Battle of the Brazos: A Texas Football Rivalry, a Riot, and a Murder [1 ed.] 9781623496623, 9781623496616

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Battle of the Brazos

SWAIM-PAUP SPORTS SERIES Sponsored by James C. ’74 & Debra Parchman Swaim and T. Edgar ’74 & Nancy Paup

Battle

OF THE BRAZOS A Texas Football Rivalry, a Riot, and a Murder

T. G. Webb Foreword by John A. Adams Jr.

Texas A&M University Press  |  College Station

Copyright © 2018 by Timothy Garrett Webb All rights reserved First edition

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). Binding materials have been chosen for durability. Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Webb, T.G., 1974– author. | Adams, John A., Jr., 1951– writer of foreword. Title: Battle of the Brazos: a Texas football rivalry, a riot, and a murder / T. G. Webb. Description: First edition. | College Station: Texas A&M University Press, [2018] | Series: Swaim-Paup sports series | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018006358 (print) | LCCN 2018013534 (ebook) | ISBN 9781623496623 (ebook) | ISBN 9781623496616 | ISBN 9781623496616 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Battle of the Brazos (Football game)—History—20th century. | Sessums, Charles Milos, 1902–1926—Death and burial. | Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas—Football—History—20th century. | Baylor University—Football—History—20th century. | Riots—Texas—Waco—History—20th century. | Southwest Intercollegiate Athletic Conference—History—20th century. | Sports rivalries—Texas—History—20th century. | Waco (Tex.)—History—20th century. Classification: LCC GV957.B37 (ebook) | LCC GV957.B37 W43 2018 (print) | DDC 796.332/6309764—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006358

For Charlie Now your name will always live...

Contents

Foreword, by John A. Adams Jr.

ix

Acknowledgments xi Introduction: The Battle of the Brazos

1

Part I. The Rivalry

5



Chapter 1. The Most Tragic Event

7



Chapter 2. Brazos Bottom

12



Chapter 3. Friendly Enemies

24



Chapter 4. A Perfect Day

43

Part II. The Riot

59



Chapter 5. All Hades Broke Loose

61



Chapter 6. Hard for Wisdom to Find Its Way

74



Chapter 7. Through!

91



Chapter 8. There Shall Be No Regrets

97

Part III. The Murder

105



Chapter 9. The Baylor Incident

107



Chapter 10. “The City with a Soul”

116



Chapter 11. “He Is Just Away”

126

Epilogue: Taps

135

Appendix A. Announcement of the Cancellation of Athletic Contracts

between the A&M College of Texas and Baylor University

137

Appendix B. A Letter from Samuel Palmer Brooks to the Parents

of Charlie Sessums

139

Appendix C. Account of Charles M. Sessums’ Death following A&M-­

Baylor Football Game, October 30, 1926, and the Later



Death of His Assailant

Notes

141 145

Bibliography 161 Index A gallery of photographs follows page 83.

viii  |  C O N T E NTS 

165

Foreword

In the long span of history there are events and incidents that have escaped factual notice. Either due to the passage of time or lack of solid facts, such occurrences are generally unreported or misreported. When misreported, oftentimes the circumstances are misrepresented, embellished, or simply fabricated. The events surrounding the Texas A&M–Baylor football riot of October 1926 are a case in point. In the days prior to the Aggie-Bear gridiron game in the old Southwest Conference, the media’s comments on that incident often included speculation. As time passed, many accounts became anecdotal, bordering on misinformation. Numerous legends replaced fact. For example, the legend that the Corps of Cadets commandeered a northbound Houston and Texas Central train, loaded it with cannons, and went to Waco to exact justice—and were halted in the process by the Texas Rangers—demonstrates one such instance in which frontier lore has ignored solid facts. The venerable Texas Aggie Richard “Buck” Weirus ’42 was fond of reminding me with a smile, regarding the numerous unsubstantiated Aggie stories from the past, “On this history stuff, when the legend becomes fact—print the fact!” As T. G. Webb notes in this fine account of the events surrounding the A&M-Baylor halftime riot of 1926, no such train was loaded, yet the legend persisted. And no such tale should distract from the facts and seriousness of the incident. Thus, for the first time in more than nine decades, we now have the most detailed accounting of the tragedy in Waco, and the aftermath of the incident is analyzed in detail. The success of this presentation is due in large part to the persistent research of the author, hallmarked by his discovery of the primary investigative reports from 1926 by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. These detailed documents, along with a substantial examination of the events preceding the altercation, chronicle the death of senior Texas A&M cadet Charles Sessums from an injury inflicted during the halftime riot. Webb thus provides a sobering reflection on

how rivalries, petty incidents, and passions, if left unchecked, can lead to tragic ends. Tim Webb has stuck to the facts. Years of speculation and legend on this incident can now at last be put to rest. —John A. Adams Jr. ’73 College Station, Texas October 5, 2017

x  |  FO R E WOR D 

Acknowledgments

I first learned of the 1926 Cotton Palace riot in Waco as I was entering Baylor’s old Floyd Casey Stadium on November 15, 2008, for the annual Battle of the Brazos game. The Baylor student selling game day programs asked if I would like to purchase a copy. After I politely declined, he made the offhand remark, “I hope we kill an Aggie today like we did before.” I asked him what he meant, and he asked me if I knew about “the time an Aggie was killed at a football game in Waco.” I had attended and graduated from Baylor in the mid-1990s, and never once in my four years had I heard about such an incident. When I pressed him for details, it was obvious he knew nothing more about the story than I did. That evening after the game I did a quick internet search, and within seconds I found a story about the 1926 Cotton Palace riot. I also learned for the first time that the name of the Aggie “killed at a football game in Waco” was Charles Milo Sessums. A year passed before I began my research in earnest, but I knew immediately this was a story that needed to be researched and told. I would like to thank several individuals who have helped bring this book to completion. First and foremost, I would like to thank my first “editor,” my mother, Karen Webb, for her support throughout the research and writing process. Together we traveled to libraries in Tyler, Galveston, Waco, Dallas, Fort Worth, and College Station tracking down sources to ensure no stone was left unturned in this story. Thank you, Mom, for letting me tell you this story at least a hundred times as I worked through the vast sources and details I uncovered in my research. Thank you also for being the first person to review my manuscript and for providing your critical feedback. Your encouragement gave me the confidence to submit the book for publication. Thank you to Sharon Sessums for your encouragement and enthusiasm for this project. We may have connected late in the process, but I am very glad we did. I hope you find this story to be a fitting tribute to your great-uncle Charlie. And thank you for your permission to donate copies of the Pinkerton detective’s notes to the archives at both Texas A&M and Baylor.

I would also like to thank Kevin Sherrington of the Dallas Morning News, who has long been interested in the story of the Cotton Palace riot and cadet Sessums’s death. Kevin was the first person to publicly reveal the existence of Pinkerton detective Benedict’s private investigation notes in an article in the fall of 2011. Thank you, Kevin, for sharing with me your copies of the Pinkerton investigation notes and your desire to uncover the true story of Charlie Sessums’s death. I hope you find this book and its revelations to be most satisfying. Thank you to the wonderful staffs at the Texas Collection at Baylor University and at the Cushing Library at Texas A&M University. A special thanks to Amie Oliver and Geoff Hunt of the Texas Collection for your prompt answers to inquiries and your professional assistance. Thank you to Thom Lemmons, senior editor of the Texas A&M University Press, for seeing the need for this story to be told and for making this process so enjoyable and easy for a rookie author. Thank you to all of the Texas A&M University Press staff for helping make this book a reality. A special thanks to John Adams Jr., who has helped make this book better in several ways. Thank you for your insights on Texas A&M’s colorful and unique history and for directing me to additional sources for the book. Your feedback and enthusiasm for this story have been humbling and are appreciated more than you know. I can think of no more fitting introduction to this story, written and told by a Baylor Bear, than the eloquent foreword written by a true Texas Aggie. To you, sir, I say a most heartfelt, “Thank you.” Finally, I Corinthians 10:31 says, “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” I give the glory to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for giving me the opportunity to tell the world this story and for giving me the determination and patience to see this project through to completion. I have loved researching and writing this book, and I have tried to the best of my ability to present the unbiased truth. Should the reader find any satisfaction in these pages, the credit is not due the author.

xii  |  A C K N O W LE D GME NT S 

Battle of the Brazos

I NT ROD UC T I O N The Battle of the Brazos “Our goal is to defeat A&M. All other games are just steps to that goal. Keep that object in view.”1

More than anything else, those twenty words, proudly displayed in the athletic building at Baylor University in the 1920s, captured the essence of just how passionate the football rivalry between Baylor and Texas A&M had become. As the rivals prepared to meet again for their annual duel on October 30, 1926, the Baylor student newspaper unapologetically declared, “Rivalry of the bitterest taste exists between the two schools and the game this afternoon promises to be a hard fight, a thrilling battle all the way.”2 The battle on the field did not disappoint, but even after the game ended, emotions on both sides were still running high. The spirit of rivalry was so intense that several cadets from Texas A&M reportedly stole their school’s parade cannon, commandeered a train, and set out to level their rivals’ campus. Fortunately for everyone at Baylor, the cadets never made it to Waco. Several versions of the story exist, and while most agree on the basic plot, they disagree as to who should be credited with halting the planned attack. In one version, the college’s administration is said to have intervened and dissuaded the cadets from their plan, while other versions credit the state police, the National Guard, and the Texas Rangers for intercepting the train en route to Waco. In the end, the details don’t really matter, because as fantastic as the story may be, it’s almost certainly apocryphal. Despite its being included in Texas A&M’s official centennial history, there is no known contemporary account to corroborate the tale. But that does not mean the story doesn’t contain an element of truth. Whether a renegade band of Aggies with a cannon ever intended to exact revenge on their rivals in Waco or not, the cadets were seeing red following the 1926 football game against Baylor, and it had nothing to do with the final score. By the early 2000s the Texas A&M and Baylor rivalry was known as the Battle of the Brazos, but the name would have been a more fitting description for the terrible events at the Cotton Palace football stadium in Waco

on the afternoon of October 30, 1926. Thousands of spectators watched in stunned horror as one of the largest and most violent riots in the history of American intercollegiate athletics erupted on the football field between the students and supporters of Texas A&M and those of Baylor. Estimates placed the number involved in the fight in the hundreds, with Baylor students representing the vast majority of the participants. When it was over, no one could make sense of what had happened, and few could even explain what they had seen. The only detail not in dispute was that the morning after the riot, a student from Texas A&M died from an injury he had received in the fracas when he was struck in the head with what was later described as a piece of a wooden chair.3 What started as a terrible blemish on an old rivalry soon escalated into a war of accusations and recriminations, and in the cacophony of blame that ensued between the two sides, the loudest cries of all were those of “murder!” The family of the victim, his fellow cadets, and even the administration at Texas A&M all claimed the young man had been murdered and demanded an investigation be conducted to find the killer. While theories abounded about who might have been responsible for the young man’s death, the local authorities never made an arrest, and the killer was never brought to justice. Shortly after the riot, Texas A&M president Thomas O. Walton remarked that there were so many rumors about what had occurred at the Cotton Palace that he doubted whether the truth would ever be known. The passions of the moment eventually receded, and when cooler heads once more prevailed, the consensus on both sides was that it was best if everyone just forgot about the terrible day and moved on. Two years after the riot, Baylor University president Samuel Palmer Brooks received a letter from a small South Texas town asking him to settle a local dispute over what had occurred at the Texas A&M game in 1926. Brooks truthfully replied that he had not been on hand to witness the incident, and therefore his knowledge was only secondhand. He respectfully declined to get involved. In the end, Walton’s observation proved to be prescient. More than ninety years later there are still unanswered questions about what happened that October afternoon.4 The story of the Cotton Palace riot is a sad tale of a good rivalry gone bad, of boys and young men provoked to the point of violence over a petty prank, and of a promising young life cut short. But there is much more to the story that has never been told. While no one was ever held accountable for the death of the A&M student, the identity of his killer was openly 2  |  I N T R O DU C TI ON 

discussed in Waco in the days and weeks after the fight. Some people suggested the killer was the son of a prominent family in Waco, and others even hinted at a cover-up to keep the suspect out of trouble. Supporters of Texas A&M employed a detective from the famed Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency to investigate the incident and bring the killer to justice. The investigation ultimately proved to be unsuccessful, yet the detective’s private notes contain clues to the killer’s possible identity and reveal just how close the investigation might have come to uncovering the truth. Today it is hard to imagine that a college rivalry could deteriorate to the point that hundreds of educated young men could collectively lose their minds, take up weapons such as wooden clubs and chairs, and wield them on their peers with deadly force. The riot, and the ferocity with which it was carried on, can only be understood within the broader context of the Texas A&M–Baylor rivalry at the time. In a span of only a decade, from 1916 to 1926, the series between the two schools went from being a local contest between rivals on the friendliest of terms to one of the most sought-after football tickets of the entire season. The Cotton Palace riot laid bare deep animosities between the cadets of Texas A&M and the students of Baylor that had begun to develop as the annual game grew in popularity. The afternoon of October 30, 1926, became the climactic moment in an increasingly intense rivalry that had been escalating toward a violent conclusion for several years. For decades echoes of the riot and whispers of a murder haunted the rivalry between Texas A&M and Baylor. At last, this book explains the Cotton Palace riot, including its causes and aftermath, and reveals the untold story of the murder of a Texas A&M cadet and the search for his killer.

TH E B AT T LE O F T HE B R AZ O S  |  3

PART I The Rivalry

CH A PT ER 1 The Most Tragic Event

For two wonderful weeks every autumn from 1910 to 1930, the population of Waco swelled by tens of thousands of people as the central Texas city hosted the annual Texas Cotton Palace Exposition. Billed by its promoters as “the Greatest Show of All” and “the South’s Most Unique Exposition,” the Cotton Palace drew crowds from far and wide to its many spectacles and delights.1 By the 1920s, each fall tens of thousands of people filed through the Cotton Palace turnstiles, attracted by the fair’s offer of something for every taste. But among its many thrills and amusements, the biggest attraction of all was the weekend of the fall football classic between the hometown Baylor Bears and their fiercest rivals, the Aggies of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. By 1926 the fall football classic between the Bears and the Aggies was more popular than ever and had become one of the top sports rivalries in the state of Texas. As the rivalry rapidly ascended in popularity, it unfortunately witnessed an equally rapid deterioration of relations between the opposing student bodies. Riots were narrowly averted following both the 1922 and 1924 contests, the only two games in recent memory when Baylor had triumphed over Texas A&M.2 Despite the warning signs of trouble in those years, the prospect of violence was the last thing on most people’s mind as fans poured into Waco by the thousands for the big game on the final weekend of October. Adding to the already festive spirit of the occasion, the year 1926 marked the third consecutive season Baylor had designated the weekend of its game with Texas A&M as homecoming for its students and alumni. The city’s hoteliers must have been pleased when the Baylor faithful began arriving in town several days before the actual game, all but ensuring that a large, supportive crowd of Baylor fans would help fill the Cotton Palace stadium come the day of the gridiron duel. When the day of the big game finally arrived, the gate receipts showed just how big a draw the rivalry had become. A total of 80,714 people filed through the gates at the Cotton Palace fairgrounds on October 30, 1926, nearly doubling the city’s population and marking one of the largest crowds ever in the exposition’s history.3

At least 18,000 of the revelers squeezed into the football stadium that had been built in the infield of the exposition grounds horse racing track and settled in for one of the premier battles in all of the Southwest. As expected, the crowd was decidedly partisan in favor of the hometown Baylor Bears, but that does not mean the Aggies were not without their supporters. In addition to thousands of supporters in the bleachers, nearly four hundred members of the school’s Corps of Cadets had arrived on the morning train from College Station to cheer on their beloved Aggie eleven. As the game began, both sides anticipated a hard-fought contest on the field, but no one was prepared for the halftime show. As a carload of Baylor coeds paraded in front of the Texas A&M cheering section during a halftime performance, a couple of Aggie cadets ran onto the field and attempted to commandeer the vehicle. In the flash of an eye the previously peaceful afternoon erupted into chaos as hundreds of students from both schools rushed onto the field and clashed in a free-forall riot. Ten terrible minutes passed before school officials and the Waco police brought the fight to an end. It was about noon the following day, Sunday, October 31, when Dr. Samuel Palmer Brooks stepped off the train in downtown Waco and into the middle of the firestorm that had erupted in his absence. Brooks, the president of Baylor University, had been on a tour of out-of-state conferences and had missed his school’s homecoming celebrations, including the always highly anticipated football game. Awaiting his arrival at the downtown train station were two other Baylor officials, including the thirty-three-year-old dean of the university, W. S. Allen. Dean Allen had attended the game the previous afternoon and had been in charge of Baylor’s response to the halftime incident in Brooks’s absence. After being briefed on the current state of affairs arising from Saturday’s riot, Brooks prepared for his first task since returning to town; the parents of an A&M cadet injured in the riot were expected to arrive from Dallas at any minute, and it was now Brooks’s responsibility to meet them. Alexander and Jemima Sessums, more commonly known as A. B. and Mamie, likely knew little more about the events that had transpired in Waco than what had been reported in their hometown newspaper that morning. The Sunday edition of the Dallas Morning News had printed a full-length account of the gridiron action from the previous afternoon, but the story only made a brief reference to the halftime riot. Under a small subheading titled “Dallas Boy Injured,” the newspaper reported, “Between halves, while a car containing about a dozen Baylor girls were staging a 8  |  C H A P T E R 1 

demonstration in front of the Aggie rooting section, a free-for-all fight developed between Baylor and A&M students. A score or more students were injured. One cadet, Charles Sessums of Dallas, was hit over the head with a chair and he was still unconscious in a local hospital at a late hour Saturday night.”4 Charlie, as the cadet was affectionately known by his friends and family, was the fourth child of A. B. and Mamie Sessums. The Sessumses were proud parents of five children. Brothers George and Joseph were the oldest, followed by an only daughter, Grace. Charlie had come along next before the youngest, Harry, had completed the family. The two youngest boys appear to have been very close. Despite a difference in age of more than two years, Charlie and Harry entered the freshman class at Texas A&M together in the fall of 1922, where they proudly wore the uniform of the Corps of Cadets and where both later served in the corps’s Battery B, field artillery battalion. The young men shared a strong physical resemblance even for brothers, which may explain Harry’s nickname of “Twins” in his senior yearbook at A&M. The boys spent the summer before their senior year working together for the Texas State Highway Department assisting the resident engineer in completing field surveys for maps. In the fall of 1926, they returned to A&M for their final year with an anticipated double graduation in the spring of 1927.5 On the morning of October 31, 1926, A. B. and Mamie climbed aboard the interurban electric train in downtown Dallas and settled in for the nearly three-hour ride to Waco. Today the ninety miles between Dallas and Waco can be covered in almost half the time, but in the mid-1920s, prior to the modern highway system and America’s love affair with the automobile, the railroad was still the preferred method of long-distance travel. The Texas Electric Railway Company operated the largest electric rail system west of the Mississippi River, boasting over two hundred miles of track connecting towns and cities from as far north as Sherman, Texas, near the Oklahoma border, all the way south to Waco. The burgeoning city of Dallas was the main hub, with spur lines running west to Fort Worth and Cleburne and southeast to the small county seat of Corsicana. The main line ran due south from Dallas through numerous small towns and farming communities to the line’s southernmost terminal in Waco.6 The Sessumses most likely had fond memories of Waco. A. B. had worked there for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, also known as the Katy, for several years in the 1890s, and the young couple had wed in the city in 1894. As their family grew, the Sessumses took detours through Oklahoma and New Mexico before finally settling in A. B.’s hometown of T HE MO S T T R AG IC E VE N T  |  9

Dallas. The already sprawling city had long been home to A. B.’s family. According to records from the time, his father, John, ran an established general contracting firm in the city called J. R. Sessums and Son. The son in the firm was A. B.’s older brother, William. After years of making his own way with his new bride and young family through various economic pursuits, A. B. finally decided to settle down and join his father and brother in the construction business as a carpenter in the early 1920s.7 The year 1926 had been a good year for the Sessums family. Demonstrating their improving fortunes, A. B. and Mamie had moved from a charming cottage-style home on the corner of Morningside Drive and Greenville Avenue into a new, larger, two-story brick home on Oram Street northeast of the city’s downtown district. The two oldest boys, no longer living at home, were working steady jobs, while daughter Grace, who moved with her parents to their new home, was embarking on what would prove to be a successful lifelong career in the Dallas real estate industry. With the two youngest sons expected to graduate from Texas A&M in the spring of 1927, there was much to be happy about in the Sessums home in the fall of 1926. As the gently swaying red and tan car of the Texas Electric Railway Company eased into the downtown Waco station on the corner of 4th Street and Washington Avenue, a small group anxiously awaiting its arrival gathered on the platform. Among the assembled group were some of Charlie’s classmates, who had remained overnight in Waco to keep a watchful vigil over their wounded friend. Also gathered on the station platform were three representatives from Baylor University, including President Brooks and Dean Allen. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon when the weary couple stepped down from the train and their lives changed forever. Samuel Palmer Brooks had never met the Sessumses prior to the introduction on the interurban platform that day, but the unenviable duty fell to him to inform the couple that tragically they had arrived too late. Their son Charlie had passed away at 9:00 that morning.8 Texas A&M president T. O. Walton later described the halftime riot and the death of Cadet Sessums as “the most tragic event that has ever overtaken our institution.”9 As heartrending as the loss of a fellow cadet must have been on the College Station campus of Texas A&M, the loss was personal and devastating for the Sessums family. Instead of taking their son home to Dallas to recover, A. B. and Mamie Sessums prepared to take him home for burial. 10  |  C H A P T E R 1 

Before returning to Dallas that evening, A. B. viewed the body of the cadet at a local funeral home and confirmed that the slain youth was indeed his son. The death certificate listed the cause of death simply as “fracture of [the] skull inflicted by party or parties unknown.”10 The accuracy of that statement would later be called into question, but whether through conspiracy or simple unwillingness on the behalf of the officials of the city of Waco and Baylor, the killer’s identity remained elusive. As tragic as the riot and the death of Cadet Sessums might have been, it was soon all but forgotten on both the Baylor and Texas A&M campuses, as both sides silently agreed it was best to move beyond the tragedy. But in the modest two-story brick house on Oram Street in Dallas, the Sessums family never got over the untimely and senseless death of their son and brother. His memory and the sting of his death were kept alive first by his father, then by his sister, Grace, and finally by a nephew, born after his passing, who bore his name. Following the death of Charlie Sessums, officials at both schools now had even larger concerns on their minds, first and foremost of which was the threat of further outbursts of violence between their student bodies. As Presidents Brooks and Walton sought the wisest path forward, they must have wondered how the rivalry had taken such a violent turn. The truth is, if anyone had been watching more closely the previous ten years, they would have seen the storm clouds gathering.

