Texas history and drivers of
Texas history. These minorities become objects acted upon white the triumphal whites.

63
Healy, Donald T., “Native American Flags,” Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
 Page 54 of 103

The text under the Mexican medallion shows the purpose of Mexico being assigned a
portico, even though they are not white. Under the medallion for Mexico is the text,
“THIS REPUBLIC FOSTERED THE ENTRY OF THE FIRST AMERICAN COLONISTS A
PEOPLE DESTINED TO MOULD A GREAT EMPIRE.” (Original all capitals.) That is
the historical meaning of Mexico is that they allowed white people to enter and establish
the triumphal white state of Texas.

Figure 46- Text under the medallion in the Mexico Portico

Art along the Esplanade

In the porticos on the inner wall there were murals, two for each portico. There are
figures of white men and women, semi-nude neo-classically draped in scenes of the
leading modern technologies of 1936. They are going into the heavens on rockets,
welding, using X-Rays, broadcasting, working with the atom, making movies, working
on modern equipment, sailing and navigating the oceans, using trains and automobiles,
and other technologies. There are no non-white people. Non-white people are nothing,
non-existent, in these buildings of the future.

The following are some pictures of some of the murals.

Page 55 of 103
Page 56 of 103
Page 57 of 103
 Page 58 of 103

The Esplanade isn’t the only location at the

Centennial in which white people are
represented as being the agents for all
important activity.

In the iron work for the doors to the former

Dallas Museum of Fine Arts you see that the
artists are all white.

Figure 47- Iron work for doors at the former Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.
 Page 59 of 103

What is disturbing is that Dallas cultural institutions have been restoring the murals
along the Esplanade. Some were damaged by fire or painted over and Dallas cultural
organizations have seen fit to bring them back.64

Texas Hall of State

Figure 48- Postcard Night view of the State of Texas Building.

As you complete walking down the Esplanade you reach the pavilion before the Texas
Hall of State. Whereas the buildings along the Esplanade represent the progress of
Texas history, the Texas Hall of State represented the triumphant present day state of
Texas.

64
I have seen the following information on plaques at Fair Park. At the Confederate Portico the “Future Methods
of Transportation” mural, Carlo Ciampaglia, received conservation treatment in 1997 was paid for by Katherine B.
Scrimshire, Fidelity Investments through the Fidelity Foundation, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation,
and John Raeber. At the United States portico, “Photographic Process” mural, Pierre Bourdelle, was paid for by the
City of Dallas Bond Program, Friends of Fair Park, and State Fair of Texas. Another mural at this portico was also
restored but the author failed to get photos of the plaque for the restoration. At the Portico of France the murals
are also restored. No information on who paid for the restoration. This remains a project to be completed.
 Page 60 of 103

Figure 49- Series of views approaching the Texas Building

 Page 61 of 103

Figure 50- Views of Texas Building and detail

 Page 62 of 103

Figure 51- Texas Building looking up

In a line all around the exterior of the building towards the top are chiseled letters of all
the Texas governors, making quite a rogues gallery of racists.

Figure 52- Names of Texas Governors front right wing.

It was considered a shrine to Texas, a holy place.
 Page 63 of 103

In a front page DMN article, “Gorgeous Shrine Westminister for Texas, Says, Neft,” Pat
Morris Neff, then president of Baylor University and previously governor of Texas, says
that there should be no commercialism in the Hall and it should be the “Westminister
Abbey of the New World.” He refers to it as a “sacred spot,” and that “In the dedication
of this building we pay tribute to a glorious and romantic past and look forward to a
greater future,” and most importantly, “it will always be held as a sacred source of
inspiration for our youth.” That it will teach a certain white nationalist understanding of
Texas to “our” youth, the white youth.65

In another front page DMN article, “Majesty of State Hall Makes Visitors Instinctively
Remove Their Hates and Lower Voices,” compares this to religious space. The article
states:

The dignity of the structure is inescapable and so overpowering that men walking
through its portals, standing face to face with the heroes of the past, instinctively
remove their hates. Visitors lower their voices as if they were within the walls of
some great cathedral.

The Hall with its murals are, “… almost oriental in its splendor, its richness and in its
color.”66

Figure 53- Left to right statues are James W. Fannin, Mirabeau B.Lamar, Stephen F. Austin
Upon entering is a curved room with large statues of the leading figures in the Texas
revolution against Mexico, who created a slave Republic out of a nation that had

65
No author, “Gorgeous Shrine Westminister for Texas, Says Neff,” DMN, 9/6/1936, pp. 1.
66
Wallis, Eugene C., “Majesty of State Hall Makes Visitors Instinctively Remove Their Hats and Lower Voices,”
DMN, 9/20/1936, page 1.
 Page 64 of 103

abolished slavery and was threatening to bring the abolition of slavery to Texas. It also
represents the white revolution against a multiracial Mexico.

Figure 54- Statues are left to right, Sam Houston, Thomas J. Rusk, William, B. Travis

Figure 55- Someone thinks that the birth of a slave republic and Jesus go together.
Pictures taken 12-18-2018.
 Page 65 of 103
John Morán González in his book, “Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican American
Literature,” explains how the Texas Centennial celebration’s negative depictions of Mexicans resulted in a counter-
response and the development of Mexican American culture and Tejano identity. His first chapter, “‘Texanizing Texans’:
Texas Centennial Discourses of Racial Pedagogy,” explains how the Texas Centennial state-wide discourse was about
teaching white supremacy and white triumph over multi-racial Mexicans. 67

Figure 56 - Left side view, center view, and right side views from the entrance to the Hall of State

67
González, John Morán, “Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican American Literature,” Univ. of Texas Press, 2009.
 Page 66 of 103

From the rotunda with the leaders of the Texas Independence movement you pass into
the giant Hall of State with its gigantic murals on either side. Illuminated by chandeliers
and an ornate ceiling held up by massive pillars. The steps into the hall, the floors, and
the walls below the murals are made of polished stone. Opposite the entry way is a great
golden medallion with a giant five pointed star in the center and six figures arrayed
around the star on the medallion representing an allegorical figure for each nation on a
cloud.

It is like entering a great temple and it is a great temple, a temple to the triumph of the
white nationalist state of Texas.

Figure 57 - Depictions of African Americans in the Texas of 1936

 Page 67 of 103

Figure 58- Mural Hall of State Right side as entering taken from medallion side facing entrance.

