Waco’s sporting history is colorful and diverse, not least due to the various minor league baseball teams that have called the city their home. One of the longest standing and most successful of these teams was the Waco Navigators, who played in Katy Park from 1906-1919.

Although the state of Texas did not boast a major league baseball team until 1962, Texans had been playing baseball since the 1860s. Initially, Texas baseball consisted only of a few amateur clubs, but by the 1880s, these teams began to pay some of their players, usually the pitcher, catcher, and shortstop. By 1887, there were at least six professional leagues in the United States, and Texas was not far behind. Spearheaded by John McCloskey, player and manager for the Joplin Independents, the Texas League came into a shaky existence in 1888, teams from Austin, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Galveston, Houston, and San Antonio making up its ranks. The first few years were a rollercoaster for the fledgling league, with some teams sporadically running out of cash for their players’ salaries, others folding in the middle of the season, and the league sometimes terminating seasons ahead of schedule.

Waco’s baseball history began years before the founding of its first minor league clubs. Along with a few amateur teams, Waco was the home of several semi-professional black baseball teams beginning in the 1870s. It was not until 1889 that Waco’s first minor league baseball team began play. Between 1889 and 1906, Waco was the home of several minor league baseball teams, including the Waco Babies, Texans, Tigers, and Steers. Each of these teams belonged to the Texas League. In 1906, during the league’s early turmoil, Waco embraced yet another new baseball team. A public contest decided the team’s name, with the winners, Mrs. W. Sparks and Miss Mattie May Wilkes, selecting the name of “Navigators,” reflecting the efforts of Texans to navigate the Brazos River. The Navigators’ first season was less than impressive, resulting in a final record of thirty-two wins and ninety-six losses. These abysmal numbers earned the Navigators the last-place spot in that year’s Texas League standings. The next four years were equally unimpressive, possibly due to frequent turnover in the manager’s position. Between 1906 and 1911, the Navigators went through eight different managers. Finally, the team hired Ellis Hardy. Formerly the head baseball coach for Texas Christian University, Hardy became the most successful and longest tenured of the Navigator’s managers, and he led the team to its first winning season in 1911. From there the team began to climb, with its record improving steadily until 1914, when the Navigators tied seven-time league champions Houston Buffaloes for first place.

The end of the 1914 season would go down in Texas League history as one of the wildest and most contested finishes the league had ever seen. Going into the last series of the season, the Houston Buffaloes led the Navigators by a single game. Waco easily won both of its slated games against the Dallas Giants, giving them a winning percentage of .670 for the season. Houston, in its turn, came away victorious over the Galveston Pirates in its first game, but their second game remained unfinished, called due to darkness in the fifth inning. They had been losing badly. With the unfinished contest, Houston finished at .673, seemingly earning themselves the pennant. Indignant, Waco contested the unfinished game, saying it had been bright and sunny when the umpires stopped the game. Texas League historian William Ruggles, who attended the game, states that it was indeed dark when the fifth inning began, but by the time Galveston had finished batting the sky had cleared. On top of this, Waco then found out that, earlier that season, Houston had broken a league rule stating that the first game of a doubleheader had to be nine innings long, stopping at seven innings in the first game of a doubleheader against Austin. Texas League President W.R. Davidson threw out the result of the shortened game, ignoring the rule that stated the teams had to replay the contest. However, he had also learned that Waco had played a game with a player acquired after intraleague trades had ended. Unfortunately for Waco, Davidson threw out that game as well. Eventually, league administration credited both teams with records of 102-50, and the pennant race ended in a tie.

The Waco Navigators won the pennant for the next two seasons, making them back-to-back-to-back champions, an impressive feat. The Navigators continued playing until 1919. The 1919 season was a dismal one, with the team posting a 59-88 record, their only losing record since 1910. At the same time, the growing city of Wichita Falls, Texas, was experiencing an oil boom. Suddenly flush with cash, a Wichita Falls group bought the Navigators and moved the team, renaming them the Spudders after the oilfield slang for starting an oil well (not potatoes).

That same year, the newly organized Texas Colored League began to play. Among its founding teams was Waco’s newest minor league team: the Waco Black Navigators. The Black Navigators would go on to spend 1919 and 1920 in Waco, before moving to San Antonio as the Black Aces. The Black Navigators were not the last professional baseball team Waco would see in the twentieth century. Between 1920 and the demolition of Katy Park in the 1960s, Waco was the home of the Cubs, the Black Cardinals, the Dons, and the Pirates. Although Katy Park no longer stands, and Waco has not boasted a professional team since the 1950s, Wacoans have retained their love of the national pastime and recall their old clubs fondly.

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Willie Durham House, an extraordinary person, devoted public servant, and gifted administrator, played a pivotal role in the establishment of two of Waco’s most essential institutions — free public schools and the Waco-McLennan County Library.

Born in 1856 in Austin County, Willie Durham was the only child of Dr. and Mrs. M.S. Durham. When the Durham family moved to Brenham, she attended schools there until her marriage at age 16 to J.A. House. The couple had one child, a daughter, Lolabel.

Whether J.A. died or deserted the family is unknown, but with a young, precocious daughter to support, Willie entered one of the few fields open to women in those days: teaching. Possessed with a great thirst for knowledge, House, in 1878, somehow cobbled together the resources to enroll in the University of Nashville’s Peabody Normal School which had been established to empower teachers.

Upon graduation, the Texas State Board of Education hired House to administer Summer Normal Services (meaning all education and administrative services that go on during the summer months) in Mineola, Victoria, Marshall, and Lampasas. She returned briefly to the classroom in Tyler, then the fledgling Waco public school district hired her in 1884 as the principal of the city’s third ward school. She was just 28 years old. Within a few years, House became vice president and secretary of the Texas State Teacher’s Association, founded in 1880 to further the cause of education in Texas.

From this point forward, House’s name appears hundreds of times in the Waco newspapers, including The Day, The News-Tribune and others — she’s everywhere, speaking, encouraging, raising money for schools, spearheading the campaign for women to vote and working with businessman Isaac A. Goldstein to bring a Carnegie Library to Waco.

When A.A. McGregor was elected superintendent by the School Committee of the Waco City Council, he vigorously crusaded for public schools — Black and white — continually going to the press and city council meetings to push for better salaries, facilities, and working conditions for teachers and administrators. The city council eventually fired McGregor in 1888. Her fellow teachers and administrators strongly supported House for the position. The Council, however, wanted another male superintendent.

On June 3, 1888, Waco newspaper The Day reports that the Council was reluctant to support House’s appointment because she was a woman. We don’t know what changed the Council’s mind, but on July 13, a follow-up article appears, heralding her election to the position and commending her on her qualifications for the role.

House immediately set to work in the Waco schools — improving record-keeping, tackling maintenance issues, expanding the curriculum, and encouraging and equipping students, staff, and faculty alike in a school district that was one of the largest in Texas. She was also the lowest paid superintendent of schools in Texas, making about $2,000 a year, while many other superintendents made closer to $2500.

It was too good to last. When the City Council deeded authority over public schools to the newly formed Waco School Commissioners in 1893, House was summarily replaced and demoted to campus principal. Leading the charge against House was Waco businessman Edward Rotan, who headed up an opposition “ticket.” House returned again to the classroom.

Within a year, the all-male school board declared that only men could be principals in Waco schools. The following year, it decreed that all female teachers must be single and that, should they marry, it would be a declaration of resignation from Waco schools.

In 1904, when the beautiful Carnegie Library opened on Twelfth Street and Austin Avenue, House accepted a position as Waco’s first full-time librarian.

Once again, House encountered opposition, this time from the Waco City Council. Despite the city’s pledges of support with the original grant application, the Council provided minimal support to the library, publicly dismissing it as a playground for children and a storehouse of cheap novels. Consequently, House was again forced to spend much of her time fundraising.

Eventually, she had had enough.

In 1907, House accepted a position with the filing and stenographic division of the Workman’s Compensation Commission in Brooklyn and rapidly rose through the ranks to the position of “chief” of the division. A Waco Times-Herald article from June 7, 1914, reported that her promotion was to “the most important position held by a woman in business circles of New York state.”

When House died in July 1926 at the age of 69, her obituary appeared in both The Brooklyn Eagle and New York Times, as well as different Waco newspapers. Her daughter Lolabel House Hall, Ph.D., an educator respected in both the Waco and New York school systems, brought her mother’s remains to Waco for burial in Oakwood Cemetery and read from a framed letter of tribute from the very commissioners that once fired her, calling her a “remarkable woman.”

When Lolabel herself died in May 1946 after a lifetime of advocating on behalf of education and women’s rights, The Waco Tribune-Herald cited both women in an accompanying editorial:

With her mother, the late Mrs. Willie Durham House, a strong personality well-remembered by old-timers, Mrs. House was one of the early workers for women’s suffrage. It is due to the activity of those two women and many other like them that women are able to vote in this country. We accept the fact of women’s votes without question now. It is hard to imagine the campaign that had to be waged by women like Dr. [Lolabel] Hall and Mrs. House to make that fact come to pass.

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During World War II, Elizabeth “Bettie” Mae Scott joined a small group of women who took to the skies in support of the United States war effort. Scott served as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), a program that trained female aviators to perform critical flying duties within the United States while male pilots fought overseas.

Bettie Mae Scott spent her early life in Monrovia, California, a city in the greater Los Angeles area. She was born on July 26, 1921, to Frank L. Scott and Virgel (Cochran) Scott. Although relatively little documentation survives about her early years, the 1940 U.S. Census indicates that she grew up in a household with three siblings (two brothers and one sister) and her father served as the Police Chief in Monrovia. Scott remained in the community where she was raised until leaving California for Texas to begin training with the Women Airforce Service Pilots, marking the first time she had relocated away from home.

Bettie’s story emerged during a period of dramatic change in the American workforce. As masses of men departed for military service, an estimated 6.6 million women entered the labor force, taking on occupations that had previously been closed to them. Aviation proved no exception to these national trends, and the U.S. Army Air Forces soon faced a shortage of domestic male pilots.

Operating from August 1943 to December 1944, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program represented a significant development in the professional advancement of female aviators in the United States. However, its creation did not mark the beginning of women’s participation in aviation. Rather, WASP emerged from decades of effort by women seeking greater access to flight training and professional aviation opportunities. Applicants were required to already hold pilot licenses; many having trained through the federal Civilian Pilot Training Program established in 1938. Bettie Scott herself had earned a civilian pilot’s license before applying to the program. Administratively, WASP consolidated two earlier organizations, the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) and the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), into a single program. Its formation also reflected broader global developments, as both Great Britain and the Soviet Union had already incorporated women into wartime aviation roles, placing pressure on the United States to expand women’s participation in military aviation.

