THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
INTERVIEW WITH: V.H. Hackney
DATE: October 22, l990
PLACE: Marshall, Texas
INTERVIEWER: Les Pistel
LP: This is an interview with V.H. Hackney in Marshall, Texas on October 22, at 7:l5 pm. I'm Les Pistel.
What we'd like first of all is to get your - when you were born, where you were born and anything personal that you'd like to tell us about your early life.
VH: Well. I was born in Burleson, Texas. That's in Johnson County.
LP: How do you spell that?
VH: B-u-r-l-e-s-o-n, Burleson. And it's just now almost a part of Ft. Worth. My father was a doctor. We, at an early age, we moved over to Dallas and he started to practice in Dallas. Then later, we moved to Terrell and he became one of the house doctors for the state asylum and we lived in the asylum. Fact is I have, about a l5 page documentary of my experiences in the asylum. Then we moved from there to Dallas. And he was a radiologist there until the time of his death.
I grew up in Dallas really and went to Southern Methodist University and got a BA and a MA degree and then I got some additional work at the University of Texas and so forth.
At the end of my educational period, or part way through the educational period, I went into teaching - graduating from Hackney
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SMU, I went into teaching at SMU and - went out from SMU and the job that I took was in Marshall, Texas.
LP: When did you graduate from...?
VH: l93l.
LP: l93l.
VH: Yes. I got a job in Marshall, Texas and started teaching in Marshall and I never got out of Marshall except for ten years, when I retired from the bank and we moved to Jefferson in a historical home - did the historical home over and enjoyed the experiences of a historical town, in a historical home, they're supposed to have a historical ghost in it and.....had tours for almost l0 years of people from every point of the compass.
And then we decided that it was getting too much for us and we moved back to Marshall and we've been here ever since. That's the story.
LP You're almost a Marshall native, then.
VH: Yes, I've been here except for that l0 year period. From '3l til now. And I found it was the right place for me to be because I found my wife here and I hope she didn't find me, I hope I found her, and (laughter) found a wonderful group of friends.
VH: Well, that's important, too. And the historical...the place is crammed, jammed full of historical facts. The surface had just been scratched.
LP: We had a little introduction to that this afternoon and Hackney
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I must agree with you one hundred percent.
VH: It's amazing. As I get older and read more about it and learn more about it, I find out that we have so much that we haven't told, or we don't even know about.
Like, for instance there were l5 named plantations in the eastern part of the County. Fifteen of them! Around Caddo Lake and there were plantations. There were - they had the old plantation names, you know.
LP: Was cotton the main...?
VH: Cotton was the main - agricultural product. For instance, when the early days of the pioneers and all came in, that was what they were planting. And they were called "planters". Now that's the eastern part of Harrison County. The western part that is not the same picture.
LP: It doesn't have the same....?
VH: They change. The real southern part ended half way through Harrison County and ....
LP: Has two different configurations.
VH: Two different configurations, that's right. And the planters came into the east and further into the west of the County the Civil War all caught up with them.
But, the - one of the busiest places around Harrison County for some time, other than Marshall, was on Caddo Lake. It's amazing to me what they did down there in those early days.
You were speaking of cotton, in the Texas Republican, or Hackney
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the Marshall Republican, an early-day paper, they were announcing that some man had a - well, he didn't have a wager, but he was challenging all planters to meet his quota that he had set up and his pickers had picked. And he quoted a fantastic number of pounds for one day. And then a little later another planter answered him back and listed his slaves and the number of pounds each one had picked and beat him out, or said he'd beat him out, and there was a play back and forth which was a little unusual, as you can understand.
And, the fascinating thing to me about, the eastern part of it, there was an Alabama governor buried out there on Caddo Lake. He was an Alabama governor, he was a senator, he was a congressman, he helped draft our first constitution and he got beat out in a political race and he picked up with all of his family and moved over to Caddo Lake and he died there. And they buried him there and then they lost him there. And Alabama was trying to find the man because he was the only Alabama governor that they had that they didn't have over there buried in the official governor's site.
Voice: Have you seen his grave?
VH: No, I'm going out this fall and look - he has no headstone and they planted some trees, wasn't that right Mary.
Incidentally, Mary's family came in here in l847, so she is my authority behind my authority.
