Everything about Marshall Texas totally explained
Marshall is a city of the
northeastern region of the
U.S. state of
Texas. It is a major cultural and educational center in
East Texas, and the multi-state
Ark-La-Tex region. As of the 2000
U.S. Census, the population of Marshall was 23,935. It is the
county seat of
Harrison County.
The city was a political and production center of the
Confederacy during the
Civil War, and was a major
railroad center of the
T&P Railroad from the late 19th century until the mid-20th century. The city's large
African American population and the presence of black institutions of higher learning made Marshall a center of the
civil rights movement in
the South. The city is known for holding one of the largest light festivals in the United States, the
Wonderland of Lights, and, as the
self-proclaimed Pottery Capital of the World, for its sizable
pottery industry.
Marshall is also referred to by various nicknames; the
Cultural Capital of East Texas, the
Gateway of Texas, the
Athens of Texas, and the
City of Seven Flags.
History
19th Century
The Republic of Texas and the Civil War
The city was founded in 1841 as the seat of Harrison County, after repeated failed attempts to establish a county seat on the
Sabine River since the county was established in 1839, and was incorporated in 1843.
By 1860 the city was the fourth largest city in
Texas and the seat of the richest county. The county had more
slaves than any other in the state, making it a hotbed of anti-
Union sentiment. When Gov.
Sam Houston refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy, Marshall's
Edward Clark was sworn in as governor. Marshall would also produce Texas's third
Confederate governor,
Pendleton Murrah. Marshall became a major Confederate city; producing
gunpowder and other supplies for the
Confederate Army, and hosting three conferences of
Trans-Mississippi and
Indian Territory leaders. The city also became the capital of
Missouri's Confederate government-in-exile, possibly meaning that Marshall was the intended destination of a government preparing to flee from advancing armies.
Reconstruction and the Railroad Era
Marshall was occupied by Union forces on
June 17,
1865. During Reconstruction the city was home to an office of the
Freedmen's Bureau and was the base for Union troops. In 1873 The
Methodist Episcopal Church founded
Wiley College to educate free men. African-Americans came to the city seeking opportunities and protection until 1878, when the
Citizens Party, led by former Confederate General
Walter P. Lane and his brother George, took control of the city and county governments and ran Unionists,
Republicans and many
African-Americans out of town. The Lanes ultimately declared Marshall and Harrison County "redeemed" from Union and African-American control. Despite this the African-American community would continue to progress with the establishment of Bishop College in 1881 and the certification of Wiley by the
Freedman's Aid Society in 1882.
Marshall's "
Railroad Era" began in the early 1870s. Harrison County citizens voted to offer $300,000 bond subsidy, and the City of Marshall offered to donate land north of the downtown to the
Texas and Pacific Railway if the company would move to Marshall. T&P President
Jay Gould accepted and located the T&P's workshops and general offices for
Texas in Marshall. The city benefited immediately from a population explosion. Under the leadership of
John L. Lancaster, the Texas and Pacific Railway experienced its height during the first half of the 20th century, Marshall's ceramics industry expanded to the point that the city began to be called the "Pottery Capital of the World." Marshall's industry received a boost with the discovery of what was then the largest oil field in the world at nearby
Kilgore in 1930. Small landmarks of progress, such as the first student at Marshall High School to have a car,
Lady Bird Johnson, excited the working class and poor. These small notes of progress would pale in comparison to the coming civil rights movement.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries children of both races had been raised to accept the
status quo of
racial segregation. African-American Marshall resident
George Dawson later wrote about his childhood experiences with segregation in his book
Life Is So Good. He described how, despite African-American children's acceptance of segregation, in some instances its demands were too outrageous to follow. For example, Dawson described how he'd refused the demand of one employer who expected him to eat with her dogs. Other racist tactics were more overt; between October 1903 and August 1917 at least twelve people were lynched.
Not all instances of lynching were reported by authorities, so the number the number is likely an undercount.
In the early and mid 20th century Marshall's
traditionally black colleges were thriving intellectual and cultural centers. Three major civil rights leaders, Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. and later
Jesse Jackson attended
Bishop College while
James L. Farmer Jr. went to
Wiley College, and Texas's member of the
Harlem Renaissance,
Melvin B. Tolson, wrote while teaching at Wiley.
With the increasing success of Wiley and Bishop, Marshall developed as one of the hearths of the civil rights movement, spurring key court challenges to
Jim Crow on a national and state level. In 1949, Marshall banned the movie
Pinky from the city because it portrayed an
interracial couple, a violation of the city's censorship code. The city was sued and the case went all the way to the
U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned the city's censorship law.
