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Parallel Development
Posted by Runfellow on 2012/8/21 22:55:06 (333 reads) |
 Note: Parallel Development is a column by contributing writer Brandon Cooper about Lewisville’s rich (yet often untold) history and how it relates to the issues we’re facing today.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the New Deal in Lewisville and included some information on government employment that surprised even me. After going through the database I created again, a few more things caught my attention, this time regarding gender and employment.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that a gender gap exists here and elsewhere. According to the American Community Survey from the US Census Bureau, full-time working women made about 91% of what men made in Lewisville as of 2010. That’s actually not that bad compared to the statewide average: According to a 2010 Bureau of Labor Statistics report (PDF, page 37), women in Texas made 84% of what men made in weekly pay; men averaged $714 per week and women averaged $611. Economists, statisticians, and sociologists have spent the last 40 years arguing about why this gender gap exists, but since that’s not my field, I’m not going to try to figure that out today.
But here’s the interesting part: In 1939, female employees in Lewisville made about $16.42 per week ($257.60 in 2010 dollars), while male employees earned around $16.83 ($264.02 in 2010 dollars). Think about that for a moment: Women in Lewisville made almost 98% of what men made in average weekly pay in 1939. |
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Parallel Development
Posted by Runfellow on 2012/5/28 21:48:52 (597 reads) |
Many people assume that residents in this area have always favored a “small government” political philosophy, especially regarding fiscal issues. Around election season, it seems as though local campaigns are often a competition between those who promise to do more with less and those who swear to do less with less.
Historically, though, Lewisville has not always been this way. The recently released 1940 United States census rolls paint a very different image of this city than the one we commonly hear. According to those records, which I have transcribed into a public database,* almost 30% of Lewisville’s workforce held government jobs in 1940:
Key:
oa = own account (business owners)
pw = private work (paid employees)
gw = government work
Let’s put this in perspective: Greece’s government, often used as an example of a bloated bureaucracy, employed 15% of its workforce in 2008. Norway has the highest percentage, with 29.3% of its workforce government-employed. In 1940, Lewisville had a higher percentage of government employees than most of these “leftist” governments today. |
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Parallel Development
Posted by Runfellow on 2012/5/15 19:40:00 (655 reads) |
 Note: Parallel Development is a column by contributing writer Brandon Cooper about Lewisville’s rich (yet often untold) history and how it relates to the issues we’re facing today. This entry is the final part of a four part series. The first part is here. The second part is here. The third part is here.
Quote:
[...]rather we should be content if we can furnish accounts that are inferior to none in likelihood, remembering that both I who speak and you who judge are but human creatures, so that it becomes us to accept the likely account of these matters and forbear to search beyond it.
-Plato, Timaeus
After Lewisville schools integrated in 1964, history got better for the black community in Lewisville, even if historians did not. Writers in Denton County, as they did elsewhere in the south during this period, frequently examined historical events from a defensive perspective, one that passive-aggressively attempted to "reclaim" history. In his otherwise well-researched History of Denton, Texas From Its Beginning to 1960 written in 1978, C.A. Bridges frequently refers to the Civil War as the "War for Southern Independence".
As mentioned in the last entry in this series, black residents were not counted as part of Lewisville in the 1940 census. This remained true for the 1950 census, and the 1960 edition only counted 74. The 1970 census included 504, and in 1973, Lewisville elected its first black councilmember, a clergyman named Lenard Levosha Woods. Today, L.L. Woods Park is named for Woods. Bobbie Mitchell, the first black mayor of Lewisville, was elected in 1993. |
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Parallel Development
Posted by Runfellow on 2012/4/4 23:10:09 (745 reads) |
Note: Parallel Development is a column by contributing writer Brandon Cooper about Lewisville’s rich (yet often untold) history and how it relates to the issues we’re facing today. This entry is the third in a four part series. The first part is here. The second part is here.
Quote:
No, I forgot that. I might remember that some day, but I don’t want to to talk about that right now.
-Laura Butler White Lewis, responding to a question about the Ku Klux Klan in Lewisville, 1995.
Very often, the people at the heart of an important subject choose not to address it, which is understandable. But the kind of selective memory that often pervades local history only demeans their cause. After writing the first two installments of this series, I hit a wall. I found it hard to read about these things, and even harder to write about them, so it went on hiatus. This week, I received the impetus to continue the project: After 72 years in the vaults, the U.S. Census Department released every page of the 16th census from 1940. The first thing I did was look up Lewisville’s records.
The black community in Lewisville wasn’t just considered second-class; it wasn’t even considered part of the city. As I mentioned in the second part of this series, Lewisville excluded the part of town where the black community was forced to live, referred to as “Scrougeout,” when it incorporated in 1925. For the 1940 census, that portion of the city was split into two enumeration districts, 61-16 and 61-17, described as “outside Lewisville town.” The count of Lewisville’s enumeration district (61-15) became the official population of the city, which was set at 873. That’s the number repeated by most histories I’ve read, but since it only counts the “official” residents (all 873 were white), it is completely erroneous. |
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Parallel Development
Posted by Runfellow on 2012/2/13 15:18:43 (653 reads) |
Note: Parallel Development is a new column by contributing writer Brandon Cooper about Lewisville’s rich (yet often untold) history and how it relates to the issues we’re facing today. This entry is the second in a four part series in honor of African American History Month. The first part is here.
In the Oral History of Lewisville interview series, many historians and eyewitnesses claim that any tension between races after the Civil War (when they admit there was any at all) began around 1900 with a confusing episode that resulted in the death of a white resident, allegedly at the hands of a black man.