LP: That's your wife.Hackney
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VH: That's right. l847. We're hunting for one of her family that's buried out there. A Dr. Arnett, he died out there and was buried at Swanson's Landing and we're going to look for that, too.
LP: We heard a lot about Caddo Lake. Was the Lake named after the Indians, or...
VH: Yes. Named after the Indians, the Caddo Indians. The Caddo Indians came over from the Mississippi area and they were mound builders. They came over to here and as they moved to this direction, why, their mounds got smaller and smaller. There were mounds - mounds have been found here and further down too. But this Lake was the spiritual Happy Hunting Ground and they have a book put out by the Carnegie Institute that gives the stories that the Caddo Indians back in l9l0 related to a person that was taking interviews at that time of the Caddo Lake and their spiritual understanding of the earth and how it was made, and so forth.
LP: We have the huge mural down at the Institute on the Caddo Indians and it depicts the mounds and everything that you have mentioned.
VH: Yes. There are Caddo Indians up in Oklahoma. They've been down here in recent years, put on a little dance for us and so forth and my daughter went up to Caddo Lake, I mean went up to Oklahoma where they are and they put on some special dances for her.Hackney
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LP: So the tribe, then, is not extinct. There are members of the Caddo tribes still alive?
VH: That's right. Oh, yes, there's a tribe up there. They're growing in numbers and they have their dances and, incidentally, when my daughter wrote a book about the epic- adventures of Texas which was narrated by Bill Moyers. There's an introduction by Mrs. Ladybird Johnson and this tape - has on it the Caddo Indians doing their dancing and singing and so forth.
LP: That was mentioned in our interview this afternoon.
VH: That's right. Anyhow, Marshall is a place unto itself. When I first came into Marshall, it was on a Saturday. And I was not used to Black people. I just didn't see many of them. The fact is the first time I ever saw a Black child was and playing with him, I thought he was dirty and I took him over to an outside faucet and tried to wash the dirt off of him. And that was my first experience.
LP: You weren't successful, were you? (laughter)
VH: At any rate, when I first drove into Marshall in my Essex I was astounded as I drove up to the square. One side of the square was completely black, all the west side of the square was black - the black wagons out there and black people. Thick. A few whites were scattered around in it. I went around the square and on the other side - the east side of the square was all white. There were cotton planters, there were cotton buyers Hackney
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and the air was filled with pieces of cotton hanging up on the wires and there was that type of activity going on there.
Around the fringe of the Black group, I learned later that there was these lenders that had - they called them "Pocketbook Lenders" and they would lend their Black friends money and when they would come in on Saturday or catch them and get their money from them on Saturday. But I didn't see that so much as I did see this vast concourse of people all Black on one side and all White on the other side, all having a wonderful time.
LP: But apart.
VH: Apart, yes. Well, there were some of the Blacks mixed - uh, whites mixed in with the Blacks. Those were maybe a church would be having a sale of clothing, or something of that type.
LP: What year was this?
VH: l93l.
LP: l93l.
VH: Yes. Now I - it was such an astounding thing to me that I started taking notes of the relationships between the Blacks and the Whites in l93l. And I kept keeping these notes until about l935. And then later, I wrote down the Black-White relationships of Marshall from '3l to '35 and then to be certain I had told the story as it was supposed to be, I picked out 5 Black people who were native born, but were adults at the time I said, l93l-l935, and 5 white people who were adults and Hackney
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were native born, and asked them to read it. And they read it and agreed that it was maybe more factual than they'd even realized in their own mind.
So then I tucked the thing away because it was not the time to reveal that. It just wouldn't have been - the proper thing for me to have brought it out then. But, I think it's factual. Very interesting. Still in my file.
Voice: Is it?
VH: Yes.
LP: From the school stand point the Whites were segregated from the Blacks.
VH: Oh, yes. The White - the superintendent was in the -where the City Hall is now. That was his office up there. And the Black people had their schools and the Whites had theirs. And the Blacks' administrative staff would meet at one time with the superintendent and the White administrative staff would meet in another time with the administrative staff. And the football teams, the football players played on their own field, they didn't play on the same fields as the White teams did. Or Whites didn't play on the Blacks' field.