THE MO S T T R AG IC E VE N T  |  11

CH A P T E R 2 Brazos Bottom

A few miles northwest of the tiny West Texas town of Rule, the currents of the Salt Fork and Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River meet and combine to form the longest river in Texas. From its headwaters high upon the Llano Estacado along the Texas–New Mexico border to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico two miles south of Freeport, the Brazos River twists and turns through the heart of Texas for more than one thousand miles. To navigate its entire course would take you on a tour of most of the geographical regions of the vast state. The Brazos River features prominently in the history of Texas, particularly in the story of its early years. Spanish explorers gave the stream its name, but exactly who and when is not exactly clear, as multiple legends exist as to how the name came to be. The Brazos is the river Native Americans most likely called Tokonohono, but legend says early Spanish explorers called it Los Brazos de Dios, meaning “the arms of God.” While the legends of the origins of its name vary in detail, most attribute the name to an expression of gratitude from thirsty Spanish explorers who were saved when they came upon the river’s lifesaving waters.1 In October 1823, while Texas was still a part of Mexico, Stephen F. Austin chose a location on the west bank of the Brazos as the site of San Felipe de Austin, the unofficial capital of his new colony. Thirteen years later Texas declared its independence from Mexico and became an independent nation at the small village of Washington-on-the-Brazos, also located on the banks of the river. The capital of Texas moved multiple times during the following decade and twice was located on the Brazos, first in the town of Columbia for three months starting in late 1836 and later for a second time at Washington-on-the-Brazos. The river even provided the setting for an early naval battle. A year after Texas gained its independence from Mexico, the Texan navy lost an engagement against Mexican naval forces at the former town of Velasco (now Surfside) in an incident known as the Battle of the Brazos River. In the antebellum era, the rich, fertile soil along the river gave rise to some of Texas’s earliest fortunes as many of its

wealthiest citizens established cotton and sugar plantations along its banks and built some of the finest homes in the state. With such a vibrant and notable role in the early history of Texas, it is only fitting that two of the state’s most prominent universities arose on the banks of the Brazos River. They represent the first public university established in Texas as well as the state’s oldest university.2 Baylor University is not only the oldest university in the state of Texas, it is older than the state of Texas, with a history stretching back to the time when Texas was an independent republic. Education was a chief concern among the settlers and leaders of the Republic of Texas, as demonstrated by the fact that the Texas Congress chartered fifteen institutions of higher education during the republic’s ten-year existence. Of the fifteen, Baylor University is the only one that survived the republic with its original charter.3 While Baylor exists today as a legacy to the visionary men and women who helped found the state, the dream of a public university in Texas is even older than Baylor. The oldest public university in the Lone Star State is not the state university in Austin. Although the University of Texas existed on paper as early as 1858, it did not officially open until 1883, a full seven years after the first public institution of higher education in Texas welcomed its first students. That institution was the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, known today as Texas A&M University.4 The road to public higher education in Texas proved to be a long and winding path that required decades of patience and persistence from the state’s leaders just to maintain and keep the vision alive. Mirabeau Lamar, the second president of the Republic of Texas, first proposed the idea for a public university in 1839, only three years after Texas had wrested its independence from Mexico. The Texas Congress responded and expanded upon Lamar’s proposal by setting aside land for the benefit of two future universities.5 However, as a result of a perpetual shortage of government funds during the republic years, neither of the universities ever materialized. After Texas was admitted to the United States as the twenty-eighth state in the union in 1845, another thirteen years passed before the proposal for a public university was resurrected by the state’s representatives. In 1858 the Texas legislature, following in the footsteps of the Texas national congress nearly two decades earlier, passed a law creating the University of Texas, but before the plans could be put into motion, the Civil War intervened, and once again the hope for a public university was deferred to a B R AZ O S B O T T O M  |  13

future generation. The funds the legislature had earmarked in 1858 for the future state university were redirected for frontier defense and later for the state’s operating expenses during the Civil War.6 After the South surrendered and the war ended, Texas, like all her southern sisters, was economically depressed and bankrupt. Once again, the state simply could not afford to move forward with the proposed university. In a twist of ironic fate, it was actually the passage of a US statute, enacted in July 1862 during the early months of the Civil War, that finally made public higher education a reality in Texas. The statute was the Morrill Land-Grant College Act of 1862, and it provided for the endowment of land-grant colleges by authorizing an allocation of federal land grants to each state in the union. The states that applied for and received the grants could in turn sell the property to raise the funds necessary to finance the operations of a public college. Under these arrangements the states would own and manage the colleges, but the federal law came with the stipulation that a particular curriculum was to be followed. Specifically, the Morrill Act called for the colleges created under its provisions to emphasize the study of the “agricultural and mechanic arts.”7 The concept of “A&M” colleges had been born. After the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865, the terms of the Morrill Act were extended to the states of the former rebellion. In November 1866 the Texas legislature passed a resolution accepting the law’s provisions and thereby became eligible to receive a grant of federal property. Once again, though, the Texas legislature moved slowly and nearly missed the deadline for implementing the provisions of the act. In 1866 the US Congress had set a deadline for states to implement the provisions of the Morrill Act by July 23, 1871, or return any revenue from the sale of the land grants to the federal government. On April 17, 1871, with barely three months to spare, the Texas legislature finally chartered the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas as a branch of the yet to be established University of Texas. Despite the arrangement on paper, in reality the college operated as an independent entity right from the start. In April 1871 it looked as though Mirabeau Lamar’s vision was about to become a reality; no one could have predicted it at the time, but another five and one-half long years lay ahead before the doors of the new college opened and the first students enrolled in classes.8 The dream of generations of Texans was finally realized on October 4, 1876, when the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas welcomed its first six students to its humble campus set atop a remote, windswept prai14  |  C H A P T E R 2 

rie. The nearest town to the college was the city of Bryan, located four miles to the north along the Houston and Texas Central Railway. The leaders of the city of Bryan had aggressively lobbied the legislature to host the state’s first public college, and while the city was most likely selected as a result of the hard work of its city fathers, for years the legend persisted that the location had actually been settled by a poker game in Houston. Whether through the industriousness of the city’s leaders or a good poker hand, Bryan won the bid and donated 2,416 acres for the new college on “the highest summit of the region.” Perhaps on account of the school’s remote location, a post office was granted to the college only four months after the first students arrived on campus and was officially designated as College Station. Today College Station is a city in its own right and larger than its nearby neighbor Bryan. As for the humble agricultural and mechanical college on the remote Texas prairie, by the end of the first term in June 1877 enrollment had increased to 106. Texas A&M was on its way.9 It had taken nearly four decades, and at least three false starts, but Mirabeau Lamar’s vision was finally achieved, and the citizens of Texas could at long last take pride in a school they could call their own. Texas A&M University bears little resemblance to the frontier college founded on that remote prairie, but many of its wonderful traditions from its earliest years live on in the spirit of Aggieland. In addition to stipulating an emphasis on “the agricultural and mechanic arts,” the Morrill Act also required each land grant college to teach “military tactics”—a practical idea, considering the law was passed because of a shortage of trained military officers in the heat of the bloodiest war in the nation’s history.10 Today the act’s pragmatic ideal lives on in the oldest of the many great traditions of Texas A&M University, the Corps of Cadets. The university still retains the A&M in its name as a recognition of its heritage, but the letters no longer have any official meaning.11 When the school officially changed its name to Texas A&M University in 1963, it began an amazing era of expansion, transforming itself from the formerly rural, all-male military college into a nationally acclaimed coeducational university with a mission and vision far beyond the limits envisioned in the Morrill Act. The same year Mirabeau Lamar proposed that Texas should have a university to call its own, a former Alabama congressman arrived in Texas to begin a new life. The gentleman was a lawyer by trade and a Baptist preacher by divine calling, but forever his name is linked with academic excellence in the state of Texas. The lawyer-preacher was Robert Emmett Bledsoe Baylor. B R AZ O S B O T T O M  |  15

Baylor quickly became a leading figure in Texas politics, first winning election to the bench of the third judicial district in 1841 and later serving on the Texas Supreme Court.12 In 1845 he was elected as a county delegate to the constitutional convention charged with writing a new constitution for the soon-to-be twenty-eighth state. Judge Baylor served the citizens of his new home faithfully during an impressive legal career spanning twenty-three years, but he is best remembered for his contribution to the cause of education in his adopted state. On October 8, 1840, a small group of Baptists met and formed the Union Baptist Association, the first Baptist organization in Texas. The association consisted of only three churches with a combined membership of forty-five, but among the tiny band of believers was a group of men of noble stature and grand vision. Judge Baylor was among the founding members and was promptly appointed the association’s corresponding secretary. A year later, at the gathering’s second annual meeting, Baylor made the recommendation that a Baptist school should be established in Texas. His motion carried, and the fledgling Union Baptist Association established the Texas Baptist Education Society and tasked the society’s members to found an academic institution that could provide both academic and theological preparation for young men who were called to the gospel ministry.13 Judge Baylor insisted that the idea for a Baptist school actually had first been suggested to him by William Milton Tryon, a fellow minister and member of the Union Baptist Association. When the society selected a name for the new university, Baylor suggested that the school should be named in Tryon’s honor. Tryon University was destined not to be, though, as Tryon demurred and instead inserted Baylor’s name into the university’s proposed charter. On February 1, 1845, the Congress of the Republic of Texas, assembled in Washington-on-the-Brazos, approved the Texas Baptist Education Society’s charter, and President Anson Jones, the last president of the republic, signed the act into law. The new school was officially styled as Baylor University. Before the end of the year the Republic of Texas ceased to be a sovereign nation, and the new state of Texas joined the constellation of states in the American union. The Republic of Texas was gone, but Baylor University was just beginning.14 Despite the society’s aims that the new university should educate young men called to preach the gospel, Baylor University welcomed both male and female students from its inception, becoming only the second coeducational university in the United States and the first west of the Mississippi River. The first students arrived on the humble campus on May 16, 1846, 16  |  C H A P T E R 2 

a meager class of only twenty-four youths. Success came early for the new Baptist university, though, and by the end of the year enrollment had increased to seventy pupils. Baylor’s future looked bright. While the university may have been the dream of Texas Baptists, the educational benefits of the university enriched the entire state, as Baylor nurtured and produced a more educated and refined citizenry. When the second president of Baylor University, Rufus C. Burleson, proposed to the school’s trustees an outline of his new administration’s policies in 1851, it seems only fitting that he included a proposal that the school’s motto should be “Pro ecclesia, pro Texana” (For church, for Texas).15 For almost forty years Baylor was located in the now all-but-forgotten village of Independence, Texas, located only thirteen miles and a few bends of the Brazos River from Washington-on-the-Brazos, the birthplace of the Republic of Texas. But by the 1880s the Texas state capital had moved permanently to Austin, and after the railroad bypassed both Independence and Washington-on-the-Brazos, the villages lost their influence to the more populated cities and towns in the growing state. In 1886 the Baptist General Convention of Texas voted to relocate Baylor University from its original home in Independence to the up-and-coming city of Waco. There, Texas Baptists already operated a university with the unassuming name of Waco University, so the two schools were consolidated to form a single entity.16 Less than a decade after Baylor’s arrival in Waco, a seismic change occurred on college campuses throughout the state of Texas and the entire Southwest. The older colleges in the northeast had already witnessed the advent of intercollegiate athletics, and by the last decade of the nineteenth century the fervor, or fever, for athletic competition arrived in Texas. As students across the nation started to form intramural teams and athletic associations, a clear favorite soon emerged among the various new sports. By far the most popular sport on any college campus near the dawn of the twentieth century was the exciting new game of football. Baseball may have been America’s pastime, but football was destined to become her obsession.17 The first intercollegiate football club in the Lone Star State was formed in 1893, with the honor falling to the University of Texas at Austin. The boys from Texas had to content themselves that first season with competing against athletic clubs from the cities of Dallas and San Antonio, as no other college team existed in the state. Varsity, the name of all of Texas’s athletic teams at the time, made a perfect sweep of their opponents in two B R AZ O S B O T T O M  |  17

games each against the football clubs and claimed a perfect 4–0 record. Unofficially minted as the “undisputed champions of the state” by the press, Varsity had to wait only a year before the lack of a fellow collegiate foe was rectified when the boys of A&M formed a team, and the rivalsto-be prepared to make Texas football history.18 While a football team from A&M competed in a game as early as 1893, Texas A&M considers its 1894 team to be its first official squad.19 Texas A&M played only two games in its inaugural football campaign in 1894; one represented the first Aggie win on the gridiron, while the other was a historic loss. The win came in a 14–6 decision over Galveston’s Ball High School. Texas A&M scheduled Ball High only one more time in its history, but its other opponent in 1894 became its most frequently played rival. In October 1894 the boys of the Agricultural and Mechanical College traveled to Austin to play the unbeaten eleven of the University of Texas. Varsity held all the advantages, as not only were they already tested on the field of competition, but also, making matters even worse for the A&M squad, Texas had home field advantage at Austin’s first Clark Field. The crowd on hand likely numbered only in the hundreds, but they were a fortunate few who witnessed history in the making. Not only were they on hand for the inaugural game of one of college football’s oldest and greatest intrastate rivalries, but they were also on hand to witness the first intercollegiate football game in the entire Southwest.20 Unfortunately for the outmanned A&M squad, the outcome wasn’t as memorable as the occasion. From the first snap to the final whistle, the outcome was never in doubt, as Varsity whipped the boys of A&M, later identified as “Bryan” in accounts of the game, by the score of 38–0. Seven decades later, Lou Maysel, the longtime sports editor of the Austin American Statesman, quipped that Varsity’s victory had been so crushing that A&M didn’t play another game for two years. Whatever the actual reason may have been, two years did pass before Texas A&M fielded another team, and when they did, once again the opponent was Ball High School. In the 1896 rematch, the Farmers, as A&M soon came to be known, did not fare as well as they had in 1894 and had to settle for a scoreless tie.21 Texas A&M’s first intercollegiate win came later in their second campaign in 1896 against Austin College of Sherman, Texas, in a 22–4 triumph. A final 28–0 win over Houston High School gave A&M a 2–0–1 mark in its second season, but the second victory was avenged in the following season opener when Houston High handed the Farmers their second all-time loss in a humiliating 10–0 final score.22 18  |  C H A P T E R 2 

While Texas and Texas A&M were making Texas football history on old Clark Field in Austin in the fall of 1894, the football fever that was sweeping the nation arrived on the Baylor campus in Waco. The Baptist school’s administration was less enthusiastic about the game than the student body. It viewed the sport with a leery eye, concerned that the violence of the game clashed with the school’s Christian character. Any immediate hopes of intercollegiate play at Baylor were quickly dashed when the school’s administration refused to permit the formation of a varsity squad, but the popularity of the sport took root anyway in the form of intramural competition. No formal facility existed on campus to host the sport, so teams of students competed in games held on the military drill field located on the banks of Waco Creek, which ran along the western edge of the campus.23 Eventually cracks in the administration’s resistance began to emerge, and the students won a small but significant victory in January 1898, when the administration relaxed its opposition and granted permission for the formation of an official athletic organization on campus. The organization was formed with the stated purpose of helping participants “become men among men,” but its unstated purpose was finally to bring intercollegiate sports, and especially football, to Baylor.24 Baylor was late to the game, so to speak, in terms of participating in intercollegiate play and forming a varsity football squad. At least five other colleges and universities in Texas were fielding organized varsity squads by the time Baylor’s administration relented and allowed the school’s first official team. After Texas and Texas A&M clashed in 1894 in the first intercollegiate football game in the state, Austin College in Sherman and AddRan University in Waco (renamed Texas Christian University in 1902), were next to form varsity squads in 1896. Simmons College in Abilene, known today as Hardin-Simmons University, fielded its first team a year later in 1897.25 Finally, in 1899 the Baylor administration gave its blessing to the sport of intercollegiate football, but a lingering hesitancy was still evident in a unique restriction placed upon the school’s first team. The administration allowed the newly formed Baylor football team to compete with other colleges with the stipulation that all of the games had to be played in Waco. The restriction could not last, at least not if Baylor was to assume a seat among the leading universities of the state not only in the classroom but on the field of athletic competition as well, so in 1900 the administration removed the restriction entirely, and Baylor opened its second football campaign on the road with an 11–0 victory over Austin College.26 B R AZ O S B O T T O M  |  19

The inefficiencies of long-distance travel at the dawn of the age of collegiate athletics aided in the rapid development of rivalries between schools within a close geographic proximity. Confined to competition mostly within a limited geography often resulted in matchups of the same opponents multiple times in a single season. With only ninety miles separating the campuses of Baylor University and the A&M College of Texas, it was all but inevitable that a rivalry would eventually develop; still, it took a couple of decades before the series evoked the strong emotions and passions typically associated with the spirit of rivalry. It all began in 1899. William McKinley was president of the United States of America, which at the time consisted of only forty-eight states. The horse and buggy and the locomotive were the most efficient means of transportation, as Henry Ford wouldn’t introduce his epoch-making Model T automobile for almost another decade. It was still four years before the Wright Brothers made the first manned flight at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, and there was no radio or television to entertain the masses. In many areas there were no phones. In 1899 many parts of rural Texas were still more than thirty years away from receiving the blessings of electricity. The game of football was still in its infancy, and it was a much different game from the one the modern fan knows and loves. A touchdown counted only five points instead of the familiar six, a team had to gain only five yards to pick up a first down instead of ten, and the forward pass, which has come to define the sport the way it is played today, was not even legal.27 The Baylor eleven were riding high, having already disposed of their first foe, the long since defunct and forgotten Toby’s Business College in Waco, with a 20–0 shutout, as they welcomed the cadets from A&M to their campus. Just as the teams from the University of Texas at the time were known simply as Varsity, neither A&M nor Baylor had yet adopted an official mascot. Texas A&M’s teams were known as the Farmers during the first couple of decades of the twentieth century before the name Aggies replaced it in popularity, but even after the cadets became known as Aggies, Aggies wasn’t officially adopted as the nickname of the student body until 1949. Baylor settled on the bear as its mascot much sooner, in 1914, but only after students selected that over the buffalo, eagle, and antelope, and the unfortunate choices of frog, ferret, and bookworm. Baylor was briefly referred to by the Waco press as the Bulldogs in 1899, but no mention of the nickname was made in reports of the game when they hosted A&M. The historic first game between the two soon-to-be rivals took place in Waco on Thursday, November 30, 1899. Baylor’s luck on the gridiron reversed from 20  |  C H A P TE R 2 

their victory over the hapless Toby’s Business College, as the cadets won handily, 33–0. That single victory marked the start of a 112-year tradition of rivalry.28 Of all the early football rivalries that developed in Texas at the close of the nineteenth century and in the early years of the twentieth, no rivalry featured two more dissimilar foes than that of Texas A&M and Baylor. Texas A&M was a public college; Baylor was a private university. Texas A&M emphasized the “military arts” and boasted a proud Corps of Cadets; Baylor was a church school run by Texas Baptists who had originally founded it to prepare young men for service in the gospel ministry. A&M was proudly an all-male institution; Baylor was coeducational. Texas A&M was rural and remote, situated outside the small town of Bryan; Baylor was located in Waco, one of the state’s leading cities of the time. The Brazos brothers appeared to be natural rivals.29 Dave Campbell, the dean of Texas sportswriters, was first introduced to the rivalry in the late 1930s when he was a student at Baylor, and he recalled that the rivalry was known in those days as Brazos Bottom, named so for the fertile lands along the river’s path between the two campuses.30 The nickname eventually faded, and it was only in recent years that the rivalry was given the name the Battle of the Brazos. For most of the series’s long history it was good enough that Aggies wanted to beat Bears and Bears wanted to beat Aggies. Who needed a fancy name when you had one of the best rivalries in the state? The rivalry was not always confined to the football field, either. Well into the 1960s Texas A&M still boasted an all-male student body, and with Baylor being the nearest university with a coed population, the belles at the Baptist school became objects of competition as well as a point of contention. Legendary Baylor football coach Grant Teaff coached in the rivalry for a record twenty-one seasons and once noted how the coeds at Baylor had contributed to the intensity of the rivalry. “That’s another interesting thing about why the rivalry is so deep. There was a great deal of resentment from Baylor boys on campus because there weren’t any girls at A&M. The Aggies would come here and grab the Baylor beauties,” Teaff explained. Jim Dent recounted in his best-selling book The Junction Boys how the cadets logged many miles on Highway 6 between College Station and Waco, where they found that the Baylor girls showed a preference for the more “manly” Aggies. The boys of Baylor had long guarded the reputation of the young ladies on campus and took it as a matter of personal injury when their esteemed coeds preferred the company of Aggie cadets. No B R AZ O S B O T T O M  |  21

matter what may be said of a woman’s scorn, the wounded ego of a young man is not a matter to be taken lightly. The young men at Baylor could be overly protective of the ladies on campus at times, as demonstrated by a nearly calamitous event in late 1897.31 William Cowper Brann had made a name for himself by disparaging in print the social institutions he disdained. After relocating his one-man Iconoclast newspaper from Austin to Waco, he turned his scorn upon the Baptists at Baylor. The administration, students, and local supporters of the university silently suffered abuse at the tip of his pen for several years, but after he published particularly disparaging remarks about the women at Baylor, the male students decided they had finally had enough. A small group of young men from Baylor kidnapped Brann at gunpoint from downtown Waco and drove him to the Baylor campus, where a larger group of students was gathered. The angry mob appeared to mean business and went as far as threatening to hang him if he refused to sign a retraction of his article. Brann eventually relented and was released, but he was shot in the back on a downtown Waco street six months later by a Baylor supporter following another printed attack upon the university. Despite being wounded, Brann returned several shots at his assailant. Both men were mortally wounded and later died from their injuries.32 The Brann kidnapping was not the last time the Baylor men would rush to their coeds’ defense, and the next time tragedy would not be averted. One of the more playful and long-running disputes of the A&M-Baylor rivalry centered on former Texas governor Lawrence Sullivan Ross. Despite being elected to the Texas governor’s mansion twice, holding the highest office in the state was only one of the many accomplishments in Ross’s colorful life. Sul Ross, as he was known, was born in Bentonsport, Iowa, on September 27, 1838. In the following year his family relocated to Texas, where his father, Shapley Ross, soon became an early leading citizen in the newly founded city of Waco. In the great Texas wilderness Sul became a legend and earned enduring fame. His first brush with notoriety came in 1860 while fighting the native Comanche Indians on the Texas frontier. During the Battle of Pease River, Ross commanded a company of Texas Rangers that defeated the Comanche forces and recovered a white woman, Cynthia Ann Parker. When Parker was only nine years old, a band of Comanche warriors attacked her family’s settlement and killed five white settlers before kidnapping five others, including Cynthia Ann. The young girl was taken into captivity, where she lived among the Comanches for nearly a 22  |  C H A P TE R 2 

quarter of a century. The news of her rescue by Captain Ross and his company of Texas Rangers was a media sensation and made Ross a hero.33 Shortly after resigning his commission with the Texas Rangers, the Civil War began, and Ross enlisted in the Sixth Texas Cavalry of the Confederate Army. After enrolling as a private, he was quickly elected as an officer, and within two years he rose to the rank of brigadier general, serving as the commanding officer of the Sixth Texas Cavalry Brigade until the war’s end. After the Confederate States surrendered, Ross made a living as a farmer, then as a sheriff, a state senator, and finally, governor of Texas. After leaving the governor’s mansion, Ross was hired for the job for which Aggies would remember him most fondly. On January 20, 1891, Sul Ross became the president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas.34 Ross’s leadership and “sense of esprit de corps” is credited with the development of many of Texas A&M’s unique traditions during his eightyear-long administration. Without a doubt, his presidency cast a long shadow over the institution and helped forge A&M’s identity. He served as president of Texas A&M until his sudden and untimely passing at the age of fifty-nine after he contracted pneumonia following a hunting trip. In his honor the school erected a bronze statue of his likeness, which was allegedly painted green multiple times over the years during the week of the annual Brazos Bottom game. You see, Ross may have served as A&M’s president, but his family helped found the city of Waco. His father, Shapley Ross, built the first house there in 1849, operated the city’s first ferry across the Brazos River, and built Waco’s first hotel. After the former governor’s premature death in 1898, his body was taken back to Waco to be interred in the city’s Oakwood Cemetery. And before ol’ Sul was ever a Texas Ranger, governor of Texas, Confederate general, or president of A&M College, he had studied in his youth at Baylor University. Perhaps by painting his statue green, Baylor lads were simply reminding their Aggie peers that their old hero Sul was green and gold long before he was ever maroon and white.35 Less than two years after Ross’s death, Texas A&M and Baylor played their first football game ever, marking the start of a rivalry between his beloved A&M and the college of his youth. Something tells me Sul would have approved.