The WASP program was highly selective. More than 25,000 women applied, but only about 1,830 (roughly seven percent) were accepted for training at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. Of those accepted, 1,074 ultimately completed the program and served as Women Airforce Service Pilots, an achievement Bettie shared with just over a thousand other women. Such an accomplishment was comparable in selectivity to being accepted into an Ivy League university.

Affectionately known as “Scotty” among her fellow pilots, Scott trained for several months at Avenger Field before graduating on April 15, 1944. Upon graduation, the Army Air Forces assigned her to Blackland Army Airfield and Waco Army Airfield in Waco, Texas, where she served as an engineering test pilot. In this role, Bettie flew aircraft that had recently undergone maintenance to determine whether they were safe to return to operational service.

Test flying ranked among the most dangerous responsibilities in the WASP program because mechanical failures and structural defects could emerge only after an aircraft returned to the air. Many WASP pilots faced similar risks while ferrying newly manufactured aircraft between factories and military bases or towing aerial targets for training. By the time the program ended in 1944, thirty‑eight WASP pilots had lost their lives in service.

The inherent dangers of test flying became a tragic reality for Bettie on the morning of July 8, 1944, when Scott took off to test‑fly a recently repaired BT‑13 Valiant at Waco Army Air Field. The BT‑13 was a basic training aircraft used by the Army Air Forces to prepare new pilots for more advanced combat planes. Shortly after the aircraft lifted off the runway, it climbed too steeply and stalled at an altitude of roughly one hundred feet. The plane rolled and crashed upside down, killing Scott instantly as a result of severe head trauma. Investigators later determined that structural defects in the aircraft’s tail assembly had caused the sudden loss of control.

For many years after the war, the contributions of the WASP pilots remained largely unrecognized because the federal government classified them as civilian employees rather than military personnel. As a result, pilots who died on duty were not provided funeral or body transportation benefits, nor were they recognized as fallen service members. When Bettie Scott died in 1944, her fellow WASP pilots collected money to return her body to her family in California, sending her home in a simple pine coffin. Scott was later buried in her family’s plot at Live Oak Memorial Park Cemetery in Monrovia, California, near her parents. Only decades after the WASP program ceased operation did the federal government formally acknowledge the women’s service. In 1977, Congress granted WASP members veteran status, and in 2010 the pilots of the program were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of their contributions during World War II.

Today, Bettie Mae Scott is remembered as part of a pioneering generation of women in military aviation. During wartime pilot shortages, WASPs stepped into roles that had previously been closed to them. They undertook missions despite the known dangers of the work and the knowledge that they lacked the official status and benefits afforded to military personnel. Women like Scott accepted the risks by pursuing their ambitions as aviators while contributing their skills to the wartime needs of the U.S. military. Their service expanded opportunities in aviation and helped shape the future of women’s participation in the United States armed forces.

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One of the most beautiful buildings on Baylor University’s campus is the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum. Sources such as Campus Grotto and Flavorwire have named the library to their lists of the fifty most beautiful libraries in the United States and in the world, respectively. The three-story Italian renaissance style building houses the world’s largest collection of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning material. Collected by Dr. Andrew Joseph Armstrong throughout his life, the artifacts have resided in the Armstrong Browning Library since its opening in 1951.

Born in 1873 in Louisville, Kentucky, A.J. Armstrong grew up wanting to be a college professor. He lost his father when he was fourteen, so when his mother fell ill a few years later, he delayed his college education to care for her. She died when he was twenty-six, and he began his studies at Wabash College. After he graduated in 1902, he accepted a position teaching English at East Texas Baptist Institute, where he met his future wife, fellow English teacher Mary Maxwell. Armstrong went on to earn his doctorate from University of Pennsylvania in 1908. That same year he accepted an interim teaching position at Baylor University. After three years teaching at Georgetown College, he returned to Baylor as the chair of the English department.

Dr. Armstrong possessed an interest in Robert Browning from an early age. Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, were two of the greatest of the English Victorian poets. A master of dramatic monologue and psychological portraiture, Browning was a prolific poet, writing hundreds of poems and eight plays in verse.

Around 1905, Armstrong began to collect Browning's writings. His interest grew greatly upon his meeting the Brownings’ only son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, called Pen, on a visit to Italy in 1909, and he resolved to collect every artifact he could. When Pen died in 1912 without a will, Sotheby’s auction house in London sold off the Browning estate. Armstrong was able to acquire a copy of the sale catalogue, including sale prices and purchasers, from a Sotheby staff member named E.H. Courville. From this starting point, Armstrong began to track down the Browning effects to bolster his fast-growing collection of Browning writings and relics.

Armstrong donated his collection of Browning materials to Baylor in 1918. Throughout his life, he continued to track down Browning artifacts, funding his passion with donations, gifts, and profits from events he hosted on campus. Many of these events were live readings, concerts, or dramatizations, featuring poets, musicians, actors, politicians, and scholars such as Robert Frost, Basil Rathbone, W.B. Yeats, Vachel Lindsay, William Taft, and Katharine Cornell. The university kept the Browning materials in Carroll Library, and designated a Browning Room to house the collection after the 1924 building renovation.

The collection grew quickly, and in 1943 Baylor President Pat Neff provided $100,000 to begin work on a new library to house the artifacts. Dr. Armstrong took upon himself the task of raising the remaining money. With the aid of his wife, Mary, he began an enormous fundraising campaign, writing to alumni, colleagues, politicians, and celebrities for whatever donation they could spare. Each letter he wrote was personal, and each gift was recognized with a thank you note. According to Dr. Armstrong, one person out of every four asked provided a donation. Several local and campus groups with which Dr. Armstrong was involved sponsored specific features of the building. For example, Dr. Armstrong’s Literature Survey class funded the front stairs, and the Tuesday Club of Brady, Texas and Mr. & Mrs. John Leddy-Jones of Dallas donated the Pippa statue on the front lawn.

Five years later, having obtained the $1.75 million dollars necessary for the construction of the building, the university held a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Armstrong Browning Library. In 1950, about halfway through the building’s construction, a second ceremony was held for supporters to place keepsakes such as pictures, books, and papers in the library’s cornerstone along with a list of the 5,117 individuals that contributed to the Browning fund. Finally, in December of 1951, the library officially opened to the public. By now, Dr. Armstrong’s collection was the biggest collection of Browningiana in the world.

The library stands three floors high. Its majestic Italian Renaissance architecture serves as a stunning backdrop for the thousands of artifacts housed within its walls. The Armstrong Browning stained glass collection is the largest collection of secular stained glass in the world, featuring sixty-two stained glass windows depicting the lives and poetry of the Brownings. The ground floor of the library underwent renovation in 1995. Until then, the first floor held offices and classrooms for the English department, while the second and third displayed the various Browning materials. The ground floor now houses the Cox Reception Hall, the ABL Gift Gallery, the Mary Armstrong Seminar Room, the Lewis-Birkhead Lecture Hall, and climate-controlled book stacks. The second floor holds the Martin Entrance Foyer, the Hankamer Treasure Room, the John Leddy-Jones Research Hall, the McLean Foyer of Meditation, and the Cloister of the Clasped Hands, which holds a bronze cast of the hands of Robert and Elizabeth Barett Browning done by artist Harriet Hosmer. The stairwell joining the three floors holds a collection of paintings by Pen Browning. The third floor boasts the Austin Moore-Elizabeth Barrett Browning Salon and the Belew Scholars’ Room (originally Dr. Armstrong’s personal classroom) as well as a balcony overlooking the Foyer of Meditation. Spaces found outside the building include the Garden of Contentment, added in 2012, and an amphitheater.

The Armstrong Browning Library & Museum is a testament to how the tireless effort of one person can accomplish a lofty goal. The library continues to inspire students, scholars, poets, and tourists with its beauty and resources.

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Since 1958, Jesse’s Tortilla Factory, founded by Waco couple Jesse and Esther Contreras, has provided the Waco community with fresh tortillas and chips made in-house. Jesse’s sells at both wholesale and retail level and provides for many restaurants in the Waco area.

Jesse’s co-foundress Esther Contreras inherited both her business instinct and her tortilla making skills from her mother. As a young woman, Esther’s mother, Hermelinda Niño, and her sisters sold tortillas door to door. After Hermelinda’s marriage, she opened Niño’s Tortilla Factory on South Fifth Street with the help of her husband. In an era where many barriers kept Mexican American women from being business owners, Hermelinda’s perseverance served as an inspiration to the women of her community.

In 1950, Jesse Contreras retired from active duty in the army and got a job delivering tortillas for Niño’s. Esther and Jesse soon married, and the couple took over running Niño’s after Hermelinda retired. They moved to their current location and became Jesse’s Tortilla Factory in 1958.

The original Jesse’s was a corner store which sold deli meat, bread, soda, candy, and cigarettes. The factory aspect consisted of a small rolling machine which rolled one tortilla at a time. Much of the store’s initial customer traffic came from the nearby boys’ club where the Contreras’ grandsons spent much of their free time. The building was originally a duplex. One half held Jesse’s, and the other half was the home of the building’s owner. Eventually,the Contrerases purchased the whole building and expanded their facility.

Tragedy struck the Contreras family in 1989. One morning that January, a masked man entered the store demanding money. Jesse, refusing, did his utmost to protect the store, hurling a trashcan at the assailant. The robber fled empty-handed, but not before he had shot and wounded Contreras. Jesse Contreras died a month later from the wounds he sustained in the fight. The factory only closed for a day, so that the family could attend the funeral. Esther carried on the business as sole owner, with the help of her daughter Alice Rodriguez and grandson Santos Rodgriguez.

In its many years of operation, Jesse’s has seen considerable success. They have made several changes to both their retail and wholesale offerings over the years. Under Jesse Contreras, Jesse’s only sold one style of chip, but after Jesse’s death, they began selling two styles of chips—thick and thin—with the thinner style surpassing the thicker chips in popularity. In 2019, at the suggestion of Santos, Jesse’s started selling meals to go such as tacos, taquitos, tamales, and taco salads.