LP: They were segregated.
VH: It was completely segregated.
LP But you did let girls in the class with boys.
VH: Oh, sure. They didn't ?
Voice: Was there just one superintendent?Hackney
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VH: Oh, yes. Well, there was the county superintendent. That was for the common school districts. And he stayed in the courthouse. They had a lot of common school districts in Harrison County and they were set up by the State much, much earlier. And they had their own board of trustees and they ran their schools and the superintendent was the superintendent.
LP: Did you have any idea of how the curriculum might be different from the Black school and the White school?
VH: Oh, it was all under the supervision of the State - the Department of Education.
LP: Technically, it should be..
VH: Technically, it should have been the same. But practically, it probably wasn't. There was very little conflict between the Blacks and the Whites at that time. It was really a very gentle-type situation.
LP: This was in the l93l-l935 time frame.
VH: Yes, that's right.
LP: Before the big transition started taking place.
VH: Whenever the superintendent of the Marshall schools would have a notable in to see the schools, he would always take them over to the Pemberton High School or Central High School, as it was at first, and....
LP: That was White or Black?
VH: Oh, when I was - l93l.
LP: This school that he went to was that...?Hackney
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VH: A Black school. He'd always take him to a Black school and they'd call an assembly and he would get up on the stage with his visitor and he'd introduce him and he'd sit down and then suddenly over here on one side, a group would stand up and start singing an old Black hymn and they'd sit down and another one on the other side would stand up and sing and the whole group finally joined together singing songs - old religious hymns and the men went away from there almost blown over with his feelings about that type of program. And, of course, that was when you could sing religious songs, I suppose, and do such things.
LP: Religion in the schools yet.
VH: That's right. But then that, of course, was all changed when they integrated and they've been integrating ever since.
And the schools on the outside, mostly common school districts that were close to Marshall, joined in with Marshall became a part of Marshall schools. It's about 300 square miles around here for all the school district - all the Marshall school district. They run a number of school buses, you know.
We have a real good school here. I'll tell you one thing about this school system, black or white. We turn out more unusual, and have turned out more unusual people. People that have found fame, not as much fortune but fame and people of great capacity for giving, serving others that I don't know of another school district that's like it.Hackney
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LP: Inez was telling us of some of her students this morning, this afternoon.
Voice: They were probably Mr. Hackney's students, too.
LP: Yes.
VH: At any rate, the picture here of the Blacks - I want to add one thing more about it. I don't want to just wear you out with it, but this....The question comes, "Why does Marshall have so many black people here"? Why here?
Well, I think it's very simple. First, when the Civil War started up and they started moving into the south, the planters that were nearby - (Louisiana and Mississippi) started moving out of their states over into Marshall to get away from the advancing Northern troops because they didn't want to lose their slaves or they didn't want to be captured by the Yankees. Then the - so they brought hundreds of slaves into Harrison County.
And then the second thing that caused an influx into this County was that we had a - right after the Civil War they put here the Freedman's Bureau for 2 or 3 states, or 2 or 3 areas. This was a central point. The troops were stationed here. They had to send their troops out if they wanted - had some trouble over in Rusk or over in Panola County or something like that.
And so the Freedman's Bureau was handing out...
LP: Was this a military....?Hackney
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VH: This was a - no it was a civilian operation with military support.
LP: Military support.
VH: And they were stationed here and the fact is I have a stack on the Marshall - of documents this high, copies of documents about the Freedman's Bureau right here. We've got - I could point out a number of families who were caught up and fined by the Freedman's Bureau because they didn't -Blacks complained because they didn't fulfill their contract.
LP: Does this have anything to do - I saw in one of the books of Marshall Conference. Is that the...?
VH: The Marshall - you're talking about the Marshall Conference, as I understand it. That was before the end of the Civil War and the governors of the states around here met over here after Lee had surrendered and they wanted to decide what they would do in concert, whether they should go on with the Civil War or whether they should plan to surrender and they decided finally to give up.
But this was after the Civil War. When the - Washington had set up these Freedman's Bureas to protect the Blacks to find jobs for them, to see that they had contractural relationships with the Whites and to see that there was fairness in their bargaining. And as you would understand -something I can tell you got out of hand and the Whites didn't like it and I don't know if the Blacks liked it. Hackney
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At any rate, why the Blacks from all around knowing the soldiers were here and knowing the Freedman's Bureau was here, moved in from other places into Marshall.
