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Talking Texas History
Talking Texas History
The Texas New Deal Symposium
In this episode, we talk with George Cooper, who founded the Texas New Deal Symposium. George explains how a small historical gathering has evolved into a vital 12-year tradition examining one of America's most transformative periods bringing together diverse scholars exploring everything from banking reforms to infrastructure projects that still shape Texas communities today. The engine of modern American government was built during the 1930s, and Texans were holding the wrenches.
This year's Texas New Deal Symposium will be held at Tarleton State University in Stephenville on Saturday, June 14, 2025. The Symposium will take place at the Joe W. Autry Agriculture Building in Room 113.
This year's event at Tarleton State University features presentations on contemporary preservation efforts for New Deal infrastructure, healthcare for freedmen as documented in WPA slave narratives, and Nazi hunting during the later New Deal years—demonstrating the era's remarkable breadth of influence.
The event is free of charge and lunch will be provided; however, registration is required.
For registration information, click on the East Texas Historical Association events page: https://etha.wildapricot.org/event-6164675
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas, based upon our professional training and study of the past.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it and, of course, all of us who live it and love it. I'm Scott Sosby and I'm Gene Preuss, and this is Talking Texas History. Welcome to Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Preuss. I'm Scott Sonsby. Scott, good afternoon, it's great to see you again. It is morning, but we're recording this so it could be any time of the day.
Speaker 1:We just make up times, don't we?
Speaker 2:We make up a lot of things, so time is the least of them. We've got a great friend of ours on here, somebody that I can't even begin to think how long we've known, george Cooper, and it's great to have him on the podcast. George, welcome to Talking. Texas History.
Speaker 1:Thank you Good to be here, george. You know you've done. I mean we could say a lot of things about George folks and we have and we have, and some of them we won't repeat on air, but you know that's how it goes. But I mean he's a historian, an author, an instructor, curmudgeon, all kinds of things all rolled up into one. But particularly today, what we want George to talk to us about more than then we'll get into a lot of topics but most particularly George's involvement.
Speaker 1:In fact, he is the grand poobah of the Texas New Deal Symposium. He's the originator of it and it's about to hold its 12th event in Stephenville at Tarleton State University on Saturday. June the 14th is when it will take place. We will get this up and posted before that and everybody is welcome. But we want Gene. I mean Gene, we don't want Gene to tell us anything we want George to tell our audience about. He is the originator. So just give us a rundown on how you conceived of the Texas New Deal symposium and how this event has happened and what kind of the process. Take us way back to when it started.
Speaker 3:Rather convoluted story convoluted story. Back in 2011, I had done a symposium, chaired a symposium, put it together down in Victoria Gene, you spoke there on the Civil War. I was kicking around the topic with Charles Furlan, who was really the brainpower behind all of this, about what to do the next year and I had been talking to a lot of people who wanted to do something on the New Deal. Charles was somewhat opposed to it so we never really got it done down there. But at the time I was also very active in the Historical Association of New Mexico and one of the people I'd met there and she later would come to an East Texas meeting was Kathy Plym, who at the time was the director of the National New Deal Preservation Association, which is now based out of Washington DC, but at the time it was based out of Santa Fe and Kathy was doing all the work. Now Kathy's still going strong, but she's got to be well over 90. So she's kind of passed that off. But she and I got to talking about the New Deal when she was down in Nacogdoches for our meeting in 2012. And she said she would kind of like to do some kind of regional symposium and I said, I can get several people in Texas to show up and I think I had about 15 major historians lined up to go to Santa Fe in August of 2013 and get it done. Kathy just couldn't get her act together. Love her dearly, but she couldn't get her act together. We could never come up with any kind of venue for us to hold it at. So I fell through. But, talking to people that wanted to attend that and wanted to present people like Light and Victoria Cumming Scott, you were interested, jean, I think you were too were interested, gene, I think you were too. Finally, talking to people, someone came up and volunteered Carol Taylor, I believe, volunteered the Audie Murphy Cotton Museum in Greenville for us to hold a one-day event at. To hold a one-day event at.
Speaker 3:I very quickly put everything together. Carol and Scott and the people in Greenville made arrangements so that there was no registration fee and the museum, I believe, fed us that day. We had two sessions in the morning, three speakers each. Then we had a featured speaker in the afternoon. That particular day it was Light Cummins.