B R AZ O S B O T T O M  |  23

CH A PTE R 3 Friendly Enemies

As the 1924 college football season approached, Baylor president Samuel Palmer Brooks confessed in a letter to a journalist that his school’s rivalry with Texas A&M had “grown beyond our expectations.” That season the Baylor school newspaper heralded the Texas A&M–Baylor game as the “premier battle” of the Southwest Conference. But only eight years earlier, in 1916, as the longtime foes prepared to renew their series after a two-year hiatus, no one would have thought it possible that in less than a decade the Texas A&M–Baylor game would become the most anticipated in Texas.1 But it wasn’t journalistic hyperbole. By 1924, the game between the Texas A&M Aggies and the Baylor Bears was the most anticipated matchup of the entire Southwest Conference schedule. It didn’t seem to matter to the fans of either school that Texas A&M was almost always the victor and held a commanding series lead. Each year the crowds grew larger, the games grew more intense, the fans became even more boisterous, and, just as a thread slowly frays until one day it snaps, the animosity between the two student bodies and fans of both schools continued to deteriorate toward a breaking point. The rivalry was riding a wave of popularity by 1924, but for most of the series history that had not been the case. Before 1916 the series had been one-sided and sporadically contested and lacked the passion and spirit that are the marks of a true rivalry. That is not to say fans of both schools did not look forward to their teams playing each other, they just did not yet look upon the contest as the all-important event it would become by the middle of the 1920s. Following their first meeting in 1899, Baylor experienced little success on the football field against Texas A&M during the next two decades. After eighteen games in seventeen seasons from 1899 through 1915, the Fighting Farmers held a solid 13–3–2 advantage in the series. The year 1901 had been the high-water mark for Baylor in those early years. After Baylor lost the initial contest in 1899 by a score of 33–0, they did not play A&M again until 1901, when the teams met three times. Baylor claimed a 17–6 victory in the first game that year and then won the final meeting of the season

on Thanksgiving Day. That game could have been called the Thanksgiving Day Massacre, as Baylor stunned the cadets 47–0. More than a century later, the victory still stands as Baylor’s largest margin of victory over Texas A&M. It was also Baylor’s last victory over A&M for the next seven years. From 1902 to 1905 Texas A&M ran up an 8–0–1 record against Baylor and compiled a streak of seven consecutive shutouts. The streak was interrupted only in their second meeting in 1905, when Baylor managed five points in what was ultimately still a losing effort. The A&M spell was broken in 1908, following a two-year break in competition in 1906 and 1907, as Baylor eked out a narrow 6–5 victory. It may not have been impressive, but a win was a win.2 On November 28, 1912, in a game played in Dallas, the cadets decisively exorcised the memory of the Thanksgiving meltdown eleven years earlier by handing Baylor a stunning 53–0 defeat. That victory remained the largest margin of victory in the series by either team for ninety-one years, until A&M bested Baylor again with a 63-point margin of victory in 2003 in a humiliating 73–10 triumph over the Bears. When they met again in 1913, the results were much improved for Baylor, as the game ended in a 14–14 tie.3 By the close of the 1915 season the Texas A&M–Baylor rivalry was nothing more than a local affair, garnering little enthusiasm outside the supporters of both schools; but the lack of parity on the field was not the only reason the matchup had failed to generate the attention and passion of a big-time college football rivalry. A lack of consistent scheduling was also to blame. Even though Texas A&M and Baylor averaged more than a game a year from 1899 to 1915, the games had been scheduled intermittently. While it wasn’t uncommon for the schools to play more than once in a season, as in 1901 and 1903, when they played three times each season, it also wasn’t uncommon for them not to play at all. In 1906 Baylor’s administration banned football from the Baptist campus because of the violent nature of the game, but the decision was soon reversed, and the sport was resurrected in time for the 1907 season.4 However, Baylor and Texas A&M did not resume competition until the 1908 season.The absence of a game between the schools in 1906 and 1907 wasn’t their only break in competition, though. In six of the eighteen seasons prior to 1916, Texas A&M and Baylor did not schedule a game, including a second span of consecutive seasons without a contest in 1914 and 1915. In time the schools learned it was hard to build a rivalry when they didn’t play. FR IE N DLY E N E MIE S  |  25

So just how did a couple of casual opponents build the premier rivalry in Texas in less than a decade? The ascendancy of the Brazos Bottom rivalry can be traced to two decisions in 1914 and 1916 that helped transform the friendly series from obscurity to premier status. The first decision was made when the leading colleges and universities in Texas and a handful of neighboring states banded together to create a new athletic conference in the Southwest; the second was the decision to feature a football classic at one of the biggest venues in the state of Texas. The Southwestern Intercollegiate Athletic Association was tentatively founded on May 6, 1914, when representatives from eight colleges and universities from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas gathered at the Oriental Hotel in Dallas to discuss the need for the proposed new league.5 The association adopted the shorter and more familiar name Southwest Conference a few years later. A group of Texas schools had previously tried to bring uniformity to the rapidly developing rules of the game of football as early as 1909, when the loosely knit Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association (TIAA) had been formed. However, the TIAA proved to be more of a gentleman’s agreement with no real mechanism to enforce rules, and it eventually died a slow death of its own design. One issue that remained unresolved during the faltering days of the TIAA was the lax standards for player eligibility. Nobody knew it at the time, but a dispute between Texas and Texas A&M in 1911 over that very issue foreshadowed the decline of the TIAA and planted the seed for the Southwest Conference.6 Texas A&M had not had much success against the Texas Longhorns before handing over their head coaching duties in 1909 to a young man named Charley Moran. Later in life Moran made a name for himself as an umpire in major league baseball, but in 1909 he was a fresh-faced thirtyone-year-old destined to unwittingly play a part in the story of the making of the Southwest Conference. Under Moran’s leadership the following six seasons, the Farmers became a football powerhouse and dominated their competition, including multiple wins over the Longhorns, but they soon discovered in Aggieland that their newfound success came at a price. Texas alleged that Charley Moran was playing fast and loose with the already lenient eligibility rules of the day. Moran had triumphed over Texas in his first three games against the Longhorns, but Texas suspected he had purchased his success with the use of “professional” players, also known as ringers, who curiously dropped out of school once the game was over. The suspected ringers were often never seen or heard from again.7 26  |  C H A P TE R 3 

Moran’s win streak over the Longhorns ended in 1911, when Texas was declared the victor after a controversial ending to a game. Moran and his squad felt certain they had been robbed of a tie after Texas was declared the 6–0 winner. After the game Texas promptly sent notice to the A&M College that competition would not be renewed in 1912. When pressed for a reason, the Texas administration cited as their justification “the heated state of opinion among students and alumni of both institutions.” That was the public stance, but the real reason Texas refused to play A&M was the belief that Moran had used ringers on his team and that he was guilty of coaching a dirty style of football.8 The break lasted longer than the 1912 season, when Texas refused to resume competition with A&M until Charley Moran had been replaced. What Texas fans called dirty football, A&M fans called success, but without their annual rivalry with the Longhorns, the A&M administration quickly learned their success cost more than they could afford. Many years later Dutch Hohn, a former star on Moran’s A&M teams and later an assistant on his staff, claimed that Texas’ refusal to play A&M “all but sent our athletic department into bankruptcy.” Keeping Uncle Charley had become more trouble than it was literally worth. Texas A&M never officially explained its decision, and depending on which story you believe, Charley Moran either resigned or was forced out when the school declined to renew his contract. Either way, Texas had prevailed.9 Still, Texas’ victory in their dispute with A&M would have been hollow without stricter eligibility rules and an organization with the authority to enforce them. Pressure to organize was also added by the older, more established football conferences, which had resisted scheduling games with their southwestern brethren because of lack of conformity in eligibility standards among schools in the south. The vision for a new athletic conference consisting of major colleges and universities throughout the South and Southwest, as described by the Dallas Morning News, “in an arrangement equal in magnitude to the athletic organization among the colleges of the north,” was first suggested by young L. Theo Bellmont in 1914 in a letter he sent to the larger colleges and universities in the region. Bellmont was the athletic director of the University of Texas, but he is best remembered as the father of the Southwest Conference. In response to Bellmont’s call, a gathering of representatives from the University of Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, Southwestern University, the University of Arkansas, the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma A&M College (now known as Oklahoma State University), and Louisiana State University convened in FR IE N DLY E N E MIE S  |  27

Dallas on May 6, 1914. The conference planners had invited the University of Mississippi and hoped it would soon join their ranks, but Ole Miss never reciprocated the interest.10 The meeting in Dallas produced a proposed constitution and by-laws for the new conference which were then sent to the constituent schools for approval. When the representatives reconvened in Houston at the Rice Hotel in December 1914 to finalize plans for the conference, all eight institutions that attended the original meeting in Dallas were present. However, when final plans for the new association were agreed upon, Louisiana State University decided not to join the conference. The remaining members instead welcomed Houston’s Rice Institute into their membership on a one-year provisional basis. It was also decided at the Houston meeting that conference play would commence with the 1915 football season.11 The Southwest Conference had been born. The new conference had successfully accomplished one of its biggest objectives, at least on paper. In an effort to rid the game of ringers, the newly formed conference adopted a rule that a player could have only three years of varsity eligibility. However, a player had to have one year of residence at the school before he could compete. This eliminated the possibility of athletes competing immediately upon transferring from another institution, and it also eliminated the use of ringers.12 On October 8, 1915, and exactly ten months to the day after the meeting at the Rice Hotel in Houston, where plans for the new conference had been finalized, the Baylor Bears made the two-hundred-mile trek from Waco to Houston for only their second game ever against the Owls of the Rice Institute. Rice had claimed a narrow 14–13 victory in the teams’ first meeting the previous season, but the 1915 rematch resulted in a reversal of fortunes for the Owls, as Baylor stormed to a 26–0 shutout. In time the annual Bears-Owls game became a familiar staple of the fall schedule, but the 1915 contest was significant, marking a historical moment in college football history. On that October afternoon, Baylor and Rice had the honor and distinction of competing in the first Southwest Conference football game.13 The most anticipated game of the 1915 season, though, was not the first game in league history. Instead it was the resumption of competition between Texas, the favorite to win the first conference championship, and Texas A&M. Texas may have triumphed in its earlier dispute with Texas A&M over player eligibility and fair play, but they had not heard the last from their former nemesis, Charley Moran. In what turned out to be the 28  |  C H A P TE R 3 

biggest upset of the season, the Fighting Farmers of A&M were spurred on to a 13–0 victory over the Longhorns by an inspirational pregame telegram Moran sent to his former players with an emotional plea for them to play the game for him.14 With Texas denied the conference title because of their loss to A&M, Baylor was named the first Southwest Conference champions with a perfect 3–0 conference record, but no sooner had Baylor been crowned as champs than the league’s new eligibility rules were put to the test. Shortly after the completion of the 1915 season it was discovered that the Bears’ starting quarterback, Thomas Stonerod, had played football previously at Carnegie Technical Institute (now known as Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Stonerod had hid this fact from Baylor, but under the conference’s new rules, the young man was determined to be ineligible to play in 1915. Once the deception was uncovered, the Baptists did the ethical thing and forfeited their claim to the title. Although Oklahoma had an equal claim to the title with a 3–0 conference record, the Sooners never raised a finger or a voice to claim the vacated championship. In fact, when Baylor made the motion to forfeit the championship, not a single school, including Oklahoma, seconded the motion. The result was that the Bears remained the conference champions in the Southwest Conference record book.15 The creation of the Southwest Conference brought Texas and Texas A&M back together on the football field, but it also laid the foundation for the rivalry that would eventually tear Texas A&M and Baylor apart. Even though Texas A&M and Baylor did not play in the first year of Southwest Conference competition in 1915, the establishment of the league promised to bring the two foes together annually in the future, thus removing the obstacle of inconsistent scheduling from the path to establishing a rivalry. Although the creation of the Southwest Conference resolved the issue of regular scheduling of games between Baylor and Texas A&M, the founding of the league alone did not guarantee their future rivalry the lofty status it achieved in the mid-1920s. Prior to the 1916 season the rivals made another fateful decision that in less than a decade catapulted the series to statewide prominence. As Texas A&M and Baylor prepared to renew their acquaintances after a two-year hiatus, they chose to restart their series in the most dramatic of fashions and selected as the site of their soon-to-be-annual classic one of the highest profile venues in the state of Texas in the early twentieth century, the Texas Cotton Palace.

FR IE N DLY E N E MIE S  |  29

Sallie Taylor, wife of prominent Waco attorney Joe Taylor, had first suggested in 1890 that the city should host a grand fair and exposition when she penned an editorial in a Waco newspaper titled, “Why Not a Cotton Palace at Waco, the Queen of the Brazos?” Four years later a group of civic leaders decided to do just as Mrs. Taylor had proposed and pledged forty thousand dollars to build an exposition hall large enough to seat five thousand people. Their plan was to host a celebration that would be the crown jewel of the city’s social calendar, and they christened the grand hall they erected the Texas Cotton Palace. In November 1894 the first Cotton Palace Exposition opened to the public.16 By the late 1800s Waco had grown and flourished as one of the state’s leading cities and had earned the sobriquet the “Athens of Texas” because of its many institutions of higher learning. At least five denominational schools, including schools run by the Methodists, the Christian Church, and, of course, the Baptists at Baylor, were numbered among its many academic offerings. The Catholic Church operated an esteemed private academy in the city as well, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s Paul Quinn College had recently relocated from Austin to its new home in East Waco.17 Despite the city’s many academic options, though, commerce was the real business of Waco, and in the late nineteenth century the king of Texas commerce was cotton. The 1894 Waco City Guide boasted that the city was the “largest interior cotton market in Texas, and probably the South.” Farmers shipped their cotton to one of the city’s two large cotton compresses from as far as one hundred miles away. Railroad lines dissected the city and carried the region’s most valuable commodity to destinations in faraway markets. Wherever cotton was king, cash was aplenty, and so the leading citizens of Waco decided to highlight the source of the city’s wealth with a grand exposition in which cotton would be “displayed in as many ways as possible.” To everyone’s immense satisfaction the month-long exposition was a resounding success, but the celebration was to be short-lived, as the city watched its dreams literally go up in smoke six weeks after the exposition closed when a fire swept through the Cotton Palace and destroyed the grand exposition hall.18 Sixteen years passed before civic leaders decided to rebuild the Cotton Palace. The new version they envisioned was destined to eclipse its forerunner, for this time it was to be built on an even greater scale. The exposition grounds for the new Cotton Palace were a twelve-acre plot of land known as Padgett Park. Located at the intersection of Clay Avenue and 30  |  C H A P T E R 3 

South 13th Street, the rebuilt fairgrounds included a new main hall built in the architectural motif known as “palace style” and boasted a massive coliseum that could seat ten thousand spectators, twice as many as the original facility. In addition to the main structure, one of the most popular attractions of the rebuilt exposition grounds was the sprawling carnival midway known as the War Path, featuring the city’s very own roller coaster. Other highlights included livestock barns, a horse racing track, and, for a while, even a small zoo. The newly resurrected Texas Cotton Palace welcomed its first crowds in the fall of 1910, and for the next twenty-one seasons “it was the outstanding fair of the Southwest.”19 Six years after the Cotton Palace reopened, the future looked promising for the Brazos Bottom rivalry as the 1916 season approached. The schools signed a new contract that year that ensured they would play annually, but more important, it was agreed that the series would be hosted at the Cotton Palace, where a football gridiron was laid out in the infield of the horse racing track. The selection of the Cotton Palace as the site for the game gave the contest an immediate boost in profile that gained attention far outside the Central Texas region. Of course, hosting the game in Waco ostensibly made it a home game for Baylor each year, so in order to coax A&M into giving up the rights to a series in which the schools would alternate hosting the game on their respective campuses, Baylor agreed to divide the tickets at the Cotton Palace evenly.20 This ensured both schools would have large representations of fans. However, this decision did not sit well in future years with some Baylor loyalists, who took umbrage at seeing so many Aggie supporters in the grandstands in Waco at what was still presumed to be a Baylor home game. Beginning in 1916, a true rivalry started to develop between Texas A&M and Baylor for the first time, and as is the case with all true rivalries, it was only a matter of time before the former feelings of collegiality turned to bitterness and animosity. Over the next eleven seasons at the Cotton Palace, the annual Texas A&M–Baylor game set and then shattered attendance records for football games in Waco, amassing some of the largest crowds for a football game in Texas to that time, all while blazing a course to becoming the premier Southwest Conference matchup.21 The crowds did not come overnight, however. A modest crowd of ten thousand spectators filled the stands in 1916 for the first game of the Southwest Conference era between the schools. Texas A&M won the glory that day in a hard-fought duel by a narrow 3–0 margin. The day was also marked by another event that would become more or less a tradition in the FR IE N DLY E N E MIE S  |  31

series during the Cotton Palace years. Before the game, more than twelve hundred cadets from Texas A&M’s Corps of Cadets paraded through the streets of Waco from the train station to the Cotton Palace grounds. In a sincere demonstration of the collegiality between the schools at the time, the march was halted partway through the procession while the cadets were treated to a barbecue dinner served by a large group of Baylor coeds. After lunch, the military parade resumed, as a crowd of twenty-thousand Wacoans crowded the city’s sidewalks to watch the spectacle of the Corps of Cadets and the Aggie Band.22 The following year the Corps treated Waco’s citizens to another parade through town, and again the out-of-towners were well received. After a 7–0 A&M triumph, a fight broke out in the grandstands, but unlike the brawl in 1926, this fight was a friendly intramural affair as the cadets celebrated the victory with a massive pillow fight using the stadium’s cushions for “weapons.” After a late-night dance in town, the cadets boarded their train and returned to College Station.23 The cadets made it three shutouts in a row with a 19–0 win in 1918, but they weren’t done yet. Texas A&M’s dominance over Baylor had picked up in the Southwest Conference era where it had left off in 1913, and it continued unabated as the Aggies held the Bears scoreless in five consecutive games from 1916 through 1920. Those seasons happened to be the heyday of the Aggies led by Dana X. Bible, when every A&M opponent received a thrashing at their hands. Despite the dominance by the Aggie eleven on the field and the anticipated yearly result, interest in the Cotton Palace game began to grow, and the 1919 crowd of twelve thousand was hailed as one of the largest ever to attend a football game in Texas. Even the weather could not level the muddy playing field that year as A&M notched a 10–0 victory. In 1920 the crowd was even larger; fifteen thousand were on hand as the Aggies once again blanked the Bears, 24–0. By all appearances, nothing had changed in the series; the boys from Baylor just could not seem to lick the men from A&M. But in reality, a significant change had occurred in Waco in 1920, and it was only a matter of time before its effect was felt by the entire Southwest Conference.24 In 1920 the swashbuckling Frank Bridges arrived on the Baylor campus, boasting that he would win a conference title within three years. Longtime Southwest sportswriter Harold Ratliff described Bridges in his 1957 history of the Southwest Conference, The Power and the Glory, as “a colorful, loquacious, cocky little man.” During a six-year tenure in Waco, Bridges

32  |  C H A P T E R 3 

confounded his conference foes with subterfuge, trickery, and innovation. Clark Nealon, a former writer for the Houston Post, captured the essence of those three traits when he described Bridges as “wily, tricky, and sharp.” One example of Bridges’s cleverness was his introduction to the conference of the hidden ball trick, which is believed to have originated with one of football’s most inventive early icons, Glenn “Pop” Warner. Ratliff explained the play as follows: “The hidden ball shenanigan consisted of the center handing the ball to a guard who held it until a tackle came around and grabbed it, being careful to keep the oval well-concealed until delivery.” By well-concealed Ratliff meant the guard hid the ball under his jersey until he handed it off to the tackle. The description sounds odd to the modern fan, but in its day the play was perfectly legal and quite innovative.25 Frank Bridges’s greatest success at Baylor, though, was his ability to get the Bears back in the hunt for a conference title in football. Baylor had been awarded the first title in 1915 but did not claim it after forfeiting the championship as a result of the Thomas Stonerod incident. In 1916 the conference did not name a champion because of the absence of rules to settle a tie in the event more than one team had a claim to the title. Texas had the best conference record at 5–1, followed by Baylor at 3–1 and both A&M and Oklahoma at 2–1. Texas had lost to A&M, which had beaten Baylor, which had defeated Texas. Oklahoma lost to Texas but had not played either Baylor or A&M, making their claim to the title the weakest of the top four in the conference. With four teams each with only one conference loss and no round-robin schedule to break the tie, the conference did not name a champion.26 Matters were much clearer in 1917 when a single game determined the league championship. The title had come down to two familiar rivals, Baylor and Texas A&M. The undefeated 8–0 Texas A&M squad was crowned champions after a 7–0 win that made them the first team to win an undisputed Southwest Conference title, while Baylor settled for second place. Texas A&M claimed the title again two years later in 1919, but Baylor did not even come close to another title for the next five seasons. Bridges’s boast to bring a conference championship to Waco within three years might have been greeted with a healthy dose of skepticism after his first meeting with the Aggies in 1920. The 24–0 loss his Bears suffered was their largest margin of defeat at the hands of the A&M eleven since the conference had been formed. And adding insult to injury, it marked the fifth straight year Baylor had failed to score against A&M. With Texas