LP: For their protection.
VH: For their protection and to get whatever it was that the Freedman's Bureau was giving. And they started up classrooms right away. Freedman's Bureau did see. Well, you can imagine the influx of the Blacks that came in for that.
Then two religious bodies - denominations - put in Black colleges here, one of the earliest - two of the earliest in the south were right in Marshall. Well, that group, those that were interested in education...
LP What were the colleges?
VH: Bishop and Wiley. Bishop was a Baptist and Wiley was a Methodist. And finally Bishop moved to Dallas and failed and it closed down and they opened up again under the name of Paul Quinn. And the Wiley College is still going and is doing very well. They're having problems out there as they always do. But those were the reasons why the blacks were here. And they got used to it and they stayed here and they weren't here, but they stayed here and so that's why we have so many blacks. They found a home here and this is their home, as they see it.
LP: Did they establish many of - little cabins with them?
LP: No, no. Sharecroppers cabins.
VH: Yes, they were sharecroppers and a lot of sharecroppers Hackney
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in this - that's what they finally went into, sharecropping.
As soon as the Civil War was over and they were freed, the White planters went to their Blacks, if they had slaves and they said, "Look, you're free. Now you can go on if you want to, but we'd like you to stay and finish out the year and help us plant the seed and gather the harvest and I'll pay you for it". And so they finished out the year that way and they went into the next year the same way and until finally they developed the sharecropper idea. And they went into it as sharecropper. And the planter would build little huts out there for them, scattered all around and they would accept that. And then, of course, they had Black and White sharecroppers. And then all of that faded out when the Blacks and the Whites, too, got away from agriculture.
LP: Very interesting. When you were growing up, for instance, what was it like at your school?
VH: In Dallas?
LP: Yes.
VH: Mine wasn't like anything, it was all White.
LP: You were.....
VH: Remember I told you the first Black I ever saw I tried to wash the dirt off of him. And.....
LP: I was thinking more in terms of personal experiences that you could recall in your school district.
VH: Very few because the schools - the Blacks were in the Black Hackney
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schools, centered in the Black district - in the center of a Black district, as they were here the Black children - quartered where the Black children were.
And I just never did see them. I didn't see them practically at all. And so I really don't know. I know that what they had. They had Elm - Deep Elm Street there and I used to walk through that place and hear the talk of the Blacks that stood on the corner there. But I had very little relationship with them.
LP: What I'm driving at - with your own recreation. What did you do as a youngster for your recreation?
VH: In Dallas?
LP: In Dallas.
VH: I guess I did what every other boy did. I - we shot marbles and we played organized games, organized with the rules set by us. And we - in any organized games that we had, if we'd had an adult trying to tell us what to do, we'd think there was something wrong with the adult. We just didn't want any adults hanging around. We were playing honest games like Leap Frog, Wolf Over the River, and marbles and tops and all of those things but they all had names, you know. And they had rules for them. We all knew the rules and we all followed the rules and if one didn't follow the rules, we kicked him out.
But nowadays, you have to have an adult in order to be able to play a child's game. Do you realize that?Hackney
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All: Yes. (laughter)
Voice: Do you think Mr. Hackney needs a break?
LP: Yes.
MP: What was the asylum? I didn't catch that.
VH: Levi was a trustee. I don't know why he was a trustee but he was....
LP: At the asylum.
VH: At the asylum, yes. And I was just a little small tyke and I used to run around with Levi and he had bottle stops on his coat here, you know here. He'd hang them on his coat like medals...
Voice: Like take the corks out ....
VH: Take the corks out, that's right, put it back on. And he was supposed to be ....said he used to eat rats. Well, I never saw him eat a rat. But Levi used to take me around to see different things out there. He'd take me over to the horse barn to see the horses, and we'd bake sweet potatoes in the coals.
He had a reputation of neighing like a horse. He'd get one side of this three story brick building and neigh like a horse and the horse on the other side would neigh back at him. Doctors would go out and get Levi to neigh like a horse and hear the horse neighing back at him (Laughter).