On these murals the Native Americans are subordinated, white Spaniards first colonize the land, Mexicans are defeated, and white
Texans fight battles, settle the land, found states and educational systems and are the agents of history and build the future.
African Americans are depicted once, four shirtless adult men toting bales of cotton and loading them onto a ship. African Americans
are just objects that are present in Texas.
 Page 68 of 103

Figure 59-- Mural in Hall of State on side facing in from the entrance.
Over the many of the historical scenes are figures, often three classically draped women, as if they were the three sister goddesses of
Fate in Greek mythology, directing or reigning over the scene below. In one scene they are three angles with golden halos. Sometimes it
is a single female figure in classical drapes. These gods, angels, allegories, themselves, the arbitrators of fate in Texas, these divine
agencies, are all white. The heavens themselves in the murals are run by whites.
 Page 69 of 103

Figure 60- Allagorical figures in the Hall of State Murals – The heavens and earth are run by white people.
 Page 70 of 103

These murals also fashion a history of Texas that is an erasure. Slavery isn’t depicted nor
is Reconstruction and its white violent terror. The Ku Klux Klan is erased.

Figure 61- Slave stabs himself to death rather than be recaptured - Dallas Daily Herald 11/28/1858.
The strivings of Native Americans, African Americans and Latinos to a better future and
accomplishments they have made is ignored. African Americans are clearly depicted as
having only a future of manual labor and being happy to do it.

In the other halls at the Texas Building, with their murals, only possibly once is an
African American depicted as a tiny figure helping to saw down a tree. Again white
people are making Texas.

Figure 62 - Left figure is possibly an African American assisting with the manual
labor of cutting down a tree.
As González explains in his book, this idea of racial triumph in the celebration of Texas
had its precedents. He explains that the first proposal for a Texas centennial made in
1923 by Theodore H. Price, publisher of the business journal Commerce and Finance,
argued for a centennial celebrating the first identifiable Anglo-Saxon settlement by
 Page 71 of 103

Stephen F. Austin in 1824 and in which Texas history would be central and that it was
about Anglo-Saxons defeating “Mexican oppression.”68

Even earlier, the official guide to the Texas exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904
by Moye Wick’s in a section, “Texas: A Glance at Its History,” emphasized white
supremacy. The introduction to this section is:

The Progress of Texas is an object lesson of survival of the fittest, as shown by the
final domination of the Anglo-Saxon over other racial elements. The luminous
page of history records no achievement surpassing the victory at San Jacinto, by
which the Republic of Texas accomplished independence in 1836. … Not only was
Texas, during all this time, menaced by Mexico, but it was also in conflict with the
Indians. … It also shows that Providence favored the possession of this great
domain by the Anglo-Saxon, “the heir of all the ages, in the foremost ranks of
time” – the only race worthy to cope with its vast possibilities. … This pride is
well founded, for, from the inception of the Anglo-Saxon history of Texas, its
pages have been gilded with glory.69

The triumphalist white supremacy of the 1936 Texas Centennial has deep historical
roots.

The architecture of the Centennial is undeniably intended to be a triumphalist

architecture which it is. Though the specific architectural styles used to signify
modernity and the future is different than the triumphalist architecture of fascist states
in Europe in the 1930s, the Texas State Centennial Fair, is essentially the same in its
goals.

Figure 63- Title page Texas

Imperial State of America.
Again Texas is imagined as
an empire.

68
González, John Morán, “Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican American
Literature,” Univ. of Texas Press, 2009, pp. 34-36.
69
Dexter, W.W., “Texas: Imperial State of America with her Diadem of Cities,” The Texas World’s Fair Commission
1904, Samuel F. Meyerson Printing Co., St. Louis, n.d., “Texas: A Glance At Its History” by Moye Wicks, n.p.
 Page 72 of 103

Figure 64- Picture of the Esplanade in 1936 from State of Texas Building.

Fair Park ought to be considered Texas’s very own “Triumph of the Will” and the artists
involved should be considered Leni Riefenstahls. Instead art books entirely ignore the
racial elements in Fair Park and just see a lot of pretty buildings.

Dallas cultural institutions are busy restoring or recreating these murals are restoring
the message of white supremacy of the 1936 Centennial. There doesn’t seem to be any
recognition by Dallas cultural groups that these restorations are restoring the message
of white supremacy. These activities should instruct the reader that Dallas cultural
institutions are white institutions.
 Page 73 of 103

Empire Exhibitions and Colonial

Expositions

Figure 65- Empire Exhibition Glasgow Scotland 1938 Dominions and Colonial Avenues.
The 1936 Texas Centennial was not the only empire exposition in the late imperial world
system of white supremacy of the 1930s. There was the 1931 Coloniale Exposition of
Paris, the Bruxelles (Brussels) 1935 Exposition, the Johannesburg Empire Exhibition of
1936-37, Glasgow Empire Exhibition of 1938 and others, but only these named four will
be discussed in this essay.
 Page 74 of 103

Figure 66- Postcard Paris 1931 Colonial Exposition - Cite des Informations

Figure 67- Picture Cite des Informations Paris 1931

A common feature of these exhibitions and expositions is that they employed modernist
architecture, including Art Deco to make a white supremacist regime seem modern and
of the future and communicate ideologies in support of white supremacy.
 Page 75 of 103

Figure 68- Brussels Exposition 1935 Grand Promenade

Figure 69- Grand Palace Brussels Exposition 1935

 Page 76 of 103

Figure 70- Cover booklet for Johannesburg Empire Exhibit 1936-1937

As Mark Crinson, in his book, “Modern Architecture and the End of Empire,” (2003)
points out, the historians of architecture have largely ignored the relation of modernist
 Page 77 of 103

architecture to imperialism and have made assumptions that it was inherently not
nationalistic or imperialistic, but instead assumed that it was anti-imperialistic. Crinson
in his book points out that these assumptions are not true. Instead Crinson suggests that
modernist architecture is a part of imperialism. Crinson makes these statements in his
introduction:

Imperialism figures hazily if at all in most surveys of modern architecture, even

those specifically devoted to British modernism.

Architecture as an arm of imperialism is seen, and seen episodically at best, as an

embarrassment to modernism and part of what it … contests.

But modernism arose at the peak of European colonial empires, even if its own
histories barely acknowledge this and even if empire seems like one of those
things it consigns to history.

One [assumption] is that the values of modernist architecture are understood to

transcend issues of national power and sovereignty over other peoples; modernist
architecture … was … silent, so it can remain for its historians in relation to
imperialism.

One [assumption] is that modernism’s advocates were anti-imperialist … Yet, if

this opposition to imperialism was there it was subconscious at best: there are
few anti-imperialist statements by modernist architects, and where we do find
them they tend to be voiced by only a few non-wester clients. Perhaps it might be
better to speculate that modernism was not a disavowal of imperialism, it was
actively employed as a way of improving the function of the colonial city …

But it [modernist architecture; was also a form for the veiling and naturalizing
the violence …70

As explained by Patricia A. Morton in her book, “Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and

Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris,” this exposition used modernist
architecture to establish a racial hierarchy with France, the Metropole, represented by
modernist architecture, as being the advanced and the subject peoples of the French
empire represented by their architecture which was to represent their less evolved state.
As Morton states:

“The Exposition classified and organized colonial objects and peoples it displayed
according to principles of hierarchy and evolution, with Europe at the pinnacle
and ‘less evolved’ civilizations ranked below it. The architecture of the pavilions
was the medium for bearing the ‘good news’ of colonialization and, at the same
time, was the physical manifestation of this invented colonial ‘reality.’”