Speaker 3:Can't start off any better than that when you have light as your featured speaker, who, as always, spoke without notes off the top of his head and went for 30 minutes and was absolutely fabulous. The topic that he spoke on that day has, in fact, now been published in the Texas New Deal Review, which is an online journal published by Texas A&M, and it just kind of grew from there. We had not planned to have another one, but after the session a bunch of us gathered at Starbucks there in Greenville and people got to saying they'd like to do it again. So we started scrambling, put together a program. I was able to put together a program. We were luckily able to have Heron County Northwest Community College yeah that's where John Lumberg was at the time.
Speaker 3:I think Lumberg's been at South he's at Tarrant County South but George Diaz was the department chair up there then and he arranged for us to meet there the next year and it just kind of snowballed like that. Every year there's always been someone come up and ask to do another one and I kind of started pushing for an annual event rather early on, actually, because I enjoyed putting the thing together and I have learned from experiences. It's a whole lot easier to introduce people than it is to have to write something and present it. So we just kind of kept snowballing from there. Brenda Matthews at Texas Wesleyan volunteered a place for the next year and hosted it the third year and I think the fourth year, I think was at Texas A&M Commerce.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we probably went to Commerce then and we went back to Greenville, I think, after that and we've been, we're in Stephenville this year and we're at Stephenville again.
Speaker 3:Been to Wichita Falls.
Speaker 1:Been to Wichita Falls and had it in Wichita Falls. I mean we start thinking about every place. We've had it and we'll miss some things, but it's been all. We've been lucky, we've had it all over the place.
Speaker 2:You know, the thing about the New Deal is it's I'm surprised we've had it all over the place. You know, the the thing about the new deal is it's I I I'm surprised. We never had a new deal symposium before, but it's something that was so tremendously and I hate to use this word impactful. Uh changed texas so much during the 1930s. It went from basically being an agricultural state to being an industrial one during that period and we're really transitioning. And yet and there's so much going on so many of the leaders, not just at the state level but at the national level, come out of this period kind of are trained and tested in their leadership skills during this period, that it really is something we don't place, I think, enough emphasis on. I mean, we look at the suffering but we don't look at all the other things that the New Deal did and were done through the New Deal in Texas. So how did you get interested in this topic?
Speaker 3:It all ties in with the symposium. Really, in grad school I was an immigration historian. I originally wrote a paper for the South Texas Historical Association on South Texas politicians in Washington DC during the New Deal Washington DC during the New Deal. Out of that developed a real interest on my part in John Nass Garner and his role in his relationship with Roosevelt, which I think is fascinating. But also I became very much aware not just of the transition economically in Texas during this period, but also the fact that during this period from, say, 1930, with the election of that year that put the Democrats back in control and Wurtzbach leaving and being replaced by Congressman from Kingsville Switching over to the Democratic Party, john S Garner becoming the Speaker of the House, democratic Party, john S Garner becoming the Speaker of the House Between there and really 1940, texas goes from being just a bunch of backbenchers in Congress to quite possibly the most powerful state in the entire Congress.
Speaker 1:That's something that I don't think has been emphasized amongst national historians as much as you say how much, and we don't even think about how many Texans played such big roles in the New Jersey, and these were young congressmen that were making these big roles right. Patman was what? Barely 30, or something like that when he became the powerful banking chair.
Speaker 2:Well, lyndon Johnson too, right. I mean, and you're right, patman Kleberg King, that all you know talking about South Texas people, all of those people. It really is amazing. It was kind of this, you know, a geminating room where so many people developed that would later go on to be important in not only Texas but the US history.
Speaker 3:A lot of, in addition to that, names we haven't mentioned. People came to seniority, came to take over committees in both the House and the Senate, came to take over committees in both the House and the Senate. We had the role played by Garner leaving and going home during the court packing plan and the breach with Roosevelt there. But you also had Tom Connolly in the Senate saying that he was going to make sure that the bill never got out of the Senate sure that the bill never got out of the Senate. And, of course, the reaction in the House Judiciary Committee when it was killed by the chair, who just happened to be a Texan in committee.
Speaker 3:The importance of Texas, the oversized weight of Texas at that point is really remarkable and the transition that most people just, you're right, national politicians don't pay enough attention to it. That's what got me into the New Deal and subsequent because of Garner. But to go back to your original question, gene Garner, as I started doing my research on him, I found out that he at one point or another owned 13 different banks in South Texas and I got to looking into banking because of that, the state banking system. And that's where my main focus is now and I've written a lot of papers over the last couple of years on banking during the New Deal tying the two in together you know, as long as we're talking about Garner, I've told this story many times.