Inspired by the teachings of professors, such as Melvin B. Tolson, students and former students of the colleges mobilized to challenge and dismantle Jim Crow. Fred Lewis, as the secretary of the
Harrison County NAACP, challenged the oldest
White Citizens Party in Texas and the laws it enforced; ultimately abolishing Jim Crow in the county with the
Perry v. Cyphers verdict.
Heman Sweatt, a Wiley graduate, tried to enroll in the
University of Texas at Austin Law school, but was denied entry because of the color of his skin; he then sued and the
Texas Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of postgraduate studies in Texas in the
Sweatt v. Painter decision. James L. Farmer Jr., another Wiley graduate, became an organizer of the
Freedom Rides and a founder of the
Congress of Racial Equality.
Late 20th century
The progression of
civil rights would continue into the 1960s, 70s and 80s. In the 1960s, students organized the first
sit-ins in Texas in the
rotunda of the county courthouse on Whetstone Square in a move to end segregation of public schools; in 1970, all Marshall
public schools were integrated. Also in that year, Carolyn Abney became the first woman to be elected to the city commission. In April 1975 local businessman Sam Birmingham became the first African-American to be elected to the city commission and, in the 80s, Marshall's first African-American mayor. Birmingham retired in 1989 for health concerns, and was succeeded by his wife, Jean Birmingham, who became the first African-American woman to serve on the commission.
Marshall's railroad industry subsequently declined with the dieselization of most trains, the proliferation of air travel, and the construction of the
Interstate highway system after
World War II. The T&P Shops closed in the 1960s and T&P passenger service ceased in 1970. The Texas oil bust of the 1980s devastated the local economy and the city's population declined by about a thousand between 1980 and 1990.
During the mid-20th century the city lost many of its landmarks. Some buildings were demolished because their owners disregarded their historic importance and preferred “modern” structures, others were
demolished because their owners felt they could no longer afford to maintain them. By 1990, Marshall's opera house, the Missouri Capitol, the Moses Montefiore Synagogue, the original Viaduct, the Capitol Hotel, and the campus of Bishop College (including the Wyalucing plantation house) had been demolished. In the 1970s the city began to look at the
preservation efforts of nearby
Jefferson, increasingly developing a preservationist trend throughout the remainder of the 20th Century.
Due to newly completed construction projects, the city was one of ten designated an
All American City in 1976 by the
National Civic League. In 1978, then
Taipei mayor,
Lee Teng-Hui, and Marshall mayor, William Q. Burns, signed legislation recognizing Marshall as a
sister city with the much larger Taipei. During this period
Bill Moyers won an
Emmy for his documentary chronicling the history of race relations in the city. Despite these instance of national and international attention the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s where largely a period of social and economic decline, as the city was surpassed in population and economic clout by its younger rival
Longview.
The city began to concentrate on diversifying its economy in the 1980s and 1990s, with tourism emerging as an increasingly important area of the city’s economy. Two new festivals joined the longstanding Stagecoach Days, the
Fire Ant Festival and the
Wonderland of Lights. The Fire Ant Festival gained national attention through television features on shows such as
The Oprah Winfrey Show, but it was the Wonderland of Lights that by far became the most popular—growing to become one of the largest light festivals in the United States. By 2000, the Wonderland of Lights had become such a part of the cityscape that the lighted dome of the Old Courthouse had become the most recognizable symbol of the city.
Twenty-first century
The first decade of the 21st century saw moderate economic growth
and a renaissance of downtown. By 2005 the Joe Weisman & Co. building, the T&P Depot, the Hotel Marshall, and the Old Courthouse were either restored or under restoration. Restaurants, boutiques, and loft apartments infused the downtown economy and saved historic structures in decline. Many historic homes outside of downtown continued to deteriorate and some structured in moderate condition were approved for demolition for replacement by pre-fabricated or tin structures.
The Sam B. Hall Federal Courthouse became one of the busiest courthouses in the country, becoming the venue for such cases as the
Democratic challenge to the
2003 redistricting of Texas and the
TiVo suit of
EchoStar over
DVR patent rights.
An unusual number of
patent lawsuits are being filed in the
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas which includes Marshall,
Tyler, and
Texarkana. Marshall has a reputation for
plaintiff-friendly
juries for the 5% of patent lawsuits that reach
trial, resulting in 78% plaintiff wins. The number of patent suits filed in 2002 was 32, and the number for 2006 has been estimated at 234. Only the
United States District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles will have more patent suits filed than Marshall.
The city entered into a legal battle with local residents and environmentalist about the amount of water it could draw out of Caddo Lake—the source of the city’s water—dominated city-county relation during the decade.