70
Crinson, Mark, “Modern Architecture and the End of Empire,” Ashgate Publishing Co., Hants, England, 2003, pp.
1-3
Supposedly less advanced architectures: Algerian mosque, Vietnamese Pavilion, Angkor Wat, and Dutch Indies (Indonesia) Page 78 of 103
Supposedly less advanced architectures: West African design restaurant, West African Mosque, Equatorial Africa, Togo & Cameroun.
Page 79 of 103
 Page 80 of 103

Morton also explains that some of the actual culture present in Paris and in the colonies
had to be ignored to maintain a narrative supporting racial hierarchy.

“Cross-breeding between colonizer and colonized, so prevalent in both Paris and

the colonies, had to be edited out to preserve the bipolar equation that justified
colonialism. The heterotopias of both the Métropole and the colonies – mixtures
of native and metropolitan culture and blood – had to be deleted to the greatest
extent possible or the collection would not be read in the desired manner.”71

This type of editing needs to be considered in understanding the tear down of the Hall of
Negro Life and the destruction of two of the four murals of Aaron Douglas.

Dipti Bhagat in his essay “Art

Deco in South Africa,” explains
how it is used in the 1936-37
Empire Exhibition in
Johannesburg to support a white
supremacist state. He makes
these statements:

The spectacular Art Deco

styling of the exhibition’s
built form and decorative
program was an exemplary
expression of an Empire
Dominion that asserted
during the 1920s and
1930s a young white
nationhood …

In this young nation’s

eclectic Deco-inspired
form, style and motifs
framed Africa’s white
Dominion as culturally
sophisticated and racially
distinct.
Figure 71- United Kingdom building is white and
radiant with rays contrasted with Africans.
The duality of South Africa’s
celebratory Modernism – an impetus at once national and cosmopolitan – was

71
Morton, Patricia A., “Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the Colonial Exposition, Paris,” MIT
Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000, pp. 88-89.
 Page 81 of 103

seen at its most complex in the exhibition’s representation of South Africa’s black
populations as primitive and exotic.

This posture conveyed the idea of modernity to rival that of Europe and America,
but was also conceived, in a local context, as a means of asserting white South
Africa’s cultural difference from ‘the native’ and its supremacy over him. 72

As Morton pointed out

in “Hybrid
Modernities,” the need
to edit out items that
didn’t support racial
hierarchies at the Paris
1931 Coloniale
Exposition.

The Johannesburg
exhibition also found a
need to edit out African
accomplishment. In the
brochure for the
exhibition is a page for
the Zimbabwe Ruins.
There are pictures of
the ruins, Cecile
Rhodes’ tomb, and a
picture of the
Rhodesian pavilion,
(Colonial name for
Zimbabwe) which the
caption for the picture
explains “The pavilion
is based on the temple
in the Zimbabwe
Ruins.” The page
discusses the Zimbabwe
ruins:
Figure 72- Zimbabwe Ruins page from Johannesburg Empire
Exhibition booklet.

72
Bhagat, Dipti, “Art Deco in South Africa,” Chapter 39, pp. 419-425, in “Art Deco 1910-1930,” Editors, Charlotte
Benton, Tim Benton, and Ghislaine Wood, Bulfinch Press, New York 2003. USA printing of Victoria and Albert
Museum printing in 2003.
 Page 82 of 103

The mysterious ruins of Zimbabwe, a source of argument to archeologists of five

continents, will be reproduced in replica as the Rhodesian Pavilion. The silent
mystery of these ruins, standing in the heart of Africa are a challenge to science
the world over.

It is believed in some quarters that Zimbabwe was built by the slaves of the
Queen of Sheba, and that it was from mines in the vicinity that she got her
supplies of gold. Miners are to-day still recovering gold from ancient mines in the
region of the ruins.

The idea that a ruin in the heart of Africa built long before the arrival of Europeans
might be built by Africans is simply unacceptable since it would undermine the ideology
of white supremacy. So speculation is given forth that it is a “silent mystery” or possibly
the construction was directed by the Queen of Sheba a figure from the Bible, a religious
book of Christians. So in this case it is edited out by making it a mystery and eliminating
the ruins as an African achievement. Again this editing gives insight to the tearing down
of the Hall of Negro Life in Dallas.

The Johannesburg Empire Exhibition and the 1936 Texas “Empire on Parade” both used
a covered wagon as part of self-identification.

Figure 73- On pillars at entry of front entrance of Texas State Fair.

 Page 83 of 103

Figure 74- Johannesburg Empire Exhibition postcard with enlarged detail below.

Figure 75- Johannesburg Empire

Exhibition medal.
Figure 76- Johannesburg modernist buildings representing Europeans vs. official exhibition postcards of Africans Page 84 of 103
 Page 85 of 103

At the Brussels 1935 Exposition racial hierarchy appears in that the Congo building
where the Belgians promoted their colonial enterprise as uplifting and beneficial to the
Congolese has a modernist architecture but with a few African elements.73 Next to the
building were buildings which looked like grass huts which to represent the Congo itself.
74 Central to the exposition is a large promenade with a large modernist building at the

end. The exposition did have a human zoo. 75 Unfortunately there hasn’t been an
examination of the architecture of the Brussels Exposition published in the English
language.

Figure 77- Pavilion for Colonial Enterprises which would be the Congo

73
Stanard, Mark G., “Selling the Congo: A History of European Pro-Empire Propaganda and the Making of Belgian
Imperialism,” Univ. of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE 2011, pp. 61-66 regarding Belgian propaganda and the Palais du
Congo; Morton,
74
The author of this paper has secured images of the Palais du Congo and its associated buildings.
75
Stanard, Mark G., “Selling the Congo: A History of European Pro-Empire Propaganda and the Making of Belgian
Imperialism,” Univ. of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE 2011, pp. 61-66 regarding Belgian propaganda and the Palais du
Congo; Morton,
 Page 86 of 103
At the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition there was an Empire Tower as a central element done
in an unmistakably Art Deco style. As Crinson states in his book, “The conjunction of
modernism and empire was intended to be unavoidable in Glasgow. Tait [Who laid out the
exhibition grounds.] saw it as the best way to ‘combine dignity and gaiety … to be impressive
without being heavy, gay without being cheap.’”76

Figure 78-Left Empire Tower Glasgow Expo, Right Tower Johannesburg drawing from guide
booklet.

