From the Annals of Segregation –  In 1946, Heman Sweatt accompanied by NAACP representatives met with University of Texas President Theo Painter to present his request for admission to the University of Texas School of Law.   Sweatt met all of the qualification for admission to the school – except for one minor detail – he was Black.  The Texas Constitution, Art. VII, Section 7 provided that “Separate schools shall be provided for the white and colored children, and impartial provision shall be made for both.”  The first part of the constitutional requirement was a fact – the second part was a joke.  His request was denied leading a long court battle.  Sweatt claimed that the Texas Constitution violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.  He sought mandamus to order Painter to enroll him.  The case was continued to allow the State to establish “The School of Law of the Texas State University for Negroes” in an old house north of the Capitol.  Based on the now discredited “separate but equal” doctrine, the state court denied Sweatt relief.  The case ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court  which held that the equal protection clause required that Sweatt be admitted into UT Law School.  The case did not completely invalidate the separate but equal doctrine but it was a major step in the right direction.

From the Annals of the Revolution – In 1836, Col. William B. Travis issued a call for help on behalf of the Texian defenders of the Alamo.  The troops in the crumbling mission turned fort included regular Texas Army soldiers and a variety of volunteers with Davy Crockett being the most famous.

Travis was in command of troops in the recently captured city of San Antonio de Bexar.  His military capability has been much debated.  His troops were surprised by the arrival of the leading forces of the army of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana on February 23 even though they had been marching from Mexico for over a month. Travis and his troops took shelter in the Alamo, where they were joined by a volunteer force led by Col. James Bowie.

The mission was quickly surrounded by Santa Ana’s 5,000 troops.  When Santa Ana called for Travis and his men to surrender, they answered with a bold shot from one of the Alamo’s cannon.  Furious, Santa Ana began a 13 day siege. Travis recognized his predicament and sent out several messages via couriers asking for reinforcements. Addressing one of the pleas to “The People of Texas and All Americans in the World,” Travis stated that the Alamo was surrounded by more than a thousand Mexican troops and that it had sustained 24 hours of bombardment without loss of life.  He proclaimed “I shall never retreat or surrender” and signed off with the now-famous “Victory or Death” knowing that it almost certainly would be death.  Only 32 valiant men from the nearby town of Gonzales responded to Travis’ call for help slipping through a gap in the Mexican lines that Santa Ana had purposefully left open hoping to lure more Texians to an almost certain tragic fate.

From the Annals of Reconstruction –  In 1874, the Texas Senate confirmed the election of former slave Walter Moses Burton. Burton was 21 when he was brought to Texas in 1850 as the slave of Thomas Burke Burton, a Fort Bend farmer. His owner taught Burton how to read and write, skills which Burton put to great effect. After emancipation, Burton became one of the wealthiest and most influential blacks in Fort Bend County. In 1869, Burton was elected sheriff and tax collector of Fort Bend County. In 1873 Burton was elected to the Texas Senate, where he served for seven years over two terms.  In the Senate he championed the education of blacks and is perhaps best remembered for the bill that established Prairie View Normal School (now Prairie View A&M University). When he left the Senate in 1882, Burton was given an ebony and gold cane as a tribute.  He remained active in state and local politics until his death in 1913.