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Texas House Speakers Oral History Project
In November 2003, in cooperation with Speaker Tom Craddick and his wife, Mrs. Nadine Craddick, the Center for American History launched "A Speaker from Its Own Members: A Project Documenting the History of the Speakers of the Texas House of Representatives." From its inception to April 2005, Center for American History historians Dr. Patrick Cox and Dr. Michael Phillips interviewed Speaker Tom Craddick and nine former Texas House Speakers: Reuben Senterfitt, Jim T. Lindsey, James "Jimmy" Turman, Ben Barnes, Gus Mutscher, Rayford Price, Bill Clayton, Gibson D. "Gib" Lewis, and Pete Laney.
Speaker Tom Craddick.
Nadine Craddick, wife of the current Speaker, was interviewed on videotape for this series as she takes visitors through their residence in the Texas State Capitol.
Other interview subjects included Jan Tunnell, wife of the late former House Speaker Byron Tunnell, and Dr. David Carr, son of the later former House Speaker and state Attorney General Waggoner Carr, as part of this series. Also, Representative Bill Bass provided information on the late Speaker Marion Price Daniel Jr. Additional interviews were conducted with Nelda Laney, wife of Speaker Pete Laney, veteran members of the state legislature, the Capitol press corps and the Capitol and Texas House staff. In addition, the Center for American History is collecting a comprehensive archive of documents and artifacts related to the office. Finally, additional research into the history of the Speaker's official residence, located within the Texas Capitol, was initiated.
The Speaker of the Texas House, along with the governor and the lieutenant governor, ranks among the three most powerful officeholders in Texas politics, yet Speakers in the Texas House have enjoyed relatively limited visibility. Few Texans are fully aware of the office's significance. As documented in these interviews, the powers of Texas House Speakers expanded greatly following the expansion of the Texas economy in the aftermath of World War II. In this time, Speakers began to shape the state's budget and its tax policies and to impact the quality of Texas public schools and universities.
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Title: The Speakers Residence
by The Center for American History
The era covered by the project, from 1951 to the present, marks a particularly dramatic time in Texas history. In this era, Speakers reacted to the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the subsequent desegregation of Texas public schools. Speakers responded to the rise of the space industry and other modern technologies that transformed the economy of Texas. Speakers dealt with the state's explosive population growth following World War II even as they coped with a more complex economy and a rising demand for government services in education, transportation and health care. Speakers rose and fell with the rising fortunes of conservative and liberal factions within the Texas Democratic Party and with the ascendancy of the state Republican Party, culminating in the GOP's eventual capture of the state government in the 2000 elections. They also struggled with the Sharpstown political scandal, subsequent attempts to limit the power of the speaker's office, the failed effort to rewrite the state Constitution in the 1970s, and a dramatic, quorum-breaking walkout from dissenting lawmakers who objected to a congressional redistricting bill in 2002.
The manuscripts of the collected oral histories are available to the public in the Center's Research & Collections Division. Readers will learn not only how modern Texas evolved beginning in the mid-twentieth century, but also the motives, reactions, celebrations, regrets, and fears of those most involved in the state's tumultuous political upheavals in the last half century.