Teaching Texas Politics: Sources and Texts

Abstract

In Southern Politics written during the 1940s, V.O. Key, Jr. said that the lines of political division in ten of the southern states of the old Confederacy were drawn around the issue of race. Texas was the exception. “The Lone Star State,” Key wrote, “is concerned about money and how to make it, about oil and sulfur and gas, about cattle and dust storms and irrigation, about cotton and banking and Mexicans.” Unveiling his crystal ball, Key prophetized what this meant for the future: “in Texas the vague outlines of a politics are emerging in which irrelevancies are pushed into the background and people divide broadly along liberal and conservative lines. A modified class politics seems to be evolving, not primarily because of the upthrust of the masses that compels men of substance to unite in self-defense, but because of the personal insecurity of men suddenly made rich who are fearful lest they lose their wealth.” Key also had a word to say about an emerging two-party system in Texas.