But just to show you: one day he took me out to the
little lake out there and he said we were going to catch some Hackney
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birds. So I said, "All right".
And so he put up - it looked like a half of a door he'd cut out, cut across. Put a stick on it and tied a string and put some seed under there and they - pretty soon why, a were a lot of birds got down there underneath the - where he had this half door propped up. He jerked the stick and it fell on the birds. So then he walked over to them and he said, "Now," he says, "I'll take care of them". And he jumped up and down on the board where the birds were.
He said, "You've got to kill them some way. This's about as good as any." (Laughter)
And then back on the backside where the asylum was, there was a big, fat black woman that would talk all day long. She was a trustee, I guess. And her son had been hung, or something and she would cry out and beg for his life and I used to crawl up in the mulberry tree right where she was staying and eat mulberries and listen to her. But I remember her voice was implanted in my memory very clearly. So you asked if I had experience with Blacks, Yes! (laughter).
MP: Would you like water, or coffee, or both.
VH: Neither.
Voice: Neither?
VH: If you will put it down, I'll tell you what I'll do. If I get to feeling that way, I'll go that way.
LP: These gentlemen that Nylan is talking about....Hackney
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VH: Robert Potter.
LP: Yes.
VH: Robert Potter, of course, came from I believe North Carolina. He'd been a congressman up in - from that district and he had been - his wife, he thought, had been unfaithful to him. So one day he got his knife out and the ones he thought were responsible, he went after them. And he dissected a part of them. It's called Potterizing now and that was the name of it. And for that he was put in jail. He was a duelist and he, while in jail, he ran for congress again, passing leaflets out through the window and was re-elected while he was in jail. So we are so bad down here can do that, you know?
At any rate, why, he got in trouble while in North Carolina and he left. His wife divorced him and he just had all ..... came over to Texas, helped in the drawing of the Constitution, and was recognized as being a man of brilliant ability. Incidentally he was, I think he'd graduated from the Navy, Naval Academy. And he came over here at just about the time we were having all of our troubles. He was made Secretary of the Navy. He took charge of the Navy and apparently did a very good job of it.
In the meantime, he had picked up a lady down at Galveston and was married and she was trying to get back to where her husband was in Louisiana. He offered to take her back on a boat. Well, she accepted his offer and before she got off the Hackney
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boat, why, she was up here in Caddo Lake or over here in Harrison County.
And she apparently divorced her husband and married Robert Potter by the way that a number of marriages were carried out in those days. If they said they were and had witnesses, they were.
And he was given a grant of land on Caddo Lake on High Point, Potter's Point - beautiful spot, the most beautiful spot on the Lake. And he was down in legislature and they - - Regulator - Moderators - feud started up here. And he joined the Moderators. He was a leader of the Moderators. And he came back and he got a statement, or legal document from the president authorizing him to pick up, I think it was Rose, you know. And he went over with a group of men to pick up Rose at his home. He lived - Rose lived close by on Potter's Lake, too.
LP: Who was Rose?
VH: Rose was a - he had fought in the War of l8l2. He was a mighty man. They called him "Lion of the Lakes" that was the "Lion of Caddo Lake". He came over from Mississippi and he was a leader, I guess, of the Regulators. One of the leaders. And so, Potter apparently had conflicts with him anyway and he got the president to issue a document to pick him up and arrest him.
And he went over with a group of men to Rose's home. And Hackney
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Rose hid under a bramble bush, or something. And they looked for him but couldn't find him but a chicken kept pecking around the bramblebush and when the fellows left, Rose got out of hiding and took care of the chicken. (laughter). Almost revealing his hideout.
So Potter went back home and Rose, then, got a group of men, I'm sure they were Regulators and surrounded his house. He and Mrs. Potter at home - must have been nighttime,or early morning. Potter grabbed up his gun and broke out of the house with the Regulators behind him. I don't know that Rose was with him at that time because it was a Scot that was supposed to have done the shooting and Potter jumped into the water to swim for his life - Caddo Lake - and they - he'd laid his gun over on the side by a tree and one of them picked up his gun and shot him in the head and killed him. And his wife and the sheriff from the county went out in the next day or two and found his body and brought back and buried him on Caddo Lake on the side of that hill that I was talking about that he - his home was on.
