Editing Marshall, Texas (section)

=== Early and mid-20th century ===
[[Image:Whetstone Square 1939.jpg|thumb|left|The community has developed in and around Whetstone Square, shown here in 1939. White guests stayed at the Capitol Hotel, right, and the taller Hotel Marshall directly behind it. In the 1960s, the Harrison County Courthouse, center, was the site of the first [[sit-in]]s in Texas by the civil rights movement.]]

In 1909, a field of [[natural gas]] was discovered near [[Caddo Lake]]; it was exploited  to supply city needs.<ref name="Lale 21">Lale, p. 21.</ref> Under the leadership of [[John L. Lancaster]], the Texas and Pacific Railway enjoyed its height of success during the first half of the 20th century. Marshall's ceramics industry expanded to the point that the city was called by boosters the "Pottery Capital of the World".<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3" />

In 1930, what was then the largest oil field in the world was discovered at nearby [[Kilgore, Texas|Kilgore]]. The first student at [[Marshall High School (Texas)|Marshall High School]] to have a car was [[Lady Bird Johnson]], a kind of progress that excited many students.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, children of both races were forced into accepting the law of [[racial segregation]] in the state. Marshall resident [[George Dawson (author)|George Dawson]] became a writer late in life when he learned to read and write at age 98. He described his childhood under segregation in his memoir ''Life Is So Good''(2013), written with Richard Glaubman. He said that in some instances, he and other Blacks resisted the demands of Jim Crow. For instance, he rejected one employer who expected him to eat with her dogs.

As blacks were being excluded from politics and tensions rose, more [[lynching]]s of black men took place, a form of extrajudicial punishment and social control. Beginning in the late 19th century, a total of 14 Black men were lynched in the county, the third-highest total in the state.<ref>[https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf ''Lynching in America, Third Edition: Supplement by County''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023063004/https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf |date=2017-10-23 }}, p. 9, Equal Justice Initiative, Mobile, AL, 2017</ref> Suspects were often brought to Marshall for the lynchings, or taken from the county jail before trial and hanged in the courthouse square for maximum public effect of terrorizing the black population. Between October 1903 and August 1917, at least 12 black men were lynched in Marshall.<ref>[https://archive.today/20120721221218/http://www.autopsis.org/foot/lynchnames.html The Lynching Calendar: Names A-L<!-- Bot generated title -->].</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://venus.soci.niu.edu/~archives/ABOLISH/july98/0024.html |title=THE PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION CENTER -Archived copy |date= July 1, 1998 |publisher= Wayne State University |access-date=2008-04-12 |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070529192747/http://venus.soci.niu.edu/~archives/ABOLISH/july98/0024.html |archive-date=2007-05-29 }}</ref><ref>''[[The Birmingham News]]'', [[Birmingham, Alabama]]; 1913-02-27.</ref><ref>''[[Boston Guardian]]'', [[Boston, Massachusetts]]; 1914-04-30.</ref> Not all instances of lynching were documented, so there may have been others.

In the early and mid-20th century, Marshall's [[historically black colleges and universities|traditionally black colleges]], Wiley and Bishop, were thriving intellectual and cultural centers. The writer [[Melvin B. Tolson]], who was part of the [[Harlem Renaissance]] in New York City, taught at Wiley College.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Wiley College's Great Debaters {{!}} Humanities Texas|url=https://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/wiley-colleges-great-debaters|access-date=2020-06-18|website=www.humanitiestexas.org}}</ref> Painter Samuel Countee, a Texas-born student of Bishop College in the mid-1930s, exhibited at the Harmon Exhibitions in 1935–1937 and won a scholarship to study at the [[Boston Museum of Fine Arts]]. Countee had a successful career as a teacher and artist in the New York City area, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Inspired by the teachings of professors such as Tolson, students and former students of the colleges mobilized to challenge and dismantle [[Jim Crow]] laws and institutions in the 1950s and 1960s. Fred Lewis, as the secretary of the Harrison County [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP), challenged the [[White Citizens Party]] in Harrison County, which had the oldest chapter in Texas, and the laws the party supported. This suit overturned Jim Crow in the county with the ''[[Perry v. Cyphers]]'' ruling. [[Heman Sweatt]], a Wiley graduate, tried to enroll in the [[University of Texas at Austin]] [[Law School]], but was denied entry because of his race. He sued and the [[United States Supreme Court]] ordered the desegregation of postgraduate studies in public universities in Texas in its ruling in ''[[Sweatt v. Painter]]'' (1950). [[James Farmer]], another Wiley graduate, became an organizer of the [[Freedom Rides]] and a founder of the [[Congress of Racial Equality]] (CORE), which was active throughout the South.