A Pictorial History of the Texas Tech Seal

On February 10, 1923, Texas Governor Pat M. Neff signed Senate Bill No. 103 to establish Texas Technological College.  The first day of classes didn’t begin until October 1, 1925, so in the interim William Ward Watkin designed Texas Tech’s first university seal.  It contains several symbols: the lamp, which represents “school,” the key for “home,” the book for “church,” and the star for “state.”  Cotton bolls represent the area’s strong cotton industry and the eagle is suggestive of the United States.  The seal first appeared on Tech diplomas in 1948, but it wasn’t approved officially as “The” Seal of Texas Tech University until 1953.

In the late 1920s, prior to the adoption and widespread use of the Texas Tech Seal as the official academic logo of the university, administrators and students used a few unofficial logos. The two images above were found within the scrapbooks of Lucile Davis, who attended Texas Tech from 1925-1927.

A variation of the State of Texas logo was reconfigured for use by early TTC administrators. The first one was featured on a red school pennant (above), found glued into one of Davis’ scrapbooks.  The second one, done in leather and ink (also above), graces the cover of another scrapbook.

The Semicentennial Commemoration Seal was designed by Jerry D. Kelly, Manager of the Publications Bureau of Tech Information Services.  The five pentagon blocks each represent a decade, and frame the Lone Star of Texas in the center.  Texas Tech’s colors are black and red, so in this version of the seal black represented past decades, while red represented the current one.  According to a 1972 issue of Tech’s student newspaper, the University Daily, the sum of the blocks represented the foundation on which the university would build its future.

Since April 1972, the seal rests beside an elongated fountain in the Amon G. Carter Plaza at Tech’s official main entrance at the intersection of Broadway and University.  The twelve-foot-tall, 37,500-pound red granite seal, along with the Will Rogers Statue, are now the top two sites for taking individual and group portraits on the main TTU campus.  It gets particularly crowded in the month leading up to graduation.

 

 

Fall into Diversity: An Exhibit of our University Archives

This fall, our University Archives has created “Fall into Diversity: My Story,” an exhibit showcasing individuals involved with Texas Tech University whose stories were chronicled among our many, many oral histories. In their words:

“Everyone has a story to share, a perspective that helps better round out the history of a person, place or thing. For 60 years, the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library has conducted oral history interviews as a way of preserving people’s memories and views on a vast variety of subjects. ‘Oral history is both the oldest type of historical inquiry, predating the written word, and one of the most modern, initiated with tape recorders in the 1940s and now using 21st-century digital technologies,’ states the Oral History Association. As of 2016, the Southwest Collection has conducted over 6,500 interviews, recorded through a number of methods as technology has evolved. Many of these interviews feature Texas Tech-related faculty and alumni. This exhibit showcases a small sampling of the diverse interviews done over the past two decades.”

 

Stella Ruth Courtney Crockett (pictured above) was born on October 4, 1943, in Lubbock, Texas, and attended Dunbar High School. In the summer of 1961, after learning that Texas Tech would integrate, she was among a very small group of African Americans who decided to attend. Despite being accepted into the Texas Tech marching band, Stella found it a difficult task to be among the first to break a long-held barrier. For example, she enrolled in another section of a class because the first instructor used disparaging language toward her. Support from her family, church, and community helped her stay on course and she pointed to her mother’s encouraging words of “sticking it out” as a motivator. “It’s my right to be here. I deserve an education and I’m going to get it,” she recalled in her March 3, 2010, interview.

From the 2nd grade, Stella wanted to be a teacher. In May of 1965 she earned her bachelor’s degree and thus became the first African American to attend Lubbock schools from K-12, attend all undergraduate years at Texas Tech, and successfully graduate. Stella retired in June 2009 after 43 years of teaching.

Anita Carmona Harrison was born on February 17, 1944, in Lubbock. Following a tour of the Texas Technological College campus with her second grade teacher, Mrs. Billie Everton, Anita decided she wanted to attend and started a piggy bank fund. In the fall of 1963 she enrolled at Texas Tech. Of her college years she fondly recalls “meeting people from diverse backgrounds,” hanging out with friends in the SUB, and being taught once again by Dr. Everton, who had become a professor at Texas Tech.

In 1967 she graduated with a bachelor’s degree, went on to teach bilingual kindergarten classes and, in 1969, helped develop Lubbock ISD’s first Curriculum Guide for Bilingual Kindergarten. She continued to teach elementary school while raising two daughters and, in 1999, she retired from LISD after almost 30 years from public teaching.

Anita is recognized as the first Lubbock-born Latina to attend Lubbock schools from K-12, attend all undergraduate years at Texas Tech, and successfully graduate. She grew up in a very tight-knit family and has proudly shared stories of her childhood, family, and community in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and Latino Lubbock magazine. Her oral history interview was conducted on December 8, 2009.