Alice officially took over ownership of the business after her mother’s death in 2020. A year later, Jesse’s suffered an electrical fire. While the damage slowed production, insurance covered most of the costs, and the repairs provided an opportunity for some much-needed renovations.

Jesse’s produces about 45,000 corn tortillas a day and uses 1,800 lbs. of corn a day. The entire tortilla-making process takes place inside the factory. A silo on-site holds corn which is cooked and then soaked in water and lime for five hours. After this, the corn is transferred to a stone grinder, which grinds the corn into a dough called masa. This dough is rolled out and cut into disks on the tortilla rolling machine, which then drops them onto a conveyor belt which takes them through the oven. About ninety percent of these finished tortillas are then cut into quarters and fried to make tortilla chips.

The factory has grown to employ a staff of about a dozen people. This family business invites their community to be a part of their family and so makes a lasting legacy of love and support for the Waco community.

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On the corner of South Eleventh Street and Cleveland Ave, Cruz’s Drive Inn stood as a cornerstone to the community for over 50 years. Four generations of the Cruz family served both the neighborhood near the Kate Ross apartments and countless Hispanic Wacoans. The store became a hub for news and support for its many patrons.

 Cruz’s Drive Inn was opened in 1965 by Juan and Lilia Cruz. They purchased the store at 826 South Eleventh Street from the Tusa family, prominent Waco grocers at the time, to help relieve Juan’s father Cayetano from a depression caused by the loss of his wife, Leonarda. In the early years, Cayetano and Lilia ran the store during the day, and Juan closed the store at night after his shift at Clark Transit Mix Concrete. Juan maintained his job driving a concrete truck until the store was well established and proved profitable.

 The store had a deli counter selling meats and cheeses, bread, candy, beer, cigarettes, sodas, kerosene, and snow cones. As the business grew, so did the property around the store. Juan purchased a former bar and repair shop that would become storage buildings for the store. Lilia, who ran the financial side of the business, saved profits from snow cone sales to expand the store’s physical footprint. They saved enough to add onto the building, and in early 1980, the expanded store opened without missing a day of business. The larger establishment allowed for the sale of more products, many of which catered to the Hispanic community. Items included religious candles, oils, Mexican herbs and spices, piñatas, Spanish language books and magazines, card games such as lotería and naipes, paletas, Mexican sodas, and more. In later years, the store even sold phone cards and money transfers. These were purchased mainly by Hispanic immigrants and workers to stay in contact with and support their families in Mexico or other Latin American countries.

 As a neighborhood store, Cruz’s maintained a regular clientele, seeing generations of families returning year after year. Through good times and bad, the Cruz Family and their clients supported each other. Mr. Cruz often extended credit to those in need, allowing them to purchase goods and later pay the bill when they were able. Some of these debts remained unpaid when the store closed but were proof of the goodwill and faith between the family and community. This mutual respect also added to Juan’s property holdings. As neighbors moved away or passed, the families often offered Mr. Cruz the first opportunity to purchase the land or houses. In addition to supporting the immediate neighborhood, Cruz’s supported other small local businesses, including Jimenez Bakery and Tiempo Newspaper, by purchasing and distributing their goods.

In 1995, Juan’s first grandchild began working at the store part time in the evenings. Seven of his eleven grandchildren would do the same. In 1999, Juan suffered a heart attack and could not work for several months. At this point, his daughter Diana Hernandez began working full time at the store. She quickly learned the business, taking inventory, purchasing goods from regular vendors, operating the cash register, and serving as the food manager over the deli counter. As more family members became involved in the operation of the store, it became the setting for many birthdays and small holidays and a place for the grandkids to stop by and visit between classes at MCC, TSTC, or Baylor University. 

Juan Cruz passed in May 2007, leaving the business in the hands of his wife and children. His daughter, Diana Hernandez, was integral to the running of the store until it closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, Mrs. Cruz sold the property, nearly a half city block acquired piecemeal by Mr. Cruz based on his foresight of the eventual change and development of the neighborhood. Mr. Cruz envisioned opening a storage facility on the land he acquired but never had the opportunity; however, the neighborhood did change as he predicted. Nearby houses that had long been rental properties were sold and renovated to accommodate the influx of visitors to the Magnolia Silos.

 Cruz’s Drive Inn was a family business, not only for the Cruzes, but for those in the surrounding community. Customers often returned after years of absence and recalled to their children buying candy, pickles, chips, snow cones, and chopped beef sandwiches. Additionally, bilingual service (English and Spanish), evoked a sense of place in a new environment for Hispanics new to Waco. Familiar products and the atmosphere made Cruz’s a place of comfort and community to all who walked through the doors.

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Baylor University was the first coeducational university in the South, and only the second in the country. Even so, the education women received at Baylor for many years was fundamentally different than the men’s. Women stayed within the bounds of the more “feminine” degrees such as education or music, and access to on-campus organizations was severely limited. Female students were held to high standards and kept under close supervision by the Dean of Women. They had to adhere to a strict dress code (superintendents could remove undesirable clothing from student’s closets), attend Sunday school and church services every Sunday, sign out any time they left campus, observe a strict curfew, and keep good grades in order to be allowed to date, ride in a car, or leave campus.

As women’s rights activists made headway in the early twentieth century, coed institutions received more and more female applicants. Baylor was no exception. In the 1920s, Baylor received so many applications from women that they had to turn them away due to a lack of space. At the time, Georgia Burleson Hall and a few small annexes were the only women’s residential spaces on campus, and women who were not from Waco were not allowed to live off campus due to university administration’s desire to keep them protected and out of trouble. The male students, by comparison, were not subject to the same levels of supervision as the women and were trusted to live off campus. The ones that did live on campus were housed in then-brand-new Brooks Hall.

Despite being advertised as better than the accommodations at other universities, Burleson Hall was cramped, leaky, outdated, and only housed around 200 women, and the annexes could hold around 200 altogether. In the mid-1920s, the number of women enrolled at Baylor was around one thousand. In light of this space issue, President Samuel Palmer Brooks began planning the addition of a new women’s dormitory. The Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas, having observed the piety and Christian attitudes of Baylor students, took an interest and pledged to help the university raise funds for this new building. They advertised in Waco newspapers to secure donations from the community, and sororities on campus aided them with fundraisers.

In 1928, a groundbreaking ceremony took place at the site of the new dormitory on the corner of Seventh and Speight. Baylor alumna, renowned author, and Columbia University professor Dorothy Scarborough addressed the spectators at this event. Scarborough emphasized the importance of remembering the exceptional women in Baylor’s history and made a commitment to be present at similar events in the future. Baylor administrators overseeing the project hoped that the groundbreaking might serve as a reminder to the community that the project was still underway, and hopefully inspire them to resume their donations, which had decreased significantly.

Woman’s Memorial Dormitory, named in honor of the Woman’s Missionary Union, was finished in 1930 and cost approximately $350,000. Securing funding for this project was no small feat, as at this time the country was suffering in the early days of the Great Depression. At this time, the building could house 245 women, and boasted a dining hall, a chapel, a study hall, and two banquet rooms. On October 15, 1930, the university suspended classes for two hours so that faculty, staff, and students could attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the new dormitory. President Brooks, speaking at this ceremony, thanked the Woman’s Missionary Union for making the idea for the new dormitory into a reality, and further thanked all the women of Texas for their contributions to the project. Mrs. F. S. Davis, president of the Woman’s Missionary Union, also addressed the attendees, speaking of her hopes that the women of the dormitory would grow in their faith and be strong, Christian leaders in their community. “The fervent prayer,” she said, “that wells up from the heart of the Women’s Missionary Union today is that ‘our daughters may be as polished cornerstones after the similitude of a palace.’ For truly you, our daughters, are our glory and our crown.”

In 2005, Memorial and neighboring hall Alexander became home to the university’s Honors College Living and Learning Community, or HC-LLC (often called the Hick-Lick), with Memorial housing the women and Alexander housing the men. Four years later the university upgraded the community to the status of residential college. The Honors Residential College is known across campus for its tight-knit community, goofy traditions, and, in the words of one former Baylor professor,its “common love of uncommon things.” In 2023, the university renovated both Memorial and Alexander, updating facilities, rooms, and common spaces, as well as adding the new Carona Family Commons, a two-floor shared common area connecting the two buildings.

Woman’s Memorial Dormitory, now simply called Memorial Hall, has been a welcoming home away from home to Baylor women for almost 100 years. Memorial was instrumental in improving women’s access to education at Baylor when it was built, and the impact it and its founders had on the university is still visible.

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Since the nineteenth century, Waco has been renowned for the quality and number of higher education institutions in the city and surrounding area. Despite this reputation, the Waco area did not boast its own junior college until the 1960s.

The idea of starting a junior college in Waco originated with Waco Chamber of Commerce member Paul Marable. When Marable joined the chamber, one of his initial concerns was the lack of a junior college for the Waco community. Senior members of the chamber hesitated to bring up the discussion of a junior college, as they feared Baylor University would feel threatened by the possibility of a new institute for higher education in Waco. Marable, unfazed by these worries, went to Baylor administration and presented his idea to President Abner McCall. Rather than being offended, McCall supported the idea wholeheartedly. With this endorsement, the Chamber began to discuss the feasibility of a new junior college.

 In November 1964, a steering committee appointed by the Waco Chamber of Commerce met for the first time to begin planning the creation of a new junior college. One year later, local voters approved the creation of the McLennan County Junior College Tax District and elected a seven-member governing board. The college was christened McLennan Community College (often shortened to MCC) in early 1966, making it the first junior college in Texas to incorporate as a community college. That same year, the board hired Dr. Wilbur Ball as the college's first president. Ball was well-suited to the position, having previously worked in the registrar’s office at Del Mar College and served as dean and vice president at Wharton College.

A great deal of consideration went into the selection of the college’s site. The board initially considered putting the new college downtown in an effort to promote business there, but MCC administrators, including President Ball, quickly decided that none of the buildings available downtown were suited to hold a college. School administration decided early on that the college should be in or near Waco proper, as that was the population center of the district. The college’s original temporary location was the deactivated James Connally Air Force Base, which it shared with the newly opened Texas State Technical College (then called the James Connally Technical Institute).

MCC held its first day of classes in September 1966. When the college opened, it boasted twenty-two faculty and had an enrollment of 858 students. MCC was open enrollment, and in its first year of operation a significant portion of the student body were minority students. In order to reflect this, MCC sought out minorities when hiring faculty as well. Ms. Ezra Henderson, a Waco native and one of the college’s original faculty members in 1966, was the first African American faculty member at MCC.