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A&M poised for continued success under the auspices of Dana X. Bible, prospects did not look good for a Baylor upset over Texas A&M anytime in the near future. It was about that time that the nickname “Aggies” was slowly but surely replacing the older “Farmers” at Texas A&M, and the 1921 Aggie team Bible assembled was one of the most fearsome that had ever worn the maroon and white. Texas A&M lost only one game on their way to clinching their third Southwest Conference title, but the 1921 Aggie season is best remembered for giving birth to one of the greatest traditions in college football. Today the “twelfth man” is uniquely identified with Texas A&M football, although the label had been applied to the supporters of other schools as early as 1900, and even as late as the mid-1920s it was not exclusively applied to Texas A&M.27 Where the Texas A&M Twelfth Man tradition differed from that of other colleges is that it went one step further when a member of the crowd actually left the bleachers, suited up, and stood ready to help in his team’s hour of need. The legend was born in Dallas, Texas, on January 2, 1922. Prior to the 1921 season, Dallas area attorney and A&M alumnus Joe Utay conceived of a game to be played at Dallas’s Fair Park following the regular season. Utay, captain of the 1908 A&M football team and the college’s former athletic director during the Charley Moran era, called his creation the Dixie Classic and envisioned it as a championship game for the entire southern region of the country. The Aggies readily accepted an invitation to play in the inaugural Dixie Classic, but when their scheduled opponent, the Washington and Jefferson Presidents of Washington, Pennsylvania, received a competing invitation to play in the Rose Bowl, Utay had to turn to an old friend to provide a worthy foe for A&M. Charley Moran was enjoying great success as the head football coach of the Praying Colonels of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, when his old associate invited him to come to Dallas and compete against his former employer. Moran, who had built Centre into a national powerhouse in college football, readily accepted.28 The Aggies’ body of work in 1921 had been impressive, but the trail of destruction the boys of Centre College had left in their wake had been unbelievable. Not only was Centre undefeated, but they had allowed only six points by their opponents all season. The Praying Colonels entered the game riding a fifteen-game winning streak that had started in the 1920 season. Since Moran’s arrival in Danville in 1917, Centre College had amassed a 38–3 record and had outscored their opponents by an unbelievable mar34  |  C H A P T E R 3 

gin of 1,767 to 110. And lest you think they built their success feeding on lesser programs, consider that during Moran’s tenure the Praying Colonels defeated the likes of Kentucky, Virginia, TCU, Clemson, Auburn, West Virginia, Indiana, and Arizona. Their most lopsided victory under Moran came in a 120–0 humiliation of Howard University. Needless to say, Texas A&M had their hands full entering the Dixie Classic, where oddsmakers had made the Praying Colonels a four-to-one favorite by kickoff.29 Bible had decided to limit the size of his traveling squad on account of the recent holidays, as well as the fact that some of his players had already begun to compete in other sports after the football regular season had ended. As if the prospect of toppling the mighty Praying Colonels was not daunting enough, the Aggies arrived in Dallas with a thin roster that quickly got even thinner. After several injuries in the first half, Coach Bible looked at his bench and saw that he no longer had a man to spare. A reserve fullback named E. King Gill had already departed the team to participate in basketball but had made the journey to Dallas that day as a spotter for legendary Waco News-Tribune sportswriter Jinx Tucker. Bible sent a messenger to the press box with instructions to bring Gill to the sideline.30 The Aggies had no spare jerseys, so at halftime Gill went under the bleachers and exchanged outfits with one of the injured A&M players. Despite his readiness to help his team at a moment’s notice, Gill never saw action that day. And despite the myriad injuries and the odds stacked against them, Texas A&M stunned the sports world with a 22–14 upset victory over Charley Moran’s Praying Colonels. The Dixie Classic, a forerunner of the Cotton Bowl, had its first victor, and the Aggies added to their title of Southwest Conference Champions the title Southern Champions. The newspapers hailed the victory as the greatest in the “glorious gridiron history of the state” of Texas, and declared that the Aggies’ victory put A&M and football in the Southwest on the national map. And the legend of the Aggie Twelfth Man became a permanent part of the fabric and folklore of college football in America.31 During the 1921 regular season the Aggies had made it six victories in a row against the Baylor Bears, but their victory had been hard fought and was not achieved without stiff resistance. For the first time in the Southwest Conference era Baylor had managed to score against Bible’s vaunted Aggie defense, albeit only a meager three points. For a while it had even appeared as though the Bears might actually upset the favored Farmers, as they held a slim 3–0 lead for most of the game. Yet in the final ten minutes of play, FR IE N DLY E N E MIE S  |  35

A&M managed to keep their perfect season alive and escaped with a 14–3 win. Once again the result may have been yet another loss for Baylor to Texas A&M, but the Bears had scored, and in only his second season Frank Bridges had managed a minor feat that had eluded his predecessor. The 1921 season also witnessed the first indication that relations between the Texas A&M and Baylor student bodies were starting to decline. The first sign of trouble in the rivalry occurred after the game had ended. As if snatching defeat from the jaws of victory had not been enough for the Bears, following the game a group of cadets paraded a donkey onto the field in front of the Baylor fans. On the side of the animal was a sign that read, “This is what we made of Baylor.” The implication was clear: the Aggies’ come-from-behind victory had made a jackass of their rivals. Other than some bruised Baptist egos, no real harm had been done, but the first brick in the dam staving off a flood of resentment had been removed. The following season the dam was nearly breached.32 As the 1922 season began, Frank Bridges entered his third year as Baylor’s head coach and faced the daunting task of delivering on his promise to bring Baylor a conference title. The week before the annual game with the Aggies, the Bears easily dispensed with Bible’s former employer, Mississippi College, in a 40–7 rout. Baylor had a 5–1 record and a clear path to the conference crown as it welcomed A&M once again to the Cotton Palace, yet if Bridges hoped to deliver on his ambitious promise, his Bears would have to find a way finally to defeat the Texas A&M Aggies. Bridges had one advantage working in his favor: much like the 1921 Aggies, the 1922 Baylor Bears were hailed as the greatest team that had ever been assembled in Waco and were said to be considered by many to be the equal of any foe in the entire South.33 Despite the impolite inference from the cadets’ behavior at the conclusion of the 1921 game, the Baylor Lariat echoed the former feelings of collegiality between the two student bodies only three days before the 1922 rematch. “It is often said that Baylor has a friend in A. and M., and that Baylor is strong for the Aggies,” the paper said. Unfortunately, the actions of the cadets would soon reveal that the feelings were no longer mutual. The paper continued its preview of the upcoming game and eerily foreshadowed the trouble that lay ahead for the rivals. “The only talk now is ‘we’re going to beat A. and M. to death and beat them fair.’”34 There was no doubt the Baylor-A&M game was destined to be a huge event that year. A few days before the game the Baylor student newspaper, the Lariat, carried a headline that boasted, “Everybody Coming Saturday 36  |  C H A P T E R 3 

to See B. U. Beat A. & M.” In fact, consideration was even given to tearing down the fence around the Cotton Palace field so that those who could not get a ticket to the game might still be able to catch a glimpse of the action from outside the stadium’s grounds.35 Tickets for the game sold out days in advance, with a total capacity crowd of around twenty thousand expected to be on hand at kickoff. Those fortunate enough to have a ticket were not disappointed. The 1922 game between the Baylor Bears and Texas Aggies was a classic in every sense of the word. First, there was the history between the two schools and the fact they had been foes for more than twenty years. Next, there was the intense geographical rivalry, as both schools competed in the same conference as well as in the same region of the state, with the coaches often competing to recruit the same young men to come and play at their respective schools. Finally, there was the dramatic element set by A&M’s six consecutive victories over the Bears as well as the fact that fourteen years had passed since Baylor had last bested A&M on the gridiron. During the previous fourteen-year span, the Aggies held a 9–0–1 advantage.36 The fans that day were treated to another hard-fought battle. As the final minutes of the game ticked away, Baylor held on to a tentative 13–7 lead, but Texas A&M had the ball and was driving deep for the tying score. If the Aggies could get the ball across the goal line, they would have the chance to win the game on the extra point attempt. History appeared set to repeat itself once again as the A&M quarterback dropped back and lofted a pass toward the end zone, but fate had other plans that day. A&M’s hopes for another come-from-behind win ended when Baylor’s B. J. Pittman knocked the pass to the ground at the goal line as the final whistle sounded. As the ball fell to the grass, hordes of fans clad in green and gold flooded the field to hoist their gridiron heroes high on their shoulders. Amazingly, Bridges had only used twelve players during the entire game, and he would have used only his original eleven if not for a late injury to one of his starters. The win propelled the Bears to make good on Bridges’s promise, and Baylor went on to claim its first undisputed conference title in only the coach’s third season. The Lariat proudly hailed the 13–7 victory in a special evening edition of the paper as an “Epochal Game.” Not only was Baylor’s upset victory epochal in the sense that a true era of rivalry of equals might at last be claimed, but it also marked the beginning of a new epoch of relations between the old rivals, one that would be marred by violence, disgrace, and ultimately death.37 FR IE N DLY E N E MIE S  |  37

According to an article by the Lariat four years after the game, as the Baylor players and fans celebrated the victory on the field, the A&M cadets attempted to “obtain revenge for the defeat inflicted upon their team” and disrupt the festivities. The paper implied that a riot was narrowly averted and that fire hoses were used to disperse the unruly cadets. The Aggies took a more light-hearted approach to the affair. The 1923 A&M yearbook, the Longhorn, reported: “After the game, all went smoothly except that the Waco Fire Department undertook to lay the dust on the football field by sprinkling. A thousand or more Aggies and several policemen prevented this being done effectively.” The rivals had taken another step closer to violence, but for the time being the dam had held once again.38 The first test of the new balance of power in the rivalry came the following year, 1923. Once again thousands of Baylor alumni returned to Waco for the game, and once again the two-thousand-strong Corps of Cadets marched through Waco’s streets as if laying claim to the city itself. Another pitched battle unfolded during the afternoon on a field made muddy by recent heavy rains. When the final whistle sounded, Baylor had escaped defeat for a second consecutive year, but this time they could not claim victory. The struggle ended in a 0–0 tie.39 Just as Baylor had won the conference title in 1922 after their victory over A&M, 1924 brought the school another conference crown, and once again the path to the title ran straight through the Cotton Palace. As the annual mass of Baylor fans and faithful converged on Waco, they were treated to a slate of organized celebrations as Baylor welcomed the return of the full-fledged pageantry of only its second official homecoming since 1909 and the first in nine years. A reported crowd of fifteen thousand fans lined the streets for a morning parade through Waco’s business section, while four thousand Baylor students and alumni, and numerous automobiles and floats, took part in the parade. After the parade ended, the hometown contingent graciously made way for the Aggies.40 At 9:30 a.m. the train carrying the twenty-two hundred members of the Corps of Cadets arrived in Waco. Upon disembarking, the corps assembled in their familiar military formation and proceeded down the city’s streets. The Lariat noted once again that the cadets were greeted along the parade route by either cheers or impressed silence, but for the first time the paper reported that the visitors were also taunted by some young men from Baylor who heckled the cadets with predictions of defeat for the Aggies that afternoon. If the corps had ever received taunts before when

38  |  C H A P T E R 3 

they marched in Waco, such common collegiate tactics had gone unreported. It was yet another sign the times were changing.41 A game day report predicted that fifty thousand people would enter the Cotton Palace, with up to half of those holding tickets to the afternoon football game. The crowd inside the stadium at kickoff, reported to number twenty-five thousand, was the largest crowd ever at that time to attend a football game in Waco. Right on time, and with military precision, a thousand A&M freshman cadets entered the field at two o’clock, greeted by the eighty-piece Aggie Band. The crowd was treated to a fifteen-minute display of military drills by the cadets before both teams took the field. Further military demonstrations were given at halftime, including the formation by the entire corps of their famous block T, which is still performed today in the halftime routine by the Aggie Band.42 Halftime also included a demonstration by Baylor students featuring an appearance of the soon-to-be infamous Baylor “bucking Ford.” The special edition of the Lariat that day referred to the Ford as “Hub Diggs’ famous bucking Ford,” implying that the vehicle was already well known by Baylor fans. The Ford was intended to be a hometown crowd pleaser and featured a Baylor cowboy riding a barrel mounted on the back of the vehicle. The barrel was “decked in the red and white of the Farmers,” the A&M school colors, and was meant to represent the Bears riding the Aggies to victory. When the driver of the bucking Ford veered too close for the cadets’ comfort to a group of Aggie football players resting on the sideline during the intermission, the situation revealed a real potential for getting out of hand.43 Despite later claims by the cadets that they had been “infuriated” by the bucking Ford’s close call with the Aggie players, no cadet is reported to have taken any action against the vehicle at the time of the demonstration, but a strong vocal reaction from the cadets in the stands is not beyond the imagination. Whatever irritation the cadets might have been feeling, the halftime fortunately proceeded without any incident. Despite another close contest, Baylor finally pulled ahead for good on a sixty-yard touchdown run by Ralph Pittman, and when the last whistle sounded, the scoreboard showed a final tally of fifteen points for Baylor and seven for Texas A&M. Once again, Bears fans erupted in jubilant celebrations, just as they had in 1922, but this time the celebrations did not end Saturday night. Baylor president Samuel Palmer Brooks declared Monday a campus-wide holiday and suspended all classes. Downtown Waco was

FR IE N DLY E N E MIE S  |  39

given over to the Baylor student body on Monday night as the Baylor band and yell leaders hosted a pep rally followed by a victory parade of sixteen hundred students. The parade route wound through the city’s downtown streets before ending at the site of the victory at the Cotton Palace. The administration even took the extraordinary step of extending the coed curfew until 11:00 p.m. to allow the ladies ample time to participate in the night’s festivities.44 The celebrations in downtown Waco on Monday, November 3, 1924, recalled only the sweetness of the triumph, but that day’s edition of the Baylor newspaper sounded a more sobering tone. Underneath the joy and ecstatic victory celebration boiled animosity toward Baylor’s biggest rival. The Lariat featured an article with the troubling title, “Where Is Famous ‘Aggie Spirit?’ Is Cry from Crowds Who Saw Game.”45 The paper reported that at the conclusion of the game, not only had Baylor students rushed onto the field to celebrate their team’s victory, but the “entire A&M regiment” had also rushed onto the field attempting once again to spoil the celebration. But the cadets had not rushed the field simply to cause confusion, as the paper alleged they had rushed on to inflict harm on Baylor students, men and women alike. The father of one Baylor coed went so far as to offer a $250 reward for “information leading to the arrest and conviction” of the cadet who allegedly struck his daughter on her arm while “attempting to wrest her colors from her.” The Lariat not only questioned the disgrace of an attack upon the male students, but also wondered what could be said for affairs when “grown men attack women, tear at their colors, and handle them severely.” Demonstrating its claims were not a bluff, the paper claimed that testimony of the accusations could be provided by female students and noted that the entire fracas had been witnessed by observers in the press box.46 Even more troubling, the Lariat claimed unidentified cadets had been overheard plotting to go on the field and stop Ralph Pittman on his game-winning sixty-yard run, and it alleged that some had tried to make their way from the bleachers. The student newspaper compared the near riot in 1924 to the disturbance following the 1922 game. Obviously, the former incident was still fresh on the minds of Baylor students. Fire hoses had been sufficient in 1922 to disperse the cadets from the field, but after the 1924 game the Lariat credited the Waco Police Department for quickly quelling the trouble and preventing any further escalation of the tensions.47 Both sides braced for more confrontations after 1924. The Lariat concluded its Monday, November 3, 1924, report by wishing that it could attri40  |  C H A P T E R 3 

bute the unfortunate behavior by the cadets to a “few hot heads who had not the interest of the school at heart,” but the fact could not be denied that almost the entire corps had appeared to participate in the instigation of hostilities. In a clear sign that tensions were escalating, the paper also noted that the actions on the part of the cadets in 1922 did not reach “such proportions” as they did in 1924. Once again, the dam of civility restraining a flood of violence and resentment had held, but it began to appear that it might be only a matter of time before a true catastrophe would erupt.48 But then relations between the student bodies seemed to improve, at least on the surface. In a surprising show of harmony and goodwill, the rivals shared the parade route once more in 1925 as Baylor again designated the weekend of their game against Texas A&M as the school’s homecoming celebration. The parade was led by what one report called “the famous Baylor Ford,” but the paper did not specify whether it was the same vehicle as the “bucking Ford” that had nearly sparked a riot the previous year. Following behind the Ford was another vehicle carrying leaders of both schools and their respective alumni organizations. A little further back in the parade was yet another vehicle carrying a senior Baylor coed named Mattie Bell Justiss. The automobile was designated the “BaylorA&M Friendship Car,” as Miss Justiss was joined in the vehicle by a cadet representative from A&M. Of course the parade would not have been complete without the full two-thousand-plus-member Corps of Cadets.49 Everybody breathed a sigh of relief when the 1925 contest ended without incident. Nobody wanted to see a repeat of the unfortunate events that had accompanied the conclusion of the previous season’s game. A year had passed, and the outcome had reversed as A&M walked away with a 13–0 victory. While Aggie fans had earned the right to thump their chests in victory, Baylor students found another cause for holding their heads high. After the ugly events following the conclusion of the 1924 game, Baylor’s student newspaper had asked the A&M cadets, “Will such sportsmanship continue to represent such a school?” The implication actually concerned a lack of sportsmanship on the part of the Aggies. Baylor responded to the near riot in 1924 with the slogan “Sportsmanship Then Victory” for the 1925 game. The Bears achieved the first goal but fell short of the second, yet that essentially was the point they were hoping to make. At Baylor, sportsmanship was to be valued above victory. As the defeated and deflated Bruin squad made their exit from the field, the Baylor student body rose to its feet and gave a hearty cheer and then joined the band FR IE N DLY E N E MIE S  |  41

in serenading their team with the school’s alma mater. The vanquished party acted as though they were the victors. W. S. Allen, the dean of Baylor University, later commented, “It was perfectly wonderful. In my opinion Baylor covered herself with glory at that A&M game.” The Lariat observed that the remaining spectators broke into applause for the Baylor students after seeing their gracious acceptance of defeat. “Never had they seen such action on the part of a side that has been defeated on the field of play, but not in spirit.” There would be no such accolades in 1926, but there would be much to regret.50

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CH A PT ER 4 A Perfect Day

October 30, 1926, was a typical autumn day in Central Texas. In other words, it was a perfect day for a football game. According to the Baylor Lariat, the weather forecast had called for “a light norther accompanied by local showers,” but only a trace amount of precipitation fell in Waco, while the mercury never rose above seventy degrees. Thousands of fans had begun pouring into town on Thursday, swelling the city’s population. Some traveled from as far away as California and New York to attend Baylor’s homecoming and to catch the big game.1 Homecoming at Baylor in 1926 not only provided the perfect occasion for thousands of alumni to return to Waco and “renew former associations and friendships,” but it also set the stage for the reunion of a group of local former high school football stars as well as two former rivals. As Frank Bridges was restoring Baylor’s football fortunes by bringing the school its first two undisputed Southwest Conference titles during the early 1920s, the hometown Waco Tigers were gaining statewide, and eventually national, attention in the high school ranks. (Waco High changed its mascot name to the Lions after merging in 1986 with Jefferson-Moore High and Richfield High. The consolidated school retained the Waco High name, the Jefferson-Moore lion mascot, and the Richfield school colors of scarlet, white, and gray.) The school’s gridiron heyday remains the 1920s, when the Tigers were guided to multiple state championships by one of the most respected and well known coaches in all of America at the time.2 According to the legendary coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Knute Rockne, the man who knew more about football than anyone else in America was none other than Paul Leighton Tyson, coach of the Waco High Tigers from 1913 to 1942. Rockne once praised Tyson’s abilities by stating that the high school coach was “one of the finest coaches I ever met, college or high school.” The two were more than mere acquaintances, for Rockne consulted with Tyson on offensive philosophy. While Rockne’s teams were building an impressive résumé in the college ranks, winning three consensus national titles in a little more than a decade, Tyson was leading an almost invincible gridiron menace in the high school ranks.

Throughout his career the dominance of Tyson’s teams led to numerous invitations for him to coach at the collegiate level, a temptation he resisted until only a year before his death in 1950. Fortunately for the city of Waco, Paul Tyson chose to leave his legacy in the annals of Texas high school football.3 During the 1920s the Waco High Tigers seldom experienced defeat, as Tyson’s squads were arguably the most dominant Texas high school football team of the era. In a seven-year span from 1921 to 1927 the Tigers amassed a record of 81–3–2 while outscoring their opponents 3,859–156. Their success was capped with an unofficial national championship in 1927 following a 40–14 postseason victory over Cathedral Latin High of Cleveland, Ohio. The Tigers won plenty of official titles as well during the era, including four state championships in 1922, 1925, 1926, and 1927. The Waco High yearbook, The Daisy Chain, claimed a fifth championship following the 1921 season when the Tigers outscored their opponents 526–0 and finished with a perfect 8–0 record. However, the title was unofficial, because Waco was not yet a member of the Texas University Interscholastic League (UIL), which had begun awarding state titles in football in 1920. A game between the designated state champion team from Bryan and Tyson’s Waco Tigers fell through when financial arrangements could not be made. Once the Tigers joined the UIL, they appeared in six straight state championship games from 1922 through 1927.4 Many of Tyson’s players went on to compete at the collegiate level, and no university benefited as much from the stable of talent at Waco High than the Baptist university across town. During the 1920s the Baylor Bears reaped the rewards of the talents of several former Tigers players who decided to continue their football careers on the next level locally. Tyson’s first official state championship team in 1922 produced no less than five players who later achieved stardom at Baylor. Sam Coates, Abe Kelley, Weir Washam, John Drew “Boody” Johnson, and Louis Slade each had successful college careers for the Bears, with Coates and Slade contributing on Frank Bridges’s 1924 Southwest Conference championship team. By the 1926 season all five were leading the Bears as starters on another possible championship run. While Baylor no doubt benefited the most, the Bears were not the only team to reap the fruits of Tyson’s labors. Perhaps the greatest collegiate star to arise from Paul Tyson’s 1920s high school gridiron juggernaut was Oliver Joel Hunt. More commonly known by his middle name, Joel played only one season for Waco High in 1923. That season happened to be the year of one of the Tigers’ greatest 44  |  C H A P T E R 4 

disappointments. Fresh off a spectacular title-winning campaign in 1922, the 1923 Waco Tigers tore through their competition with little mercy. The Tigers were a perfect 11–0 and had outscored their opponents 409–0 as they headed into the championship matchup against the Eagles of Abilene High. The amazing dream season and perfect record came to a crashing halt, though, when the Tigers were stunned by a shutout of their own as Abilene claimed its first state title with a 3–0 win.5 While his classmates headed across town for their college careers, Joel Hunt headed southeast to join Baylor’s biggest rival of the era, the Texas A&M Aggies. During his three seasons on the Aggie varsity from 1925 through 1927, Hunt carved out an enduring legacy as one of the greatest players in Southwest Conference history. Some sportswriters even suggested he was the greatest of his time. Sportswriter Harold Ratliff described Hunt’s contributions to his team as follows: “He was a runner, blocker, passer, punter, place-kicker, drop-kicker (he once drop-kicked a 43-yard field goal), and kicked off. He was also one of the finest defensive players in the Conference.”6 Joel Hunt began his career in the 1925 campaign leading the Aggies to recapture the Southwest Conference title. His contributions that season included scoring all thirteen of the Aggies’ points in their shutout victory over Baylor. Weighing in at 143 pounds at the start of his career, Hunt never topped the 170 mark, yet he cut a swath through the ranks of the glorious old conference wide enough for several much larger men to follow through. His greatest season came in 1927, when he led the Aggies to another conference title in Coach D. X. Bible’s next-to-last year at the helm of the program. That season he also had perhaps the greatest game of his college career when he led the Aggies to a 39–13 victory over SMU, highlighted by a three-touchdown individual performance. For his achievements at the quarterback position during the Aggies’ 1927 championship season, Hunt was named an Associated Press All-American. Yet there is another accolade that stands out in the dazzling college career of Joel Hunt. One close-up observer of his playing days was the head coach at nearby Rice Institute in Houston, who simply declared, “Hunt was the best all-around back I’ve ever seen.”7 That is an authoritative assessment, considering the coach at Rice at the time was John Heisman, the namesake of today’s Heisman Trophy. The reunion of former high school teammates from Paul Tyson’s Waco High Tigers was not the only reunion set to take place on the football field at the Cotton Palace. The 1926 Baylor–Texas A&M game was without one A PE R FE CT DAY  |  45

of the leading personalities of the rivalry from the past six seasons, setting the stage for the reunion of two former rivals. Frank Bridges had been the coach at Baylor since the 1920 season and had led Baylor to two conference titles in football. By the end of the 1925 season the Baylor football team was earning an impressive sum of money annually for the university. Bridges claimed the football program had added one hundred thousand dollars to the school’s coffers, a princely sum at the time, and felt the football team should have use of the proceeds. Armed with that argument, he approached Baylor president Samuel Palmer Brooks.8 Never known for meekness, Bridges asked Brooks for a raise and named ten thousand dollars as his price, a substantial salary at the time. Brooks responded that there was no way the school could pay Bridges that amount, as he himself did not make that much. Bridges confidently quipped, “We’ll get you a raise.” Actually, his quip was not as far-fetched as it may seem. In 1937 the Texas Longhorns lured D. X. Bible away from the University of Nebraska with an offer of fifteen thousand dollars per year. At the time that exceeded the salary of the president of the university, a common practice today but almost unheard of before the days of the celebrity college coach. Instead of finding a more affordable option as head coach, the university responded by raising the president’s salary. Such a ploy may have worked in Austin in 1937, but it didn’t fly in Waco in 1926. President Brooks laughed at Bridges’s suggestion but wasn’t moved by the coach’s bravado. Despite Brooks’s apparent amusement at the coach’s confidence, Bridges later claimed the exchange was the first time he felt the president didn’t like him.9 Having failed to convince Brooks of his value, Bridges turned to the media and boasted about the healthy financial condition of the school’s football program. Since the school was in the middle of a fundraising drive, and fearing donors might be disinclined to donate if they believed the school was flush with funds from the football team, Brooks admonished the coach for not following the proper protocol by going over his head to the media. Possibly in a fit of anger, or perhaps calling Brooks’s bluff, Bridges immediately offered his resignation. Baylor historian Eugene Baker suggested that Bridges may not have offered the resignation in earnest, but it mattered not, as Brooks readily accepted it in earnest. If Bridges had figured his success as coach would cause Brooks to back down, he had miscalculated. Baylor’s athletic fortunes suddenly appeared to be headed for a severe reversal, as Bridges’s resignation and abrupt departure came only 46  |  C H A P T E R 4 

weeks after the school’s eleven-year-old athletics building had been lost in a fire.10 With the upcoming school year and football season rapidly approaching, Baylor had to move quickly to find Bridges’s replacement. The search for a suitable choice soon turned to a little-known coach from a Baptist college in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Morley Jennings had led the Ouachita Baptist Tigers for fourteen seasons and had compiled an impressive record of 72 wins, 14 losses, and 8 ties. His teams had never suffered a losing season, and four times they had finished the year unbeaten. Two of those undefeated seasons had come in the most recent back-to-back campaigns in 1924 and 1925. At least on paper Jennings looked like a winner, and the fact that he was a Baptist didn’t hurt. But Jennings had never coached in a situation anywhere near the big time of the Southwest Conference, and so his hiring was greeted in Waco with a healthy dose of skepticism. For a school that had recently won two conference titles and was in the middle of its greatest era to date on the gridiron, the choice of Jennings as coach understandably appeared a little underwhelming.11 But Samuel Palmer Brooks had good reasons for hiring Jennings. First, Jennings made no outlandish salary demands such as the one that had led to Bridges’s recent departure. Jennings’s salary for his first season was set to be a modest five thousand dollars, yet Brooks had even better reasons for offering him the job. It seems everywhere Baylor turned in its coaching search, the name Morley Jennings kept popping up. The most convincing of all the recommendations Brooks received, though, came from a source who knew Jennings well and had coached against him. The source was none other than Dana Xenophon Bible, the greatest coach of the era in Texas college football and the head coach at Texas A&M in 1926.12 Today, Bible might be best remembered for his spreading the good news of Texas Longhorn football through “the Bible Plan.” Before arriving on the Forty Acres in Austin in 1937 with a plan to revive the sagging fortunes of Texas Longhorns football, Bible had roamed the sidelines of Texas’ archrival in College Station for eleven seasons and spent an additional eight years on the flat plains of Lincoln, Nebraska, as the head coach of the Cornhuskers.13 In 1936 the University of Texas suffered its worst season since football had been sanctioned as a varsity sport on the campus in 1893. The man unfortunate enough to be head coach in 1936 was John “Jack” Chevigny. The 2–6–1 finish followed on the heels of a 4–6 mark in 1935, which had also included a humiliating 20–6 Thanksgiving Day loss to Texas A&M. A PE R FE CT DAY  |  47

