Short Cuts: Episode I 
Cities
Not Black and White
Has Marshall changed much in the fifteen years since Bill Moyers’ documentary about it aired on PBS? Yes and no.
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At least five of the people Moyers interviewed have since died, including Inez Hughes, and with them died their particular memories and outlook. The citizens who have moved to town since then came from many locations both in and out of the state. Some of them sought refuge there from the urban melee; some started businesses or entered the education system. And a younger generation of natives has grown up to assume its own part in the civic picture. “New people are coming in and making a significant impact on what is happening here,” says Pat Smith, the former superintendent of schools. “All kinds of people are concerned with the benefit of the town, with revitalizing it, preserving the past, but protecting the future. And the power base is more diversified as a result. Marshall is much more global now.”
When Moyers’ film was made, Marshall had already had a black mayor, postmaster, county commissioner, president of the county medical society, and assistant superintendent of schools; black tellers worked in the banks and black salespeople were employed in stores that had previously hired only whites. Since then the number of blacks in influential positions has continued to increase, and the offices they have held include president of the chamber of commerce, president of the League of Women Voters, chair of the Friends of the Library, and member of the City Commission. These outward signs are encouraging. Yet do they signify deep change in the social fabric?
Dr. R. L. Hall thinks not. “In the words of an Italian aristocrat in The Leopard, Lampedusa’s novel about the Sicilian peasant uprising, ‘In order to keep things the way they’ve always been, much is going to have to change,’” he says. “That’s just what has happened.” Dr. Hall, a black professor of sociology at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, was born and raised in Marshall and returns there about once a year. “There’s a difference between titular or proximate power and real power,” he says. His opinion is echoed by Jerry Stallworth, the owner of the local Buick-Pontiac-GMC-Toyota dealership, who moved to Marshall from Fort Worth in 1980 and became the chamber of commerce’s first black president. “There is very little socializing between the races here,” Stallworth says. “You can go to the ball game and talk, but afterward you all go home to your own little niche. We don’t even attend each other’s churches, except for special occasions. The kids don’t really mix except in the area of sports. Then they might get noticed. In elementary school the kids all play together and don’t make many distinctions between the color of their skins. But once they reach junior high, all that changes.”
The fact that his dealership serves the whole community of Marshall, and not just one segment, is unusual. “There are very few black-owned businesses in town,” he says. “Not one real restaurant. A couple of hamburger or barbecue take-out joints. Barbershops. Maybe one grocery. Four funeral homes that have been there taking care of the black community for a long time. That’s just about all.” When asked why this is the case, Stallworth says, “The kids grow up, go to college, get degrees, find out there aren’t any opportunities for them here in town, and leave.”
One venue where their opportunities might prove limited, if they stayed, is the country club. Marshall’s private Lakeside Country Club has a nine-hole golf course that is rated among the top ten in the state. It also seems to have an unwritten policy excluding blacks as members or golfers. While president of the chamber of commerce, Jerry Stallworth took steps to apply for membership in the club. He was sponsored by two members and was asked to pay a $600 application fee. He says that a poll was then taken among the club members, with 65 percent of them saying they would accept him and 35 percent saying they wouldn’t—because they couldn’t be sure who he might bring to play. According to one club insider, the club’s position is that Stallworth never applied. Stallworth says he decided not to pay the fee because his sponsors advised him that he would be put on a waiting list indefinitely. A couple of years later, Stallworth, an avid golfer, once again considered applying. This time he was told that the club would grant him an associate membership, meaning that he could do anything there—dine, for example—except play golf. “It burned and aggravated me,” he says. When asked about this incident, another club insider who didn’t want to be named told me that he had no personal knowledge of it. He said that the club does not discriminate, but confirmed that it has no black members.
Roy L. Edwards, a former assistant superintendent of schools and the first black person to hold that position, says that in the years since 1984 there has been a tremendous social change in the black community itself, and not necessarily for the better. “Young people are forgetting their roots, especially among the African Americans,” he says. “They care and know less about their history [than young people used to].” He concurs with Jerry Stallworth’s pessimism: “The young are more career-minded, and as soon as they graduate from college, they take their skills to the metropolitan centers. And among the ones who stay, gangs have been a presence since the late eighties.”
The biggest and most unexpected change in Marshall, however, has been the advent of a whole new culture. Fifteen years ago this was a typical old Southern city of two main communities: black and white. A few other ethnic groups lived there, but only in small numbers: Italian families from the turn of the century and earlier, for example, and the remnants of a community of Jewish merchants who had long prospered there but whose descendants began to leave in the forties in search of economic opportunities. Today Marshall is following the rest of Texas, from Corsicana to Lubbock to Dallas, in adopting Mexican Americans as its third major demographic cohort.
An accurate census has yet to be taken, but of a 1998 school enrollment of 6,380 children, 492 are Hispanic. Father Ron Diegel estimates that four hundred people regularly attend the special twice-weekly Spanish-language mass at the Catholic church each week. The First Baptist Church and the Church of Christ both have busy Spanish ministries. There is a new Mexican American—owned restaurant, and a supermarket caters specifically to Hispanic tastes. The literacy and English-as-a-second-language programs are well attended by Hispanic adults, many of whom are parents wishing to keep up with their children’s progress. “Hispanic parents are very involved in their children’s education,” says Carla Huffman, the coordinator of special populations and testing for the Marshall Independent School District. “When there are parent-teacher meetings, both parents will always be there.” The hospitals, police station, and banks all have access to translators to accommodate the new residents, who supply skilled labor to several industries in town, including the thirteen potteries that manufacture ceramics from Marshall’s famous clay. Hispanics there, as elsewhere, also work at more menial employment. The town seems to have few reservations about its newest citizens. As Gail Beil notes, “There’s more respect for the Hispanics as a community than there ever was for the black folks when they filled those same hard, labor-intensive jobs that the Hispanics do now.”
The newcomers have yet to find a full voice in the civic or the county government, partly because they are so new. But presumably that will change too, as much has already changed in Marshall. Surely the town that Bill Moyers suggested was a microcosm will not choose to turn itself into three distinct entities—Marshall, Texas; Marshall, Texas; Marshall, Texas—but will keep on adapting alongside the rest of us on our walk through the twenty-first century.
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