76
Crinson, Mark, “Modern Architecture and the End of Empire,” Ashgate Publishing Co., Hants, England, 2003, pp. 92-99, quote pp.
95.
 Page 87 of 103

Figure 79- Left to right, Palace Metropolitan Paris 1931, Federal Bldg. Dallas 1936, Palace of the City of Brussels 1935
At the Brussels Exposition 1935 many pavilions had towers.
 Page 88 of 103

The layouts of these empire and colonial exhibitions and expositions are strikingly
similar to each other as well as the Texas Centennial. There is usually a big Art Deco
tower. There is in several cases a very long giant promenade with water and fountains,
sometimes a pond along the entire length or a series of ponds in the promenade. The
promenade often leads up to a large modernist building. Africans or persons of African
ancestry are represented as being backward.

The striking irony of these pretentions of rationality and progress is that these Western
powers who had devoured the world with imperial conquest and then turned on each
other in World War I and would in a few years be engaged in another World War with a
combined death toll of both these world wars would be in excess of a 100 million. They
had defined non-whites as “savage” yet they would slaughter each other by the tens of
millions.

As Art Deco and other modernist architectures were used in the other empire exhibition
and colonial expositions Art Deco in the Texas Centennial serves the same purpose in
the 1936 Centennial to make a racist regime seem modern and part of the future.

The use of modernist styles of architecture to make a racist regime seem modern isn’t
confined to 1930s expositions and imperial regimes. Also, More than one type of
modernist architecture can be used to attempt to make reactionary racism seem
modern. Walter Peters, in his 2004 article, “Apartheid politics and architecture in South
Africa,” explains how the apartheid government of South Africa in the 1950s drew its
inspiration from Brazilian modernism. Architects travelled to Brazil to study its
modernistic buildings to get ideas for its designs of segregated facilities in Namibia77
and South Africa. Brazilian modernism shows that different styles of art and
architecture, thought as modern, can be used to make reactionary regimes seem
modern.

At the conclusion of the article he discusses the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in
South Africa and how it would grant amnesty to those who had committed human rights
abuses. Peters points out, “Despite the gross application of apartheid ideology to
architecture, the profession has obviously not understood its role in the ignoble past, let
alone that collusion may have distorted its moral and ethical basis.”78

It might be equally said that Dallas cultural institutions, as manifested in its activities
and attitudes related to Fair Park, seeing it without comprehending its meaning, have
also not understood their roles in relation to Dallas’ ignoble past or demonstrated much
understanding at all.

77
Then under South African control.
78
Peters, Walter, “Apartheid politics and architecture in South Africa,” Social Identities Journal for the Study of
Race, Nation and Culture,” Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, Vol. 10 No. 4, 2004, pp. 537-547, DOI:
10.1080/1350463042000258953, link to article, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1350463042000258953.
 Page 89 of 103

African Americans at the Empire Exhibition

Dallas Morning News Mocks African Americans

African Americans during the 1936 Centennial are not just ignored or demeaned by the
Fair Grounds. The DMN has a constant rhetoric demeaning them. One front page article
is “Negroes Swarm To Centennial For Their Day,” as if they were locusts.79

Another headline about the Negro Hall of Life proclaims that “History of Negro From
Jungles to Now to be Shown,” with the subtitle, “Centennial to Be Turned Over to
Darkies Juneteenth.” This article opens with the sentence:

The economic and cultural development of the Negro, from the days of the weird
chants sung by native tribes in Africa to modern times in America…80

Yet another headline is, “Folk Festival Negroid For Emancipation Day.”81

In a front page article, “Negroes Stage Big Juneteenth At Centennial: Dallas Eats Cold
Supper and Cotton Patches Emptied as Thousands Inspect Magic City: Hall Is
Dedicated: Dusky Beauties Prance,” about African Americans having a Juneteenth
celebration.

“Magic City” implies that African Americans will not comprehend the Exposition except
as magic.

The article insistently regards African Americans attending the triumphalist white
Exposition in comical terms.

Mandy wasn’t there when Dallas sat down to cold supper Friday night for with
Rastus, and thousands of carefree members of her race she was busy putting in a
glorious Juneteenth at the magic Texas Centennial Exposition. …

Joining in with the city negroes were other thousands of dusky country
merrymakers who had deserted catfish streams and left fiddle-faced mules to
munch contentedly in idleness, farm work forgotten, to celebrate Emancipation
Day …

Rolling eyes and flashing white teeth dominated exhibit halls, the Midway and
various places where special negro programs …

79
“Negroes Swarm to Centennial for Their Day,” DMN, 10/20/1936, page 1.
80
“History of Negro from Jungles to Now to be Shown,” DMN, 5/14/1936, page 15.
81
“Folk Festival Negroid for Emancipation Day,” DMN, 6/19/1936, page 5.
 Page 90 of 103

Laughter and carefree happiness comes easy to the sons and daughters of Ham
and with the many wonders and attractions of the magic city at their disposal
they made this Juneteenth a Christmas, July Fourth and Thanksgiving all rolled
into one.82

The article continues with similar remarks.

Another DMN article has the subtitle, “Seven Bewildered Blacks from Cuba Bring
Voodooism as Fair Feature,”83 and another article headline is, “Third Million At Fair Is
Due On Wednesday: If 3,000,000th Visitor Is Negro Will Get Date With Yanyego
Voodoo Dancer or Her Partner.”84 The DMN, using popular ideas of what Voodoo is, is
portraying African Americans as primitive and pagan.85

With these articles the DMN hoped to do what the exhibitions and representations of
non-whites at the Paris, Brussels, and Johannesburg exhibitions and expositions sought
to do, represent persons of African ancestry as primitive. The Hall of Negro Life dashed
those hopes. The Hall in turn could be dashed to pieces.