And so the Congress of Texas went in mourning for him and said that he was one of the finest statesman they had and he was high on the list for the things that he did for education, and so forth.
He had a lot of good qualities is what I'm trying to say. And so he was given recognition and the county that was named Hackney
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after him.
And then later, about l936 they came up here - the State boys came up here and dug him up, took him down to Austin and buried him down there with the other notables. And there's a book written about Robert Potter - two or three of them. "Robert Potter, North Carolinian," and something. It's a very good book. It tells about him.
He loved to gamble. And he loved to duel. He was a dueler and he had - he had, apparently, a brilliant and rapier-like tongue which he used to his advantage in Congress.
That's - he was in - he was in partnership, he was an attorney. He was in partnership with VanZandt, Isaac VanZandt Law Firm, I guess, in Marshall. And Isaac VanZandt, was one of the most outstanding persons that was in the political arena.
During the Republic of Texas period, he was an amazing person. He was Ambassador to the United States. He wrote a letter during the Regulator-Moderator period back to his wife in Marshall. He was in Washington, D.C. He said, "I hear there're daily killings (about the Regulator-Moderator). There are daily killings on the streets of Marshall. I can't understand this and if it continues on, I don't want to live in that situation, I want to move somewhere else."
LP: Did he...
VH: No, he died, of course.
VH: He died, I believe down at Galveston. Then Isaac VanZandt, Hackney
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was that the one you were talking about?
Isaac VanZandt came here with his wife in the early thirties and settled in Marshall. He apparently was an unusual fine attorney. And he was recognized Statewide for his capability and his judgments - good judgments. And I think he was a legislator or in Congress down in Austin and then he was made Ambassador from Texas - Republic of Texas to Washington, and then he was running for governor, I believe it was governor, when he took sick and died. And he had lived up on the hill up here - VanZandt Hill and they moved to Ft. Worth. And the VanZandt's are still outstanding people in Ft. Worth. They are recognized as being pious people.
Mary's great uncle bought part of the land from the Isaac VanZandt family. He is buried up there in the cemetery.
It was the VanZandt Cemetery and he bought the land and the Greenwood Cemetery is the old VanZandt property. And then we have a map of the VanZandt's Cemetery(?), a small section of land in the Greenwood property for themselves. When they sold the other for everybody.
Voice: By the cemetery?
VH: Yeah. New cemetery. Made a new cemetery out - the Marshall Cemetery had been here since the beginning of Marshall and they had had a conflict. The Board of the Marshall Cemetery wanted to take a - the streets that were dedicated but were not used - had not been opened up in the cemetery, and sell Hackney
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the property for graves because they were filling up. Some of the people in the cemetery took them to court. And they won. That is, the people who took them to court won. And Mr. Raines, who was the sexton of that cemetery, then he bought the cemetery over there. The Marshall Cemetery belonged to a corporate body and, but he bought this cemetery which was Greenwood and started a new one and he moved his family over in the new cemetery - Greenwood Cemetery, and it has a tremendous history in it though. Greenwood Cemetery does.
Voice: Which part is the VanZandt?
VH: Down where you were.
Voice: Where Isaac is buried?
VH: Yes. It's this way and this way - right at that corner. But I think now that's it just all a part of it.
LP: I know you've done a lot of writing. We saw a couple of your books. What else did you do - have you done in your life? I understand you were a banker?
VH: Yes. I ended up being a banker.
LP: Teacher.
VH: Sir?
LP: A teacher...
VH: Yes, I was more than that.
LP: Okay.
VH: When I.....I had several relationships with the school. I left the first time because I had been promised - this is Hackney
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not generally known - the principalship of the Marshall High School. I'd been told that. By the new superintendent coming in.
And when he came in, lo and behold, he never did contact me and then suddenly it started getting out to me that a a fellow named Dick Denard was going to be the new principal. So I decided that under such circumstances I just couldn't do what I wanted to do - or feel the way I wanted to feel, so I retired from school teaching.
And Mr. Joe Wiseman, Joe Wiseman and Company Store that marked with the growth of this town invited me to come into the bookkeeping department. And those were the days when a hundred and five dollars or six dollars were a lot money. He offered me a whale of a salary, I think it was a hundred and eight dollars.
