The Fightin' Fourteenth
columnist: Jim Dallas

Topic: Ron Paul
The Fourteenth District of Texas: A History (Part I)

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As chance would have it, Texas history began on the first Tuesday in November in an even-numbered year. And it began in what is today the Fourteenth Congressional District.

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by Jim Dallas
(Liberal)
Friday, December 7, 2007

This is the first in a series of background columns on the Fourteenth District and on the 2008 Congressional Race. 

November 6, 1528 started as a fairly typical day for the residents of the Upper Texas Coast. To be sure, it was rainy and cool, but the Karankawa Indians who inhabited the Coast during the cooler months of the year were used to these conditions. For thousands of years, the Karankawas fished and hunted, ate and drank, were born and were buried, in seasonal camps built on barrier island ridges.

But that chilly Tuesday morning brought something new to Texas - Europeans. About 90 lost and starving Spaniards, led by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, beached their rafts on the Texas Coast that day. All but a few of these explorers - who had left Europe a year earlier with visions of gold and conquest - perished from hunger and disease that winter, despite the Karankawas' hospitality (ironically, this tribe would later earn a reputation for cannibalism). Cabeza de Vaca called he lived on for several years "Isla Malhado," or "Island of Misfortune."

Today, "Malhado" is called Galveston Island (although a few scholars have argued that Cabeza de Vaca may have come ashore near Surfside). And although the marketing has gotten better over the years, the Galveston area -- now part of the Texas Fourteenth Congressional District -- has had its share of misfortunes over the years. In the last 500 years, the Galveston area has been assaulted by pirates, hurricanes (including the Great Storm of 1900, the worst natural disaster in American history), industrial disasters, Nazi U-boats, Confederate "cotton-clads", the mob, developers, bikers, and tourists from every corner of the globe.

Dan Rather and the French also resided in what is today the Fourteenth District.

But the District has also played host to more momentous occasions in history. Much of the District was part of Stephen F. Austin's original colony. Gail Borden invented condensed milk here. And the Institution of Slavery in America met its final demise when federal troops landed in Galveston on June 19, 1865 (an event now celebrated throughout America as "Juneteenth").

Although politically a part of the conservative South (the region voted overwhelmingly for Secession), what is now the Fourteenth District has a unique political background. in the late Nineteenth Century, the Populists and Republicans had some influence in the area, and the efforts of early bi-racial and black politicians like John B. Raynor and Norris Wright Cuney added nuance to the racial politics of the region. During much of the Twentieth Century, the area was represented by liberal Democrats, such as Bob Casey, Bob Gammage, and Jack Brooks.

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2007 Jim Dallas, all rights reserved.
Published: Friday, December 7, 2007
Last modified: Friday, December 7, 2007

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