Figure 81- Aaron Douglas' mural Figure 80-- Estevancio. Was destroyed.
Negro's Gift to America. Was destroyed. Not sure if any image remains.
82
“Negroes State Big Juneteenth at Centennial,” DMN, 6/20/1936, pp. 1, 12.
83
Rosenfield, John, Jr., “The Passing Show,” DMN, 8/4/1936, page 10.
84
No author, “Third Million at Fair is due on Wednesday,” 8/19/1936, page 1.
85
The DMN would be using what the popular ideas of Voodoo were. I do not make any comment about what
Voodoo might actually be. Popular ideas what voodoo was would be from movies like “Black Moon,” Columbia
Pictures, 1934, or “I Walked With a Zombie,” RKO Radio Pictures, 1943.
 Page 91 of 103

Hall of Negro Life

Figure 82- Postcard Hall of Negro Life

The Negro Hall of Life was erected at the 1936 Centennial over the opposition of the
Dallas establishment. There were problems with the building’s racist contractor. It was
located off in a corner away from the rest of the Centennial and cordoned off by
numerous shrubs. It was shuttered during the 1937 Greater Texas and Pan American
Exposition. It was demolished over the objections of the local African American
community.86

86
González, John Morán, “Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican American
Literature,” Univ. of Texas Press, 2009, pp. 42.The Texas State Historical Association Handbook offers up an excuse
for why the building taken down to try to dismiss the idea that it was due to racism which should warn the reader
about this handbook.
 Page 92 of 103

Figure 83- A red circle is drawn around the Hall of Negro Life on the map.
At the Hall there were four panels by Aaron Douglas of which two survive. Examining
the surviving art work it becomes apparent why the Hall was torn down, why it was an
imperative for white racist Dallas to have it torn down. The Douglas’ art was a pointed
and direct rejection of the entire art and architecture of the 1936 Centennial.

The first feature that would have been objectionable was that the art of Aaron Douglas
was immediately and easily perceived as superior artistically and intellectually to the art
of the porticos and other buildings and the murals in the Hall of State.

The art of Aaron Douglas was sophisticated and modern and show his understanding of
Orphic-Cubism. Even today the two surviving murals, “Aspirations” and “Into
Bondage” are compelling. In contrast the Art of the white nationalist narrative of the
1936 Centennial seems kitschy and banal. The interest in Art Deco would be coming to
an end shortly and was somewhat dated.
 Page 93 of 103
CREDITS - THANKS
Aaron Douglas, American,
1899–1979
Aspiration, 1936
Oil on canvas
60 x 60 in. (152.4 x 152.4
cm)
The Fine Arts Museums of
San Francisco, museum
purchase, the estate of
Thurlow E. Tibbs Jr., the
Museum Society Auxiliary,
American Art Trust Fund,
Unrestricted Art Trust Fund,
partial gift of Dr. Ernest A.
Bates, Sharon Bell, Jo-Ann
Beverly, Barbara Carleton,
Dr. And Mrs. Arthur H.
Coleman, Dr. and Mrs.
Coyness Ennix, Jr., Nicole Y.
Ennix, Mr. and Mrs. Gary
Francois, Dennis L. Franklin,
Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell C.
Gillette, Mr. and Mrs.
Richard Goodyear, Zuretti L.
Goosby, Marion E. Greene,
Mrs. Vivian S. W. Hambrick,
Laurie Gibbs Harris, Arlene
Hollis, Louis A. and Letha
Jeanpierre, Daniel and
Jackie Johnson, Jr., Stephen
L. Johnson, Mr. and Mrs.
Arthur Lathan, Lewis &
Ribbs Mortuary Garden
Chapel, Mr. and Mrs. Gary
Love, Glenn R. Nance, Mr.
and Mrs. Harry S. Parker III,
Mr. and Mrs. Carr T.
Preston, Fannie Preston,
Pamela R. Ransom, Dr. and
Mrs. Benjamin F. Reed, San
Francisco Black Chamber of
Commerce, San Francisco
Chapter of Links, Inc., San
Francisco Chapter of the
N.A.A.C.P., Sigma Pi Phi
Fraternity, Dr. Ella Mae
Simmons, Mr. Calvin R.
Swinson, Joseph B.
Williams, Mr. and Mrs.
Alfred S. Wilsey, and the
people of the Bay Area,
1997.84
Art © Heirs of Aaron
Douglas/Licensed by VAGA,
Figure 84--Aaron Douglas Aspirations and Detail from Hall of State New York, NY
 Page 94 of 103

The 1936 Centennial had taken care to hire white artists from outside the state who were
supposedly the best and brightest in painting murals. Several were from Europe. Yet
here was an African American artist clearly surpassing them all and not by an
increment, or margin, but was way beyond them. Aaron Douglas art made a mockery of
the whole white triumphalist narrative of the 1936 Centennial.

The mural, “Into Bondage,” made visible what the 1936 Centennial artwork and the
Confederate artwork strove to make invisible, the crime of African American slavery.

The mural, “Aspirations,” is a direct rejection of the depiction of African Americans in

the Hall of State. The African American men in this picture are wearing suits. They are
not toting bales of cotton, one holds architectural tools, a compass and a square ruler,
the other holds a chemical flash. The third figure, an African American woman, is
reading a book. To the side is a globe of the world.

All three are looking off into the distance where on top of a hill are skyscrapers and a
modern factory. They have serious expressions and postures in looking towards the
buildings on top of the hill. There is a solemnity in the picture. There is hope. They
stand on a ledge above many hands stretched upward and wearing chains.

“Aspirations” directly rejects the depiction of the African Americans toting cotton bales.
It directly rejects how the DMN wanted its readers to think about African Americans.
The African Americans in “Aspirations” are not “carefree” or “rolling their eyes.”

It would give aspirations to African Americans in Dallas in a city whose white

establishment could only but be alarmed by African Americans with aspirations, in a city
whose white establishments would worry that African Americans with aspirations might
mean “cold suppers.”

As long as the Negro Hall of Life stood it would demonstrate that the art of the 1936
Centennial was ridiculous and racist. It would mock the pretensions of white supremacy
made by the 1936 Centennial.

Morton in her discussion of the Paris 1931 Coloniale Exposition pointed out that that the
reality of hybridity in the actual architecture of France and the colonies was excluded in
the exhibition’s construction to insure that the exhibition would only speak a certain
narrative of racial hierarchy of white over non-white. Those who constructed the Paris
1931 Coloniale Exposition had control over the space and were able to prevent any
contradiction to their intended narrative. In the Johannesburg exhibition there was the
denial that the Zimbabwe ruins could have been construction by Africans again
preserving racial hierarchy.

The Afrofuturism of Douglas inverted the intended racial hierarchy of art at the
Centennial and thus subverted the Centennial. This upset white people. Jesse Thomas in
 Page 95 of 103

the book, “Negro Participation in the Texas Centennial,” a report on the Hall of Negro
Life in the Centennial, describes the reaction of white people at the Centennial.

“Many white people insisted that these murals were not painted by a Negro. In
the early days of the Centennial, several of them remonstrated with the
intelligence personnel. Some became so rude that the administration decided to
have a sign painter paint on the wall the following statement: ‘These murals were
painted by Aaron Douglass, [sic] a Negro artist of New York City.’”87

Dallas had previously demonstrated opposition to African Americans upstaging white

people. In 1925 the Bonnie Blue Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy of
Dallas reported in their annual statement to the 29th annual Texas Division UDC
convention minutes the activities of their legislative committee:

In a Book Review contest a negro child won the first prize. Our committee called
upon the School Board protesting such a contest and offered to furnish a separate
prize for a contest between negro children. The School Board advised that a
mixture contest would not be held in the future.88

Even something as minor as a book review contest by school children would be seen as a
threat by the ever vigilant guardians of white supremacy, imagine how Douglas’ murals
eleven years later would alarm them.89

Renée Ater, in her essay on Douglas’ murals in the book, “Aaron Douglas: African
American Modernity,” published by the Spence Museum of Art at the Univ. of Kansas,
recognizes that Douglas’ murals upset racial hierarchy. Ater states:

The visual history of the past and future as depicted by Douglas stood in stark
contrast to the murals in the Hall of State.