Bernard A. Harris, Jr., was born on June 26, 1956. From ages 7 to 15 he lived with his mother on a Navajo Indian Reservation where she worked as a teacher. “She told me I could do anything,” he recalled in a 1995 University Daily interview, and it was under her positive influence that he dreamed he could reach the stars. “I knew I wanted to be an astronaut when I first saw human beings land on the moon.”

Bernard received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Houston in 1978 and his medical degree from Texas Tech School of Medicine in 1982. His residency at the Mayo Clinic was completed in 1985, after which he worked with NASA where he completed a research fellowship in 1987 and training as a flight surgeon in 1988. On February 3, 1995, Bernard also became the first African American to walk in space.

After his stint as a scientist and flight surgeon with NASA, he went on to serve as a professor of medicine at several Texas universities, and on the Board of Regents at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center. In his December 15, 1998, oral history interview Bernard expressed that he wanted to be known as a visionary or a dreamer.

Gary Stewart Elbow was born on November 15, 1938. He received his bachelor’s degree from Oregon State College in 1960 and his master’s degree from the University of Oregon. He came to Texas Tech in 1970 as an assistant geosciences professor and later earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburg in 1972.

In his many administrative and teaching roles over the course of 45 years at Texas Tech, Gary observed firsthand the changes the university underwent, most notably the battle over tenure and academic freedom when Texas Tech was censured by AAUP. He also saw the founding of an Honors College, where Gary continues to teach. He has held every position in the Faculty Senate and has worked for many years as a Marshall at graduation ceremonies.

In his June, 20, 2010, oral history interview, Gary reminisced about the university’s changing role under former President Grover Murray in the 1960s and 70s. “So this was an exciting place. Things were really hopping, and the idea at the time was that we were going to become more than just a regional university.” Without a doubt, Gary is one of the individuals who contributed to Texas Tech becoming a Tier One institution.

James C. Watkins was born on May 28, 1951. In a November 20, 2009, interview he shared how his grandmother and mother encouraged his artistic development by allowing him to use old calendars as drawing pads, and supported him taking “Draw Me” art correspondence courses. James continued his education by receiving his B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute and his M.F.A. from Indiana University. He taught at Indiana University and Hampton University before coming to Texas Tech in 1983 as an assistant professor of architecture.

For over 30 years he has specialized in ceramics, particularly in the use of raku. He is a co-author of two books, Alternative Kilns & Firing Techniques and Architectural Delineation, Presentation Techniques and Projects, and is the subject of a third book, A Meditation of Fire: The Art of James C. Watkins. In 2005 he became a Fulbright Scholar, and his contributions to the field of art were recognized at Texas Tech in 2006 with his promotion to the esteemed rank of Horn Professor. Examples of his work reside in the White House Collection of American Crafts, the Shigaraki Institute of Ceramic Studies in Japan, the Texas Tech University Public Art Collection, and have also been part of two different Smithsonian exhibits.

Lauro Fred Cavazos was born on January 4, 1927, on the King Ranch. He earned his B.A. and M.A. at Texas Tech University and a Ph.D. from Iowa State University. Lauro taught at the Medical College of Virginia and at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, where he was also Dean from 1975 to 1980, before returning to Texas Tech in 1980 to become its tenth president. He is the first Hispanic and first graduate of the university to hold the title of president.

A recognized expert in both the field of medicine and the field of education, Lauro’s accolades were numerous. Most prominently, on September 20, 1988, he was unanimously confirmed as Secretary of Education, making him the first Hispanic to serve in the U.S. Cabinet. He continued in that position until December of 1990.  The TTU Board of Regents bestowed an honorary degree upon him in 2016.

Cavazos grew up attending segregated schools and was the child of a ranch foreman. In his January 25, 1991, interview Lauro discussed why it was important for Mexican American families to teach their children English and prepare them for school.

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Those interested in the exhibit, “Fall into Diversity: My Story” are welcome to visit it from fall until spring at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library’s Coronelli Rotunda.

You Never Know What You’ll Find…

Each of the thousands of collections housed at the SWC contains its share of unique material, but some are so bizarrely diverse that they deserve a closer look. Take for example the recently-processed Earnest Langley Papers. Earnest Lee Langley, Jr., was born in 1920, which set him up not only to attend Texas Technological College during the 1930s, but also to enlist in the Army following the United States’ entry into World War II. After the war, Earnest graduated from the University of Texas School of Law and subsequently built a prominent West Texas law career. As a result, we have stacks of day books and appoint books, legal documents, and correspondence related to his law practice. But we also have an alarmingly sharp World War II era bayonet!