The 2007 movie,
The Great Debaters, produced by
Oprah Winfrey and starring
Denzel Washington as debate coach
Melvin B. Tolson and
Denzel Whitaker as 14-year-old team member
James L. Farmer Jr., is a
docudrama about Wiley College's
1935 championship debating team.
Law and government
The City of Marshall has a
Council-manager form of municipal government, with all governmental powers resting in a
legislative body called a Commission. The Commission passes all city
laws and ordinances, adopts
budgets, determines city policy, and appoints city officials, including the
City Manager. The city manager, rather than a
mayor, serves as the executive of the city government and thus is in charge of enforcing city laws and administering the city's various departments.
The City Commission
The City Commission has seven members, each elected to serve a single-member district. Districts 1–4 divide the city into four districts, and the districts 5–7 divide the city into three districts that overlay Districts 1–4, so every location in the city falls in two districts, one from each set. Each Commissioner is
elected to a two-year term. Districts 1–4 hold elections in odd-numbered years and districts 5–7 in even years; elections are held in the
spring. After each election, the City Commission selects a commissioner to serve as Chairman of the Commission, generically called a Mayor, until after the next year's election. If no one files to run against a commissioner, as happened with District 1 in 2005, the commissioner is reinstated and an election for that district isn't held that year. The City Commission meets twice a month on the second and fourth Thursdays, in addition to any special sessions that are called or regular meetings that are canceled. The Commission provides a public forum before each regular session, providing citizens the opportunity to address the commission for two minutes without forward notice, with notice additional time may be scheduled. The Commission meetings are broadcast on
radio and on the local
public access television station.
Commission Members
| District |
2007 Commission |
2002 Commission |
1999 Commission |
| District 1 |
Vacant/Katie Jones |
Katie Jones |
Jean Birmingham |
| District 2 |
Zephaniah Timmins |
Alonza Williams |
Alonza Williams |
| District 3 |
Ed Carlile |
Ed Carlile |
Chris Horsley |
| District 4 |
Jack Hester |
Jack Hester |
Audrey Kariel (Mayor) |
| District 5 |
John Wilborn |
John Wilborn |
John Wilborn |
| District 6 |
Mike McMurry |
Bryan Partee |
Michael Smith |
| District 7 |
Ed Smith (Mayor) |
Ed Smith (Mayor) |
Martha Robb |
City Administration
| District |
2004 |
1999 |
| City Manager |
Frank Johnson |
Tony Williams |
| Asst. City Manager |
Janet Cook |
Frank Johnson |
Geography
Physical geography
Marshall is located at (32.542897, -94.363727) or roughly 150
miles (240 km) east of
Dallas, Texas and 40 miles (65 km) west of
Shreveport, Louisiana. The intersection of
US 80 and
US 59 and the intersection of US 59 and
Interstate 20 are located within the city limits of Marshall.
According to the
United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 29.6
square miles (76.8
km²), of that, 29.6 square miles (76.6 km²) of it's land and 0.1 square miles (0.2 km²) of it (0.27%) is water.
Marshall is closer to the capitals of Arkansas (
Little Rock 190 miles or 305 km), Louisiana (
Baton Rouge, 239 miles or 384 km), and
Mississippi (
Jackson 243 miles or 390 km) than it's to the capital of Texas (
Austin, 253 miles or 407 km).
The city lies within the
Eastern Interconnection rather than the
Texas Interconnection making it part of only 15% of the state to lie outside of that
power grid.
City layout
The city is bisected along a north-south axis by East End Blvd. (
US 59). The eastern half of the city is bisected along an east-west axis by
US 80 which east of its intersection with US 59 is called Victory Drive and west of US 59 is named Grand Ave. The Harrison County Airport and Airport Baseball Park are located to the south of Victory Dr. off of Warren Dr.
To the west of US 59, south of Pinecrest Dr. are older
suburbs; north of Pinecrest Dr. the oldest portion of the city stretches northward over seven hills. This portion of the city radiates out from downtown which is centered on the Old Harrison County Courthouse in Peter Whetstone Square. Immediately to the north of the square is the
Ginocchio National Historic District where the city's
Amtrak Terminal is located. This region of the city is bisected along an east-west by Grand Ave. (
US 80). Spreading out from downtown is a belt of
Antebellum and
Victorian homes centered on Rusk and Houston Streets.
To the west of downtown are some of the oldest
African-American neighborhoods in
Texas, centered around
Wiley College. To the north of Grand Ave. (US 80) are neighborhoods that were built largely by employees of the
Texas and Pacific Railway. In addition to the Ginocchio National Historic District, this part of the city is home to
East Texas Baptist University, and three historic cemeteries: Marshall Cemetery, Powder Mill Cemetery, and Greenwood, which is divided into
Christian and
Jewish sections.
