State Fair of Texas & Black History

Midway was once far from fair for blacks
08:56 PM CST on Friday, February 11, 2005
By MICHAEL E. YOUNG / The Dallas Morning News
Marion Butts/Dallas Public Library
Protesters picketed during the final years of segregation at the State Fair of Texas, which once banned blacks from amusement rides and food stands.
Fifty years ago, when the State Fair of Texas opened for its annual autumn run, visitors looking for a day on the midway came face to face with black America's struggle for civil rights.
The NAACP began marching outside the gates of Fair Park in 1955, demanding full equality in fun, as they had over education, voting rights and jobs.
"Most people think African-Americans weren't admitted to the fair except on a special day or two, but that wasn't the case," said Nancy Wiley, former public relations director for the fair and author of The Great State Fair of Texas – An Illustrated History. "They were admitted on any day, but they couldn't ride the rides or eat at the restaurants."
Florence Keller Butts, widow of photographer Marion Butts, remembers those days none too fondly. "All these black people came from small towns and what have you, and the fair would be so crowded, and everything was closed down to them," she said.
The fair board refused to end the ban on amusement rides in 1951 but changed the policy two years later, Ms. Wiley said. Blacks and whites could ride the same rides except for two where there was the potential for contact.
The criticism and picketing continued, though. And in 1956, the Negro Chamber of Commerce withdrew its support because of lingering discrimination, particularly at fair food stands. That last vestige of segregation wouldn't disappear until the next decade.
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Historians focus on photos of racial struggle
09:58 PM CST on Saturday, January 29, 2005
By MICHAEL E. YOUNG / The Dallas Morning News
History unfolds in the images, history from a different angle. A way of life blooms in black and white.
The photos, often the work of men and women unknown beyond the limits of their own communities, depict the struggles of a people forced to the margins of society, celebrating victories and ruing defeats with clarity and grace. In Dallas, Marion Butts Sr. was perhaps the most notable of the photographers chronicling the final days of racial segregation, mostly for the Dallas Express, one of three newspapers serving African-American readers.
"Initially, I think this was a job to him," said Brian Hurdle, Mr. Butts' grandson. "Back then, if you had a black event, you had to call a black photographer.
"But he definitely realized over time that what he had was special, and that not a lot of people had anything like it."
"Marion was one of the greats," said Alan Govenar, author of Portraits of Community – African American Photography in Texas and co-founder, with wife Kaleta Doolin, of the African American Photography Archive in Dallas.
"He excelled among his contemporaries – but he did have contemporaries."
In Dallas and across Texas, dozens of African-American papers flourished in the 1950s and '60s, covering news the mainstream publications often ignored. But in the years since, some of the photographic record they provided has disappeared.
"The reality is there was a vibrant African-American press," Dr. Govenar said. "In our archives, we have photographs taken at the same event by different photographers, many photographers.
"But this is an area that has barely been documented. We're just beginning to scratch the surface."
The Dallas Public Library recently purchased roughly 58,000 photo negatives taken by Mr. Butts, who died in 2002. The work of R.C. Hickman, a contemporary who worked for the Dallas Star Post, resides at The Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.
But as other photographers retire or die, their files can end up in an attic, or worse, a Dumpster. Finding and preserving as much as possible is crucial, Dr. Govenar said.
His book lists 117 African-American newspapers that operated in Texas between the mid-19th century and the turn of the 21st. And during the same period that Mr. Butts and Mr. Hickman were working for Dallas newspapers, A.B. Bell, Dewitt Humphrey and others were covering news assignments as well.
Photo studios flourished, too, though photography may have been a second or even third profession for some.
Calvin Littlejohn photographed Fort Worth's African-American community for six decades, shooting everything from visiting celebrities and church groups to evidential photos for court cases involving the NAACP.
Alonzo Jordan operated a combination photo studio-barber shop for 41 years in Jasper, Texas. Eugene Roquemore worked as a janitor during the day and a porter at the Lubbock bus station at night, shooting photos whenever he could.