The board approved the selection of the historic William Cameron property, comprising 200 acres, for MCC’s permanent site in 1966. They acquired the land for $290,000. Construction on new, permanent facilities on the Cameron property began in 1967 and finished in 1969, with classes began at the new location that January. The next year, legislature approved a $4,000,000 bond issue to build additional facilities.

MCC became the first community college in Texas to run its own police academy in 1977. In 1987, MCC bought the old Waco High School campus, which stood empty after Waco High merged with Richfield High School. The purchase added 40 acres, four tennis courts, and new school facilities to the existing campus. The old school building became the Community Services Center. The college grew quickly, expanding to 5,750 students and 165 full-time faculty by 1990. At that point, the school had become a member of the American Association of Junior Colleges, the Texas Public Junior College Association, and an affiliate member of the Association of Texas Colleges and Universities. Into the 2020s, McLennan Community College’s enrollment and number of faculty have grown to almost ten times their original size. It has made a name for itself in academic excellence and holds true to its commitment to offering a high-quality education while remaining affordable.

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In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the rise of railroads and industrialization caused significant changes in the business world. The growth of corporations and big businesses led to a greater need for accountants, bookkeepers, corporate bankers, and other financial and administrative professionals. In response to this new demand, business schools teaching the skills necessary to fill these positions began to pop up across the states. Among these was a Waco institution known as Toby’s Practical Business College (or simply Toby’s Business College). Founded in 1890 by Edward Toby, the school made a name for itself as a producer of competent businessmen and upstanding citizens.

Edward Toby was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1858. When he was eighteen, he earned his degree in engineering in Virginia and entered the workforce. After spending time in New York City and New Orleans, Toby moved to Waco in 1883. After trying his hand as a salesman, grocer, clerk, and even cowboy, Toby settled into a job with Provident National Bank. In his position as head bookkeeper, he displayed remarkable professionalism and capability. In 1890, at the urging of his coworkers, he began to teach the business skills he had learned to others. For three years, he taught a few night classes a week while working at the bank during the day. Eventually, the high demand for his classes led him to quit his job at the bank and begin teaching full time.

Toby initially held classes in his home on Fifth Street. His popularity continued to grow, and in 1896 Toby’s Business College had enough students to field a football team. During the summer, he offered business classes in New York City. In 1898, the college outgrew its small room in Toby’s house, and he moved it to a rented office space on South Fourth Street. A year later, the school received its charter with a capital stock of fifty thousand dollars. In 1910, he built a new four-story building on the corner of Fourth Street and Webster Avenue. The college grew to be one of the biggest business schools in the country with about 600-700 enrolled students a year.

In the numerous advertisements he purchased in newspapers and city directories, Toby marketed his school as the best education money could buy. There were several things Toby believed made his school the very best. One was his own impressive qualifications as a Certified Court Accountant, a Fellow of the Central Association of Accountants of the World, and a renowned handwriting expert. Another was his unique, hands-on approach to education. He refused to use traditional textbooks and instead wrote his own lessons, emphasizing practical experience. Another defining quality of the college was its high standards for admittance. Toby would not admit smokers, drinkers, sloppy dressers, troublemakers, or anyone who did not have at least an eighth-grade education.

The school had six departments: academics, bookkeeping, banking, shorthand, telegraphy and office appliance, and typewriting. Adjacent to the business college was Toby’s School of Correspondence. On Fridays, Toby would host symposiums where prominent businessmen or legislators would come and speak to the student body on matters such as banking, railroads, mining, or aviation, after which the students would hold a debate. The classes at the business school garnered such respect that Baylor University President Samuel Palmer Brooks often encouraged his students to take additional classes with Toby.

The school prospered until the Great Depression. The cause of its financial hardship was most likely a sharp decline in enrollment leading to a lack of profits. The school was unable to recover and closed its doors in the 1940s. Ed Toby died in 1937 at the age of 79.

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Until the 1990s, hockey teams in the South were few and far between. The heat prevalent in the southern states did not exactly lend itself to ice-based sports, leading locals to favor warm-weather sports such as baseball and football. However, the National Hockey League’s (NHL’s) expansion teams began to gradually make their way further south throughout the 1990s, spreading a new interest in the sport. In 1993, the expansion reached Texas when the Minnesota North Stars moved to Dallas, becoming the beloved Dallas Stars.

With these new NHL teams came their minor league counterparts. The majority of these new minor league teams belonged to the Western Professional Hockey League (WPHL), which operated from 1996-2001 and stretched from New Mexico to Mississippi. In 1996, Waco became home to one of Texas’ five (soon to become eleven) WPHL teams, the Wizards. The Waco Wizards played in the WPHL’s first ever game on October 16, 1996, against the Central Texas Stampede from Belton. The game resulted in an unfortunate 5-4 loss for Waco.

The Wizards played their home games in Waco’s Heart of Texas Coliseum, now called the Extraco Events Center. Their first home game exemplified both the struggles and the vibrancy of minor league play in the South. Waco’s humidity caused a thick fog to gather over the ice, and the Wizards’ administration had to send for dehumidifiers from Dallas to dry out the building. They were able to clear some of the fog, but the glass around the rink remained foggy throughout the game, blocking the enthusiastic but somewhat confused fans. On top of that, a creative and well-intentioned mascot stunt went awry. During the pre-game ceremonies, the Waco mascot was lowered from the Coliseum’s ceiling in full Wizard costume. Unfortunately, the bulky costume got in the way of the mascot attempting to release himself from the straps after the stunt, resulting in him hanging for a while over the ice.

In their first season, the Wizards averaged 3,161 fans in attendance (about one third of the Coliseum’s capacity) and finished with a 30-34 record. The team experienced a sophomore slump the next year, averaging 2,048 fans in attendance each game and finishing 18-51, a WPHL record for a team’s worst season. However, new head coach Todd Lalonde turned the team around in its third season and brought the Wizards to the playoffs after achieving the Wizards’ first ever winning record with 40 wins and 29 losses. Despite the Wizards’ success, attendance stayed low, with an average of 2,137 fans a game.

In their three and a half seasons, the Wizards replaced their manager four times and never had a player advance to the National Hockey League (NHL). Their overall record came to 99 wins and 114 losses. During the first three seasons of operation, the team reportedly lost three million dollars. In 1999, the Wizard’s owner, Ohio businessman Joe Milano, sold the team to Rick Dames, a radio station owner from Corpus Christi. Dames in turn partnered with baseball executives Stu and Sue Kehoe in an attempt to revitalize the dying franchise. Their attempts were unsuccessful, and when they were unable to make their lease payment to the Coliseum, the team folded after only having played 27 games in the 1999-2000 season. The Wizards went out the same way they began: with a loss, this time to the Corpus Christi IceRays.

The WPHL lasted another year after the Wizards folded before merging with the Central Hockey League, which in turn lasted until 2013. The WPHL saw a resurrection in 2024, when a group of minor league teams in California came together to revive the once-beloved league. Although the Wizards only existed for a few years, they sparked a love for hockey in the people of Waco.

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The rapid rise of migrant labor in Texas in the 1940s brought large numbers of laborers to Waco. To accommodate this new situation, the city of Waco acquired funds to build the Waco Farm Labor Camp, a center where workers could stay and receive aid while following the crops. Although the camp was only in operation for about twenty years, it had a long-lasting impact on the Waco community.

The Bracero Program, a program through which American farmers in need of laborers could hire Mexican workers in need of a job, began in 1942 due to a decrease in available American farm labor caused by World War II. Although Texas was initially excluded from this program due to its history of discrimination against Mexican immigrants, the “Bracero Ban” was lifted in 1946, and Texas became one of the first stops workers would make as they followed work across the United States.

Waco quickly became a hub for migrant workers because of its cotton crops. As more and more workers came into Waco, the McLennan County Farm Bureau, the Texas Employment Commission, Texas Agri-Life Extension, and the Waco Chamber of Commerce came together to provide them with resources and a place to stay. The Chamber of Commerce began raising funds in 1946, and the new farm labor center was built by the next harvest season.

Initially, the camp consisted of a large Quonset hut on the corner of 3rd Street and Marlborough (now Bosque) Avenue. It accommodated about 100 workers, providing housing, showers, first aid supplies, and other support. However, due to its frequent use and the number of families that came into town every harvest, the facility was quickly expanded in 1947. Along with the services provided at the camp, volunteer organizations such as Church Women United in Waco worked to supply laborers with food, a nursery, a kindergarten, immunizations, and other services.

Aside from its primary function, the camp also became a home for other farm support services. It housed the McLennan County Farm Bureau’s income tax office and often hosted 4-H and FFA (Future Farmers of America) events and livestock shows. It also served as a meeting place, where local farmers could come to recruit laborers and workers could come when they needed a job.

The center was renovated and expanded in 1957. It grew to accommodate up to 400 workers in a season. It continued to be a hub for agricultural activity in Waco until the 1960s. In 1964, the government discontinued the Bracero Program, and Waco no longer needed a labor center. Its use slowly decreased, and the city finally demolished it and built a new health center in its place during Urban Renewal. The site of the labor camp is now home to the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District.

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A Chicano activist and founder of Tiempo newspaper, Ernesto Fraga worked tirelessly to advocate for the interests of Hispanic communities in Waco and Austin. Fraga’s family had a long history in Waco: his grandparents, like so many others, had moved there in 1910 fleeing the Mexican Revolution, joining a growing Hispanic community in Waco. Fraga made it his life’s mission to protect this community by fighting discrimination, advocating for their representation in politics and media, and celebrating their rich heritage. 

Born in 1950 in Chicago, Fraga spent the early years of his life moving all over the country because his stepfather was in the Army. He moved to Waco when he was twelve years old, where his extended family still lived, and grew up on Spring St just north of the Brazos. Many of his family members, along with others in the Waco Hispanic community, worked in the cotton fields. In school, Fraga encountered racism and sometimes got into fights; from a young age he refused to let racism go unchallenged. At age seventeen he left home due to familial strife and moved in with two roommates, one of whom was Manuel Sustaita, a Vietnam veteran and activist in Waco, and at this point his political involvement began. That same year, he helped create a junior chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Texas-born civil rights organization, bringing together around eighty high school and McLennan Community College students in Waco. Within a year, he moved up the ranks to be elected as a state director. He then helped to organize a chapter of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) in Waco, a group originally founded in San Antonio based on more aggressive political demonstrations, including protests and school walkouts. MAYO in turn coordinated the Alliance of Mexican American Organizations in Waco, a coalition of churches, businesses, and clubs that advocated for equitable hiring practices. All of this took place before Fraga graduated from high school in 1968. 

