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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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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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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When football fans hear “Battle of the Brazos,” they think of an old rivalry between Baylor and Texas A&M (formerly The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas), two schools situated on the Brazos River. Before the days of the Big 12 and the Southeastern Conferences, there was the Southwest Conference (SWC), where Baylor and Texas A&M vied for the title of SWC champions for decades until the conference was disbanded in 1996. But there were a few years when the schools did not compete, and it was because of a tragedy that has been swathed in myth and bias. A young A&M cadet lost his life as a result of a heated brawl between the two sides during halftime of the game on October 30, 1926.

Baylor and A&M had developed quite the rivalry in the years since their first face-off in 1899. It was the big public college versus the small private college, with the added competition for Baylor women’s hearts, as A&M was still an all-male institution. The cadets often courted the Baylor gals, invoking the ire of the Baylor men ready to come to their defense. The football field became the perfect setting to release this frustration and to try to come out on top for all the girls, alumni, and other fans to see. To add to the stakes, during the 1920s the Baylor-A&M game was often the biggest of the season, being played in the famous ten-thousand-seat Cotton Palace stadium (pinned on map below) and often also serving as Baylor’s homecoming game. A&M would bring its entire cadet corps and parade through the streets of Waco as well. The festivities surrounding the game were highly anticipated, and it was always a full house.

With such revelry comes emotion and team spirit, and these can sometimes get out of hand. In fact, trouble had been brewing at this football showdown in the years leading up to the fateful game in 1926. In 1922, a riot broke out after the game and was broken up by firehoses. In 1924, another riot erupted after the Aggies lost, and both male and female students were allegedly assaulted until the Waco police dispelled the violence. When the 1926 game rolled around, Baylor had law enforcement ready for any postgame shenanigans, but to everyone’s surprise, the violence came long before the game ended.

It all started with what was thought to be some low-stakes mockery. Normally, the A&M cadets would perform at halftime and show off their military calisthenics. This year, the entire corps did not come to the game, so with only four hundred cadets in attendance, they decided not to perform. But Baylor took it upon themselves to make sure the crowd still got a cadet calisthenics show. Dressed as fake cadets, some Baylor men took to the field and made fun of the military routine of their rivals. This caused blood to boil among the Aggie attendees. Then, to make matters worse, a Ford vehicle full of Baylor women came out onto the field touting signs with previous Baylor football scores on them. This particularly irked the Aggies because of a previous game between Baylor and A&M when a Ford car had nearly collided with some Aggie students during the halftime show. Just the sight of a car was too much for a few to handle.

Two cadets, later identified as W. L. Lee and G. L. Hart, hopped onto the field and sprinted toward the moving vehicle. Lee dove into the car window and grabbed the steering wheel, jostling the car and causing one of the women to fall off the back. The Baylor men then took to the field to protect their women, and mayhem ensued. The young men swung not only fists, but also clubs and parts of the wooden chairs from the stands. It was in this chaos that cadet Charles Milo Sessums was struck by a chair on the left side of his head near midfield, falling flat to the ground. Cadet William Moers Jr. carried him to the first aid station while the band quelled the riot by playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Lead Aggie yell leader J.D. Langford apologized to the crowd and made his men swear to stay in their seats thirty minutes after the game ended to avoid further fracas. Things seemed to have settled, and the game continued to its completion, with Baylor winning 20-9.

But soon no one remembered the score. After being checked out at the first aid station, Charles Sessums was taken to Providence Sanitarium. The doctors detected a skull fracture, but medicine had little to offer Charles. His doctors assumed that with rest he would make a full recovery, but sadly he passed away at nine o’clock the next morning due to a blood clot that formed because of the fracture. His parents traveled from Dallas to collect their son’s body, and a funeral was held in their home on November 2, 1926.

Despite an investigation by Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, the man who struck the fatal blow was never found. Though detective Ila Floyd Benedict narrowed it down to a handful of suspects, he never called for an arrest. In fact, some of the interviews Benedict conducted led him to suspect a cover-up by the town mayor, Dr. H. F. Connally. Relations between the two schools soured in the wake of these events, especially after the Baylor and A&M presidents released a joint statement sharing the blame for the incident. Both student bodies vehemently protested, blamed the other, and called for a cessation of athletic competition between the two schools. Baylor and A&M would not compete in any capacity for five years after this tragic incident.

Baylor and A&M played for the last time in 2011, and by that time most people did not even know about the riot that killed Charles Sessums. But it remains an important event in the history of the university and the town of Waco. Author T. G. Webb captured the full story and outlined the suspects in his book: Battle of the Brazos: A Texas Football Rivalry, a Riot, and a Murder.

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Floyd Casey Stadium housed the Baylor Football Program from 1950 until the opening of McLane Stadium in the fall of 2014. In 1936, Baylor Football’s home turf was Municipal Stadium, located at Fifteenth Street and Dutton Avenue. With a maximum seating of twenty thousand, it didn’t take long for the Baylor Football Program to outgrow this facility.

In the late 1940s, a 500-member-strong Baylor Stadium Corporation formed to provide a new home for the Bears, and Baylor President W. R. White banded together with Waco civic leaders in order to get the job done. The corporation initially projected preliminary construction costs at $1.5 million. The city agreed to put $500,000 toward the project, and the university estimated that $1 million could be raised from non-Waco resources such as Baylor alumni, football fans, and “outstanding Baptists [sic] laymen.”