Speaker 1:I guess I'll go on record. I've heard it, gene's heard it, because I believe he may have even been in the class that I heard it. One time One of our mentors and one of my primary mentors, don Walker, loved to tell this story about John Nance Garner that he had heard from one of his mentors at UT. I believe it was Lewis Gouldoul, but I'm not sure as who was the young person that went to go interview garner in the garnered already left. You know he was either the like 1960, 1961, something along that. He was living in uvalde and this young researcher, when he was young, went to, I believe a graduate student went to go interview garner in uvalde and he found him in the backyard in his bermuda shorts and a t-shirt uh, you know the former vice president of the united states and speaker of the house of representatives and they sat outside doing their, uh, his interview, going back and forth, but finally, after it's in the morning it's about 10 o'clock in the morning garner slapped the table real hard and he thought, boy, howdy, I've done something wrong. And uh, garner said son, are you a drinking man and said, well, I guess so. So he went up to the to the uh, his porch area, got in a refrigerator but it wasn't a refrigerator when he plugged in and got a big bottle of Jim Beam and brought two water glasses out and set them on the table and he told him say when. And you know, he poured him just a little bit and he said, okay, garner basically filled that thing up and proceeded to drink it in about three drinks after that and they went on with the interview and they had lunch and then about one o'clock they were still doing it and Garner said I think it's time for another drink. And so they did the same thing. He got his little you know two fingers in his water glass and garner basically filled that thing up and started drinking it. And he was looking at him. He said he must have been wondering about what I was thinking and said, uh, garner said son, you know why I've lived so long? No, sir, wait, I have three of these every day. So there you go. And so he was probably pickled, is what he was. George. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1:So we've been doing that symposia. We always, always get it mixed up. We've had some easy and I should keep track, but I'm pretty sure this year is going to be our 12th event, because we had to miss uh one during the covid year that we didn't hold once. We're about to hold our 12th new deal event this year, so we've had quite a few of these things we put in the can and I I have been, I missed, I've missed one. I missed when we were in abilene, I think three years ago. Uh so, but you must have had favorite things that have happened during this, these various symposia that we've had. So tell us about some of them. Either paper highlights that you had funny stories of people you know. Whatever, just some favorite thing people might want to know about the New Deal symposia.
Speaker 3:One that stands out in my mind and it doesn't pertain to the papers, which have always been excellent was the second one. We had all gotten together at the hotel bar, restaurant and bar. You were out playing golf and by the time you got in, most of us were three sheets to the wind already.
Speaker 1:Well lubricated. We'll put it how about that?
Speaker 3:That's a good way to phrase it. Yes, and we get to the campus the next morning and apparently no one had told maintenance that we were going to be there. The building was locked up. No one was around to unlock it. I'm basically sliding down the wall because my head was splitting. I think it took us an hour to get in.
Speaker 1:We were at least an hour late getting started. That's right.
Speaker 3:The weather at the year we were in Wichita Falls. That storm blew in and about half of the presenters couldn't make it. You had to read somebody's paper. I read somebody's paper, but overall I will say this the quality of the papers that have been presented, for the most part, have been as good, if not better, than any I have heard anywhere.
Speaker 1:I agree, that's one of the biggest things I mean and that's the thing we say, but there's why more work hasn't been done. And remember we are just dealing generally with Texas topics in the New Deal.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I mean, what I'm doing in this year is not just a holy Texas topic, which may be one of the first times that we've really gone outside the state to do something. It's kind of amazing that there's so much to do with the New Deal in Texas and all of these things we hear every once in a while. We're like, oh, I never knew that, I haven't heard that before. That's what's amazing.
Speaker 2:But you know, it occurs to me that one of the things that and this is look, you know, we've been Texas historians for a long time. Everybody always says Texas is very provincial. We just look inside ourselves. In the New Deal we're really looking at national, even global events right, the Depression was a global issue and how it affects Texas, how it affects even local areas and communities. And so we're taking a big national, global topic, bringing it home but also going back up right, going from the local back to the nation, back to the global. So it really is one of those areas, one of those times in history where we can connect, one of those times in history where we can connect Texas and local history and politics and socioeconomic events to the bigger picture. Right, and everybody always has said, you know, oh, texans don't do that, but but we do. In the New Deal time period, and maybe it's a model for other periods as well, we can look at doing the same thing.