And so I went to work there. And then after about three or four years, Dick Denard came to me and offered me to come back as a teacher. Well, by that time I decided that maybe teaching wasn't so bad. I wasn't really a bookkeeper. So I accepted - went back as a teacher.
And I remember Mr. Hirsch said, "What did they offer you? " I was making a hundred and twenty-five. I said, "He offered me a hundred and sixteen."
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2 - 45 MINUTES.
SIDE 2 - CONTINUED.Hackney
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LP: You said Wiseman....
VH: Offered me the job and when I accepted the job back to school, he said, "How much did he offer you?" And I told him and he said, "You mean he offered less than I'm paying you?" I said - he said, "My God, you must want to get away. (laughter)
So I went back to school and taught and was then offered a junior high school principalship. I accepted that and then while I was going on there, the - they offered me a job in a bank, which was Mary's family's - not their bank but they were deeply involved in it - they offered me a position in the bank. And I went in the bank, as an officer in the bank, and I stayed there for a number of years until the school lost it's high school principal and they got in touch with me and asked me if I'd take the high school principal's job.
So I went back to the high school - took over the high school principalship.
LP: The same high school that...
VH: The same high school. This is all the same thing. And finally ended up by being a superintendent of schools. And then Mary's brother died, who was on the board at the bank and I was a member of a - they made me a member of the board representing the family. And that was it.
LP: When do you have time to do all this writing? When did that start?Hackney
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VH: Oh, that was back in l939. Remember I said I started collecting .....
Voice: When you went back into the bank....
VH: Well, yeah, when I was in the bank. It was mostly done when I was in the bank. But I've been collecting materials and playing with ideas - writing children's stories for my children mostly that I - enough for a book for children's stories - adventures for our children that I would tell each night. And then I had to write a - our youngest daughter I wrote a separate series of adventures for her because she said she didn't want to be in adventures that they were in Baylor in, she wanted to be in her own adventures. So I wrote her - adventures stories for her. And we have all of those - they just want 'em.
LP: When are you going to get them published?
VH: There's too much to that. Too many problems to make it worth it and then I don't think they're that good. I just don't - they're good enough for our children and good enough to where they wanted me to have copies made for them.
MH: I'd love to read them.
LP: If they're for children - a lot of children are looking to read them.
VH: Well, they're interesting stories to me. But they're not interesting, I think, to a lot of people.
Not enough to where you could make any money. What did you say?Hackney
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And then I've written some other stories and poems. I've got enough poems to write - I might have those published.
LP: You've seen enough, then, that you can tell the various changes in the town of Marshall.
VH: Well, Marshall is an amazing town. They have had terrible blows to their economy. I mean blows that would have just - blown you away; blown the town away. And they've always managed to come back.
And it has been tragic to see the town fight so hard to move ahead and to have these things come up. Like the disappearance of the shops. This was a railroad town and I mean it was a big railroad town. At one time they had 3,000 people working down here. And when the checks would come in on weekends, or whenever it was they came in, the town was busy with the colored checks that the railroads issued to their employees.
It was good money for the Blacks. They made their best money down there. It was good money for the Whites. And then they had a fight - a union fight that I don't think they ever got over and the Texas Pacific had written a contract with our lawyers to - that would protect Marshall from the Texas Pacific ever leaving. This was a central point. But the union - the T and P officers and their legal staff found a loophole in it and they started taking the - moving the shops away until finally there's nothing down there much except grass.Hackney
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LP: You mean the maintenance shops?
VH: Well, all maintenance shops, and the roundhouse and everything.
LP: Everything.
VH: The main office moved to Dallas, to Palestine, to different places. That was one of the biggest blows of this town and it was terrible.
Then they've had the Thycol and the Monsanto and they'd close down and they'd open up. There'd be a big rush of maybe a couple of thousand people out there for a war and then they'd shut it down and we'd collapse again. Then we had such places as the White Globe Charcoal and Solberger Engineering and - they would fold up.
Blue Buckle over all, just one after another.. And each one of them were major employers. And each time Marshall had to absorb the loss of those people's money.
But they always managed to come back. During the height of the depression the banks of Marshall, while the government forced them to close down for a few days, they were in a position to where they could have stayed open the whole time. They just...