Depicted in the photo above, this item was found among boxes full of more mundane material. Needless to say, we were surprised (and inordinately excited) to discover it. The blade has since been inventoried among the many other artifacts in his collection…many of which seem equally out of place. For example, several boxes were full of Campfire Girls booklets, pamphlets, uniforms, and t-shirts. Most prominent among the items was this charter incorporating the Hereford Council of Campfire Girls. What did all this have to do with Ernest Langley? Had we confused this with another collection (note: we have never done that.) It was time for research! It turned out that after Langley moved to Hereford, Texas, his wife became an active supporter and leader of the Camp Fire Girls and was integral to their presence in that region. Mystery solved.

In retrospect, maybe the Campfire Girls items weren’t really that odd, but the three linear feet of stamps that we found produced a lot of head-scratching. There were thousands upon thousands of stamps, some loose, some attached, and some cut off of envelopes. In a typical collection you might find evidence of a hobby or two that a person enjoyed, but three boxes packed full of postage is pretty rare. Earnest Langley: philologist!

Finally, we found a simple and unadorned jewelry box. Its piles of lapel pins, most of them Army rank insignias, jived with what we knew about him. Some pins were difficult to identify…until we pulled out the Shriner’s fez (not pictured, sadly) that had been tucked below the jewelry box. A quick survey of his other materials unearthed a box full of papers about his membership in the Masons! Masonic materials are always fascinating, and would probably make for some good reading for interested researchers. Also, the fez is cool (although nobody tried it on, we promise.)

So, after sorting this stuff out, we now knew that Earnest Lee Langley, Jr.: stashed weaponry; helped establish some Panhandle Campfire Girls; loved stamps; and spent his free time practicing Freemasonry. Not pictured are the awards he received from over a dozen state and national law organizations, documentation of his efforts to found a local Methodist Church, and scrapbooks full of wine labels. Oh, and according to a plaque we found, he was also Hereford Citizen of the Year in 1969.

The Earnest Langley Papers were a fun one with which to work. There are other eccentric collections in our stacks as well, and if you’re interested in tracking some down then don’t hesitate to contact our Reference Department.

Women Who Shaped Texas Tech: 2015 Edition!

Last March we told you about our Women’s History Month exhibit, “The Women Who Shaped Texas Tech,” celebrating several women whose influence on Texas Tech University is still felt today. The exhibit has received several new additions for 2015 who we’d like to share with you!

The first of this year’s celebrated women is Lucille Graves (above.) 40 years ago she sat down with one of our oral historians for an oral history interview to share her story as the first African American student at Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University.) Having already received her bachelor’s degree in 1961, Graves tried to attend Texas Tech to receive her masters. Yet she was repeatedly refused entrance on the grounds that its charter stipulated that the university was established for white students only. With the help of the NAACP, she confronted the university and was at last admitted after a phone call from Texas Tech President R. C. Goodwin himself. Soon Tech saw a peaceful, non-violent integration of the traditionally white college. Graves was also the founder of Mary and Mac, the first black private school in Lubbock, Texas, in 1955. She chose the name of her school after the children’s nursery rhyme on the reasoning that “This poem depicts the act of boys and girls in their desire to become useful in this society.”

Faye Bumpass is also featured in the exhibit. She received her bachelor’s (1932) and master’s (1934) from Texas Technological College, then went on to teach Latin and Spanish in Texas high schools until 1941, serve as a visiting instructor in Spanish during the summer at Texas Tech, travel to Latin America to teach Latin and English as a second language (primarily in Lima Peru,) and acquire a Doctor of Letters (1948) from San Marcos University. Returning to Texas Tech in 1957, she became an assistant professor in both English and Foreign Languages, wrote several textbooks on bilingual education, and testified before Congress in May 1967 about bilingual education. In 1969, she became one of two women to acquire the Horn Professorship, TTU’s highest faculty rank and one previously held only by male professors.

Another Shaper of Texas Tech, Mary Jeanne van Appledorn, studied both piano and theory at the University of Rochester’s prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where each year she was awarded the George Eastman Honorary Scholarship, and in 1948 received her Bachelor of Music with Distinction in piano. She subsequently received her Master of Music Degree (Theory) from Eastman in 1950 and accepted a position at Texas Technological College that fall. She earned a Ph.D. (music) from Eastman in 1966 while teaching at Tech courses ranging from undergraduate music theory to graduate composition courses. Her list of chairmanships, composition commissions, and other honors are too many to list here. Suffice to say that in 1989 she received TTU’s prestigious Horn Professorship. Dr. van Appledorn held the distinction of being one of the longest serving faculty members at Tech (58 years!), and her papers are held in our University Archives.Mina Marie Wolf attended the newly established Texas Technological College where she received her B.A. in chemistry in 1932. While in graduate school at the University of Texas, she was discouraged from pursuing a career as a chemist by a faculty member due to the difficulty of finding jobs in that field for a female. So she returned to Texas Tech in 1935 to get her M.S. in Foods and Nutrition, and, after a brief stint away from Lubbock, she returned to TTU in 1940 to serve as associate professor in the foods and nutrition department of Home Economics, picking up her Ph.D. in Nutrition and chemistry from Columbia University (1942) along the way. Mina married Arch Lamb in 1941, and together the couple left a lasting impression on Texas Tech through their support for the college and its students. Dr. Lamb was a member of numerous professional and local campus organizations, taught Red Cross nutrition and canteen courses during World War II, and also served on the Lubbock Food Ration Board. TTU honored her as a Piper Professor for her teaching and work with undergraduate students, and just before her retirement she donated $10,000 towards a new laboratory for assessment of nutritional status in humans. Yet in an interview in 1990, she stated that her proudest accomplishment was establishing the federally funded Women, Infants and Children (WIC) supplemental food program at the Lubbock Children’s Health Clinic where she had volunteered for 18 years.