Ater proceeds to give a summary how the Texas Building and Hall of State presented
history and then comments:

87
Thomas, Jesse O., “Negro Participation in the Texas Centennial Exposition,” Christopher Pub. House, Boston
1938, Pp. 27. Douglas was spelled with a single “s.” See also, The British Association for American Studies has an
excellent web page on Aaron Douglas and his murals at the Negro Hall of Life. http://www.baas.ac.uk/usso/from-
harlem-to-texas-african-american-art-and-the-murals-of-aaron-douglas/, 4/19/2018. Aaron Douglas is spelled
with a single “s”. Frederick Douglass is spelled with “ss” and not “s,” an interesting spelling error.
88
“Minutes of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Convention of the Texas Division of the United Daughters of the
Confederacy, Held in First Methodist Church, Marshall, Texas, October 13-16, 1925,” “Report of the Bonnie Blue
Flag Chapter, No. 1852, Dallas,” pp. 145-148, quote from pp. 146. United Methodist Churches still lend their
facilities to United Daughters of the Confederacy meetings as recently as 2016. The author has been unable to
track down who was the child who won the contest in 1925 or what the title of the essay was. It doesn’t seem to
have been reported in the Dallas Morning News. The Dallas Independent School District needs to track this down
and some type of reparations needs to be given to all the students who after 1925 were shunted into a separate
contest.
89
The author of this paper is going to write the Dallas Independent School District and try to find out who this
African American student was and also ask for reparations.
 Page 96 of 103

Unacknowledged in the Hall of State was the way in which slavery had been
vigorously sanctioned in the state from its beginnings as a republic in 1836;
except for the stevedores, no African Americans were visible. (Native Americans
and Mexicans fared no better; they were shown either as noble savages or as
savage brutes to be defeated.) The history that Douglas relayed was diametrically
opposed to the history that the white organizers projected, that of a progressive
and modern new Texas. If the Texas Centennial effectively erased blackness from
public display, Douglas intervened in this exclusive story and emphatically
reinstated the black presence. Douglas’s murals for the Hall of Negro Life and the
murals as exemplified by the north Texas room for the Hall of State shared a
conviction in the utility of the past, emphasized the role of humans in shaping
that past, and celebrated the heroes of their respective communities. However,
the gulf between these two versions of history and the way in which they were
represented was wide and deep, and was never bridged at the Texas Centennial
Exposition.90

Unlike the Zimbabwe ruins it would be relatively easy to just tear down the Hall of
Negro life and they did.

The infamous behavior of the contractor for the Hall in painting its interior bright green
and red would have acted to make the hall less sophisticated in the eyes of the public
and less of a disruption of racial hierarchy. Thomas in his book reports:

The contractor painted the building without instruction or consultation with the
General Manager or members of the Advisory Committee with reference to the
color scheme to be followed. He used two colors for the interior —deep green and
red. When he was called into question as to the reason for painting the building
without official advice or authority, he stated that in the first place he knew that
Negroes could not assemble enough exhibits to fill the building; the second place,
he understood that Negroes like loud colors and he thought when visitors came
they ought to have something pretty to look at.

Thomas relates that it was a struggle to get the contractor to correct this and paint it the
correct colors and he had refused to follow the safety code and resisted correcting it and
only did so under the federal government’s threat of forfeiture of payment.91

This white visitors to the Hall of Negro Life had probably walked up the Esplanade and
toured the Texas building and were in awe of the Hall of State, and felt like they were the

90
Ater, Renée, “Creating a ‘Usable Past’ and a “Future Perfect Society: Aaron Dogulas’s Murals for the 1936 Texas
Centennial Exposition,” a chapter in “Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist,” edited by Susan Earle,
published by the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Manhatten, 2007, pp.
91
Thomas, Jesse O., “Negro Participation in the Texas Centennial Exposition,” Christopher Pub. House, Boston
1938, pp 21-22.
 Page 97 of 103

master race of the universe and then when they viewed the murals of Douglass their
pretensions would have popped like a bubble, a cheap rubber balloon.

There had been resistance to having a Hall of Negro Life but African Americans through
lobbying the federal government were able to get the Hall of Negro Life included. In just
existing it was an affront to the white establishment of Dallas and Texas in that they
were not masters of the Centennial space and that African Americans were able to
challenge successfully their control of this space. Empires control their space and
dominate it, with the Hall of Negro Life being constructed, the Centennial had not, it
was not an Empire on Parade as they asserted. The message of the Esplanade and the
Texas Building was absolute white triumph over the geographic space of Texas and yet
in this microcosm of the Centennial into which Texas and Texas history was mapped
there was an intruder representing a failure to control space and the successful
contesting of white control of this space. Just by existing there was a message that
resistance could be successful and the Texas Empire was fragile.92

For the Texas Building and its Hall of State and for the Art Deco murals and architecture
to teach their lessons the Hall of Negro Life would have to be taken down. It was torn
down and two amazing national treasures of art were destroyed when it was torn down.

Conclusion
The Art Deco of Fair Park, the architecture, the Texas Building and the Hall of State
within needs to be recognized as an empire exhibit and as the triumphalist white
supremacist project that was intended to teach a lesson of white supremacy. It needs to
be recognized that Fair Park teaches this white supremacist lesson today.

We need to put an end to Fair Park teaching white supremacy.

92
Thomas, Jesse O., “Negro Participation in the Texas Centennial Exposition,” Christopher Pub. House, Boston
1938, describes the lack of support the Hall received from the state of Texas and the decision to seek funds from
the federal government.
 Page 98 of 103

APPENDIX:
Six-Flags Over Texas: A Historical Fabrication

The idea of six flags over Texas is a historical concoction since for France and Spain the
idea of nations and national flags are projections back into the historical periods when
Texas is imagined to be under two national states France and Spain. To understand this
we need to understand the ideology of nationalism.