Losing was never tolerated for long in Austin, and losing to the Aggies was frowned upon almost as much as the unpardonable sin, so it was no surprise that after only two short seasons Coach Chevigny was told to “hit the road, Jack,” both literally and figuratively. When Texas cast about for its program’s next savior, it did not have to look too far into its past to realize its greatest hope was once its greatest foe. Over eight seasons Bible had been earning nationwide attention at the helm of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, where he won six Big Six Conference championships and compiled a 50–15–7 record. At Texas he inherited a program at the lowest point in its history.14 The answer to the Longhorns’ woes was the Bible Plan, which called for an ambitious recruiting strategy that funneled the state’s top talent to its flagship university. Bible’s strategy divided the state into multiple regions, with each region under the auspices of an alumnus of the school. Today the Bible Plan would violate NCAA restrictions on access to possible recruits, but in its time it was revolutionary.15 Over the next decade Bible’s plan restored the fortunes of Texas football and won the school three conference titles, but his teams failed to achieve their highest aspiration, which was to bring home a national championship to the Forty Acres. The University of Texas eventually won three national titles in a span of eight years from 1963 through 1970, and despite his nearly two-decade absence from the Longhorns’ sideline, D. X. Bible deserves at least a small part of the credit for the Longhorns’ eventual rise to national prominence. After retiring from coaching in 1946, Bible remained at Texas for another decade in the role of athletic director, where one of his final official acts was to hire a new coach for the upcoming 1957 season. The man he hired— Darrell Royal—became an even bigger legend in the Lone Star State, defining for a generation what a great coach should look like. It was Royal who also led the Longhorns to their national titles in 1963, 1969, and 1970. But long before Dana Bible restored the glory of Texas football, and before he ever dominated on the great plains of Nebraska, he put Texas A&M football on the national map and put the country on notice that the schools of the Southwest Conference were ready to compete with anyone.16 In 1917, twenty-five-year-old D. X. Bible was hired as the head coach at Texas A&M. Bible had been the coach of the A&M freshman team the previous year before departing mid-season when Louisiana State asked him to take over after they lost their coach. In his first year as head coach at A&M, his Aggies won the school’s first Southwest Conference title in dominating fashion, finishing 8–0 without allowing a single point by their 48  |  C H A P T E R 4 

opponents all season. Their victories included a 98–0 romp over the hapless Dallas University as well as identical 7–0 victories over their two biggest challengers for the conference crown, Texas and Baylor.17 Bible was no different than millions of other young men his age, and in 1918 he left the A&M sideline to serve his country in the armed forces during World War I as a pursuit pilot in the Aviation Corps. Though he never achieved the rank, he would later be given the enduring and endearing nickname “the Little General.” The origin for the nickname might not have been his military service and may have been his commanding presence on the sideline and the success of his teams on the field. Even in his absence, and with almost all of the players from the 1917 team serving in the armed forces, the reduced 1918 A&M squad performed admirably, finishing 6–1. By 1919 Bible and his returning war veterans from 1917 were back at A&M, fresh from the war and ready for friendlier action. That season Bible became the only coach ever to have two undefeated seasons in which his opponents did not score a single point. The feat might have been accomplished in consecutive years had the Great War not intervened.18 The 1919 season had opened with back-to-back games on the same afternoon against Southwest Texas State and Sam Houston State. Bible’s eleven downed the first opponent 28–0 and the second 27–0. A&M also beat their two biggest rivals of the era that year, Baylor and Texas, by the respective scores of 10–0 and 7–0. Bible was back, and once again the Aggies were Southwest Conference champions. They kept rolling on, taking their impressive streak of shutouts into the final game of the 1920 season. Once again A&M had dominated their competition and were poised to win the Southwest Conference, and all that stood in their way was a Thanksgiving Day game against the Texas Longhorns in Austin. The historic streak of shutouts came to an end when Texas managed to score a single touchdown, the first such feat by an A&M opponent since the Longhorns had managed a single touchdown in their 1918 contest. A lone Texas touchdown had been enough to give A&M their only defeat of the season in 1918, and in 1920 the Longhorns’ lone touchdown was once again enough to beat the Aggies, this time 7–3. Since both teams had entered the 1920 game undefeated, the single touchdown also decided the Southwest Conference championship in the Longhorns’ favor. The title may have been lost to their biggest rival, and the amazing streak of shutouts may have come to an end, but A&M’s dominance and streak of shutouts under Coach Bible in 1917, 1919, and 1920 remain unparalleled in college football history.19 A PE R FE CT DAY  |  49

Bible and his Texas Aggies had their eyes set on reclaiming the conference championship as the 1926 season got underway, yet their plans quickly hit a bump in the road in Dallas as the SMU Mustangs gave them their first loss of the year in a 9–7 decision. Joel Hunt had again been dazzling even in defeat, personally gaining over three hundred yards of offense. After losing three starting linemen to injury against the Mustangs, the Aggies knew they would need another heroic effort from Hunt as they prepared to face Baylor the following week. The trip to Waco presented the perfect opportunity for A&M to get their season back on track and stay in the conference title hunt.20 Morley Jennings may have been new to Baylor, but he was no stranger to Dana Bible. A year after Jennings was hired by Ouachita Baptist, Bible had accepted the head coaching position at another small Baptist college in Clinton, Mississippi, called Mississippi College. Bible’s team won their first meeting in 1913 by a score of 22–14. The following year Jennings’s eleven blanked the Mississippi boys 19–0. A third and final meeting on Thanksgiving Day in 1915 was never completed, as the game was halted because of a “severe wind and rain storm” while Ouachita held a 6–0 lead. Although the teams had played only one half, Morley’s Ouachita eleven were declared the victors. A few years after Bible had moved to Texas A&M, Jennings took his Tigers squad to College Station looking to upset Bible’s Aggies. In spite of a valiant effort, Ouachita suffered a 19–6 loss. Armed now in 1926 with some of the best athletes to come out of Central Texas, Jennings knew he at least had a fighting chance to win as he reunited with the former rival who had recommended him for his new job.21 Everybody in Waco and at Baylor was well aware of the fact that the Bears had never won a conference championship without beating the Texas A&M Aggies, and in order to win the title in 1926 they would once again have to overcome their biggest rival. The lingering doubts about Morley Jennings had yet to be dispelled, but they had been put on hold for a while. The Bears had settled for a tie in Jennings’s first Southwest Conference game against TCU a few weeks earlier, and despite an early-season loss to Loyola, Baylor was comfortably at 3–1–1 and completely in control of their own destiny headed into the Texas A&M game. Jennings’s early-season success had not made the local Waco newspapers optimistic about Baylor’s odds against Texas A&M. The Aggies were weakened on offense, but they still brought to Waco the strength of their team, the vaunted A&M defense. Jack Hawkins of the Waco Times-­ Herald declared that the 1926 team Bible had assembled was the “most 50  |  C H A P T E R 4 

brilliant machine the Aggies have ever brought to Waco.” Commenting on the Aggie defense specifically, the paper stated that A&M “touted the most powerful and fastest charging that has ever been possessed by a Southwest Conference football eleven.” That is quite a statement, considering the Aggie defense gave up only twenty-six points during a four-year span from 1917 through 1920. Bible conceded that the previous week’s loss to SMU had taken a toll on his team, but resilient to the end, he predicted, “The Bears will at least know they have been through a football battle.”22 The stage was now set: former rivals, classmates, and friends were ready to reunite on the gridiron at the Cotton Palace at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday afternoon. As the day of the big game neared, passions were running high among supporters of both schools. The Friday edition of the Waco Times-­Herald reported, “Several enthusiastic fans have already given vent to their partisanship with fisticuffs.” The paper did not provide any additional details, and there was no indication that the bouts of fisticuffs had involved any students from either institution, but the paper ominously predicted additional outbreaks of “hand-to-hand battles.” Pep rallies had been held on the Baylor campus all week and culminated Friday night in a “climax pep rally” in the Baylor chapel, where the official homecoming celebrations got under way at 7:00 p.m. Following the evening rally, the students held a torchlight parade from the campus through downtown Waco. Fifteen hundred “sons of Baylor” marched from the heart of campus along South Fifth Street to the city square. From the square they were led by the Baylor Golden Wave Marching Band down Austin Avenue to Eighth Street, where they celebrated with a rendition of the Baylor alma mater, “That Good Old Baylor Line.”23 For the first time in several years no parade was scheduled for the morning of the game. Instead, the festivities resumed Saturday at 9:45 a.m. with yet another pep rally for Baylor alumni and students. Dean W. S. Allen gave the keynote speech to the two thousand assembled supporters decked in green and gold. Among the crowd were several coeds who paraded with placards displaying scores of games in prior years when Baylor had defeated the Aggies and other conference foes. Each of the ladies was dressed in the fashion of the year displayed on her placard. The costumed coeds made quite a show and even got their picture in the following morning’s newspaper account of the homecoming festivities. In his address, Dean Allen noted in particular that during his nineteen years as both a student and official at Baylor, he had never seen school spirit soar higher.24 A PE R FE CT DAY  |  51

While the pep rally continued on campus with more speeches, mass singings, and an introduction of the Baylor coaches, a special train arrived downtown from College Station at 10:45 a.m. carrying the Aggie football team, the band, and about four hundred cadets. Aggie Coach D. X. Bible had decided not to bring his team to Waco the day before the game, thinking that a night’s rest in their own beds would be beneficial to his players and would remove any advantage Baylor would have otherwise held. A couple of full-page newspaper ads greeted the Aggies and welcomed them to town. William Cameron & Co., a local homebuilder, placed a full-page ad welcoming Bible and his team, and a local consortium of businesses ran another full-page ad, featuring a picture of Baylor coach Morley Jennings, that welcomed the Aggies and declared, “Today you will meet in the Gridiron Classic of the Southwest Morley Jennings and His Baylor Bears.”25 Just as Baylor had broken the precedent of recent years by not having a parade the morning of the A&M game, the Corps of Cadets had voted prior to the season to reserve their annual march for the SMU game in Dallas.26 Each year the corps voted before the season and selected one road game to attend in which they would march like a conquering army through the chosen destination. In recent years the corps had marched in Waco each autumn as part of the lead-up to the game at the Cotton Palace. As a consequence of their choice to march in Dallas and not Waco in 1926, their numbers were greatly reduced at the Baylor game, and the cadets found themselves heavily outnumbered in the stands. The fact that the entire two-thousand-plus-member corps was not in attendance may have been decisive in how the day’s later events unfolded. After arriving, the Aggie Band marched to the offices of the Waco News-Tribune to serenade the popular sports editor Jinx Tucker and then paraded through downtown Waco with the cadets following behind “in a war dance.” While the cadets occupied downtown, a complimentary barbecue had been planned for the homecoming crowd back on the Baylor campus following the morning’s pep rally. As much as eight hundred pounds of meat had been cooked in a large pit overnight to feed the anticipated two thousand or so alumni expected to attend. The feast included all of the familiar trimmings, such as pickles, onions and potato chips. Cake and coffee were also on the menu, and Eskimo Pies were served for dessert. At 12:30 p.m. the barbecue concluded, and the throng of Baylor supporters set off for the Cotton Palace stadium, where a massive crowd was already gathering for the weekend’s main event.27 52  |  C H A P T E R 4 

The total attendance of 80,714 at the Cotton Palace that day included both those who attended the game and those who came for the many other attractions the exposition featured. In addition to the A&M-Baylor football game, October 30, 1926, at the Cotton Palace was also Press Day, West Texas Chamber of Commerce Day, East Texas Chamber of Commerce Day, Girls Canning Club Day, Traveling Men’s Day, and Woodmen of the World Day. The year 1926 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, so it was only fitting that the Cotton Palace also designated October 30, 1926, as A&M Day. The exposition was not alone in making the out-of-town visitors feel welcome. Downtown Waco merchants had also decorated their storefronts in both schools’ colors, intertwining “Green and Gold, Maroon and White.”28 Once again, interest in the Texas A&M–Baylor tilt was high. An impressive 13,000 tickets to the game were sold Saturday morning alone, while almost the entire Baylor student body was expected to be on hand. The school reported that 1,550 student tickets had been claimed as of 3:30 p.m. Friday; the school’s total enrollment was 1,561.29 Low morning clouds had given way to sunshine by noon, and by 1:30 in the afternoon, as the crowd was beginning to file into the stadium, hardly a cloud was in sight. By 2:00 p.m. the east side bleachers were already full as the Aggie Band entered the field and played their familiar “Goodbye to Texas University” fight song. At 2:05 the Baylor band paraded onto the field before heading to their seats in the stands. With only twenty minutes remaining before kick-off, both teams came onto the field, with the Aggies appearing first, followed closely by the hometown Baylor Bears. By 2:15 the stadium was almost filled to capacity, and “moving picture men gathered on the field to take pictures of the highlights of the contest.” Unfortunately, only a handful of pictures are known to exist from that day, and none appear to have captured the afternoon’s most memorable moments.30 The Cotton Palace stadium was laid out on a north-south axis with the grandstands facing east. On the east side of the field was another set of bleachers that housed the student cheering sections for both schools. The Baylor students were seated on the southern end of the stands and were divided only by an invisible barrier at the fifty-yard line from their Aggie counterparts on the northern end of the bleachers. A large contingent of players from the Baylor freshman team, dressed in their uniforms, sat along the edge of the field in wooden chairs in front of the Baylor student section.

A PE R FE CT DAY  |  53

Texas A&M won the coin toss and elected to kick with the wind to their backs. Baylor tried to make its case with an early seventeen-yard strike from Abe Kelley to Sam Coates on the opening play of the game. Before fans had settled into their seats, Baylor was already at midfield. The Aggie defense recovered quickly, and the Bears’ drive eventually stalled at the Aggie thirty-four-yard line, but Hunt and the Aggie offense could not move the ball on their opening drive and quickly had to punt the ball back to Baylor. Wier Washam fielded the punt at the Baylor forty-yard line and returned it nine yards to near midfield. With great field position again, the Bears knew if they could capitalize on their second drive they might be able to stun the Aggies and set the tempo for the afternoon.31 Coach Morley Jennings reached into his bag of tricks early and called a play that almost sprung Baylor team captain George Morris for a touchdown. Morris broke free and sprinted twenty yards before the Aggie safety brought him down and prevented an early Baylor touchdown. Living up to its reputation, the Aggie defense stiffened again, and Baylor’s drive stalled short of the goal line once more. This time, however, the Bears were within field goal range for the sure-footed Morris and drew first blood with a thirty-yard field goal and the afternoon’s first lead, 3–0.32 The second Aggie drive got no further than the first, as the offense continued to sputter, and the two teams prepared to settle into a battle for field position. On the ensuing punt the Bears rushed the Aggie punter and barely missed blocking the kick as the ball passed through the arms of two defenders. Washam again fielded the punt and desperately looked for an opening in the Aggie defense. He eventually was brought down after no gain despite running nearly fifty yards trying to get around the Aggie left flank. As the final minutes of the first quarter ticked away, the defenses continued controlling the field of play. Baylor had a chance for a drive starting on their own thirty after another Aggie punt. On the first play of the drive Abe Kelly rounded the Aggie right end for a big Baylor gain of thirty yards. On the next play he hit Coates for fifteen more, and in just two plays Baylor had reached the A&M twenty-five-yard line. The Bears continued to drive and pushed inside the ten-yard line before the Aggie defense resisted, and Baylor settled for another Morris field goal. At the end of the first quarter the Bears found themselves up 6–0. Texas A&M opened the second quarter with a “beautiful” pass from Hunt to J. A. Simmons for twenty yards as the Aggies crossed midfield for the first time. A couple of plays later Hunt found another receiver for a 54  |  C H A P TE R 4 

fifteen-yard gain, and A&M was suddenly putting together their first successful drive of the game. Just as it started to appear the Aggies might score, the drive ended a couple of plays later when Hunt threw the first interception of the day. However, the change in possession proved to be only a temporary delay for the Aggies. Baylor soon returned the favor as Abe Kelley threw his first interception of the game, and the Aggies resumed their march at midfield. The pendulum had clearly swung in A&M’s favor, and this time the Bears’ defense could not stop the momentum. Hunt burst through the right side of the Baylor line for a twenty-yard gain, then A&M used a rotation of rushers to move the ball inside the Baylor five before Hunt crashed across the goal line for the tying score. With the successful point after attempt, A&M took its first lead of the afternoon, 7–6. Just like an army answering a foe’s demand to surrender with a blast from a cannon, Baylor quickly answered A&M’s challenge with a touchdown of their own. Washam fielded the ensuing kickoff at his own ten and returned it fifty-five yards to the A&M thirty-five before being tackled. Next it was Kelly’s turn to go to work. After an initial stop for no gain, Kelly dropped back and found Coates again for a twenty-one-yard strike. Three plays later he had driven Baylor to the Aggie one-foot line. A&M attempted a valiant goal line stand, but it is hard to keep any opponent out of the end zone when they have first and goal from the one-foot line. The Aggies did the best they could, though. On first down the Baylor rusher was tackled an inch or two shy of the goal line. Kelly would not be deterred, though, and on second down he sprinted around the right end of his line and into the end zone to put Baylor back ahead. After the extra point Baylor was back on top 13–7. A&M had one more chance to answer before the first half expired. Hunt found receiver J. A. Simmons open for a twenty-two-yard gain that placed the ball on the Baylor thirty-five, but that was as far as the Aggies would make it. Hunt’s next three passes were an incompletion, a batted down pass, and a final incompletion intended for J. V. Sikes. As the first half expired, Morley Jennings’s Bears held a six-point lead over Bible’s Fighting Texas Aggies. The second half picked up for the Aggies where the first half had left off. Hunt uncharacteristically threw his second interception of the afternoon, giving the Bears great field position at the Aggie thirty-five-yard line. A few plays later Baylor faced a fourth and one on the one-yard line and appeared poised to add to their lead, when an Aggie defender A PE R FE CT DAY  |  55

smashed through the Baylor line and blocked George Morris’s third field goal attempt. The defensive battle resumed in the second half as the teams continued to trade field position. After tackling a Baylor punt returner in his own end zone for a two-point safety, the Aggies watched as their hopes of victory slipped from their grasp. As the third quarter drew to a close, and with the Aggies trailing 13–9, Weir Washam stepped in front of another Joel Hunt pass and picked up Baylor’s third interception of the afternoon. But Washam’s brilliant game was not over yet.33 Late in the fourth quarter Washam took a handoff at the Aggie seventeen-yard line and headed straight for the center of the line. After surviving the first line of the Aggie defense, the undersized Washam, once described as “that spectacular, daring, twisting, dodging son of Waco High,” evaded several more defenders and sprinted to the end zone.34 George Morris added the extra point, and Baylor was in total control with a 20–9 lead and the clock in their favor. Texas A&M made a last valiant attempt, but needing two scores to overcome or match Baylor’s lead, their fate was all but sealed. However, Hunt was not the type to surrender, and he drove his team downfield to the Baylor ten-yard line. His final pass of the game landed in the hands of yet another Baylor defender, and the Bears had defeated the Aggies.35 The Waco Times-Herald declared in its account of the game the following morning, “Seldom has a team been more clearly and decisively outplayed than were the Aggies yesterday.” The Aggies had looked to Joel Hunt and their mighty defense for victory, and both had fallen short. Not only did Hunt throw four interceptions, but Baylor also frustrated the Aggies’ ground game all afternoon. The same paper observed that Hunt had only two good runs, and for the first time in two years a team had contained him.36 More significant than stifling the dynamic future All-American Aggie quarterback, Baylor had also set a mark no other team had ever achieved against the Bible-coached Aggie defense. As the Dallas Morning News explained, “When diminutive Weir Washam, former Waco High star, reeled off a seventeen-yard broken field run for a touchdown and piled the score up to 20 points, he not only cinched the battle, but caused the Bears to shatter all records in scoring against the fighting Aggie crew while under D. X. Bible. For never before during the coaching regime of the solemn Aggie mentor has an opponent scored more than 17 points.”37 The thousands who attended the game got their money’s worth. The 56  |  C H A P T E R 4 

Dallas Morning News said the Baylor victory “must be hailed as the most sensational in the traditional history of rivalry between Baylor University and Texas A&M.” The Waco Times-Herald echoed the sentiments and called the game a great battle, “a battle that must go down as the greatest of those annual, traditional, historical, thrilling encounters between the Aggies and the Bears.” The Baylor Lariat claimed that many of those who had witnessed the game went away declaring it “the most interesting and spectacular football game ever played on Texas soil.” For many it had been a great game on a near-perfect day, yet the memory of the contest was destined to be forever overshadowed by the sad events that took place during the intermission. The Lariat captured the mood of the moment with the somber observation, “Had a ten-minute period of violent turmoil between halves which, if it had only been averted, would have allowed the day to remain a perfect one, but it resulted in a tragedy that those same thousands cannot explain but all regret.”38

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PART I I The Riot

CH A PT ER 5 All Hades Broke Loose

As the beaten and battered Aggies prepared to board the train for the three-to four-hour ride back to College Station, Baylor fans and students took to the streets to celebrate their historic victory over their biggest rival. For the third time in five seasons the Bears had triumphed over the Aggies, and just as the 1922 and 1924 wins over their rivals had been the crown jewel in those championship seasons, the Baylor faithful once again saw a conference title within reach and filled the streets in a victory procession. Thousands looked on as a throng of five hundred or more students clad in green and gold paraded once more through downtown.1 Only a few months earlier the hiring of Morley Jennings had been met with skepticism in Waco. After the high-flying days of the Frank Bridges era it is understandable why a lesser known coach from a small Baptist college in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas failed to set the world on fire in Central Texas, but overnight everything changed. Following the victory over A&M, the Lariat sang Jennings’s praises, and the coach that many never really wanted became the coach that one day everyone would hate to see leave. Over the next fifteen years “the Builder of Men,” as Jennings came to be known, set the standard at the school in terms of tenure, wins, and gentlemanly conduct. His legacy would only be eclipsed on the banks of the Brazos a half-century later by Hall of Fame coach Grant Teaff. In 1926 Jennings was just beginning to build his legacy, and the stunning win over the Texas A&M Aggies ensured that he would have all the time he needed.2 As for Baylor and the city of Waco, there were plenty of reasons to rejoice on the evening of October 30, 1926, but in spite of the euphoria and the mounting confidence in the team’s fortunes on the gridiron, a dark cloud was settling over the city. What should have been a joyous time at Baylor soon descended into a cacophony of recriminations and accusations, for even as the parade of students snaked their way through downtown, twenty-four-year-old Texas A&M senior Charles Sessums lay critically wounded in a local hospital, hovering on the edge of death.