Ophelia Powell-Malone is our final Woman Who Shaped Texas Tech. She holds a unique place in Texas Tech history as the first African American to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. After transferring from Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, to attend Texas Tech shortly after the college integrated, she became a home economics major. Receiving her degree in 1964, Malone went on to become a teacher in New Mexico, then a dietitian at Langston University and at nursing homes in Lubbock and Houston. Mentor Tech chose Powell-Malone as one of two trailblazing individuals to honor in the naming of their program, which was established in 2002.

If you’re curious about the archival collections of these women, or of those honored last year, why don’t you give our helpful Reference Staff a call? They’d be happy to help you out!

by B. Lynn Whitfield, University Archivist

Texas Tech University: Then and Now

(SWC HC-E168) (Texas Tech University)

This Wednesday, January 15th, Texas Tech University (TTU) will be opening its doors for the first class day of the 2014 Spring semester. The Texas Tech University Archives (UA) here at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library is full of items commemorating such events as well as other TTU occasions. Photographs comprise a large portion of their materials; so many, in fact, that UA staff were able to curate an exhibit entitled Texas Tech: Then and Now, which is now on display in the SWC’s Formby Room. Many of its sports-related photographs for this exhibit can also be seen near the main entrance of the United Spirit Arena.

The image above are included in the exhibit. To the left we see former President Dossie Wiggins accepting TTU’s iconic Will Rogers statue in 1950. A gift from the Amon G. Carter Foundation, the statue (actually entitled Riding into the Sunset) is often wrapped in red for sporting events such as the TTU football homecoming game.

(SWC HC-C2502) (Texas Tech University)

In 1924, the Texas Technological College (the  name was changed to Texas Tech University in 1969) Administration Building (left) was a lonely sight on the South Plains prairie. That is not the case any longer. As you can see from the photograph on the right (taken from the English and Philosophy building located almost a half-mile southwest of Administration), the campus has expanded into dozens of buildings amounting to the second largest contiguous university campus (1,843 acres) in the United States. The almost uniform use of Spanish Renaissance architecture is one of its highlights.

(SWC HC E355) (Texas Tech University)

What would modern university life be like without sports? Definitely less entertaining for many students on Saturdays during the fall. TTU’s football team is now known as the Red Raiders, but from 1925 to 1936 they were known as the Matadors. The photograph on the left shows the first Matador touchdown in 1925, scored against Montezuma College. The field of play has changed a little bit since then, as the photo of the 60,000-spectator-capacity AT&T stadium shows.

(SWC HC-P343)

Photos and documentation about buildings and statues aren’t the only thing the University Archives preserves. Faculty records are important as, as the participants in the first-ever faculty meeting at TTU, pictured above, would no doubt have agreed. They met for the first time on September 15, 1925, to discuss the purposes of the college and make plans for the upcoming year. Although in 1925 TTU clearly wasn’t swarming with faculty members, it currently boasts over 1,100.

(HC- U185.6 Box#2 F11)

Computers factor heavily into the academic life of today’s university. The TTU Library alone currently owns and maintains more than 200 computers for student, faculty, and public use. The university has for decades striven for similar accessibility. Want proof? Check out this photo of students several decades ago enjoying then-state-of-the-art computing technology.

(La Ventana 1926)

Let’s end with a little bit more about sports. This is a photo of Texas Technological College’s men’s basketball team in 1926. At that time, games were played in the Agricultural Pavilion because the campus did not yet have a gym. Ransom Walker, the first captain of both the basketball team and the football team, is seated at center holding the ball. Walker was also the first Matador to play in a post-season all-star football game (the 1929 East-West Shrine Game) and as a running back was the team’s top offensive player in 1927 and 1928.

The Texas Tech Then & Now exhibit will be on display indefinitely at the SWC, and the images in the United Spirit Arena will be up at least through the spring semester. Both are open for free to all interested visitors. Our University Archives has many other items, all of which our Reference Staff are always thrilled to help you find.

–  by Amy Mire, Lynn Whitfield, & Robert Weaver