In 1970 Fraga moved to Austin to work for the Office of Economic Opportunity, a War on Poverty initiative, and he quickly became involved in the Austin Chicano Movement. He helped found a chapter of the Brown Berets in Austin, a paramilitary organization that pushed for civil rights for Hispanic communities and a major player in the nation-wide Chicano Movement. The Brown Berets participated in strikes, protested police brutality, and advocated for housing, education, and immigration reforms. While in Austin, Fraga also worked with the Echo newspaper and some other barrio newspapers, introducing him to the ability of media to empower a community. He believed that the mainstream press both in Waco and Austin did not represent the issues and concerns of Hispanic residents, making barrio newspapers crucial tools for informing and organizing Hispanic communities. Fraga moved back to Waco in 1974 after being fired by the city of Austin for his involvement in protesting a city official. He organized another chapter of the Brown Berets in Waco but moved back to Austin in 1977 to continue his activism. 

Two of the most famous incidents the Brown Berets organized in East Austin took place at this time. The first was a confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan in 1977. The KKK claimed they were going to patrol the border in South Texas to intimidate illegal immigrants. After the Brown Berets announced their intent to confront the KKK at a press conference and organized caravans to travel to South Texas, a KKK leader called off the patrol to avoid the encounter. Fraga recalled this success with pride. The second was a protest in 1978 against the annual Aqua Fest, a boat racing contest that took place in a Hispanic neighborhood. The residents of this neighborhood had repeatedly petitioned to have the contest moved to another location, to no avail. The races caused noise, traffic, and significant pollution, as viewers left their trash in the neighborhood and parked on lawns, devaluing the properties in the area. The peaceful protest turned violent when police began to roughly handle and then beat protesters. Ernesto Fraga was one of the nineteen protesters arrested, although all of the charges against them were dropped when the court found that they had been within their rights to protest. Fraga’s activism in Austin was varied, but it forever shaped his political consciousness. 

Fraga’s most well-known work in Waco began with the founding of the Tiempo newspaper in 1982. He believed it was important to have a media outlet that represented Latino concerns. Tiempo was distributed free of charge; Fraga and his wife Linda made their living from ads placed in the newspaper. Tiempo covered all kinds of topics, both political and personal, and it was bilingual. Articles about immigration issues could be found next to announcements of community socials. Fraga continued his political activism, organizing marches and protests, especially against immigration-related policies which he and others felt were degrading to Latinos. The day after one such march in July 2018, Fraga suffered a heart attack which forced the closing of Tiempo. Another newspaper has not yet stepped into the same role, leaving a “void” in the Waco Hispanic community. He inspired not only Latinos, but other minority groups to organize and fight discrimination. Fraga never remained silent on an issue that impacted Latino communities, but raised awareness and advocated for change. 

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At a fountain named La Pila, children frequently splashed and played while others took a drink or filled jars and buckets with water. La Pila, meaning “the basin,” was the centerpiece and social hub of the historic Calle Dos neighborhood from the 1920s to the 1960s. Fed by an artesian well close by, the fountain produced warm, drinkable water to a neighborhood in which few had access to running water in their homes.

The origin of La Pila is unknown, although Waco newspapers suggest that the city authorized the construction of an artesian well near the area in 1915, and it was reported in 1933 that a fountain in the area was fed by a nearby well with warm water. Children would play and bathe in its waters, and families would bring containers to fill from its four faucets, taking the water home to use for cooking, drinking, and cleaning. Often day laborers gathered at La Pila, waiting to be picked up for work. The fountain’s artesian waters even drew Waco residents who did not live in Calle Dos. Rudy Solano, who lived in Calle Dos as a child, recalled that “people would pull up in their fancy cars and load up their fancy glass containers.” While La Pila held a communal significance for the residents of Calle Dos, it served the broader Waco area as well. 

In 1950, the waters of La Pila dried up. Although its practical use had faded, it still served as a gathering place for the community until Urban Renewal destroyed both Calle Dos and La Pila in 1958. Urban Renewal was an effort to clear “slums” from the downtown area, and it happened in cities across the nation. Low-income neighborhoods and minority communities were those most impacted, displaced from homes and businesses. La Pila was buried, and its concrete edges were damaged even further with the later expansion of University Parks Drive. 

In 2016 Alice Rodriguez, founder of the Waco Hispanic Museum, and Louis Gayton-Garcia decided that unearthing La Pila would be an excellent way to commemorate an important aspect of Waco Hispanic heritage. Partnering with archaeologist Katherine Turner-Pearson, the work to excavate the historic fountain began the following year with a grant for the project from Baylor Philanthropy and Public Service. The money was quickly exhausted, and Turner-Pearson used donations from the community and an army of volunteers, including students from the nearby Indian Spring Middle School, to contribute to the project and to educate the community about the process of excavation. 

In 2020, Pearson-Turner and the Waco Hispanic Museum wanted to take the project in very different directions. The Waco Hispanic Museum had wanted to completely unearth La Pila and create a small park or monument out of it, perhaps with benches and art surrounding it. Pearson-Turner, however, believed it would be best to rebury La Pila because of the complications in getting volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic. She explained that it was a common archaeological practice to uncover an artifact enough to make a report about it and then backfill and rebury the item to protect it. With loss of funding and volunteers, the recommendation of the Texas Historical Commission to backfill, and the lack of a detailed plan with Waco ISD to turn the fountain into a monument on their property, La Pila became once again a buried memory. 

La Pila’s future is uncertain. It might be uncovered again and reconstructed, or it might remain as it is. Regardless of what happens, La Pila still stands in the memories of those who lived in Calle Dos as a symbol of their community, and the excavation project ensured that the legacy of La Pila was shared with a new generation of Wacoans. 

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Manuel "Manny" Sustaita was a Vietnam veteran, civil activist, and the founder of Waco Citizens for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Though an insurance salesman by trade, he spent most of his life advocating for veterans and their families, Hispanic communities, and other underserved groups in Waco.

Sustaita was born in 1944 in Waco. As a boy he sold newspapers, shined shoes, and did other odd jobs to help support his family. In his free time, he played sports with the Waco Boy’s Club and especially enjoyed playing basketball. Though his parents did not speak English, they required their children to learn it, resulting in Sustaita and his siblings speaking what he called “neighborhood Spanish,” a mix of Spanish and English. Sustaita struggled with academics, and he dropped out of high school when he was fifteen.

Sustaita joined the National Guard at age sixteen, partially because of a desire to travel, and partially because of his love for movies like To Hell and Back and The D.I. Popular in the fifties and sixties, these movies depicted life in the military in a thrilling and heroic light, and Sustaita was moved by the example of the heroes in these films. For someone under the age of eighteen to join the military at that time, they had to have written parental consent. His father could not write, so Sustaita forged his signature. In 1963, Sustaita enlisted in the Marines. After training in San Diego, he went to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and then to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. After this first deployment, he served in Costa Rica and the Mediterranean before volunteering to join reconnaissance in Okinawa. With reconnaissance, he toured in the Philippines, Thailand, and finally went to Vietnam in 1965. Sustaita’s battalion operated out of an American air force base in Da Nang. Their primary objective was to scout for the division, and they chiefly had contact with Viet Cong guerilla units. Sustaita did one tour of duty in Vietnam before returning to the United States and serving at Camp Pendleton in California. He finally left the Marines in 1966.

When he returned to Waco, Sustaita became a life insurance salesman, drawing on his sales experience from his childhood jobs and love for interacting with people. After working for MetLife Insurance for a while, he started his own insurance company, called Multi Services Associates. He married Patricia Rivera Sustaita, and they had two daughters before getting divorced in 1981.

Sustaita made a name for himself in Waco as a civil activist. He was a founding member of the Cen-Tex Mexican American Chamber of Commerce, and he later served as its president. He served on the board of the Waco Boys’ Club and was involved with the Red Cross, but perhaps his most memorable contribution to the Waco community was his work on the Waco Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Sustaita was deeply moved the first time he visited the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. Knowing that there were many people in Waco who had lost brothers and sons in Vietnam, as well as a significant number of other veterans, he resolved to build a memorial for the people of Waco. He, along with the Waco Citizens for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial, began the planning process in 1987, but due to a series of delays, the memorial was not dedicated until 2004.

After a lifetime spent serving his country and community, Manuel Sustaita died peacefully on May 20, 2020. He left behind a legacy of activism, having worked tirelessly to aid veterans, the Hispanic community, and all who needed help in the Waco area.

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Lewis “Les” Ritcherson, born in Hillsboro, Texas in 1926, was the first African American to coach at the University of Wisconsin and the second African American football coach in the Big Ten. Ritcherson began his football career at A.J. Moore High School in Waco. As a senior, he earned All-District Defensive End as Moore High took home the 1942 district title. The team’s talent caught the eye of HBCUs around Texas, and Wiley College in Marshall offered Ritcherson a football scholarship.

Ritcherson attended Wiley from 1943-1946, playing football and basketball all four years and running track for two years. Wiley had an exceptional football program and won the Southwest Athletic Conference three out of Ritcherson’s four years as a player. Wiley’s coaches, Fred and Harry Long, were renowned among Black football coaches. In 1945, the football team went 10-0 and won the Orange Blossom Classic, the national championship game for HBCU football teams, against Florida A&M. Ritcherson’s performance that season and particularly in that game led to renowned sportswriter Fay Young naming him an end on his Black All-American team, an honor that came with a five-dollar prize.

After a short stint as football and debate coach in Midland, Texas, A.J. Moore High School hired Ritcherson in 1950 as head football coach. Moore High under Ritcherson went on to be state champion in 1952 and 1965 and state co-champion in 1951 and 1960. Ritcherson, at the urging of assistant coaches and players, started his son, Lewis Ritcherson Jr., at quarterback his last three years at Moore High. Coaching at Moore High was not without its struggles. The Black teams in the area played midweek games because the white schools played on weekends. This meant that the team often had to travel as far as Dallas or even Corpus Christi on school nights, and often the team bus got in so late that players and coaches would spend the rest of the night in the school gym.