In order to raise the money, the Baylor Stadium Corporation issued thirty-year stadium bonds at 3 percent interest. Bonds of $100 or more could be applied as a tuition credit and prospective students received “entrance priority.” The corporation also provided supporters with the option of purchasing seats, which guaranteed a seat for all home games for twenty years following the construction of the stadium, with prices varying according to stadium seat locations.

Fundraisers traveled across Texas, with exhortations from President White that “Baylor is not asking for a gift. The bonds are sound investments from a financial standpoint. The [seating] options are investments in future entertainment for sports lovers.” The rhetoric worked. By January of 1950, $1,001,836.70 worth of bonds and stadium seat options were sold.

While fundraisers were out stumping, Baylor searched for the perfect location for the stadium. Although the university wanted to remain in the same area as Municipal Stadium on the grounds of the former Texas Cotton Palace, parking posed an issue and a geological fault on the land raised construction concerns. On to Plan B. A February 1949 news release announced the purchase of a 100-acre plot in Waco’s west suburbs for the new Baylor Stadium.

The university held the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Baylor Stadium on May 28, 1949, and construction began in November of the same year. Even though the stadium wasn’t quite finished, the Bears played their first game at Baylor Stadium on September 30, 1950, against the University of Houston.

At the time of that first game, the stadium sat forty-nine thousand people and was hailed as a “Fittin’ home for the Fightin’ Baylor Bears.” Opening ceremonies included a flyover by planes from nearby Connally Air Force Base, while the University of Houston band played the national anthem and Baylor Air Force ROTC color guard raised the colors. Baylor even beat the University of Houston 34-7 on the long-awaited opening day.

Legendary sportswriter Dave Campbell reported in a 1957 Waco Tribune-Herald article that “the show-piece stadium” where “every seat is good” cost $1,668,790.27. In the years following the first game, the stadium was renovated several times in order to account for increased attendance and ticket sales. One of the largest projects occurred in the late 1980s when Carl B. Casey donated $5 million toward an $8 million renovation plan. At the 1988 homecoming game, the stadium was renamed to honor his father, Floyd Casey.

Although primarily constructed to serve the football team, Floyd Casey Stadium also hosted other events for both Baylor and the Waco community. For many years, the university held graduation ceremonies in the stadium and once even hosted an ice skating fundraiser after installing several large tanks of water on the field. Wacoans often watched area high schools play on the collegiate field, and in the aftermath of the Waco tornado, the stadium housed servicemen from Fort Hood assisting in the cleanup and rescue efforts.

After serving both Baylor and the Waco community for over sixty years, Floyd Casey Stadium held a record-setting crowd of 51,728 at the stadium’s final game, a victory over the University of Texas on December 7, 2013.

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For over a century, the Baylor University Homecoming Parade has played an important role in the relationship between the institution, its alumni, and the greater Waco community. The tradition began in the fall of 1909, when Baylor alumni received a postcard inviting them to return home to campus in order to rekindle school spirit and renew former friendships. This announcement of Baylor’s first homecoming drew hundreds of alumni back to campus on Thanksgiving weekend for what would become one of university’s largest celebrations. The weekend included concerts, class reunions, speeches by professors, and, on the morning of the last football game of the season, a grand parade through downtown.

The Baylor Processional of 1909 began by heading west on Washington Avenue, continuing to Austin Avenue, and traveling along the city’s major streets before arriving on campus for the game’s kickoff. Nearly twenty-five blocks of participants lined the streets, eager to share their school spirit. Led by the university’s marching band, the processional included faculty, the football team, and various student organizations. Automobiles and carriages decorated with green and gold pennants and yellow chrysanthemums carried dignitaries such as the university president, Samuel Palmer Brooks, and notable alumni.

The greater Waco community also took part in the homecoming parade since its debut. Shopkeepers and restaurant owners downtown decorated their storefronts with green and gold and joined the throng lining the streets as the parade passed through downtown. Some even joined the processional, setting a precedent for cooperation between the Waco community and the university. Alessandro’s Band, a family brass ensemble who regularly held concerts in venues such as the Brazos city riverboats and the Texas Cotton Palace, performed and marched in the 1909 processional.

Baylor Homecoming was not initially conceived as an annual event. The next homecoming parade did not occur until 1915, held to mark the seventieth anniversary of the founding of Baylor University. Floats first appeared in the parade that year. One 1915 float depicted a freshman entering a hall and exiting as a senior. By the 1920s, floats became the standard method of transportation during the parade, often portraying patriotic themes. In the 1915 parade, the Baylor mascot also made its debut. In the months preceding the festivities, students voted on their choice of mascot and the bear was revealed as the winner over options such as the antelope, buffalo, and ferret.

Baylor’s 1924 football season was so successful that the Baylor Alumni Association voted to make the homecoming celebration an annual event. The basic elements of the homecoming parade remained constant from the 1920s forward, although each year the alumni association sought to outdo the previous years’ celebration. 

Escalating international tensions in the 1940s cast a shadow over university activities. All male students between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five were required to register with the military, and many were called away from their studies to serve in the war. From 1943 to 1945, the alumni association canceled the homecoming celebrations in order to best preserve supplies during times of dire shortages. As the war came to a close, the alumni association put plans into motion for the “greatest parade to date” in 1946. It promoted not only Baylor spirit but also celebrated soldiers returning home and the end of the war.

Baylor’s homecoming celebrations have continued annually since the end of World War II, and in 2009, Baylor celebrated its homecoming centennial. The parade has grown to include dozens of student organizations, local businesses, and Waco high schools. Now, each fall is marked by this grand and time-honored spectacle, an essential element in the fabric of the university and greater community.

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