Speaker 3:I think we have to take a look at it this way. The New Deal also is so important in the transition between the individual and the federal government. Prior to the New Deal, government was Austin, houston City Council, harris County government. It's only with the New Deal that the individual starts looking to the federal government for aid relief, if you will, guidance Government playing a role in the life of the individual that hadn't been part of the American concept prior to the New Deal.
Speaker 1:No, and that may be the most important thing about it, this whole idea of how it remade the orientation of how people relate to the federal government. I've always said that I mean before Roosevelt and the New Deal came on, it didn't matter who was president. You did not appeal to the president, to the federal government, really, for, hey, we need somebody to remake things To some extent. Of course Wilson, in the progressive era, begins this process. You can trace it back to that because he sort of had this concept. But then the 20s come along and it goes back to the. You know, to borrow the phrase, I'm back to normalcy. But the Great Depression itself, and then followed by World War II, completely reorients that dynamic.
Speaker 1:But also because the New Deal, to some extent what Roosevelt, particularly as a preview to what I'm going to do this year in his 1936 address to accept the nomination, essentially lays out what I'll call an American revolution. We're now going to begin this individual strive for economic liberty, if you will. Before it was political liberty that was the basis of American concept, if you will, of liberty and democracy. Roosevelt basically says the most important thing is economic liberty, that you are free economically to make your own choice and American policies are going to start reflecting that, at least from this federal level. And that's one of these things that I don't think, and that's one of these things that I don't think I can't accurately say has been missed, because there are scholars who have done this Tom Hartman's done it, dracaui from Princeton's done it but it's not broke out into the mainstream American side to actually understand what the New Deal did, and that's one of the geniuses of it. I think this, our symposium, does that quite a bit. I think one of the geniuses of it.
Speaker 2:I think this, our symposium, does that quite a bit. I think it's one of the best things it does. Well, guys, let me ask you this We've got this new deal symposium coming up on the 14th. What are we looking forward to there? What are going to be some of the highlights? Who's participating this year?
Speaker 3:we have. Something I'm proud of is that we have not restricted ourselves to purely academic historians. We have a lot of independent scholars for lack of a better term that have presented this year and we nor have we restricted ourselves to purely the timeframe of the New Deal. There's factors that come into making the New Deal and impact afterwards. Our featured speaker this year, juliet George, is primarily a newspaper person, independent writer, but she's going to be presenting on the fight to maintain a built environment that was created during the New Deal.
Speaker 3:The New Deal and what has gone on in Fort Worth with the retaining wall that was built during the New Deal at one of the schools there in Fort Worth and how that's going forward and the fight that's had.
Speaker 3:That's the kind of thing to me which is important is that, okay, this New Deal isn't just something in amber that we take out and look at as historians, but it's something that still impacts us today and how it impacts us, the interaction between government, in this case, school districts in this particular instance, and the individual and those preservationists, some of whom are not historians.
Speaker 3:I think that's going to be, I think, important. A fellow by the name of William Scott, who you all know because he's finished his PhD at Texas Tech, will be speaking on health care for freedmen as reflected in the slave narratives which, of course, recorded for those non-historians, recorded by historians through the WPA during the New Deal. Scott, of course, will be speaking on one of his areas of specialization, along with Michael Phillips, who will be speaking about the chasing down of Nazis during the last part of the New Deal in the early 1940s. So there's a lot of various topics. We don't really restrict ourselves. We're not restricting ourselves this year, but it does bring home the general importance of the New Deal era in its entirety, at least in my opinion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a good lineup. I mean, we've heard of all these people that are coming, and the thing about it is, of course, one thing that we're always. Just, we're talking about this year's event. One thing that I think we're always proud of is that we don't charge. There's no charge for coming to the event and you get fed. We're going to have lunch for everybody when you're there, something we've always kept up as well to do that. Well, so we've established that, even though I think we can safely say you didn't intend for it to be I never would have envisioned it but it's become an annual event. In fact, it's become the primary spring event for the East Texas Historical Association by our board action. So what's the future? What are we going to do later? Are we going to continue this up? What's some of the future? How does it work? How do you envision George's continuing in the future?
