Governors, Regents, and New Deal Liberalism: Student Activism at the University of Texas at Austin, 1917–1945

Abstract

Governors, Regents, and New Deal Liberalism: Student Activism at the University of Texas at Austin, 1917–1945 John Moretta (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution University of Texas students gather before a protest against Texas governor James E. Ferguson, May 28, 1917. PICA 08003, Austin History Center, Austin Public Library. In 1960, southern historian Charles Ramsdell described a University of Texas colleague as “born and marinated in the deep South [Mississippi] and educated at the University of Virginia,” who declared that he found “absolutely no trace of Southern tradition either in the city of Austin or in his students from every part of the state. They are interested, he says, in no [Southern] traditions whatsoever, and Austin is a typical American college town, with a most un-Southern bustle about it; a general student and faculty environment and outlook not much different than that displayed on most of the Northern university campuses he had visited.”1 Inextricably linked and driving much of the city’s exceptionalism, especially when compared to other southern university towns, were the University of Texas’s students, who, beginning in the early twentieth century through World War II, became the vanguard for sociocultural and political [End Page 1] change in the state and institutional reform on their campus. Until the late 1950s and ’60s, student protests and demonstrations were a rarity on southern universities and colleges. However, that was not the case at the University of Texas (UT). Compared to other southern universities during the period, UT became a veritable “hotbed” of progressive student activism, countering the stereotypical image of southern White youth as a mass of conservative conformists at best and racist, red-baiting reactionaries at worst. Although such words may have described some Texans, UT students, especially by the late 1930s, were more inspired to action by the positive views of local, liberal religious leaders and faculty mentors who defied these regressive impulses. By comparison to 1960s direct action, pre-World War II student activism was more interpersonal and self-reflective, originating in existing student organizations, which increasingly reflected student interests in human rights and global peace. In many ways, prewar student advocates established the template for future student protest movements. This article explores some of the pivotal events and issues in the history of UT that ignited student activism in years 1917–45, emboldening collegians to publicly resist institutional policies and outside political interference they believed directly infringed upon their rights as students and the sanctity of the university environment. The university was to be a place where democratic values were inculcated and students’ civil liberties were respected by peers, faculty, and administration. Equally important to UT students by the 1930s was the recognition by regents and administrators that a democratically constituted student government and related student-sanctioned and -supported campus activities and institutions, such as the college newspaper, The Daily Texan, deserved the authority to act and advocate on students’ behalf. By the 1930s, existential crises, particularly the domestic socioeconomic upheaval caused by the Great Depression, further energized many UT students to engage in the reformist impulse unleashed by the New Deal. For many 1930s UT student activists, the Depression years not only revealed the inherent flaws of laissez faire capitalism, but perhaps more importantly, the social consequences of an unregulated economy. In the New Deal liberal ethos, students saw not only the means of immediate amelioration of human despair, but the long-range efficacy of positive government action in both mitigating and remedying future marginalization and disfranchisement, which if not addressed, could lead to class antagonisms and unrest as was the possibility in the 1930s. UT student activists also correlated the external crisis confronting the nation in the 1930s with their internal university battle against the regents’ suppression of academic freedom and student rights. As they saw it, the very same individuals responsible for the economic crisis were now in charge of their university, and as these wealthy plutocrats had abused the economy for their own material aggrandizement, they were inflicting [End Page 2] upon UT a self-serving agenda that was detrimental to the entire university community. American entry into World War II against the...