Of course, that was definitely not the case. In February of 1869, any hope that the transition in Lewisville would be peaceful was gone. From a story reprinted in Flake’s Bulletin in Galveston:
Quote: EXCITEMENT IN DENTON. - We get the particulars from Col. R. J. Battle, of Lewisville, of one of the most heinous and diabolical crimes ever committed in the county of Denton. On Sunday morning last, the 14th instant, Mrs. Sarah Newland, a highly respectable lady, residing on the upper end of Holford Prairie, was returning home from a visit to one of her neighbors, when a negro man by the name of George Crawford suddenly appeared before her on horseback. The lady, apprehending danger, essayed to escape, but was seized by the negro, violated and left in a senseless condition. Recovering she proceeded to her home and related what had happened, throwing that usually quiet neighborhood into a state of great excitement. A number of citizens repaired to the spot where the unfortunate lady said the crime had been committed and found the tracks of a horse which they followed and were led directly to the cabin of the freedman George Crawford. Measuring the hoofs of the negro's horse it was found that they fitted exactly the tracks which they had followed. The negro, who showed unmistakable signs of guilt, was immediately arrested and taken before the outraged lady. She recognized him as the fiend that committed the hellish deed; and he would have been hung immediately had not citizens interfered, who thought the military would avenge the negro's death by further oppressing our people; hence he was taken before Esquire John McCombs, who heard all the evidence in the case, and instructed the constable to deliver him to the sheriff of the county, to be sent to jail at McKinney. On the night of the 16th he was placed under a strong guard, but the next morning, proceeding to the residence of Mr. Lauderdale for breakfast, preparatory to starting for this place, he suddenly rushed from the guard, amid a shower of balls from six-shooters, and made good his escape. He was pursued to Elm Bottoms, and active search is still being made with little probability of success. |
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Parallel Development
Posted by Runfellow on 2012/2/6 22:00:00 (768 reads) |
Note: Parallel Development is a new column by contributing writer Brandon Cooper about Lewisville’s rich (yet often untold) history and how it relates to the issues we’re facing today. This entry is the first in a four part series in honor of African American History Month.
Quote: Friendship is friendship; history is history.
-Hēi tài yáng 731 (1988)
Scattered throughout Lewisville’s history are bits of a narrative, either forgotten or ignored, that give us a better understanding of how this town started, but you have to look hard. Walk to the back of the Lewisville Public Library and go inside the Baird reading room. Find one of the various histories of Lewisville and read about the early days of this town. A common theme runs through every account: the myth of the frontier.
No, I don’t mean the one about cowboys and Indians; rather, it’s the idea that early pioneers created the foundation of our community with a few wagons full of relatives and supplies, a little ingenuity, and a lot of hard work. It’s the concept that they endured every hardship to ensure a better life for their children. In other words, it’s the idea that they did it on their own. It’s a tale we as Americans love to tell and strive to emulate.
From reading those easily digestible books, essays, and pamphlets, you wouldn’t know that the first two families to settle here, the King and the Holford families, brought slaves with them to settle the land in the 1840s. By 1850, there were 11 slaves in Denton County, none older than 25. By 1860, there were approximately 72 slaves in Lewisville. |
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Parallel Development
Posted by Runfellow on 2012/1/29 13:12:53 (535 reads) |
Note: Parallel Development is a new column by contributing writer Brandon Cooper about Lewisville’s rich (yet often untold) history and how it relates to the issues we’re facing today.
Quote: You don’t get much choice with the highway department. You do what they want to do, or you don’t do anything. That’s the only method they have.
-James Degan
The strange part about the quote above is that Mr. Degan, who has passed away, was talking about the highway situation in the 1920s, not today. His words still ring true, though.
Recently, the Texas Department of Transportation informed us they’re considering alternate ways to expand I-35E through Lewisville, including only adding toll lanes, to compensate for a major budget shortfall. We’ve seen that they’re less than open about deals to buy property from local officials. Given these recent events, Mr. Degan’s statement now seems prescient.
Last week, I wrote about the Texas Interurban Railway and its modern incarnation, the Denton County Transportation Authority (DCTA) A-train. Now it’s time to talk about the mode of transportation that replaced the Interurban: roads. |
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Parallel Development
Posted by Runfellow on 2012/1/22 19:30:00 (561 reads) |
Note: Parallel Development is a new column by contributing writer Brandon Cooper about Lewisville’s rich (yet often untold) history and how it relates to the issues we’re facing today.
This week, the Denton County Transit Authority (DCTA) opened the doors to a new facility in Lewisville and unveiled new cars for it’s A-train commuter line.
Few people know that Lewisville had commuter rail service in the 1920s and 30s. Fewer know the system then was even more ambitious than what we have now. Almost nobody knows that the the entire railroad was within a few hours of never existing.
When the nation expanded westward, railroads made or broke countless towns and cities. In the end, Lewisville was lucky; this small town managed to get a railroad and a highway.
It wasn’t easy to convince these these entities to come here, though. Nobody looked on a map, said “that’s where we have to go”, and gave us a free stop. Private residents, elected leaders, and business owners worked together for decades to create the system we have today. |
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Parallel Development
Posted by Runfellow on 2012/1/15 18:30:00 (843 reads) |
Note: Parallel Development is a new column by contributing writer Brandon Cooper about Lewisville’s rich (yet often untold) history and how it relates to the issues we’re facing today. Image is in the CC from Marco Becerra (Flickr user mabecerra.)
It isn’t on the City’s Facebook profile, but today is Lewisville’s birthday. On January 15, 1925, 87 years ago, residents of Lewisville voted to incorporate the town.
Less well-known is the fact that the vote carried by a margin of 17 votes.
Granted, those 17 people were 2% of the population. Lewisville comprised about 815 people in 1925. But the town also included sixty businesses, including two banks, and residents badly wanted city-run utilities, so it was important for everyone. |
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