In 1966, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) sent assistant coach Deral Teteak to Texas to scout players. Teteak was impressed by Ritcherson’s coaching during his stop at Moore High, and soon after, Wisconsin Head Coach Milt Bruhn offered Ritcherson the position of receiver’s coach at the university. Although initially unsure about leaving Moore High, Ritcherson decided to take the job. He negotiated an unusual five-year contract with the university after hearing that administration might fire Bruhn the next year. Ritcherson was the first African American coach in any sport at the University of Wisconsin. At this time, Iowa’s Frank Gilliam was the only other Black football coach in the Big Ten.

As expected, the university replaced Bruhn after the 1966 season and hired John Coatta, a former Badger quarterback, to replace him. Coatta hired many of his former teammates as assistants. They greatly influenced his coaching decisions and upended the chain of command. These coaches were also extremely hard on their players, a tactic which Ritcherson felt to be unnecessary, especially when it was not improving the quality of the team.

In the sixties, considerable tension existed between Black and white students on campus, and this tension was prevalent between players and coaches on the football team. Many of the coaches treated the Black players poorly and would not pay attention to the players’ grievances. This led some of the Black players to boycott the team banquet. They also threatened to boycott a game against Minnesota, but Ritcherson felt that such an action could endanger their scholarships, and he talked them out of it. Despite the coldness of the coaching staff, the UW-Madison Athletic Board strove to help the Black players. The board even hired a psychiatrist to examine the players and coaches and suggest new ways to improve both their relationships and the team environment as a whole.

The prejudice of the other coaches affected Ritcherson as much as it affected the players. They often held meetings without him or ignored his opinion when making decisions. Ritcherson especially struggled with the lack of his peers on the staff. To remedy this, he organized the first meeting of Black coaches at predominantly white institutions at the 1970 American Football Coaches Association convention.

After he retired from coaching in 1970, Ritcherson took a job as an affirmative action officer first at UW-Extension, then back at UW-Madison. As an affirmative action officer, Ritcherson’s job was to encourage university departments to hire minorities. It was often difficult to convince departments to hire minorities because of what Ritcherson called the “old buddy system.” This meant that the departments only wanted to hire people they already knew. Despite this and other obstacles, Ritcherson made considerable progress in the university. One of his biggest successes was the program he set up with the nursing school to recruit from North Carolina A&T and Tuskegee Institute. Ritcherson was also instrumental in the creation of the Afro-American Studies Program and encouraged its administrators to hire a diverse staff.

Ritcherson retired from administration in 1990. He has since been inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Champions and the Waco Independent School District Athletics Hall of Fame. When he passed away in 2019, Lewis Ritcherson had created a lasting impact both on the university and on his players. While he as an individual might not have much national renown, it was his effort and the efforts of all the Black coaches, players, and administrators that were willing to suffer injustice to set a precedent that broke the color line in college sports.

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Among 1920s literary enthusiasts, Dorothy Scarborough was a familiar name, especially in her home state of Texas and in New York, where she taught at Columbia University. Initially well-known among Baylor University students for her popular English and journalism classes, she gained national prominence after the publication of several of her books—most notably the controversial book The Wind. A trailblazing female scholar, her work spanned from novels to folklore, from short stories to poetry. 

Emily Dorothy Scarborough, or “Dottie” as she was known to friends and family, was born on January 27, 1878 in Mount Carmel, Texas. Her parents were Mary Adelaide and John Bledsoe Scarborough, who was a Confederate veteran and prominent lawyer. The family moved to Sweetwater, TX in 1882, hoping the drier climate would help Mrs. Scarborough’s health, but five years later they moved to Waco so that the children could attend Baylor. Dorothy’s brother George attended law school at the University of Texas and became a successful playwright, and her sister Martha attended Baylor and Vassar and published three books. Like her siblings, writing was in Dorothy’s blood. 

Dorothy Scarborough received her bachelor’s in English in 1896 at age eighteen and her master’s in English in 1899, both from Baylor, and she returned to the university as a faculty member in 1905, teaching English. While teaching at Baylor, she spent her summers continuing her graduate studies at the University of Chicago, and she also taught a popular Sunday School class for college men at First Baptist Church Waco. In 1910 Scarborough took a year of leave to attend the University of Oxford, although they did not yet award degrees to women. After she returned, she taught the first journalism course available in the state of Texas. She moved to New York in 1916, where she finished her doctorate at Columbia University, and her dissertation, “The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction,” became a standard reference work on the topic among English scholars and students. She was hired immediately upon graduation at Columbia, where she would spend the rest of her career teaching creative writing focused on short stories and novels. Baylor awarded her an honorary doctorate in literature in 1923 in recognition of her accomplishments.

Scarborough’s first publication was a collection of poems entitled Fugitive Verses, which she published in 1912. Her first novel, In the Land of Cotton, which was published in 1923, examined the sharecropping system in Texas. Two years later she published three of her most famous works: The Unfair Sex, On the Trail of Negro Folksongs, and The Wind. The Unfair Sex was a partially autobiographical serialized novel based on her experiences at Oxford. She was disappointed with the profound sexism she encountered and the lack of provisions for women’s education at such a prestigious institution, which purported to value truth and learning above all else. On the Trail of Negro Folksongs was her first book-length venture as a folklorist. She had developed an interest in the topic growing up, and she conducted fieldwork and literary research to compile the folksongs found within this work.

The Wind is the most well-known of her writings, partially because of the controversy that it sparked. She first published it anonymously to garner publicity, but the novel’s negative portrayal of frontier life in West Texas ruffled more than a few feathers among Texans who accused the unknown author of slandering their state. The book is set during a severe drought in the 1880s in West Texas, and it portrays a female protagonist who is eventually driven mad by the wind and sand she encounters. The novel presents a stark contrast to the characterization of West Texas by most male authors at the time, who generally favored a more romanticized view of the West and of frontier life. After much speculation about the author, she finally revealed her secret and the controversy softened. The book was made into a silent movie starring the popular actress Lillian Gish in 1928, solidifying its impact on broader American culture. The book’s enduring legacy derives in part from its feminist overtones: Scarborough not only challenged a romanticized characterization of the American West by narrating a woman’s perspective of frontier life, she critiqued the scarcity of options for women outside of marriage and called attention to the sexual violence that many women silently endured. 

Scarborough published several more novels, including Impatient Griselda, Can’t Get a Redbird, and The Stretch-Berry Smile, all set in the South, but none surpassed her 1925 publications in popularity. She began compiling another folksong collection, called A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains, which contained Appalachian folksongs, but she died of a heart attack in her sleep on November 7, 1935. The book was published posthumously in 1937. 

Dorothy Scarborough’s success as both professor and author inspired many young people to imitate her. Numerous students, particularly female students, looked to her as their inspiration to pursue writing or to pursue a doctorate at a time when very few women did so. Her writing was not without fault; it reflected a nostalgia for the rural South that at times perpetuated racial stereotypes, but this nostalgia was frequently tempered by her questioning of gender norms surrounding women’s education and marriage. Scarborough’s legacy still lingers today in the state of Texas, and particularly at Baylor: a legacy as teacher, scholar, and writer.

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One of the most popular places to visit on Baylor University’s campus is the Bill and Eva Williams Bear Habitat, home to Baylor’s live bear mascot. The first habitat was built in 1945, but through the years the desire to increase the quality of life for the bears drove the university to rebuild the habitat again and again, until it became the haven it is today.

Baylor has had a live bear mascot since 1917. The first live bear mascot, Ted, often called “Bruin,” belonged to a nearby Camp MacArthur soldier, who let students parade the bear across the football field during a game and then left the bear to the students when he was deployed overseas. Ted served as Baylor’s mascot until the early 1920s. As there was no habitat at this time, Ted was kept at the Texas Cotton Palace’s small zoo. The bears following Ted would sometimes live off campus but were for the most part kept on university grounds, usually in a pen along Waco Creek. In 1932, Baylor student Bill Boyd acquired a bear named Joe College from the Cotton Palace, which was closing. Joe had been a show bear, and his friendliness and personality quickly made him a favorite of Baylor students. Boyd kept the bear in his backyard until Joe grew to weigh 500 pounds and could no longer be safely housed at his residence. At this point, the Baylor University Chamber of Commerce volunteered to build him a home on campus. Joe College was retired in 1940, and Chamber officially assumed care of his successor, Little Joe.

In 1945, Chamber raised the funds and built Baylor’s first real bear habitat. Located (as it is today) on the banks of Waco Creek, the habitat was known as the “Bear Pit.” It featured a swimming pool and space for the bears to climb or walk around, surrounded by a barrier originally made of iron bed headboards. The Bear Pit underwent renovations in 1949, 1953, and 1969. Chamber also added a trailer in 1953 which transported the bears to and from football games, when previously the bears had been transported in a car or train. The bears frequently tested the strength and security of the Bear Pit with their repeated and often successful escape attempts. The Pit was the home of Baylor’s bears until 1977. At this point, the university decided to demolish it and build the Steve Hudson Memorial Bear Plaza in its place. The Steve Hudson Memorial Bear Plaza was built into the sloping bank of Waco Creek, with an open area where the bears could exercise at creek level and pens and viewing decks at ground level. It was three times the size of its predecessor and included a waterfall and AstroTurf. The Plaza held a Class-C zoo license from the United States Department of Agriculture and was approved by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to hold up to three bears.

In 1999, Chamber began pushing the university to update the habitat again, and in 2003 the university finally began the process. Chamber members worked with administrators from Cameron Park Zoo to develop the plans for the bears’ new home. The new habitat opened in 2005, and university administration named it the Bill and Eva Williams Bear Habitat Complex after the project’s lead donors. This complex, which still houses the university mascots, is Baylor’s most sophisticated habitat yet. The environment resembles the bears’ natural environment and includes many new features designed for the enrichment and care of the bears. Another major change to the enclosure was the elevation, as the whole complex was raised to ground level. Viewing areas encircle about half of the outside border, allowing visitors to easily observe the bears’ behavior, and placards provide information about both the history of Baylor’s bears and about black bears in general.

The Bill and Eva Williams Bear Habitat is the safest place on campus and could withstand winds from a category five hurricane, according to the Robert Reid Director of the Baylor Chamber of Commerce, Dakota Farquhar-Caddell. The habitat received accreditation by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) in 2021. It is the only university mascot facility to achieve this designation and one of only two AZA accredited zoos on a college campus. Finally, the university added a Community Education Pavilion to the complex in 2022, promoting community engagement and education about the bears.