Climate
Marshall has a
humid subtropical climate, characterized by hot summers and fairly mild winters. On average, Marshall receives 51.2
inches (1,300
mm) of rain per year. The precipitation is relatively evenly spread throughout year, with only the summer months of July and August receiving less than 3.5 inches (89 mm) on average.
Human geography
Demographics
As of the
census of 2000, there were 23,935 people, 8,730 households, and 6,032 families residing in the city. The
population density was 809.5 people per square mile (312.5/km²). There were 9,923 housing units at an average density of 335.6 per square mile (129.6/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 54.66%
White, 38.59%
African American, 0.39%
Native American, 0.55%
Asian, 0.04%
Pacific Islander, 4.83% from
other races, and 0.94% from two or more races.
Hispanic or
Latino of any race were 8.64% of the population. The Asian population is mostly
Indians from
Andhra Pradesh,
Gujarat, or
Maharashtra and
Chinese from
Hong Kong and
Fuzhou.
There were 8,730 households out of which 32.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.4% were
married couples living together, 19.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 30.9% were non-families. 28.0% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.55 and the average family size was 3.12.
In the city the population was spread out with 26.1% under the age of 18, 13.4% from 18 to 24, 24.6% from 25 to 44, 20.3% from 45 to 64, and 15.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 87.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 82.2 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $30,335, and the median income for a family was $37,438. Males had a median income of $30,146 versus $21,027 for females. The
per capita income for the city was $15,491. About 17.8% of families and 22.8% of the population were below the
poverty line, including 32.5% of those under age 18 and 15.1% of those age 65 or over.
Economy
Marshall's economy is diversified and includes services such as
Insurance claims processing at
Blue Cross and Blue Shield,
education at several institutes of higher learning, manufacturing such as wood kitchen cabinets at Republic Industries and pottery at several manufacturers.
Black & Decker maintains a small presence in the Marshall Business Park.
Tourism is also an important industry with about one million tourists visiting the city each year.
Marshall has a local sales tax of 2.0%. The Marshall Economic Development Corporation or MEDCO lobbies companies to locate in Marshall and offers incentives to businesses that do. The Greater Marshall Chamber of Commerce represents the interests of local businesses to local, state, and national leaders.
Education
Education in the city in secondary and primary education is almost entirely conducted by the Marshall Independent School District, with over 6,000 students at twelve campuses. A private institution, Trinity Episcopal School, also exists and some parents choose to homeschool.
There are nearly 2,000 college students in Marshall at
East Texas Baptist University and
Wiley College,
Texas State Technical College-Marshall and
Panola College-Marshall. ETBU is the largest in town.
Media
The city has one newspaper the,
Marshall News Messenger,and has an
ABC news office. Two radio stations
KMHT and
KBWC are based in the city. There are no television stations in the city, but the city is within the reception area of stations based in
Shreveport, Louisiana:
KTBS (
ABC),
KSLA (
CBS),
KMSS (
FOX),
KTAL (
NBC),
KPXJ (
The CW),
KSHV (
MNTV), and
KLTS (
Louisiana Public Broadcasting). The local
cable company,
Charter provides public access channels that show local
football games produced by KMHT radio, live and replays of meeting of the City and County commissions, and streams audio from
KMHT FM.
Sites of interest
Notable natives, citizens, and associated people
» *
Note people from Marshall are called Marshallites
Edward Clark — Texas Governor
Floyd Dixon — Rhythm and Blues pianist
James L. Farmer, Jr. — CORE founder, organized freedom rides
George Foreman — athlete and entrepreneur
Ben Z. Grant — playwright, Texas legislator, state judge
Sam B. Hall, Jr. — former congressman and federal jurist
James Pinckney Henderson — first governor of Texas
Susan Howard — actress, writer, activist
Alphonso Jackson— George W. Bush cabinet member
Lady Bird Johnson — First Lady and environmental activist
Bill Moyers — journalist and government official
Pendleton Murrah — Texas Governor
Lucy Holcombe Pickens — 19th Century Southern socialite
Max Sandlin — former congressman and House Minority Whip
Terrance Shaw— NFL Defensive Back and Super Bowl Champion
James Harper Starr — politician
Y.A. Tittle — American Football Hall of Famer
Melvin B. Tolson — author, poet, and politician
Louis T. Wigfall — U.S., and later Confederate, Senator
» Please add new additions to the main list, not here.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Marshall Texas'.
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