As Michael Billig ably explains in his landmark work, Banal Nationalism,

national identity and nations are thought to be the natural order of things resulting from
a rational understanding of objective criteria which define nations, however, the
ideology of nationalism, that the idea that the world and its people are naturally divided
by nationality with clear geographic boundaries is a modern European ideology which
has universally triumphed so such so that we have trouble comprehending that the idea
of nations is a modern invention, are ideological constructs and are not inherent in
human existence. Billig’s explains that when there are regions of the globe which are
stateless we regard the situation as an anomaly where something has gone wrong
because we believe nations are natural and hence this geographic area without a nation
is unnatural.

The study of nations and nationalism in the field of cultural geography in the late
20th century has come to realize that nations are constructs and are ideological projects.
The ideology of nationalism is creation of the modern world starting perhaps as early as
the late 18th century, nations are mostly are efforts starting in Europe in the 19th
century and in the 20th century nationalism has swept the globe making nationalism a
universally triumphant ideology.

Nationality and the resulting nations have no consistent objective reason. In

detailing how there is no common logical geographical principle or language or religion
that defines nationality and nations, cultural geographer Michael Billig, Banal
Nationalism, in describing the national divisions of the earth concludes:

Historical forces may have combined to produce the nation-state as modernity’s

logical form of governance. Yet, a willful anarchy seems to have accompanied the
way that logical principle has been established in practice. 93

A common strategy for groups that feel oppressed by the metropolitan centers of
a nation is to seek to define a separate nationality and claim some need for some degree
of separation whether secession to create a separate state, or some degree of autonomy
from the national government, or some other separatist strategy. The core argument is

93
Billig, Michael, “Banal Nationalism,” Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1991, pp. 23-24. It has been through
ten printings by 2010 and is considered a landmark book in the field.
 Page 99 of 103

that this separate nationality is not fairly treated within the larger state, in terms of
developing its national identity, in the treatment of its nationals, and the treatment of
the region for which it claims for its nationals. In short there must be a sense of
grievance and difference that needs a solution in separation or separatism.

With the rise of modern nation states there are often invented national traditions.

A national identity exists if you can convince people that they are a nationality.
There can be appeals to common language, religion or not, or historical events, ethnic
origins or not, or different customs and culture or not, or what you can find people
accepting as defining a national identity. There can be claimed differences in ethnic
origins. These rationalizations can often be capricious. Nationality is an ideological
creation of moon beams and smoke. 94

This explanation of nationalism is related to the theme “Six Flags Over Texas” so that it
can be understood that this theme relies on ignoring some flags and historical periods to
pick flags which might reasonably be attributed to nations.

Whereas Mexico, Texas, the United States and the Confederacy were Republics and
creations of the late 18th and 19th century with defined flags, France and Spain were
monarchies defined by dynastic inheritance and feudal antecedents. A definitive
selection of which flags composed the Six Flags over Texas wasn’t decided until June 20,
1997 by the Texas Historical Commission which reported on their reasons for their
decision and adopted by law that year. The report is available online, see footnote.95

The Commission reported that most of the displays of the “Six flags’ were incorrect since
they were made from flags that manufacturers were already producing for the markets,
to avoid the cost of custom manufacture of specific flags and that without a codification
of what the “Six flags” were, manufacturers would not have a design specification or an
assured market.

In deciding which flag would represent the Kingdom of Spain the Commission decided
on the flag of Bourbon Charles III over that of the Habsburgs monarchs of Spain. The
Habsburg flag was a red saltire of the House of Burgundy from 1516 to 1785, whereas the
flag of Bourbon Charles III was three horizontal strips of red, yellow, and red in that
order from 1793 to 1931. The current flag of Spain is very similar in color and design to
the Bourbon flag.

94
This is a common understanding of nations and nationalism by scholars. I recommend Chapter 2, “Nations and
Language” and Chapter 4, “National Identity in the World of Nations,” in “Banal Nationalism,” by Michael Billig,
Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA,, 1991. It has been through ten printings by 2010 and is considered a
landmark book in the field.
95
“Six Flags Over Texas,” A Report by the Texas Historical Commission, reprinted from the June 20, 1997 Texas
Register, Vol. 22, pages 5959 to 5967. This is available online as a PDF at
http://www.thc.texas.gov/public/upload/forms/six-flags-over-texas.pdf.
 Page 100 of 103

As the Commission report states, “Although displaying the Burgundian saltire as a ‘Six
Flag,’ would be historically correct, few people would recognize the flag.” So the flag of
Charles III was adopted, though it was only a flag “over” Texas for a short period of time
compared to a much longer period of Spanish (or Habsburg) claims to the territory of
Texas. Another reason for this choice given in the report is that the flag appears in the
Texas state seal.

The Texas Secretary of State has online the 1993 pamphlet explaining the Texas State
Seal. Unlike most state seals Texas’ seal has a design on the reverse of the seal using a
six flag design. The original design adopted in 1961 by the Daughters of the Republic had
a Confederate Battle flag which was changed in 199196

However, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission webpage on “Six Flags of
Texas,” pointed out that the 1936 Texas Centennial in Dallas used yet another Habsburg
flag, with was divided into four squares with a castle or lion in each square. It was
chosen since it was the flag used when Cortez conquered Mexico. This report is online
see footnote.97

Reading both these reports of the Texas Historical Commission and the Texas State
Library and Archives Commission you learn that the purpose of the six flags of Texas is
other than historical instruction but rather communicate a white nationalist idea of
Texas.

In deciding for the flag to represent the Kingdom of France the Commission states, “The
flag of France that was allegedly carried by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle in
1865, was probably a plain white flag strewn with fleurs-de-lys. This flag (circa 1643 to
October 31, 1790) was a simplified version of the French state flag …)

So this flag that was “allegedly carried” “was probably” the flag used is the one the
Commission selected. It has the advantage that the Commission report explains is that it
matches the Texas state seal. The selected flag is just pulled out of the air to cover up
another bad historical decision.

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission “Six Flags of Texas” has this to say.

In the 1680s, there was not one official French flag; a number of different designs
were in use, and it is not clear which La Salle's expedition might have carried.
Some patterns which have been used in Texas include a white banner with three
gold fleur-de-lis, a blue banner with three gold or white fleur-de-lis and a white
banner liberally sprinkled with gold fleur-de-lis. For the Centennial Exposition,

96
“The Texas State Seal,” online version of pamphlet of same title, first printed 1993,
https://www.sos.state.tx.us/statdoc/seal-additional.shtml.
97
No author, Six Flags Over Texas, Texas State Library and Archives Commission,
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/sixflags.html. The reference in the online page for the reasons this flag was
selected is given as “Why the Six Flags of Texas?” Texas Centennial Review, Feb. 19, 1936, page 3.
 Page 101 of 103

the white flag sprinkled with gold fleur-de-lis was adopted as the most likely
design, and this pattern is most commonly seen today.

The Historical Commission points out that the flag design they choose matches the
Texas State seal. Why a French flag was included at all probably was to have six flags
and hence a symmetrical Texas seal and maybe more identify Texas with Europe.