The mixture of mirth and the morose in Waco that evening was captured by the Baylor school newspaper, the Lariat, when it opined in the same breath that the afternoon’s contest was the most “interesting and spectacular” ever played in the Lone Star state but lamented that the memory was forever tarnished. The paper proved prescient; nine decades later no one remembers the final score of the game or the fact that no Bible-led Aggie squad had ever yielded as many points in a contest before that Saturday at the Cotton Palace. All that is remembered about the game is the sad fact that the student lying critically wounded at the local hospital died from the wounds he sustained in the fight, and the two schools took half a decade to mend relations.3 After the near riots following Baylor’s wins in 1922 and 1924, an outbreak of unsportsmanlike conduct might have been expected. In fact, Texas A&M students alleged after the riot that Baylor students had brought stockpiles of weapons into the stadium with the intention to provoke a riot, but no proof of the claims was ever uncovered. Just as in 1925, there was anticipation that trouble might erupt between the two student bodies in 1926, but the disturbances in previous years had occurred after the conclusion of the game. No one ever expected a fight to break out during a halftime performance, and no one could have predicted the vast size of the melee and the ferocity with which it was carried on. Despite the relatively large crowd in attendance, only a handful of known eyewitness accounts of the riot were ever published. One such account was that of Esther Didzun, a young woman from Houston who witnessed the spectacle from her seat nineteen rows above the field. Miss Didzun was not identified in the media as a student at Baylor at the time, and therefore her account might be accorded the benefit of being unbiased, but the enthusiasm with which her testimony was reprinted by the Baylor Lariat at least hints at the fact she may have been a Baylor fan.4 Her account of the riot was printed three days after the game in the large daily papers in San Antonio, Fort Worth, and Houston.5 Sadly, an exhaustive search of the major newspapers of the state uncovered no other printed eyewitness accounts of the Cotton Palace riot, making Miss Didzun’s account the unofficial version of events ever since. The only other contemporary detailed account of the riot of October 30, 1926, was printed exclusively in the Baylor Lariat on November 4, 1926, and is distinctly noncritical of Baylor’s role in the fiasco. The second eyewitness account, which appeared fifty-nine years after the riot in a Baylor alumni

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magazine, was the recollection of a former seventeen-year-old Baylor freshman named A. T. Moses, who, like Esther Didzun, watched the surreal scene unfold from the security of the grandstands. It appears no Texas A&M cadet or supporter ever offered a firsthand description of the riot to the press. This might have been intentional. During Texas A&M’s investigation into the riot and Cadet Sessums’s death, Captain R. L. Ware of A&M told investigators that after the riot was stopped, and before the game had even ended, he had left the Cotton Palace to go to the “different newspapers in town in order to stop all undue publicity.”6 Unfortunately, the fact that no cadet or A&M supporter is known to have offered a firsthand account of the riot to the media only deepens the impression that everybody involved was all too eager simply to move beyond the tragedy. Esther Didzun’s description of the riot was brief and matches in almost every detail the modern versions of the story that have appeared in Texas newspapers over the last quarter-century as sportswriters rediscovered and resurrected the story for a new generation of fans. The following is the complete version of her account as it was reprinted in the November 3, 1926, edition of the Baylor Lariat: “It started,” she said, “When a car, driven by a Baylor boy, filled to overflowing with Baylor girls, dressed in costumes of all the years that Baylor has defeated A&M, started a parade down the field. One could hardly see the boy at the wheel. The girls were seated all around him, several with their legs hanging over the sides of the car. “The car crossed the dividing line between the two college camps and as it neared the end of the field, opposite the A&M section, an A&M student dashed out to it and leaped right into the center of the car crowded with girls. “One girl was knocked clear off the car. She rolled over several times and must have been pretty badly bruised. After this episode the Baylor boys made a rush for the car to save the girls and the lone boy at the wheel. “Precisely what happened next I could not tell, nor could anyone else, for in a moment, there was a swarming crowd of hundreds in a free-for-all melee. Fists were swinging madly in every direction. Some of the boys carried clubs and chairs.

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“I understand that Sessums was struck over the head with a chair. I doubt if anyone in that wild throng of college students knows today who struck him.” Miss Didzun said that the college cheer leaders tried frantically to quiet the crowd, but that it was only when the band struck up the “Star Spangled Banner” that some degree of order was restored. “The girls did not carry out their little, harmless college stunt,” she added. “The Baylor boys did spell Baylor out on the field, but things were very quiet after the riot. “A.&M. authorities made the A.&M. rooters remain in their seats 30 minutes after the game in order to prevent any further outbreak.”7 Despite the matter-of-fact nature of her version of events, much is left to be desired. For example, why did the Aggie cadet sprint onto the field and leap into a moving car? What was he hoping to accomplish, and how did the appearance of the ladies riding on the car result in such a provocation? There are also questions about the role Baylor students and supporters played in the riot, such as why did they carry clubs and chairs onto the field to use as weapons in the brawl? Questions also were raised after the fight as to where the clubs had come from, with some A&M students claiming they had seen Baylor students carrying large athletic trunks into the stadium and alleging that the clubs were removed from the trunks when the fight began, only to be spirited out of the stadium in the same trunks once the fight had ended.8 The Baylor students claimed the trunks contained only athletic gear, and the conflicting testimony from witnesses on both sides of the debate seems to suggest there was never any firm evidence of premeditation. But the biggest question of all, and one that will likely remain unanswered, is, Who swung the vicious blow that resulted in Cadet Sessums’s death? Texas A&M conducted an internal inquiry among their students to try to ascertain any information that might lead to the killer’s identity, but the only clues they uncovered led to dead ends. While no eyewitness version of the riot from a Texas A&M source was ever published, the transcript of the college’s inquiry into the cause and conduct of the riot, which is still available in Texas A&M’s Cushing Archives, is critical in helping to reconstruct a thorough account of the Cotton Palace riot. Esther Didzun may have been sincere when she claimed, “what happened next I could 64  |  C H A PT E R 5 

not tell, nor could anyone else,” but she was not accurate. Those who took part in the fight were able to provide ample insight into the details of the melee. Based on all of the known available evidence, including the testimony given in the A&M investigation, newspaper accounts, and the eyewitness accounts on record, a thorough reconstruction of the 1926 Cotton Palace riot is presented in the following pages for the first time. Prior to the 2:30 p.m. kickoff there had been no indication of the trouble that would soon ensue. A few A&M cadets had arrived in Waco on Friday evening and had mingled among Baylor students. Some of the cadets later claimed during the A&M investigation that various Baylor students had said that if A&M were to start any trouble, the Baylor students would be ready for it, unlike in previous years, when the disturbances had caught them by surprise. These claims were later used to support the allegation that an assortment of weapons had been smuggled into the stadium in athletic trunks by Baylor’s freshman football team in preparation for a fight. However, a closer examination of the testimony gives no hint that on Friday night anyone ever insinuated that the Baylor students were planning to provoke a riot as a pretext for inflicting murderous blows upon the unsuspecting Aggies. If there was any element of truth in the testimony it would prove only that emotions on the Waco campus were understandably running a little higher than in previous years.9 The expectation for trouble did not run only one way, either. Texas A&M’s head yell leader, senior J. D. Langford, testified that shortly before kickoff he had approached a Baylor student on the field who was dressed in a white uniform and whom he judged to be a Baylor yell leader and asked him if Baylor intended to use a “bucking Ford” that day. The reference was to the Ford that a couple of years earlier had driven onto the field and had come perilously close to striking a group of Aggie players. The incident had almost sparked a confrontation at the time and had not been forgotten by the cadets in the ensuing years. The young man in white, whoever he may have been, assured the Aggie yell leader that Baylor would not be using a “bucking Ford.” Langford testified that he explained to his presumed counterpart that if Baylor did bring out the bucking Ford, there would be trouble “that I could not stop or anyone could not stop.” It is apparent both sides were on edge, and the expectation for trouble was mutual.10

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In most years prior to the 1926 Cotton Palace game, Baylor had yielded the field at halftime to the Corps of Cadets, who had used the intermission period to entertain the crowds with various military calisthenics and their legendary Block T formation. But 1926 was different. The corps’s decision prior to the season to travel en masse for the SMU game the week before the Baylor game and conduct their annual march in Dallas instead meant that for the first time in recent memory the corps did not march through Waco or attend the game on October 30 in the numbers they had shown in previous seasons. A report in the Waco Times-Herald the day before the game stated that Texas A&M had even returned three hundred unsold tickets from its allotment of seats at the Cotton Palace. Estimates vary as to how many A&M students actually made the trip to Waco, but the majority of the testimony seems to place the number at about four hundred, meaning that also for the first time in recent memory Baylor students likely far outnumbered their A&M counterparts.11 In the absence of the corps’s typical halftime participation, Baylor students planned a special performance. Halftime began peacefully enough when members of the Baylor band gathered on the field without their instruments and made a formation spelling the school’s name in green and gold. With the band still at center field, Baylor’s three yell leaders ran onto the field accompanied by three freshmen who were dressed in costumes obviously intended to mimic the uniform of the A&M cadets. According to J. D. Langford, the six boys performed a “facetious and sarcastic mimicry” of the typical A&M calisthenics. After the mock routine, the three Baylor freshmen bent over while the yell leaders put on “an exhibition of hazing.” With the underclassmen still bent over, the yell leaders pulled out their shirttails to reveal long streamers in Baylor’s school colors, which unfurled as they ran in front of the A&M cheering section. It was at that point that the first signs of possible trouble began to emerge. Aggie yell leader Langford testified that the antics on the field caused him much trouble in keeping his cadets from responding, but for the moment matters in the stadium remained calm.12 While Langford tried to ease the growing anger among his cadets in the stands, a Ford car covered with Baylor coeds and driven by freshman Willard Newberry paused for a quick photo by popular Waco photographer Fred Gildersleeve before driving onto the south end of the field. In stories recounted well after 1926, the vehicle has been described both as a float and as a truck. It most certainly was not a float, for the only ornamentation on it apparently was the bevy of young coeds hanging off its 66  |  C H A PT E R 5 

sides. The vehicle was most likely a Ford roadster that had been stripped down to a row of seats in the cab with a flatbed on the back so that it more resembled a truck than a car, and according to J. D. Langford it appeared to have been painted red, perhaps in reference to the Aggie school color of maroon. Langford may have been mistaken on this last point, however, because when the administrations of Texas A&M and Baylor later released a joint statement on the riot, the Ford was clearly described as being painted in Baylor colors.13 There were also mixed reports of the number of women riding on the car. The Dallas Morning News estimated that about a dozen were on the Ford, while Langford estimated it to be no more than five or six. The November 4, 1926, edition of the Baylor Lariat stated that in addition to the male driver, there were seven young women riding in the car and on the sides, and it identified them each by name and printed a brief statement about the incident from each of them.14 The young women had made an appearance at the morning pep rally on campus, and each was still carrying or wearing a placard that displayed the score of a previous major Baylor victory on the gridiron. Each wore an outfit representative of the era of the game on their placard. An oft misreported detail of the story is that the women were displaying scores of previous Baylor victories over A&M as though the performance was another attempt to raise the cadets’ ire, but the truth is that Baylor had not previously defeated A&M enough times in their history to fill seven placards. Before 1926 Baylor had beaten Texas A&M only five times. The placards actually represented scores of significant Baylor victories against multiple Southwest Conference opponents over the previous twenty-seven seasons, and not just triumphs over A&M. After pulling onto the field, the Ford paused in front of the Baylor cheering section, and the young ladies paraded the placards to hearty applause. Finally, the women climbed back atop the Ford, and the car resumed its slow parade down the field.15 As the vehicle crossed the fifty-yard line and continued directly in front of the Aggie cheering section, a cadet jumped the fence separating the bleachers from the playing field and sprinted straight for the Ford. In the blink of an eye a second cadet went over the fence following closely behind the first. As the first young man reached the moving car, he leapt from three to four feet away from the vehicle headfirst into the driver’s compartment and quickly grabbed for the steering wheel. The young man’s identity was never made public in subsequent news stories, A LL HADE S B R O K E LO O S E  |  67

but during the A&M investigation he was identified as Cadet W. L. Lee. During the college’s investigation Cadet Lee admitted that the reason for his actions was simply that he felt the mock calisthenics routine had been an attempt to “show us up,” and just as J. D. Langford had warned his Baylor counterpart, the appearance of the Ford on the field was more than the cadets could stand.16 Langford had been too distracted trying to quell the rising furor in his ranks over the mock calisthenics routine to notice the Ford drive onto the opposite end of the field. He turned around only in time to see Cadet Lee dive into the vehicle. By then the car was already at the A&M thirty-yard line, and all Langford could do was watch in dismay. During testimony at A&M, Langford was asked to clarify if he had asked the Baylor yell leader not to bring a car onto the field at halftime, and he replied, “No, sir. I asked him about a bucking Ford. It never occurred to me that they would have another kind.” After the close call with their football team two years earlier, the mere sight of any Ford was enough to elicit a response from the cadets. And the sight of a carload of coeds suddenly under assault was more than the Baylor men were prepared to accept.17 Cadet Lee’s lunge into the car rocked the vehicle, causing one young lady, Louise Norman of Mineral Wells, to fall from the vehicle’s side. From Esther Didzun’s viewpoint it appeared as though the young woman fell and tumbled over a few times before coming to rest. Just as Lee was trying to wrest control of the vehicle from Willard Newberry, Cadet G. L. Hart reached the back of the vehicle, and in a desperate attempt to bring it to a stop, he grabbed hold of one of the rear wheels and held on until the vehicle came to a stop.18 A. T. Moses was a seventeen-year-old freshmen at Baylor the day of the big game at the Cotton Palace, and like Esther Didzun he provided one of the few published eyewitness accounts of what he observed from the safety of the grandstands. Fifty-nine years later Moses recalled that there were actually three Aggie cadets, “all wearing high shiny boots,” who scaled the fence and assaulted the car. It was at that moment that almost as one man both Baylor and A&M student bodies rushed onto the field, or as Moses stated in his recollection, “all Hades broke loose.” Moses might be excused if his memory was a little hazy after the passage of nearly six decades. It doesn’t matter if it was two cadets or three who initiated the melee, but it is almost certain from other testimonies that the majority of the cadets on hand demonstrated tremendous discipline

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and remained in their seats while a very large contingent of the male student body at Baylor rushed onto the field.19 There are multiple reports that among the multitude engaged in the brawl on the field were several Baylor football players dressed in uniform. While Baylor coaches and players adamantly claimed all of the varsity players refrained from the fight, it is almost certain one of Baylor’s stars actually played a critical role in the riot. Sam Coates was a local Waco star who had continued his career at his hometown university after playing for Paul Tyson’s Waco High championship teams in the early 1920s. Coates was known for not being afraid of a good scrap. He was also a recognizable figure, and the number of witnesses that testified they saw him participate in the fight seems to outweigh the Baylor coaches’ and players’ claims that no varsity players took part in the riot.20 However, what many witnesses took to be other Baylor football players in the riot were most likely members of the freshman team who had dressed in their uniforms in order to gain free entry into the Cotton Palace. The freshman team had been seated in front of the Baylor cheering section when the fight began and represented the first Baylor participants to join in the riot. As they rushed onto the field, many broke up the wooden chairs they had been sitting on and carried pieces of them into the fight to use as clubs. Other Baylor students and supporters rushed into the fray with chairs, boards, soda water bottles, and fists, while one participant in the fight even claimed to have been struck with a piece of the fence that surrounded the field.21 The slow-moving Ford finally came to a stop no more than fifteen yards from the A&M goal line, where it was quickly surrounded by hostile combatants on every side. Cadet Hart was struck over the head with a wooden club by a player in a Baylor uniform as he tried to disable the vehicle by letting air out of one of the back tires. He later testified that he only remembered “one lick in the head,” though another boy told him he had been hit twice. Hart was able to make it to a first aid station under his own power and was released after being treated. His injury and the blow inflicted by the Baylor player possibly led to multiple reports that Sam Coates had swung the deadly blow that ultimately killed Charlie Sessums. While there were multiple witnesses who recognized Coates and identified him as the party responsible for the lick on Hart, he was definitely not the guilty party in Sessums’s injury, as Sessums was struck near the fifty-yard line, placing the two never within thirty yards of each other in the fight.22

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Conflicting testimony was given during the Texas A&M investigation as to what role Charlie Sessums may have played in the riot. Cadet T. P. Ewing testified to the Texas A&M investigators that he had heard in Waco that Sessums was trying to assist one of the females from the field when he was struck, a story his father apparently accepted and later repeated to the media. Captain R. L. Ware testified during the A&M investigation that some junior and senior cadets had rushed onto the field to help bring the fight under control and that this group included Charlie Sessums. Despite these claims to the contrary, the preponderance of testimony in the A&M investigation suggests Charlie Sessums went onto the field to take part in the brawl.23 The most definitive testimony to Charlie’s role in the riot came from Cadet E. A. Vance. According to Vance, he and Charlie had been together since about 11:30 or so in the morning and remained together up until the halftime disturbance. They were seated together about halfway up the bleachers on the thirty-five-or forty-yard line when they saw the Baylor boys coming onto the field with clubs. When asked by investigators whether he and Charlie had gone onto the field to try to help stop the fight, Vance replied, “No sir, we were going out with the purpose of protecting our boys.”24 The implication was clear: Charlie and Cadet Vance had gone onto the field to take part in the fight. According to Cadet John Hume, as Sessums was trying to climb over the fence surrounding the field, he ducked and avoided being struck by a blow from a young man with a club. After helping Cadet Vance over the fence, Sessums went one direction and Vance went the other. Sessums then followed his assailant as the man retreated to near midfield. D. W. Bartlett, a city judge in Waco, later told a private investigator that during the riot he had witnessed a man with “a piece of a folding chair” being followed by a cadet. The man was swinging the piece of the chair “to and fro and telling the cadet he had better stop.” It was when the cadet made a quick move toward him that the man with the piece of the chair swung and struck the cadet on the left side of his head.25 Another witness named L. F. Weber gave perhaps the earliest description of Sessums’s killer during the Texas A&M investigation. He described the killer as about 5 feet 7 inches tall with a stocky build, weighing 157– 60 pounds, and “dressed in a blue serge suit.” Another witness, Mark Woodrum, did not recall Sessums being confronted as he tried to climb over the fence, but he did recall Sessums being confronted as he was heading toward the stalled Ford. That is when Woodrum says the assail70  |  C H APT E R 5 

ant approached Sessums, who turned to meet him. Woodrum described Sessums as being a “tall boy” and remembered his killer was shorter than Charlie. He also described the suspect as “stocky” but estimated his weight to be 145–50 pounds. However, he agreed with one essential feature of Weber’s description: the killer was wearing a “blue suit.”26 Yet another witness, Raymond B. Owens, claimed to have been standing no more than ten feet from Sessums when he was wounded. Owens also described the suspect as wearing a blue suit and guessed the man was around 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighed about 160 pounds. As for how Sessums was injured, Owens’s account is essentially identical to the versions offered by Woodrum and L. F. Weber. As Cadet Sessums pursued the young man in the blue suit across the field, the smaller man took two swings at the taller cadet, both of which Sessums deflected with his arm. Finally, the suspect “got a good swing” and struck Sessums on the left side of his head.27 Cadet William Moers Jr. watched from the safety of the bleachers as Sessums pursued his would-be killer across the field. As he saw the third blow hit its mark, he likened the sound of the hit to the discharge of a gun. When Raymond Owens was asked during the A&M investigation if it appeared the suspect had swung the fatal blow with all of his force, Owens answered in the affirmative, “Yes, sir. He made it from back over his shoulder.” The witnesses also agreed on what happened next. Mark Woodrum said that when Sessums was struck “he just dropped,” while L. F. Weber said he “crumpled and fell. Never staggered a bit, fell flat.” Multiple witnesses, including Weber, claimed that after Sessums fell, the suspect dropped his club and ran back into the crowd of people on the field, obscuring his identity forever.28 Cadet Moers described the weapon used to strike Sessums as being a club about four feet long. As Sessums collapsed to the ground, Moers raced to the field and to the injured cadet’s side. Moers testified that he did not know Charlie Sessums, and he only learned the injured young man’s name sometime later. With the aid of another cadet he lifted Sessums to his feet and began escorting him from the field. Moers observed a gash about the length of his first finger in Sessums’s scalp and wiped blood from the injured young man’s face with his handkerchief as he and the other cadet removed him from the action. With his arms wrapped around the other two cadets’ shoulders, Sessums was actually able to move some on his own power, although multiple witnesses testified it appeared he was dragged off the field. Moers insisted Sessums was still conscious and that when A LL HADE S B R O K E LO O S E  |  71

he asked him, “How do you feel buddy?” Sessums only answered, “Better.” Charlie told Moers he thought he would feel better if he could vomit, but he was only able to once the nurse at the first aid station gave him ammonia and water. Moers stayed with Charlie until the doctor arrived at the first aid station, and by the time he returned to his seat, the third quarter was ending.29 Seeing as many as one hundred of his cadets involved in the riot, Yell Leader Langford rushed onto the field and climbed atop the now abandoned and disabled Ford. He had earlier seen Captain Ware of the corps atop the Ford pleading to no avail with the students to stop fighting. Once Langford climbed atop the Ford, he gave the A&M band director the signal for “Taps,” hoping the music would bring the cadets to attention out of custom, but the song only partially succeeded in causing some A&M boys to return to their seats. Langford signaled the Aggie band director again, but this time he called for the “Star Spangled Banner.”30 Langford was certainly not alone in trying to stop the violence. Baylor’s dean W. S. Allen, A&M commandant Lieutenant Colonel F. H. Turner, the yell leaders from both schools, the police, and even the mayor of Waco, Herschel Frank Connally, all rushed into the action to try to get the mob to disperse and return to their seats. While officials from both schools later concluded that it was through their efforts and the assistance of unspecified “others” that the violence was quelled, it was only when the Texas A&M band struck up the national anthem that the cadets finally came to attention in the midst of the fighting. Some cadets later claimed that a few opportunistic Baylor fellows continued to pound away at them as they stood silently, but for all practical purposes the terrible fight was over, and order had been restored.31 Once calm had settled over the Cotton Palace stadium, Langford offered an apology to the hometown crowd amid jeers and invective from the Baylor student section. According to his own testimony, Langford told the crowd he was sorry the fight had happened, he hoped no such fight would ever occur again, and he told the Baylor students he “hoped the best team would win the football game.” A. T. Moses remembered the apology nearly sixty years later and recalled that Langford offered it while “precariously balanced” on top of the fence that surrounded the field. The apology was later commended despite the heated exchange of words between the two student bodies in the press in the days that followed.32 After addressing the Baylor student section, Langford returned to A&M’s end of the field and addressed the cadets now seated once again 72  |  C H A P T E R 5 

in the stands. He asked every A&M man to pledge by a show of raising his hand that he would remain in his seat once the game was over, and to the last man all agreed they would comply.33 Perhaps the most amazing aspect of that chaotic and tragic afternoon is that the game resumed and was completed without any further incident. After the game ended, and while Baylor fans undoubtedly celebrated the historic victory, the Aggie cadets remained true to their word and remained seated until thirty minutes after the game had ended and until every other spectator had left the stadium. Then quietly and in good order, the cadets filed into formation at midfield, and, led by the Texas Aggie marching band, they marched out of the Cotton Palace grounds and to the Raleigh Hotel several blocks away. Thinking that leaving through the main entrance might “be rather a hard dose to swallow” for his men, Langford convinced an official to let the Aggies depart through another gate that was located behind the A&M cheering section. That evening, while the green and gold–clad celebrants snake-danced through downtown, the city was peaceful, and even the cadets seemed to be in good humor.34