Speaker 3:You know, for a couple of years I really thought we might be able to expand this into a two-day event. I don't see that now. I see, basically because of the way it's structured, because of when we hold it in the summer, so more people are available, can make it without disrupting their class schedules, I would like to see it maintained as a one-day event, somewhat like we're doing right now Some refining maybe. How much longer am I going to be doing? I don't know. I turned 80 this year. It may not be realistic for me to keep going. However, we do have the individual that I feel is a grandfather of, godfather, if you will, of New Deal Studies in Texas, keith Polano, who has agreed to take over when I step down. So I don't see it ending. I see it going as long as the association wants to sponsor it and we can find facilities to hold it. If we can find an institution to fund it, as we do now, I think we can keep going as long as we can.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, we do not have a lot of New Deal historians across the state or across the nation. Really, it's kind of falling out of favor. Economic history in general, social history yes, but not really focusing on the New Deal. I think that's something we need to do. We have been lucky in that we have been very broad in our people that are participating, not just economic and social historians, but people, colonial historians like the Cummings people such as yourself, scott Gene. You've been there too. So in the future I think I would like to see that continue, incorporating as many different views of the New Deal and what went on as possible.
Speaker 1:I think that's right. If somebody was to ask me how I would like to see this, I think I would echo George in that I believe we've grown enough in doing this If you look back on so many of them like as scholars and we kind of do this. Much of our work has been on the first New Deal, those emergency level things and things that specifically tied to the Depression. But I've always maintained the most important aspects of Roosevelt's reform program came with the second New Deal, when he began to essentially establish what has become the American welfare state. I would like to see us begin focusing more on that, and that would take us in a more national direction this whole concept of how the New Deal essentially embedded itself and then reshaped American ideas of how our economic system would work, and then the blossoming of that into how essentially applying New Deal principles to tackling social and cultural issues in the country, which is where the wicket got very sticky, to say the least. I'd like to see that begin to happen more and more.
Speaker 1:George and I have of course discussed and I think we can tentatively say this, george, we don't know that it's for sure, but tentatively we very well may be holding the symposium in College Station next year. That might be our goal to do that. Maybe we can go down there and see if we can stir some Aggies up. Correct, it's always nice to stir Aggies up. It's also like low-hanging fruit, because it's easy to do. To use a common term, they're heavily triggered or easily triggered. I suppose you can say they always are. But yeah, I think it has a great future.
Speaker 1:I'm I'm always amazed at how, as George has said, this concept that when it began in 2013, we really thought this was a one shot thing. We were going to do that this one year, you know, and now we're about to hold our 12th and there's really no ending inside. You know, and now we're about to hold our 12th and there's really no ending inside. It's kind of really amazing and it's a tribute to you, george, that you continue to work on it. I think this can be your, to use that, not that we're trying to make you go away your greatest legacy correct on how this works.
Speaker 3:I've enjoyed doing it. It's turned into a labor of love and it will continue to be so as long as I'm capable.
Speaker 2:So what's the?
Speaker 3:most important thing? Do you think that people ought to know about that time period? Things I think and I've mentioned both of them already First is the transition in the relationship between the individual and our government, and the second thing is the increased role and the importance of Texas that grew out of the New Deal on the national level. Those are the two most important things to me about all of this.
Speaker 1:Yep, and I think those are, and that's what they were doing. We're getting that across so well, George. It's been a delightful conversation, as always every time we do one of these things, but particularly with people who are so intellectually stimulating. We've come to the end of our time, but we end. Every one of our segments has become our tradition, If we can have a tradition for this almost randomly off the wall podcast that we do on things, but that we end every show by asking our guests for their pearl of wisdom or whatever they want to offer us about anything in the world they want to, and particularly from you. I don't know that you're the oldest person. I always have to jab George about this show that we've ever had, but if not, you're pretty damn close. So this might be the best one of these questions we've ever asked. So, George Cooper, what do you know?
Speaker 3:There's always more to learn. That simple, it's that simple.
Speaker 1:It's a lifelong process. That's correct. Absolutely, it never ends. Unfortunately, there's a whole lot of people that have stopped learning and need to get that back in again. George, thank you so much for coming with us, thank you, George.
Speaker 3:It's been a great conversation. Thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:All right, well, thanks a lot and we'll catch everybody else. Thank you for listening. We'll catch you next time. Bye-bye, bye-bye.