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Nestled behind a bustling area of Waco on Laurel Lake Drive stands a facility called Stilwell Retirement Residence, unique among retirement homes in Waco because of its mission to provide for retired teachers. In the words of Henry W. Stilwell, the residence’s namesake, “We need a quality home for quality people in a city of culture and refinement.” 

Henry W. Stilwell, who inspired the vision of Stilwell Retirement Residence, dedicated his life to education. In the decade following his graduation from the University of Texas in 1909 he held a variety of roles, including a teacher in Waxahachie, a summer-school instructor at the University of Texas, a professor of education at the College of Industrial Arts (now Texas Woman’s University), and professor of English at West Texas State Normal College. In 1919 he received his master’s degree from the University of Texas and in 1920 he became school superintendent in Texarkana, where he encouraged local leaders to found Texarkana College. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Stilwell served on various committees working to reorganize school finances and administration in the state of Texas and advocating for teachers. Southwestern University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1943, and he later served as the president of Texarkana College from 1955 to 1959. One of his dreams was to create retirement homes for teachers throughout the state of Texas so that retired teachers could be assured of a quality place to live in community with other educators at an affordable price, but this dream did not become a reality before his death in 1959.

A state committee appointed to promote the creation of retirement homes for teachers successfully gained a charter for the Stilwell Memorial Residence in October 1958, and the groundbreaking ceremony occurred four years later. The community opened its doors in 1964, achieving a notable milestone in the fight to provide for retired teachers. It was the first of its kind in the American Southwest, and it remains the only of its kind in the state of Texas. Stilwell Retirement Residence is a non-profit organization, and initially the City of Waco and the Waco School Board offered them tax-free status. However, when a Waco resident in the 1960s refused to pay taxes because Stilwell did not pay taxes, lawsuits advanced to the Supreme Court, which ruled that Stilwell had to pay $106,000 in taxes and fines. This placed Stilwell in a difficult financial situation, given their commitment to providing financial aid to teacher retirees who could not afford to stay there otherwise. However, through extensive fundraising and the support of several teacher organizations, the institution paid their debts and expenses and have continued to provide high quality care and service. 

Stilwell Retirement Residence offers an independent lifestyle to its residents. The facility provides amenities such as cleaning and food services, but residents also have access to a kitchen should they desire to use it. They provide a variety of activities for residents, including game nights, craft workshops, and service opportunities, such as making items to donate to the Red Cross or Veterans Hospital. The facility includes a chapel, an extensive library with large-print books, and a small theater for music performances. Stilwell also has a prime location in a commercial area with stores and restaurants galore, and many residents still have their own cars. While former teachers and their spouses or companions are given priority, retirees of other professions can also stay at Stilwell. 

Stilwell Retirement Residence carries on the legacy of Henry W. Stilwell and his lifelong commitment to education, advocating for better care for teachers. The retirement home is built upon values of community and learning, and the donations of those committed to Stilwell’s mission have buoyed them through financial struggles, allowing multiple generations of retired teachers to benefit from Henry Stilwell’s dream. 

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Relocated, dismantled, relocated again, and pieced back together, the Earle-Harrison House has endured more than most historic homes in Waco. Originally built in 1858 for Dr. Baylis Earle and his wife Eliza Harrison Earle, the structure is the only restored antebellum building in Waco. Designed in the Greek Revival style, the Earle-Harrison House has a completely white exterior of pine sheathing with nine cypress columns. Interestingly, the columns only flank the front and side of the house, which is very unusual for this architectural style, leading some to speculate that Dr. Earle had planned to later add a second portion to the house but was unable to before his death in 1859. The interior contains a fourteen-foot high first-floor ceiling, capacious rooms, and large, walk-through windows that open onto verandas. Given its construction in the antebellum South, it is no surprise that slaves built this house, a sad reality of many historic structures built before the Civil War.

After Dr. Earle’s death, his wife sold the property to her brother Thomas Harrison. A prominent figure in the Waco community, Harrison was one of six Confederate generals from Waco, and he decided to move the house fifty yards away so that it would be more visible from the street. The house was located on Fourth Street across from the Earle-Napier-Kinnard House, and it was home to the Earle and Harrison families until 1891, when Thomas Harrison passed away and the property was sold to settle the estate. Over the next several decades, the house would be split into apartments rented by numerous families and working-class individuals, and after the house was abandoned a vagrant woman took up residence in the parlor for a period of time. The house fell into a state of extreme disrepair, and by the late 1950s was slated for demolition to make way for I-35, along with the Earle-Napier-Kinnard House and the Davis House. Roger Conger and Margaret Barclay Megarity fought to preserve the historic homes and their efforts were successful in saving the Earle-Harrison and Earle-Napier-Kinnard Houses.

The Earle-Harrison House was not safe yet, however. In 1967, the building was again slated for demolition, this time to make way for a motel. Eleanor “Nell” Jurney Pape generously offered to purchase any historic home that her dear friend Lavonia Jenkins Barnes wanted, knowing that her friend was deeply interested in historic preservation, and Barnes immediately answered that she wanted the Earle-Harrison House. Hart Nance, Nell Pape’s attorney, worked for the Citizens National Bank, who owned the property, and when she inquired whether they could buy the house, he gave it to her for free. After choosing a lot on Fifth Street with plenty of space for the house and some surrounding gardens, they made plans to have the house moved to the new location. On June 3, 1968, they began to move the house in sections. A large moving crew slowly conveyed the entire structure overnight to its new home.

The whole project was funded by the G. H. Pape Foundation, and Pape and Barnes hired Raiford Stripling as the architect for the restoration. Stripling had an impressive record of restoring historic buildings, including the Presidio La Bahia in Goliad, Fort Concho in San Angelo, and two other historic homes in Waco: Fort House and East Terrace. Stripling oversaw the house being pieced back together and ensured that matching materials were used to replace deteriorating sections. He had a replication of the original kitchen built behind the house, and he also installed a modern kitchen inside. The restoration took a total of three years and the house first opened to public tours in January 1971. Nell Pape had a passion for gardening, and the Pape Gardens planted in her honor which surround the house attempt to imagine “how grand the gardens could have been” with tall live oak trees, a tiered garden, a gazebo, and beds of roses and azaleas.

Today, the Earle-Harrison House and Pape Gardens is a popular venue for special events and weddings, and the public can still tour the historic home. The antebellum house has endured through multiple attempts at demolition and even being dissected, transported, and reconstructed, thanks to its historic legacy and beauty that caught the attention of prominent Wacoans. The efforts of Nell Pape and Lavonia Barnes saved the house from demolition and preserved it for generations to come.

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Anyone who has attended or visited Baylor University would recognize the familiar spires of Old Main as markers of the historic heart of campus. Built in 1887, Old Main was the first building constructed by Baylor in Waco. Baylor had previously been located at Independence, Texas, but when it moved north and combined with Waco University in 1886, the university needed teaching space. Containing classrooms, offices, laboratories, a studio, a library, a chapel, and even housing Baylor’s radio station and tower, Old Main was originally just called “Main Building.” It served so many purposes that it truly was at the center of campus life. Burleson Hall was built adjacent to Old Main in 1888, mirroring its architectural design, and these two buildings along with F. L. Carroll Chapel and Library and G. W. Carroll Science Hall, both completed in 1903, framed Burleson Quadrangle, or “the quad” as it has been called through the years.

William W. Larmour was the architect of Old Main. Drawing from Gothic Revival and Italian Revival styles, both popular at the time, he chose to use red brick with white limestone highlights along the building’s windows and edges. Four smaller spires stand on the roof corners and one tall spire rises in the center. Its architectural style and classic red brick have influenced the design of many buildings on Baylor’s campus, even parking garages. Red brick with white pillars or edges characterizes what many people picture when they think of Baylor, thanks to Larmour’s architectural artistry.

The 1953 Waco Tornado caused serious damage to Old Main and Burleson, weakening the spires so much that they had to be removed. In the 1960s, the university almost decided to demolish Old Main and Burleson Hall to create a new library, but instead they decided to renovate and restore the historic buildings and build Moody Memorial Library. The iconic towers were rebuilt, restoring the university’s original skyline. A renewed Old Main reopened in 1976, ready for new generations of students to pass through its doors.

Old Main is no longer used for such a variety of activities; it now houses the department of Modern Languages & Cultures. Draper Academic Building, built in 1976, stands just behind Old Main and Burleson, forming a complex of three interconnected buildings. While Old Main’s classrooms are not nearly as modern or high-tech as those in some newer campus buildings, it still serves the Baylor student body faithfully, ushering students who study within its walls, perhaps unknowingly, into a long legacy of learning.

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Most people have consumed the ingredient xanthan gum many times before, even if it was unknowingly. Xanthan gum is used in a wide variety of products, including gluten-free bread, ice cream, and cough syrup. This mysterious-sounding substance is a thickening agent invented by Dr. Allene Rosalind Jeanes, a nationally renowned chemist born in Waco, and it is only one of her ground-breaking achievements.

Born in 1906 and raised in Waco, Allene Jeanes attended Baylor University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1928. She went on to receive her master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and then returned to Texas to teach high school for a year. She was soon hired as the head of the department of science for Athens College in Alabama, where she taught chemistry, physics, and biology from 1930-1935. She decided to continue her education, finishing her doctorate in organic chemistry at the University of Illinois in 1938. After receiving her PhD, Jeanes worked for the National Institutes of Health with researcher Claude Hudson, having received one of the first Corn Industries Research Foundation fellowships, and then briefly for the National Bureau of Standards with Horace Isbell. She earned the first of her ten patents in 1941 for her research on phenanedicarboxylic anhydrides, and the same year she began working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Northern Regional Research Center (NRRL) in Peoria, Illinois, where she would work until 1976.

Jeanes’ research at NRRL focused primarily on polysaccharides, which are carbohydrates composed of sugar molecules, and she soon became especially interested in a polysaccharide called dextran. Researchers in Sweden were beginning to investigate the possibility of using dextran to extend blood plasma, helping a patient live long enough to receive a blood transfusion by increasing their volume of circulating blood plasma. Unfortunately, dextran was a rare substance and difficult to find in large quantities. By chance, a soda company sent NRRL a batch of root beer that had strangely become thick and viscous. Jeanes discovered that bacteria which produced dextran, a thickening agent, had infected the soda. By isolating these bacteria, she discovered a cheap way to produce large quantities of dextran. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, dextran was approved for medical use in the military, enabling wounded soldiers to survive until they could receive treatment. It was approved for civilian use after the war, extending the accessibility of this revolutionary treatment to the wider public and saving even more lives. 