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CH A PTE R 6 Hard for Wisdom to Find Its Way

Charles Milo Sessums was born on September 12, 1902, on the lands of the Oklahoma Indian Territory.1 He was the fourth child, and third son, of Alexander Browning Sessums and Jemima Cowan Sessums. A. B. and Mamie had moved to Oklahoma after spending the first few years of their marriage in Waco, where Charlie’s older brothers, George and Joseph, had been born. A. B. had held a series of jobs in Waco, ranging from bartender to engineer and finally switchman for the Katy Railroad. The family arrived in Oklahoma in time for sister Grace’s birth in February 1899. Census records show the family rented a house, and A. B. was farming for a living, but within a few years the family was on the move again. By at least 1905 the Sessumses were back in Texas, where their final child, another boy, named Harry, was born. By the end of the decade the Sessumses had moved once more, this time to Clovis, New Mexico, where census records again show A. B. had become a real estate agent and the family lived in a house they owned.2 Before finally returning to A. B.’s hometown of Dallas in time for Grace and Charlie’s last two years of high school, the Sessumses moved at least one more time, this time back to Oklahoma, where by 1912 all five siblings were enrolled in school district 23 in McClain County. Once back in Dallas, A. B. worked various jobs as a bridge builder, a packer with the Brown Cracker & Candy Company in the city’s West End warehouse district, and then as a carpenter. After a second stint at Brown’s, he went into the construction business for good, a field he would stay in until his death in 1944.3 When the family returned to Dallas, they settled on the city’s east side on Peak Street near A. B.’s father and brother.4 Few homes remain today on Peak Street, as the neighborhood was forever altered by the arrival of the Interstate 30 freeway, but the few remaining structures indicate that the neighborhood was a modest working-class area. Dallas was a burgeoning city in the early twentieth century, well on its way to becoming the world-class metropolis it is today, so in the fall of 1916 the city opened a new high school on the east side a short distance from the Fair Park area

that hosts the state’s world famous Texas State Fair. The new school was named Forest Avenue High School, and despite a difference of more than three and one-half years in age, Grace and Charlie entered the new school together as members of the school’s inaugural junior class. In the fall of 1916, as Forest Avenue High opened its doors to its first students, Europe was embroiled in the first world war. Once the United States entered the conflict, President Woodrow Wilson requested that boys who were enrolled in school should remain in school, and so the Forest Avenue High School Cadet Corps was formed. Charlie Sessums was among the two hundred boys who formed the first cadet corps during the 1916–17 school year, serving as a private in the corps’s Company B.5 The 1918 Forester yearbook for Charlie and Grace’s senior year described sister Grace as an “imp of mischief, yet a well of knowledge.” Acknowledging her academic acumen, the yearbook’s editors excused her mischievous ways by quoting her as saying it “runs in the family.” While the editors declared, “We like her also—yes, we do,” Charlie is described as “a great pet of all the teachers—and the librarians also.” His senior photo shows a pleasant young man with a confident gaze. His classmates’ affection for him is obvious in the following description given of him: “He always has a pleasant smile on his face and a greeting for everyone. May he always be optimistic in his view of life.”6 The yearbook’s editors also took the opportunity to have a little fun at Charlie’s expense. He is described humorously as going barefoot, and his comportment is described as “Awkward.” Unlike his college classmates, who described him after his death as being a tall cadet, his high school classmates described his “Style of Beauty” as being “diminutive.” His high school senior photo definitely shows a youth of narrow shoulders and smaller stature, but this is to be expected, as he was only fifteen years of age when he completed his high school studies.7 It is no surprise that by the time of his death more than eight years later, he had grown into the taller, though still slender, young man described by witnesses in the Texas A&M investigation. His popularity among his classmates is best exemplified by the fact that he was chosen as the protagonist in the yearbook’s “Senior Class Prophecy.” The story is set in a fictional South Carolina courtroom, where the defendant, “Dr.” Charles Sessums, is accused of having stolen, of all items, a Ford automobile. In the end, Charlie is acquitted, as it is explained that upon receiving word that one of his former classmates had crashed an airplane in a field eight miles from town, the good Dr. Sessums had taken the H A R D F OR W I SDO M T O FIN D IT S W AY  |  75

first automobile at hand to go and offer the classmate aid. In the end, the alleged theft is revealed as a big misunderstanding, as one of his former classmates is said to declare, “The heroism, rather than the crime, in his deed, is to be noted.”8 Following graduation Charlie did not pursue a medical career as the fictional account had predicted; instead, he continued to live with his parents and went to work as a clerk for the wholesale jeweler Moore De Grazier Company in Dallas’s Praetorium Building, known today as Stone Place Tower, famed for being the first skyscraper in the city and the entire Southwest. Charlie continued to work for Moore De Grazier for several years, eventually working his way up to the position of salesman, until his departure along with brother Harry for Texas A&M in the fall of 1922.9 At Texas A&M Charlie was once again a part of a corps of cadets, as participation was mandatory for the college’s all-male student body. Also at A&M he once again won the affection of his classmates, as attested by the outpouring of grief over his death following the riot in Waco. His sudden and untimely death on Sunday morning, October 31, 1926, stunned the Texas A&M campus and the close-knit family in Dallas. No less surprised by his death were the medical professionals who had been attending to him at Waco’s Providence Sanitarium. Dr. Howard Lanham had attended the game and watched the riot as it developed from the grandstands. After the fight ended, someone came near him in the stands and requested a doctor. He was asked to report to the emergency facility at the Cotton Palace, where he met Charlie Sessums. At around 4:00 p.m., Dr. Lanham observed a two and one-half inch cut over Sessums’s left ear and inspected it to try to determine if his skull had been fractured. He also noted multiple bruises on the cadet’s face, but concluded he had been struck only once with a club. Unable to detect a fracture, he dressed the wound and returned to his seat.10 After the game he returned to the emergency facility and met Texas A&M president T. O. Walton. The nurse at the facility later reported that Walton had visited with Charlie and held his hand as though he was his father, though it is not clear from the nurse’s statement whether Charlie was able to converse. Lanham and Walton discussed the patient and decided he should be transferred to Providence Sanitarium with the hopes that he would be discharged the following day.11 Newspaper reports on November 1 said that while Cadet Sessums “could be roused at times,” sadly he “never wholly regained conscious-

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ness.” However, as late as Saturday evening the doctors still did not believe his injury to be fatal. It was even noted that the young man seemed to be “holding his own until shortly before his death.”12 Lanham visited Sessums at the hospital at 7:00 p.m. and noted that he appeared to be doing well, but when he returned at 12:30 a.m. the patient’s condition had worsened. Sessums had vomited some blood since the earlier visit, and upon examining him again, Lanham changed his mind and now concluded there was a fracture at the base of the skull. He gave Sessums morphine to help him rest. In a letter he later penned to the slain cadet’s mother, Lanham stated that he had called in another physician for a second opinion to ensure nothing had been overlooked in the treatment of her son. He confessed that with the type of injury Charlie had suffered, “we are practically helpless so far as doing something is concerned.” On Sunday morning Dr. Lanham visited Charlie again at 8:25 a.m. and noted that his condition was not good. At 9:00 a.m. he passed away.13 To be certain, a fracture to the base of the skull is a serious injury, especially before the advances of modern medicine, but such an injury is not necessarily fatal. Gus Welch was a Native American youth who played for the famed Carlisle Indian School in the early twentieth century. One of the biggest games in the school’s brief history came on November 14, 1914, against the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. Late in the game Welch made an ill-fated attempt to tackle Notre Dame’s 210-pound fullback Ray Eichenlaub. As Welch tried to stop him, the hard-charging Eichenlaub’s knee crashed into Welch’s face. Welch was nearly incapacitated by the blow and was rushed to a nearby hospital, where it was determined that he had not only suffered a fractured cheekbone, but the force of the collision had also caused a fracture at the base of his skull, a near identical injury to the one sustained by Cadet Sessums.14 For four days his condition was touch and go, and his survival was anything but certain. By the fifth day he began to show signs of recovery, and shockingly, only one week after the injury, Welch attempted to check himself out of the hospital. His doctor vehemently warned against his release and cautioned him that only complete rest and recuperation at that point in his recovery would spare him the possibility of blindness, deafness, epilepsy, and invalidism later in life. Welch waited four more days and then checked himself out for good.15 While Welch’s recovery was not without serious consequences, such as severe headaches that were so intense they nearly blinded him, he even-

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tually returned to the football field in 1915 for the professional Canton Bulldogs, served in the US armed forces in World War I, and lived to the age of seventy-seven before passing away in 1970.16 A fracture to the base of the skull was also the leading contributing factor in the death of famed NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt in 2001. According to his autopsy report, the injury was described as “blunt force trauma to the head and neck.” While the Dallas Morning News correctly reported that a fracture at the base of the skull resulted in Charlie Sessums’s death, the actual cause was a blood clot that formed as a result of the fracture, which also explains the rapidity of his decline and death despite medical expectations to the contrary.17 Coincidentally, Howard Lanham had previously been a doctor at A&M College from 1902 to 1906, and his son had been born there. The younger Lanham had graduated from A&M the previous June but had been a schoolmate of Charlie’s for a few years. In his letter to Jemima Sessums, Dr. Lanham noted that after Charlie’s passing, his son had written him and expressed his fondness for the deceased cadet. “He was a fine fellow and a good friend of mine,” wrote Lanham’s son.18 The hours and days following Sessums’s death unleashed a flurry of events. Upon learning of his death the morning of October 31, W. S. Allen, the dean of Baylor University, telegraphed Texas A&M president T. O. Walton to express “profound regret and sincere sorrow at the death of Cadet Sessums as well as deplore the incident of which it is the result.” When word of his death reached College Station, the stunned campus lowered its flag to half-mast and entered an official period of mourning as A. B. and Mamie Sessums returned home with their son’s body and prepared for the grim task of arranging his funeral.19 Events in Waco were moving quickly. Justice R. B. Stanford concluded his inquest into the death of Charlie Sessums hours after the young man’s death. While it was a blood clot that had struck the young man down, the inquest cited the cause of death as a “fractured skull, caused by a party or parties unknown.” Of course the task now fell to local law enforcement officials in the coming days to try to identify the “party or parties unknown.” In College Station, Texas A&M president Walton pledged to conduct a thorough investigation into the melee and death but declined to make a statement lest he rush to judgment and make bad matters only worse. In a short release to the media Walton explained, “Until the affair can be gone into thoroughly and all details sifted, it is obvious that it would not only be unwise, but unfair, to issue a public statement.”20 78  |  C H A P TE R 6 

At the suggestion of Baylor president Samuel Palmer Brooks, the presidents of the two schools ended the day by agreeing to a conference between their administrations the following week to discuss the tragic events of the weekend. A joint statement from both administrations would be released once the conference had more closely examined the issues surrounding the riot.21 There would be no individual statements from either administration, but there would be plenty said by both student bodies in the coming days. For the Sessumses, time must have been standing still, yet Monday morning, November 1, came, and life went on as usual for the rest of the world. This time there was no campus holiday declared at Baylor. President Brooks was scheduled to address the Baylor student body in chapel that morning and intended to present a resolution to both the students and the faculty denouncing the recent violence and death of Cadet Sessums. At the Sessums family home on Oram Street in Dallas, a long line of the slain cadet’s former classmates filed silently by to pay their respects. In College Station, Texas A&M officials got their investigation underway as President Walton gathered with the deans and the college’s commandant.22 As Walton and the other officials began looking into the circumstances of the riot and Sessums’s death, the members of the Corps of Cadets who had not made the trip to Dallas for the funeral gathered for their weekly Yell Practice on the steps of the YMCA building on the Texas A&M campus. Unlike a traditional Yell Practice, there were no cheers and no demonstrations of school spirit, nor the typical denouncing of the upcoming weekend’s opponent. The weather was as somber as the mood as a steady rain fell on the students gathered for the impromptu memorial service. Instead of the “Aggie War Hymn,” the band played the spiritual “Nearer My God to Thee” while the cadets stood in silence. When the song was over the young men bowed their heads for a moment of prayer as the rain continued falling. The yell leaders briefly addressed their schoolmates and eulogized their slain comrade, and then the somber observance concluded with the playing of “Taps,” the “military requiem for the dead.”23 At ten o’clock on Tuesday morning, November 2, the funeral service for Charlie Sessums was held in his parents’ home. L. N. D. Wells, the longtime pastor of the East Dallas Christian Church, officiated at the service before Charlie was taken to his final resting place. A few miles east of downtown Dallas in the city’s Grove Hill Cemetery, Cadet First Lieutenant Charles Milo Sessums, B Battery, Field Artillery Battalion, of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas Corps of Cadets, was laid to rest. In addition H A R D F OR W I S DO M T O FIN D IT S W AY  |  79

to his fellow cadets from his battery, who served as his pallbearers, the Bryan Eagle listed six honorary pallbearers, including A&M president Walton, Commandant Lieutenant Colonel F. H. Turner, and representatives from the A&M Association of Former Students, the US Army, and the Texas A&M faculty.24 Matters were not idle in Waco as President Brooks met in the county attorney’s office with Waco mayor Dr. H. F. Connally, McLennan County sheriff Leslie Stegall, Waco chief of police Hollis Barron, and other leading city officials. Unfortunately, the gathering never issued a statement detailing what had been discussed and whether anything had been decided. Much doubt can be cast upon the proceeding, though, as no official investigation into the riot or the death of Cadet Sessums by either city or county officials was ever conducted.25 On Wednesday, November 3, President Brooks departed Waco for College Station for his conference with President T. O. Walton. Accompanying Brooks was the head of Baylor’s athletic council, Professor Henry Trantham, and the head of Baylor’s School of Education, T. D. Brooks (no relation to President Brooks). Representing A&M alongside President Walton were Dean of Arts and Sciences Charles E. Friley, Commandant Turner, and two other faculty members. The eight men who gathered for the conference knew much hard work lay ahead of them if the conference stood any chance of calming the rising furor on both campuses while also laying the entire sad affair to rest. No quick fix would do. Any conclusion reached jointly by the conference members would have to be thoughtful and address the concerns of both sides in the matter. President Brooks later captured the challenge of navigating public opinion and the competing interests of those concerned when he observed in a private letter to a Baylor supporter, “It is hard for wisdom to find its way.”26 After meeting for ten hours, the conference finally concluded its work. The finished product was a statement that sought to identify the riot’s causes. Both Walton and Brooks demonstrated their agreement on the central points in dispute and affixed their signatures. Brooks later confided in a private letter that he did not get everything he would have liked in the joint statement, but nor had Texas A&M president Walton. In the end the two had met in the middle, and the blame for the terrible tragedy would be equally shared. Relations between the two rivals appeared to have been saved, and from the contents of the statement it appears the administrations hoped their grand meeting had put the entire matter to rest.27

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The joint statement accurately captured the essential facts from the day of the riot, but it failed to adequately account for its true causes, which included the long-simmering resentments between the two student bodies. Eventually this flaw would be the statement’s undoing and would all but guarantee the severing of relations between the two schools. The joint statement as it was originally released to the media appeared in full as follows in the Dallas Morning News on November 5, 1926: After a conference with representatives of the faculties of the two institutions present, we the undersigned, as the presidents of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas and of Baylor University, join in the following statement concerning the tragic occurrences between halves at the A. & M.-Baylor football game on the Cotton Palace grounds at Waco Saturday, Oct. 30, in which Cadet Lieutenant C. M. Sessums of the A. & M. College received a blow to the head, from the effects of which he died the next morning. In order to understand these occurrences the public should keep in mind a number of features of college life which, whether desirable or not, are none the less significant facts. The first of these is the heat of loyalty to their teams and institutions which fires student bodies as crucial games approach. The tension is such that bodies of supporters are like powder magazines ready for instant explosion should any incident occur to set them off. It is exactly this fact that makes college athletics an education in sportsmanship for the students generally and it should be recognized that organized cheering has done much to provide safety outlets for strained emotions and that largely because of this, clashes are less frequent than formerly. The second is that the practice has grown usual to occupy time between the halves of the game with stunts organized under the direction of yell leaders, as demonstrations of spirit, and not frequently these stunts have partaken of the nature of taunting the rival student body. The events of last Saturday may then be considered to have begun with a burlesque, staged by Baylor students, of the calisthenics drill frequently performed by the A. & M. Cadets at previous football games. To the Baylor students it was only mockery of other youngsters like themselves. To the A. & M. Cadets it has the appearance of making sport of the uniforms they wear as a feature of their H A R D F OR W I S DO M T O FIN D IT S W AY  |  81

military training, and had a significance their rivals did not suspect. Following this, a Ford car, painted in Baylor colors, on which were seated a number of Baylor young women students, bearing placards exhibiting the scores in Baylor football victories in the past, and dressed in costumes, was driven across the field. These young women in their costumes had been a feature of the Homecoming program on the Baylor campus that morning. It would seem that the appearance of the car had different meanings to the two student bodies. The A. & M. yell leader states that he had requested of the Baylor yell leader that a certain Ford car used in a stunt at a former game be not brought on the field for fear trouble would result, and that he was told, and in turn told the Cadets, that it would not be used. The Cadets assert that they construed the use of any Ford as an evasion of a promise. We are confident that no such breach of faith was intended. When the Ford car was moving in front of the portion of the grandstand where the A. & M. students were seated two students in uniform leaped the fence and ran to the car. One leaped upon the car and its occupants, the impact of his body causing one young lady to fall from the car to the ground. The Baylor men, regarding this as an indignity offered the young women, rushed to protect them. Other A. & M. students likewise rushed to the field and a general melee ensued, in which events occurred so rapidly that it is impossible to describe accurately what happened during the next few minutes. It is the testimony of A. & M. students that they did not recognize the occupants of the car as young women, but thought them to be boys dressed as young women. As soon as the clash started, officials of both institutions, and others, rushed on the field and made strenuous efforts to stop the conflict, and succeeded in doing so in a very short time, considering the confusion. Investigations as to responsibility were begun at once and are continuing at both institutions, and the agencies of the law are likewise performing their duty, in which they will have the full cooperation of both institutions. We are profoundly saddened, as are the student bodies, and the faculties of both institutions, by the death of Cadet Lieutenant

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Sessums, and sympathize deeply and sincerely with his bereaved family.28 President Brooks and the delegation from Baylor did not return from College Station until the following morning, and only then did the product of their labors become known. None of the conference members were prepared for the war of words and the negative reaction their efforts incited once the joint statement rolled off the presses Thursday morning. As Samuel Palmer Brooks stepped off the train in Waco on the morning of November 4, 1926, he had no hint of the maelstrom of opposition that awaited him on his own campus.

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Charles Milo Sessums. (Photograph from The Longhorn, 1927, Texas A&M College.)

Full-page tribute and poem to Charlie Sessums in the 1927 Texas A&M yearbook. (Photograph from The Longhorn, 1927, Texas A&M College.)

Charlie Sessums death certificate lists “fracture of skull inflicted by party or parties unknown” as his cause of death. He was twenty-four at the time of his death. The death certificate lists his year of birth as 1903, but this appears to be an error. All other sources, including his tombstone, school records, and census records indicate that he was born in 1902. (Texas Department of Health, State Vital Statistics Unit, Austin.)

The gravesite of Charlie Sessums in Dallas’s Grove Hill Cemetery. (Photograph by the author.)

The Baylor coeds whose appearance on a Ford roadster sparked the halftime riot. (Photograph from the Waco News-Tribune [courtesy Waco Tribune-Herald], microfilm, Waco Public Library.)

The two cadets who started the Cotton Palace riot when they rushed onto the field were never publicly identified. However, they were identified in an internal investigation conducted by Texas A&M as seniors W. L. Lee (left) and G. L. Hart (right). (Photographs from The Longhorn, 1927, Texas A&M College.)

The four main suspects in Pinkerton detective Ila Floyd Benedict’s investigation. Left to right, top to bottom: Sam Coates, Hubert Connally, C. T. Johnson, and Edwin Connally. (Hubert Connally photograph from The Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, TX; others from The Round-Up, 1927, Baylor University.)

Morley Jennings, Baylor’s head football coach in 1926, was recommended for the position at Baylor by none other than D. X. Bible, the coach at Texas A&M. (Photograph from The Round-Up, 1927, Baylor University.)

Dana Xenophon Bible led the Texas A&M Aggies to five Southwest Conference championships during his eleven years as head coach. (Photograph from The Longhorn, 1927, Texas A&M College.)

Samuel Palmer Brooks, president of Baylor University. Brooks wrote to the parents of slain Texas A&M cadet Charles Sessums, “I assure you as a parent that my heart beats in abiding sympathy with you both.” However, Brooks would later be criticized for not conducting a rigorous enough investigation into the killer’s identity on the Baylor campus. (Photograph from The Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, TX.)

Thomas O. Walton was in his first year as president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas when the Cotton Palace riot occurred. Walton, an eyewitness to the riot, described the subsequent death of Charlie Sessums as “the most tragic event that has ever overtaken our institution.” (Photograph from The Longhorn, 1927, Texas A&M College.)