Though how this imagined flag flew “over” Texas is questionable. The failed tiny French
colony was a disaster with half of its inhabitants dying in the six-months. La Salle
started out with 180 colonists, but when he left them, abandoned them, there were 23
left. The colony ended with a supposed massacre by Native Americans.98 However, they
might have had a flag, and it might have been the one that is easy to get manufactured
commercially for flag displays.

The Confederate states adopted three different national flags. The first one, the Stars
and Bars was later rejected since it was considered too similar to the American flag. The
second flag was a complete redesign and had the Confederate battle flag as the canton in
the upper left. The third was only modified with a red vertical bar at the end so that
without wind, it would not be confused with a flag of surrender. The second and third
flags are what the Confederate decided upon as their flag for the foreseeable future, and
the first Confederate flag was decisively rejected.

However, a variant of the first flag is adopted by the Historical Commission because,
“The Texas State Seal Advisory Committee choose to use the seven-star Stars and Bars
when the committee updated the design of the reverse of the Texas State seal in 1992
because the Star and Bars is the least recognizable and least inflammatory of the three
Confederate flags.” This seven star flag was the first version of the 1st National
Confederate flag, but was only in existence until more states seceded and was transient
in its existence. Supposedly authoritative online sources discuss the 1st Confederate
National Flag but don’t point out that it had thirteen stars during most of its existence.
It has a prior history in Texas memory as representing not the first version of the 1st
National Confederate flag, but as the flag representing Texas as the seventh state to
secede, yet it was chosen.

For example, the Texas State Historical Association in their article “Flags of Texas,” list
this seven-star flag for the years of 1861 to 1865. It was in use only from March 4, to
May 21, 1861. The thirteen star flag was in use from Dec. 10, 1861 to May 1, 1863. It
omits how short this flag was in existence or its association with Texas secession. 99

98
Weddle, Robert S., “La Salle’s Texas Settlement,” Texas State Historical Association Handbook online,
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/uel07. As always read the TSHA handbook with caution.
99
Spain, Charles A., Jr., “Flags of Texas,” Texas State Historical Association Handbook online,
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/msf01 (7/29/2019). The use of the Texas State
Historical Association Handbook should always be done with caution. The omissions can be startling. For
the dates of the duration of the individual flags see, “What you should know about the Confederate
 Page 102 of 103

The selection of this seven star flag celebrates the secession of Texas and does not
represent the period of time Texas was a Confederate state, whereas other Confederate
flags wouldn’t specifically call out the secession of Texas.

It is doubtful that you would find many people able to recognize the Stars and Bars,
however, most everyone would recognize the second and third Confederate national
flags. It is without anyone’s doubt that the first flag is the least inflammatory of the three
designs.

The six-flag codification shows how it is constructed by non-historical considerations.

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission web page states, “The flags of six
nations have flown over Texas.” The Historical Commission on the six flags is much
more careful in their wording stating, “THC has reviewed these designs and determined
that they represent the appropriate flags of the six nations at the time of each claim to
this soil,” excepting the U.S. Flag. The critical word is “claim.”

How, much sovereignty each nation state actually had authority over the geographical
area of Texas is avoided. The reason for Texas’ existence is that the Spanish and
Mexican states had very little authority or presence in this peripheral edge of their
claimed territory.100

The Texas State Seal is unusual because it has art work for its obverse which includes six
flags. The obverse itself has been changes. The 1961 version had the Confederate Battle
flag which wasn’t any of the national flags of the Confederacy. This was the seal obverse
adopted during the mid-20th century Civil Rights Era. It was changed in 1991 to be the
First national Confederate flag.101

Though there has been some care by some, like the Historical Commission of the “six
flags,” to not make a definitive historical claim, the seal has become accepted as
representing the six nations representing stages in Texas’ development. This the
opening sentence by Charles A. Spain, Jr., for the Texas State Historical Association
handbook entry, “Flags of Texas,” is as follows:

FLAGS OF TEXAS. The strong Texas interest in flags is shown in public and
private displays of the “Six Flags Over Texas,” i.e. the flags of six countries that

flag’s evolution,” Kyle Kim and Priya Krishnaakumar, Los Angeles Times, July 9, 2015, at archive.org
http://www.latimes.com/visuals/graphics/la-na-g-confederate-flag-history-20150623-htmlstory.html.
100
No author, “Six Flags of Texas,” Texas State Library and Archives Commission,
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/sixflags.html, printed out 2/11/2018. Texas Historical Commission Report,
“Six Flags Over Texas,” reprinted from June 20, 1997, Texas Register, Vol. 22, pp. 5959-5967.
http://www.thc.texas.gov/public/upload/forms/six-flags-over-texas.pdf. Downloaded 2/11/2018.
101
“The Texas State Seal,” from the web page of the Texas Secretary of State, Rolando Pablos,
https://www.sos.state.tx.us/statdoc/seal-additional.shtml, printed out 2/11/2018. This page is an online version of
a pamphlet, “The Texas State Seal,” printed October 1993 under the Office of the Secretary of State of Texas.
 Page 103 of 103

have ruled over Texas: the Kingdom of France, the Kingdom of Spain, the
Mexican Federal Republic, the Republic of Texas, the Confederate States of
America, and the United States of America.102

Charles A. Spain, Jr. was a co-chair of the Texas State Seal Advisory Committee which
adopted the obverse design in 1961 with the Confederate Battle flag.103

When you use the phrase, “Six Flags over Texas,” the “over” tends to indicate national
sovereignty in terms understood in the 20th and 21st century understandings of nations
and national territory. As indicated before the French presence in Texas was marginal
and the authority of Spain was also minimal and largely a claim on maps to preclude
other European claims.

At the time of the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas which Confederate flag
was to be used wasn’t fixed. In some cases it is the First National Confederate flag, but
on postcards you can see a flag that is either the Second or Third National Confederate
flag and on the tickets the Confederate Battle flag.104

The cover of “Commemorating a Hundred Years of Texas History,” has six flags also, but
it is the white fleurs-de-lys on blue for France, a white flag with the Hapsburg coat of
arms for Spain, and the First National Flag for the Confederacy.

The various selections of six flags to make up the “Six Flags Over Texas” theme have
largely been mix and match. That is because it isn’t about historical instruction
concerning flags, it is about defining Texas history as being about a specific set of six
nations and defining Texas history as white history.

102
Spain, Charles, Jr., “Flags of Texas,” Texas State Historical Association Handbook, online, at
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/msf01, printed out 2/11/2018.
103
Spain, Charles A. Jr., “Seals of Texas,” Texas State Historical Association handbook, online,
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mss01, printed out 2/11/2018.
104
Items in the author’s collection.