Dextran would not be Allene Jeanes’ only revolutionary discovery; her research on dextran propelled her eventual discovery of xanthan gum. Like dextran, xanthan gum is a polysaccharide with thickening properties, but it is produced by a different kind of bacteria. It is a safe, edible, and time-tested ingredient that is used globally, and it has become the most widely produced polysaccharide in the world. 

Over the course of her lifetime, Jeanes wrote sixty publications, obtained ten patents, and received several prestigious awards. In 1956, she became the first woman to receive the Distinguished Service Award by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the same year she was awarded the Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society. In 1962, Jeanes received the Federal Woman’s Award from the U.S. Civil Service Commission for her outstanding scientific achievements. She died in December 1995, and she was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2017. 

Jeanes never married, choosing instead to focus all her attention on her career. As one of very few women working in chemistry research at the time, she cared deeply about inspiring the next generation of young women to pursue education. She even returned to Baylor in 1968 as the guest speaker for Woman’s Day at the university, to exhort her listeners about the vast benefits of women pursuing higher education and the dangers of “an overbalance of biological functions” to the detriment of the mind and spirit. She certainly practiced what she preached, and her accomplishments continue to inspire new generations of scientists today. 

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The Waco Civic Theatre has brought culture and entertainment to the city of Waco for a century. It began as the Waco Little Theatre in 1925. The theater was founded by Mrs. Jean Fort, daughter-in-law of William Fort of the historic Fort House. The Waco Little Theatre performed in a variety of venues with no permanent theater of their own, and in 1936 they disbanded. In 1945, Paul Baker, then chair of the theater department at Baylor University, decided to revive the Waco Little Theatre and rename it the Waco Civic Theatre.

The Waco Civic Theatre performed their first play in 1947. The theater utilized Baylor’s Little Theater until 1951, after which they were no longer permitted to use Baylor’s campus due to space constraints. Following this setback, they performed primarily in the Fort Playhouse until it burned down in 1955. Like its early days as Waco Little Theatre, the Civic Theatre was once again nomadic, performing wherever they could find a space, but it became increasingly evident that they needed their own building if they were to survive long-term. Paul Baker contacted James Hull Miller, a theater architect who designed the building that now stands on Lake Air Drive. Funded by the Cooper Foundation, Baker and Hull collaborated on designing a theater that would be versatile, ignoring the typically stark divide between stage and audience, actors and viewers. Some early notes on the new theater’s design stated that “at Waco the stage can be anywhere and everywhere, and due to the unique floor design, the stage includes the audience.” Miller’s goal was to create a space that was small and flexible enough to be relatively low budget but capable of a wide variety of high-quality shows. Construction began in 1957, and the new building opened in May the following year. The inaugural play of the new theater was called The Teahouse of the August Moon, a play published in 1953 about the US occupation of Okinawa.

The new theater’s unique design won awards for its ingenuity and versatility. The book Theatre and Playhouse: An Illustrated Survey of Theatre Building from Ancient Greece to the Present Day by Richard and Helen Leacroft includes the Waco Civic Theatre in its chapter about flexible theaters, noting its ability to accommodate many different types of staging. Seating was comprised of 150 chairs that could easily be rearranged. Baker wanted the audience to be seated in “director’s chairs” made of wood frames and canvas seats to further integrate the audience into the production of the play. Actors could easily enter through the audience, and a parterre that encircled the orchestra pit and seating extended the stage into and around the audience. An open-grid ceiling unified the space and concealed the source of lighting used in productions. The Waco Civic Theatre even received recognition from the Royal Institute of British Architects, who counted it among the top three most versatile theaters in America.

The Civic Theatre has always been comprised of volunteer actors, actresses, and directors, who commit their free time to rehearsals and performances. While most shows were primarily performed by adults in their early history with perhaps a few children for specific roles, a separate Children’s Theatre was created in 1966, which had classes and performances specifically for children and teenagers. Shows from a wide range of genres with actors and actresses of all ages continue to be performed there today. The Waco Civic Theatre has brought the Waco community together through the art of theater for a century, and it continues to provide an outlet for Wacoans to learn, perform, and be entertained.

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Monroe Alpheus Majors—the first Black Texan to obtain a medical degree—was never content simply to be a pioneer for African Americans in the field of medicine. Throughout his life, he pursued writing, politics, and education, always advocating for racial equality, and making many enemies along the way. Threats of violence or even death haunted him throughout his life due to his political activities, and these threats compelled him to move across the country many times, sometimes spending less than a year in one city before having to flee again.

Majors was born in Waco in 1864 to Andrew Jackson Majors and Jane Barringer Majors. Little is known about his parents’ history, except that his father was born in Tennessee and his mother in North Carolina, and it is likely that they were both enslaved. At age ten, Majors worked as a page for the Texas Legislature during Reconstruction, inaugurating his lifelong involvement in politics. He graduated from the Meharry Medical Department of Central Tennessee College in 1886, and then moved to Brenham, Texas to practice medicine. While in Brenham, he and several colleagues founded the Lone Star State Medical, Dental, and Pharmaceutical Association, created for Black physicians, who were excluded from the Texas Medical Association. Shortly thereafter, his name appeared on a list of prominent individuals in Brenham who were being threatened by a racist group. He had to move to Calvert, then to Dallas, and eventually to Los Angeles to escape these threats, and he later learned that two of the people on that list had been lynched.

Once in California, Majors became the first Black American to practice medicine West of the Rocky Mountains. He lectured at the Los Angeles Medical College, edited the Los Angeles Western News, and successfully promoted the appointment of Black individuals to police and local government roles. He married Georgia Green in 1889 and moved back to Waco the following year, after their daughter Grace was born. There, he continued to practice medicine, lectured at Paul Quinn College, and founded a hospital for African Americans in Waco. He published his book Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities in 1893, and was editor of the Texas Searchlight, a serial publication addressing topics that concerned Black Wacoans, from 1893-1895. He moved to Decatur, Illinois in 1898, but when threats quickly surfaced once again, in response to his public disapproval of a lynching that had occurred, he fled to Indianapolis. He published several poems and articles while in Indianapolis, all aimed at uplifting Black Americans and denouncing the terrorism so often used by white racists.

Majors came back to Waco in 1899 to serve as the superintendent of the hospital he had founded, but after a year, death threats again forced him to leave. He spent the rest of his career in Chicago, where he practiced medicine, published more poems and articles, and was recruited by Booker T. Washington to serve as editor for the Chicago Conservator for three years. He divorced his wife in 1908 and married Estelle Bonds in 1909, by whom he had a second daughter named Margaret. He would later go on to marry two more times. In 1925, Majors began losing his eyesight, and he moved back to Los Angeles in 1933, where he was much less politically and professionally active. He died in Los Angeles on December 10, 1960.

Monroe Majors is known primarily for his trailblazing work as a doctor, but his legacy is equally one of activism. If services or organizations were unavailable to Black communities, he founded new organizations to fill that gap. When tragic lynchings and racially-motivated terrorism occurred, he spoke out against it, even when it garnered death threats and forced him yet again to uproot his life. His writings and poems encouraged Black communities to embrace intellectual pursuits, celebrate the achievements of their race, and denounce the terrorism and hate they experienced. Majors’ professional and political life was pervaded by his strong sense of justice and his courage in the face of hatred.

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Tony DeMaria’s Bar-B-Que has graced Elm Avenue with its unique style of barbecue for many decades. The restaurant is a family-owned business with a rich history that began with the immigration of the DiMaria family in the late nineteenth century.

In 1888, a family of citrus farmers from Poggioreale, Sicily by the name DiMaria arrived in New Orleans. Large numbers of Sicilians immigrated to the US in the 1880s, when economic hardships were not lessened as promised by the unification of Italy. The DiMaria family was among this wave of immigration, and they sailed for New Orleans along with many other Sicilians. Antonino and Vita, the father and mother of this family, would move to Waco in 1902, and in the following years their sons Antonino and Gaspare, now going by the Americanized names Joe and Jasper, would also move to Waco with their young families. Jasper opened a grocery and meat market on 1219 Elm Avenue in 1919, where at some point he began smoking meats. Jasper’s smoked meats became so popular that he moved the business to 105 Clifton, founding Jasper’s Bar-B-Que. Joe’s son Tony took over the old meat market location, and in 1936 he moved the store to 1223 Elm Ave., where Tony’s Market and Grocery served “Hot Bar-B-Q” with pork and beans, cooked in a brick pit outside. Tony and his son Tony Jr. both served in World War II, and when they returned in 1946, Tony Jr. opened Tony DeMaria Jr.’s Food Market on 1317 Elm Ave. Sometime in the previous decades the two halves of the DiMaria family had begun using different spellings—Jasper’s side using DiMaria, and Tony Sr.’s side using DeMaria—but both sides passed down family recipes and cemented the popularity of Italian-imbued barbecue in the Waco community.

Tony DeMaria Jr.’s Food Market served barbecue from its inception, but the construction of I-35 is what propelled it to become a full-time restaurant. Their barbecue had always been served to-go, but when large crews of I-35 construction workers began frequenting the store, the need for seating became pressing. In 1995, Geoff DeMaria, Tony Jr.’s son, moved the business to 1000 Elm Ave., rebranded as Tony DeMaria’s Bar-B-Que, with no more groceries on the shelves. The DeMaria/DiMaria family has cooked meat in the same way since it was first prepared at Jasper’s grocery, and Tony DeMaria’s continues that tradition. The meat is first boiled in beef broth, similar to bollito di manzo, and then smoked, lending an Italian spin to a Central Texas favorite—smoked brisket. Tony DeMaria’s even uses a brick pit much like the one used at Tony’s Market and Grocery. The brisket is then served with white bread and dipped in their traditional gravy, which resembles an au jus sauce.

The restaurant remains in the hands of the DeMaria family—Geoff sold it to his son Blake when he retired in 2021—and is still a popular Waco eatery, just a few blocks away from Jasper’s Bar-B-Que. Tony DeMaria’s and Jasper’s together preserve a unique family legacy of barbecue that has been served in Waco for over a century.

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