LP: They were that stable.
VH: They were stable. Very strong and stable. And this town, if it hadn't been strong and stable with the licks that it has had it wouldn't have been here.
And even the size it is now, we're fighting the to hold Hackney
30
on with the people we have. But, so we're changing the picture of the operation of the town, from a - as I see it now, from an industrial town which we've tried to make it into - had an airport and built a beautiful airport spot and industry all around - they're still looking for industry. But I think that we're changing into a historical tourist operation. Now not the same way that Jefferson is because Marshall can't keep up with Jefferson, what's going on over there. They are - Jefferson was just a town of - it's a historical town and the people there have got the run on the tourists business and they have everything over there, it looks like, that will keep them going. They were dying and had been dying but they are now moving along beautifully. I think they've about 20-some odd antique shops over there.
Antique shops and how they manage to stay open - do you? At any rate, why, this is gradually turning into something else.
They've got Shreveport over here. We've got Longview
and Tyler and Dallas. Dallas comes up here. We've got big
areas of population close by. And this town is finally recognizing that maybe their future lies, not in bringing in those big industries and having the shockwaves hit them but to build something into the commuunity that they can maintain and offer to the public and that will draw the public here, whether they have the industry or not. Hackney
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That doesn't mean that they don't want the big industry or one industry, but that's why this lady is so valuable. She really - they found ....
LP: You've got a big tourist attraction in that pottery thing.
VH: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. That's right. But that won't hold them. You can't just say, "We've got a pottery plant." That's one thing.
This town is turning. Now it's just starting to turn. And she has offered the kind of leadership that's gonna take. Because she's offered leadership before and made some moves and did some things that were not - was not possible.
They built the library down there. Who would have thought we could have built a lovely library we did. She was the one that did it. She rolled up her sleeves and did it.
And this is the kind of person she is. Well, that's the kind of leadership we have to have. It doesn't have to be a man leadership. It has to be true, dedicated leadership. And this lady has it.
So is her husband over there. They work beautifully together.
LP: You've had quite a few big names come out of Marshall.
VH: Yes. Right. We've had some outstanding, and some of the not so outstanding, but, you know.
LP: Well, you always have the good and the bad. (laughter)
VH: For instance, they've got one - a nuclear physicist up Hackney
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there. And by the same time we have one fellow that won the - bird calling, it wasn't bird calling, but a duck calling contest of the United States. He was a champion duck caller. And he's up on there as names of distinction. And his daddy has been a tremendous force in this community.
LP: Is that ....
VH: I'm talking about Mr. Carroll over there. His daddy has never been given the recognition that he should have been given for the work that he did in helping this community move. He was on the Civic Commission. I don't know how long - how long was he on?
Voice: l4 years.
VH: l4 years. And whatever it was, Mr. Carroll - whatever was good for Marshall, whatever it was that would help Marshall, Mr. Carroll was right there. He's now reaching the point where he just can't move but he's a lovely man.
And the Jewish people in this community, one of the great losses for this community was when most of the Jewish people moved to Dallas and Ft. Worth and to Longview and only a few Jewish people were left. And they are, as you know, about the - wherever you find Jewish people in any number, you'll find the town prospering.
And maybe that's one reason we haven't done so well. (laughter)
LP: I was going to say - to ask - is there any reason for the Hackney
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migration, or is it ....
VH: Well, I think the call of expanding business like Mr. Marcus, Neiman-Marcus and Mr. Carroll or - any one of the ones up here had Carroll Store - Yeah, right close to Sangers.
Voice: Dreyfus.
VH: Dreyfus? Any number of people. At any rate, are there any questions you'd like to ask?
LP: No.
VH: You mean I've done you in! (laughter)
LP: No. No. You're just doing fine. We want to thank you for sharing this - ideas and thoughts and remembrances with us.
I was just wondering if you'd like to wrap it up with any kind of a statement.
VH: Well, I'm glad I moved here. The Lord moved me here and the Lord's kept me here and I think the Lord will take me from here. And it's a wonderful place.
LP: I want to thank you very, very much. Thank you again. (applause)
THE INTERVIEW WAS CONCLUDED AT 8:20.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2, ABOUT l0 MINUTES.