"He was an incredible talent, chronicling the black hipster lifestyle at a place called The Cotton Club in Lubbock," Dr. Govenar said. "You look at his photos and wonder, 'Why have I never seen this kind of work before?' It's like, 'I never knew this existed!' "
Mr. Roquemore's photos were found stored in cardboard boxes after his death.
Their combined works cover the breadth of photographic topics, from school photos to weddings and funerals, parades and nightclub events, studies on poverty and the protests that traced the fight for equality and justice.
"My grandfather was very aware of the discrimination blacks faced, as I'm sure everyone growing up in that era was," said Mr. Hurdle, Mr. Butts' grandson.
"Growing up, he actually worked on a plantation, and I remember him telling me some white men brought a black worker up front and beat him, kind of whipping him, so they'd know what could happen to them."
The routine slights of everyday life shaped him in certain ways, as it did his generation, his grandson said. And though Mr. Butts was a quiet man, he understood that many of the things he photographed were powerful documents in the history of Dallas and the United States.
"The photos he made during the desegregation period, those are good for history," said his widow, Florence Keller Butts. "I'm sure now that everyone knows how the blacks were treated, and sometimes still are.
"It's hard to get over that bitterness. I think I've overcome it," she said, "I guess until it happens again."
And while her husband was quiet, Mrs. Butts was feisty, waging her own little battles for civil rights with her husband's full support.
If sales clerks at the department store would call her "girl" when she was out shopping with her three children, she'd let them know how she felt, she said.
"It upset my children something awful. They thought I was about to get arrested or something," Mrs. Butts said. "But my husband, he was behind me 100 percent.
"I remember when I was in high school, there were water fountains marked 'Colored' and 'White.' And my parents didn't really like us doing this, but we would drink from the 'White' fountain, just to see if anyone would correct us.
"I decided if anyone said anything to me, I'd just say, 'I'm colored. I don't know how to read.' "
During his career, including the 20 years he spent at the Dallas Express, Mr. Butts photographed many of the small events that marked a people's progress.
He photographed the first black students admitted to Southern Methodist University and the first black doctors given operating privileges at a white hospital. He shot the first desegregated soda fountain in South Dallas and a lone picket protesting segregation at the State Fair of Texas.
One day, he photographed Dallas' first black police officers standing in front of a patrol car, a picture both historic and ironic.
"The officers could only drive that car during Negro Achievement Day at the State Fair," Mr. Butts said in a 1998 interview with The Dallas Morning News. "They couldn't make an arrest. They'd just have to detain the lawbreaker until a white officer arrived.
"And they had to dress at a housing project called Roseland Homes off Roseland Street, because they weren't allowed to dress with the other officers."
Each of those photos has historic value. But the scope of work by African-American photographers across Texas might have had even more significance in their own towns.
"My husband was proud to have the chance to make pictures of Martin Luther King and Arthur Ashe," Mrs. Butts said. "And the celebrity things he was able to do were great.
"But I personally like just the everyday goings-on that he photographed."
In his book, Dr. Govenar places Mr. Butts and dozens of others in a new genre of photography that he called "community photographer."
"There were many African-American photographers working in Texas during the years of segregation, and they recognized in a bigger sense that photography was a way to document and build esteem in community life," he said.
They accomplished that with photos of debutante balls and day-care center graduations, Masonic ceremonies and business openings. The people pictured worked hard to make their way in life, and the photos shared their celebrations. The work showed lives worthy of pride, despite the overwhelming problems that surrounded them.
"So Marion was a man who was always on the go, at community and church gatherings, anything that was important to his community," Dr. Govenar said.
"And while he made a livelihood as a photographer, he had a much bigger sense of the world and the work he was doing."
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Photographer captured '60s protest
Taking aim at injustice, paving a path toward equality
09:19 PM CST on Monday, January 31, 2005
By MICHAEL E. YOUNG / The Dallas Morning News

The walls of segregation still held in 1960, but nearly a decade of African-American protests had already forced changes at the State Fair of Texas and the Dallas school system.
The latest targets included the city's segregated lunchrooms, including the "white" lunch counter at the H.L. Green department store.

Marion Butts
A protester's sign says 'H.L. Green Co. Insults Human Dignity with Segregated Food Services. Why Pay for Segregation!'
Protesters began marching outside the store in October 1960, and the protests continued for months before black customers could freely use the ground-floor restaurant rather than the lunchroom in the basement designated for blacks.
The changes came grudgingly, even though the color line had been broken at least six months earlier.
On April 25, 1960, an African-American student at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University sat down for lunch with two white students.
"The fact that the other two were willing to go in with me made it much, much easier," the Rev. Richard Stewart, now retired in Nashville, Tenn., said Monday.
"But it was risky. I was about to graduate, and this could have jeopardized that."
The waitress refused to bring them food. But when they called the manager, they were served.
"There was a group of white businessmen who wanted to make a statement that Dallas didn't have the same kinds of problems as Birmingham and other places," Mr. Stewart said. "They wanted to make certain that if anyone asked for service that it would be granted."
But real change, for everyone, would take another year.
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Right-tilted owner of site unfazed by reporter flap
Talon leader says White House coverage will go on despite resignation
11:34 PM CST on Friday, February 11, 2005
By KAREN BROOKS / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – The politically conservative owner of the online Talon News Service said Friday that his site would continue its coverage of the White House despite harsh criticism of one of his reporters.
Bobby Eberle Jr., a Houston activist and engineer who also runs the popular GOPUSA political Web site, told The Dallas Morning News that he plans to replace reporter James Guckert, who went by the name Jeff Gannon. The reporter resigned Tuesday after reports that he had used the fake name in White House press briefings for two years and was employed by a politically active and partisan company.
"We haven't stopped our operations at all," Mr. Eberle said in a telephone interview from his Houston home. "We've got four new stories up there today."
Founded by a young, Texas-based board of directors, GOPUSA has half a million subscribers and sends Talon News stories to its audience daily. Among the founding members of GOPUSA are Richard Powell, a former policy adviser to Gov. Rick Perry; Bill Fairbrother, chairman of the Williamson County GOP; and Steve Findley, a member of the state GOP's executive committee.
GOPUSA began about five years ago with 400 subscribers, Mr. Eberle said. A native of Chicago who moved to Texas at age 11, Mr. Eberle, 36, went to Texas A&M and worked as an aerospace engineer while he developed GOPUSA. Now, he said, the sites are his full-time job.
Both sites make money from advertisements, Mr. Eberle said.
Mr. Findley said Friday that he had not heard about the resignation of Mr. Guckert and said he was not involved with Talon News.
"I can tell you that we're all good folks," he said. "We're not in the business of stirring up bad things. We like to do good things."
Mr. Guckert came to the attention of the media when, at President Bush's most recent news conference, he referred in a question to Democratic leaders who "had obviously divorced themselves from reality."
The backlash on liberal Web sites, in Congress and eventually in the mainstream media was strong, with accusations by Capitol Hill Democrats that Mr. Guckert had been planted in the White House briefings to spread propaganda.
Mr. Eberle said he would not comment on specific reports about Mr. Guckert, including that the reporter owned several sexually oriented Web sites.
Mr. Eberle said he strives to keep his 2-year-old news site "completely separate" from the partisan GOPUSA and said that if he, as editor, came across a story that was critical of Republicans, "you bet we'd be covering it."
"It's important to maintain the line between opinion and news, and I try very hard to do that," he said. "GOPUSA is overtly partisan; it says so in our name. But if you look on the Talon news site, it's just news."
Mr. Eberle neither apologized for nor defended Mr. Guckert's actions, saying instead that the question obviously "got attention because it was coming from the right" and that he would "counsel any new reporter to just be aware of the environment that they're in.
"I think there's a way of asking pointed questions from either perspective that don't necessarily come loaded with political bias," he said. "I don't think anyone should ask softball questions. ... Republicans and conservatives want to know what's going on, too. They have a lot of tough questions to ask, too."
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