An aerial view of the Texas Cotton Palace in Waco. The grand hall is in the center of the photo. A portion of the oval racetrack with its grandstand is visible in the left side of the photo. The football field is partially visible in the infield. The Cotton Palace was the site of the Texas A&M–Baylor football game from 1916 to 1926. (Photograph from the Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, TX.)

Undated panorama of a football game with a capacity crowd at the Cotton Palace football field in the 1920s. (Photograph from the Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, TX.)

CH A PT ER 7 Through!

When the joint statement from President Brooks and President Walton was printed in the November 4 edition of the Baylor school paper, the Lariat, the actions of both administrations were met with immediate denunciation by the Baylor student body.1 Since no public investigative record of the riot or its tragic consequences exists, it is obvious the joint statement was heavily reliant upon the scant details that had been covered in the media and a heavy dose of details that had come to light during the testimony in Texas A&M’s internal investigation conducted a couple of days before the conference. When the joint statement was released in Waco, immediately a few glaring points of contention seemed to leap off the pages of the Lariat as Baylor students quickly digested what had been decided by the leaders of their school and Texas A&M. The first major point of contention was the claim that Baylor’s head yell leader, Frank Wood, had been warned not to use the “bucking Ford” from the near disastrous halftime performance of 1924 and had allegedly given his assurances that the vehicle would not be used. A&M’s head yell leader, J. D. Langford, had testified earlier in the week during A&M’s investigation that he had approached someone he judged to be Baylor’s yell leader from the way the young man was dressed and issued the appropriate warning and received the proper assurances. But Frank Wood refuted the claim that he had received any such warning and denied giving any such guarantee. It should be noted Wood was never identified by name in the A&M investigation as being the recipient of Langford’s warning. Second, the statement made clear that the Aggie cadets intended to use as their defense the claim that they thought the Baylor women riding in the Ford were actually men dressed in ladies’ apparel. The Baylor men had rushed to their coeds’ defense when they were assaulted; they now prepared to rush to the ladies’ defense as they were insulted.2 But the matter that raised the ire of the Baylor student body more than anything else was the general tone of the joint statement that made clear the administrations had concluded both student bodies were equally at

fault. The statement had implied that the overreaction of the Baylor students could not be justified by the precipitous and fool-headed actions of two or three overzealous cadets who first rushed onto the field, even though President Brooks would later confide in a personal letter that had he been present when the initial assault was made, he too would have been tempted to rush into the fray. Alas, the blame for the death of Cadet Sessums would be equally shared. All of this was too much for the Baylor students to swallow, and they moved swiftly to denounce the joint statement and their own administration’s complicity in the errant conference.3 The November 4 issue of the Lariat containing the text of the joint statement rolled off the presses at 4:15 p.m. Within five minutes a petition to denounce the statement began circulating on the Baylor campus.4 Word of the outcome of the conference must already have been leaked, for there is almost no other explanation for the celerity with which the petition to denounce the conference spread across the campus. The paper claimed the petition did not commence until the issue of the Lariat had been released, but the petition shows signs of preparation and not haste. The petition asked students to show their approval of the following resolution: Resolution November 4, 1926 We the undersigned students of Baylor University reviewing the happenings of Saturday October 30, 1926, during which a car loaded with Baylor girls was attacked by A&M cadets, and an A&M student was killed in the resulting melee, when Baylor men rushed to the defense of the girls, do resolve the following: That Baylor students have hesitated to take action until a conference could be held between the Presidents of the two institutions, desiring a mutual settlement; That the results of the above mentioned conference held Baylor to share equally the blame of the unfortunate affair; That, Baylor students, refusing to believe that the defense of womanhood should result in Baylor being blamed in the least, and believing that those students of A&M who initiated, joined in, and condone their action Saturday to have violated every principle of a sportsman’s code, and recalling other incidents occurring when Baylor had defeated the A&M football team in previous years; That for the above stated reasons, Baylor students desire and urge a severance of all athletic relationships with A&M College of Texas.5 92  |  C H A P TE R 7 

The resolution appeared in an additional special edition of the Lariat that same evening, followed by a lengthy list of students who had signed the petition. In all, five hundred students of the roughly fifteen hundred on the campus had signed the petition by press time of the special edition. The headline was emblazoned in all caps, “STUDENTS URGE S­ EV­ERANCE OF ATHLETIC RELATIONS WITH A&M”. In 1924 the Lariat had run an editorial following Baylor’s defeat of A&M and the near riot that was almost precipitated by the actions of the cadets’ rough behavior toward Baylor fans at the conclusion of the game, in which the editors of the paper called into question the sportsmanship of the A&M student body. The newspaper noted that sportsmanship had always been one of A&M’s “greatest assets,” but that had begun to change after Baylor’s stunning victory in 1922. A&M had long dominated the series, and a strong bond of friendship had existed between the two schools. “Now the tables have been turned for the A&M cadets,” the paper declared, noting that Baylor had made the rivalry more competitive by claiming some victories of its own. The paper’s editors challenged and perhaps sought to shame the Corps of Cadets by questioning their own slogan. The paper asked, “Now where is the real meaning of that supposedly truthful slogan of theirs, ‘There Shall Be No Regrets?’” The sentiment was echoed in the 1926 editorial titled “Through!” in the November 4 extra edition, where the editors noted once again that relations had been fine between the schools during the years when A&M dominated the series.6 No longer looking to mend fences, the editors of the Lariat unleashed every accusation of bad behavior on the part of the corps that they could muster. They even used the A&M school paper to make their case. They cited the Battalion, the A&M school newspaper, which had run an article on October 16, 1926, following the Aggies’ 63–0 victory over New Mexico, detailing how some of the cadets singled out a particular player from the opposing team and then set to jeering and pelting him with lemons. The Battalion noted, “Serious doubt is being manifested as to the once famed and once highly adhered to sportsmanship qualities of ‘Those leather-lunged cadets.’” Not only had the Aggie paper noted that things had been unruly in the New Mexico game, but it also cited “some of the occurrences of the last few games” without identifying any specific act of unsportsmanlike behavior. A&M had played only three opponents before the New Mexico game, and all had been victories, so it is unclear what the reason or reasons had been for the poor behavior on the part of the winning school, but presumably the cadets were familiar with the reference. T HR O U G H!  |  93

The Battalion warned its red-blooded readership, “Be careful Aggies lest you wreck everything you hold dear to you.” According to the standards of the school, its gentlemanly reputation meant everything to the corps.7 The Lariat continued by citing other incidents when the corps had acted ungentlemanly, including only a week earlier when they had swarmed the SMU Mustang band as it was parading after the game in celebration of their defeat of the Aggies. Even in victory the corps had not always maintained its own standards. The paper dredged up the incident following the Aggies’ come-from-behind victory over Baylor in 1921, when the cadets had “led a jackass which bore a sign, ‘This is what we made out of Baylor,’” in front of the Baylor student section of the bleachers following the game.8 The editors of the Lariat concluded that the Aggies had become the “Conference bullies” by attempting to intimidate their conference opponents with violence. The paper noted that SMU was accustomed to using a white horse in their halftime performance but was warned prior to the A&M game not to bring the animal on the field. Obviously, such a warning carried a threat of retaliation or a potential for violence if the warning was not heeded. According to the special edition of the Baylor newspaper, a similar warning was ignored in a 1914 contest in Houston with the University of Texas, where the Longhorn yell leaders were cautioned not to perform any halftime stunts. When Texas students ignored the warning, “The result was that a big fight took place similar to the one last Saturday,” the Lariat reported. However, the Lariat apparently had its facts confused, at least on this incident, as the riot it recounted had actually occurred in 1908, though the riot with Texas did bear remarkable similarities to the Cotton Palace riot.9 It is unclear what specifically the A&M students warned Texas about in 1908, but it is safe to conclude from the later incidents involving Baylor and SMU that the warning must have been against any type of celebration that the cadets might find offensive. Of course, from later incidents it appears that an opponent celebrating a victory over A&M on the school’s own field was enough to be deemed offensive by the cadets and could spark a melee, so the threshold for offensive behavior had been set rather low. In the 1908 incident in question, Texas had entered the halftime break with a 14–0 lead when a group of Texas students with brooms began to sweep the field, indicating that they had swept the Aggies from the field in the first half. It was an innocent enough stunt, but just like the events at the Cotton Palace eighteen years later, it was enough to spark a rush of cadets onto the field. Over the fence they went “as if bent upon prevent94  |  C H A P T E R 7 

ing any celebration.” The cadets seized Texas’ school colors, presumably a banner or similar item, and attempted to burn it. The Texas students intervened and recovered their colors, and a fight between the opposing student bodies erupted. Similar to the 1926 riot in Waco, where the cadets were heavily outnumbered by the Baylor student body, about one thousand Texas students were estimated to be on hand compared to only about five hundred from Texas A&M. The cadets didn’t appear to ever let bad odds deter them from a good fight.10 In its account of the 1908 Houston riot, the Waco Daily Times-­Herald wrote, “Between the teams play was fair. Between the student bodies knives were drawn and the bitterness was such as to have resulted in what approximated a riot.” The reference to knives being drawn may have been hyperbole, as only one knife is known to have been used in the riot. William Treuckmann, a Texas student from Bellville, received a serious stab wound in the brawl. He reportedly had injuries on his scalp, his neck, and in the most odd reference in the report, his lips were described as severed. The young man was assisted from the field while a “boy” was apprehended and disarmed. It is unclear what eventually happened to the assailant or his victim, but there is no record of William Treuckmann having died from his injuries. Perhaps most amazingly, the paper noted that no arrests were made. The police struggled to regain control, but eventually the A&M students returned to their seats, and then the Texas students were convinced to do the same. Many students on both sides suffered bruises and torn clothing, but there is no indication that the riot had consequences as tragic as those in Waco, yet only perhaps by a stroke of good luck for Treuckmann.11 Despite apparent confusion on the date of the riot with Texas nearly two decades earlier, the Lariat had assembled the best evidence they could to show a clear pattern of “rowdyism” had prevailed in the ranks of the corps. The Lariat took particular issue with the fact that the joint conference of the two administrations had seemed to accept the argument that the whole fight began because a few cadets had mistaken the Baylor women on the Ford for men disguised in women’s clothes. How this errant claim made it into the final joint statement is highly suspect, given the fact that multiple cadets had offered direct testimony during A&M’s own investigation that the women were not mistaken as men. W. L. Lee, the first cadet to rush onto the field and thus light the fuse that ignited the riot, testified specifically during the A&M investigation, “I did not know whether there were women or men in the car. They were all painted up like Easter Eggs and I T HR O U G H!  |  95

did not know whether they were women or men.” Whether the actions of the cadets would have been excused had the women actually been men in disguise was never made clear by either administration. What was clear, at least to the staff of the Baylor school paper and a large contingent of the Baylor student body, was that in an effort to whitewash the whole wretched affair, the joint conference had agreed to assign blame equally. That was more than the Baylor students could stand.12 The Lariat noted that Baylor students hated to see the annual rivalry with Texas A&M come to an end, but it was the consensus on the Waco campus that a severance of athletic relations had been the desired outcome of the joint conference in College Station. The paper offered the following reasons for the Baylor student body’s desire to see relations with A&M come to an end: “Baylor students are tired and disgusted with competing against a rival student body that disregards all points of honor, attacks women, runs gang-like over a few or one man, snatches colors, carries off band caps, fails to regard in the least their rival’s Alma Mater, and seeks to bulldoze and browbeat a smaller student body by virtue of superior numbers, and the mob spirit.” The Lariat had initially responded to the riot on Monday by urging patience and caution and requested the student body to allow the school’s athletic council time to do its job. Now, only three days later, the paper threw caution to the wind and sought through its editorial and the campus-wide petition to dictate to the athletic council what its decision should be. The paper unequivocally called for a complete severance of all athletic competition “until the cadets have had time to clean house.” There would be no regrets in Waco.13

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CH A PT ER 8 There Shall Be No Regrets

After the near riot in Waco in 1924 following Baylor’s upset victory over Texas A&M, the Lariat had called into question the Aggie motto “There shall be no regrets” and asked if the mantra of resolve and manliness still held true. Now two years and a bona fide riot later, the question was more urgent than ever and begged a manly response. If the Lariat had hoped to shame the cadets into admitting their fault in the instigation of the disgusting affair of October 30, 1926, they were soon to be disappointed, and the question concerning regret would soon be answered. Less than a week after the administrations at Texas A&M and Baylor had attempted to show solidarity in managing the crisis, the first sign of strains in the relationship between Texas A&M president T. O. Walton and Baylor president Samuel Palmer Brooks began to emerge in their correspondence. A tone of defensiveness began to creep into the private communications between the two leaders, and the talk of possibly severing all athletic contracts between the two schools began to gain traction.1 The cause of the new trouble was the November 4 special edition of the Lariat. On November 8 Walton wrote to Brooks that it was “a matter of very deep regret” that the Baylor student newspaper had been so harsh in its denunciations of Texas A&M, and he roundly rejected the accusations made by the Baylor student body. Walton claimed his own students had also been dissatisfied with the joint statement issued by both presidents, but that the furor had subsided on his campus and his cadets accepted the judgment of their school’s leaders. Not so at Baylor. Perhaps taken aback by the brashness of the Lariat to denounce the actions of its own administration, Walton wondered whether Brooks’s decisions and the actions of the Baylor administration were to be dictated by its students.2 Of course, since the accusations leveled against the Texas A&M student body by the Lariat were so strong, Walton conceded that the cadets felt compelled to respond lest the good people of Texas be given the wrong impression. Still, Walton admitted he could not see how any good could come through a war of words in the media.3

The Lariat had stated that while the death of Sessums was regrettable, its student body had nothing to apologize for in defending its women. The blame for the altercation lay squarely on the shoulders of the handful of cadets who had initiated the whole affair and on the shoulders of their fellow cadets who came to their aid and fought alongside them. Texas A&M alone was responsible for the fight “and its results.” Not surprisingly, this view was not shared by the Corps of Cadets.4 The same day Walton sent his letter of protest to Brooks at Baylor, the Bryan, Texas, newspaper the Eagle printed in its entirety the full-throated response from the Aggie Corps of Cadets. The official statement from the Texas A&M student body was issued under the signature of a committee comprised of ten senior cadets, but the committee claimed their statement was “endorsed by our entire student body.” By issuing the alleged unanimous statement, the committee sought to “give a true and unbiased statement gathered from sworn affidavits.” The committee felt compelled to counter the “insulting, biased, and unfair statements and accusations coming from Baylor University.”5 Forgetting the apology of their head yell leader to the Baylor cheering section in the moments immediately following the riot, in which J. D. Langford had expressed his sincere apology over the conduct of the cadets, and disregarding the statement by their own commandant in Waco, before returning to College Station the day of the fight, that the cadets who had started the melee would be punished, the senior committee now wrapped themselves in the equanimity of the joint statement and protested that they, too, had been wronged. The death of Charlie Sessums, whom the committee portrayed as smiling down from the “windows of Heaven” and bidding his schoolmates to “Carry on, Old Army, carry on, for the love of A. & M.,” was not just a personal injury to the deceased, but also a wound inflicted upon the entire corps.6 “Then came that Ford loaded with girls,” the cadets stated. The cadets reiterated the belief that had been expressed multiple times in the private Texas A&M investigation that the cadets, “as well as A. and M. College campus residents and other spectators, all thought the passengers were boys.” The only apology offered by the senior committee was a small concession made to the ladies at Baylor who had suffered the indignities that instigated the melee. “We apologize to the ladies of Baylor for this incident, because one of our traditions is that no A. and M. man has ever willingly, or knowingly, harmed a woman.” Still in no mood to make nice, the editors of the Lariat later took poetic license with the apology and quoted the A&M senior committee as having avowed that it was a tradition at Texas A&M 98  |  C H A P T E R 8 

that “no cadet had ever willingly, or knowingly, laid hands on a woman.” If only everyone involved could have kept a sense of humor a little sooner, the entire debacle might have been avoided.7 Whereas the Lariat had defended the role of the Baylor students during the riot by claiming they were acting in defense of “womanhood,” the Aggie senior committee pinned all of the blame for the melee on the Baylor student body. Baylor had actually exposed the women, knowing that the Ford would cause insult and “excite action” on the part of the cadets. In fact, the committee went so far as to claim that the entire unfortunate affair had been premeditated by Baylor and orchestrated to incite a response from the cadets. To corroborate the charge of premeditation, the committee alleged that an unnamed Waco police officer had claimed to have prior knowledge that Baylor students had “clubs and sticks” on hand before the game had begun. They also cited unsubstantiated claims by “disinterested parties” in the bleachers who reported having seen a stockpile of Baylor weapons before the fight began.8 The Lariat had called the Aggies the bullies of the conference and cited multiple previous incidents in which the corps had acted rashly in response to a defeat, but the cadet committee claimed the paper had it backwards. The true bullies on the sad Saturday in Waco were the Baylor students who, numbering fifteen hundred, attacked and beat a much smaller contingent of cadets with “clubs, sticks, and iron rods.” And the committee left no misunderstanding as to how the Corps of Cadets viewed the death of their slain friend when they questioned whether the “man who murdered Lieutenant Charles M. Sessums” had been motivated by a desire to protect womanhood even though all of the women had left the field by the time the fatal blow was struck.9 Finally, the senior committee turned its attention to the topic of the moment: the call by the Baylor student body for a severance of all athletic relations with the students of Texas A&M. “With reference to severance or continuance of athletic relations, that is a matter of complete indifference to us, and its disposition we consider rests properly in the hands of the authorities of the College,” the statement concluded. This attitude of apathy at A&M was only deepened by the perception that Baylor had not done all it could to uncover Sessums’s killer. The cadets concluded that perhaps it was best if both schools went their separate ways. There would be no regrets.10 From the vantage point of hindsight and the distance of nine decades, the entire dispute over who started the riot seems petty, considering that a young man had lost his life over a perceived slight in a college rivalry. T H E R E S HALL B E N O R E G R E T S  |  99

One has to wonder if those involved in the debate during the heat of the moment ever looked back with regret over how a seemingly silly halftime stunt had led to such a violent reaction. The Lariat’s self-righteous defense of the Baylor student body totally ignored the fact that even if the Baylor boys had been justified in rushing to the defense of the women riding on the Ford, nothing justified the use of clubs and weapons in the ensuing riot, and there was simply no way to justify the needless death of Cadet Sessums. The Texas A&M senior committee fared no better in its explanation of the causes of the riot and the role its students played; it ignored explicitly contradictory testimony in the college’s own internal inquiry, including that of the cadet who had first rushed onto the field, that not all of the cadets believed the women riding on the Ford were actually men dressed as women. Further, the senior committee at A&M had errantly traced the roots of the riot back to the 1924 incident involving the “bucking Ford” and completely ignored the former near riot in 1922 and other incidents that had long pointed to a souring of relations. The truth is, the seeds of discontent between the rival student bodies had been planted long before the 1924 and 1926 incidents. When the claims and counterclaims of both student bodies are examined against the facts of the riot, it becomes clear that the joint statement issued by the two administrations came closer than any other document to correctly assigning the blame. On the day after the A&M senior committee’s statement was published in the state press, including in the Lariat at Baylor, Samuel Palmer Brooks wrote to John H. Ray in Corpus Christi and opined that the incensed emotions on both the A&M and Baylor campuses had made it “hard for wisdom to find its way.” A clear path forward that preserved the old rivalry was getting harder to find with each passing day and with each new salvo fired in the media by one of the student bodies. In the same letter Brooks confided that Baylor was losing the public relations war in the press. It was hard to explain just how a student had been killed while visiting his school, but Brooks felt Baylor would fare better in the public’s perception if all the facts surrounding the riot could be known.11 Having come to the realization that their joint statement had failed to calm the intense emotions and passions at their respective schools, the administrations at Texas A&M and Baylor began questioning the wisdom of continuing their rivalry. Of course, there were legally binding contracts in place, as A&M’s President Walton reminded Baylor’s President Brooks, and neither party should violate the contracts without careful consideration of the interests of the other school.12 However, the overarching 100  |  C H A P T E R 8 

concern for both presidents was the very real potential for a future outbreak of violence. In fact, if the legend of the Aggie cadets’ seizing their school’s cannon, commandeering a train, and setting out to bombard the Waco campus has any basis in reality, then violence had already been narrowly averted. Whether fact or fiction, the legend did nothing to counter the Lariat’s claim that the Corps of Cadets had become a rowdy, reckless bunch. As Walton and Brooks looked for guidance as to the wisest decision, another dispute between a pair of venerable rivals seemed to point the way forward. Less than two weeks after the riot in Waco, Princeton University’s Board of Athletic Control voted to terminate all athletic contracts with Harvard University, effective immediately. The stunning split between two of college football’s oldest rivals became known in the media as “the Teacup War.”13 The ego of the proud Princetonians had been wounded when Harvard announced that the 1926 game between the two schools would be the last in their annual series. Starting in 1927, the only annual rival Harvard intended to schedule was the Yale Bulldogs, another ancient foe of the Princeton Tigers.14 Then on the day of the Harvard-Princeton game, the satirical and feisty Harvard Lampoon ran a tactless article detailing the death of Princeton’s head coach, Bill Roper. In the fictional news story, Roper died of shock when his team defeated the mighty Harvard eleven. Princeton did win, 12–0, and fortunately Roper took it all in stride and lived, but the Princetonians still were not satisfied.15 Princeton’s decision to terminate all athletic contracts between the schools went far beyond what Harvard had intended. In explaining the decision, the president of Princeton University’s Board of Athletic Control, Charles W. Kennedy, cited a lack of mutual respect as the primary reason for the board’s far-reaching action. Kennedy could have been writing of the differences between Texas A&M and Baylor when he said, “Unless athletic contests between colleges grow out of and reproduce a feeling of friendly rivalry and mutual respect, there can be no valid reason for their continuance.”16 A parting of ways and a cooling off period seemed the wisest course to take before matters got truly out of hand. And thus, the brief Teacup War was decisively settled, but no one could truly claim victory. News of the quarrelsome duo reached Texas on Friday November 12, barely two weeks after the riot in Waco. In comparison to the recent riot at the halftime of the Baylor–Texas A&M game, the entire Teacup War must have seemed downright silly. The Dallas Morning News greeted the TH E R E S HALL B E N O R E G R E T S  |  101

announcement of the split with a roll of the eyes and a dismissive wave of the hand as it noted, “It is an odd thing that the formal break should occur over so trivial a cause as a college humorous publication, [and] only added demonstration that the human race can stand nearly everything except to be laughed at.”17 The affair in Waco could not be dismissed so casually. First, actual violence had already taken place, and second, everybody could agree that the death of a young man over a football rivalry was no laughing matter. Unable to ensure that no future violence would erupt, and unable to bring cooler heads to bear and prevail, Presidents Walton and Brooks followed Princeton’s lead and finally reached the only wise choice left to them by their student bodies. On December 8, 1926, the two met at Brooks’s home in Waco and signed a joint statement announcing that the two schools had severed all athletic relations. The two rivals had been set to begin a new contract the following season in which the teams would alternate games between their respective campuses. Now there would be no home-and-home series for the foreseeable future.18 Walton told the media he regretted the action but felt that under the circumstances it could not be avoided, nor could he foresee how long the rupture would last. The joint statement said in part, “Appeal is made to the public that it will help us to grow a better feeling between the two student bodies, to the end that at some future time a renewal of games may be made and the games played according to the high ideals that govern both institutions.”19 It would be almost five years to the day after the 1926 Cotton Palace riot before Texas A&M and Baylor competed again in football. In the end, both student bodies got what they had said they wanted. Both sides would just walk away, and there would be no regrets. The truth is, the entire affair was utterly regrettable. It was regrettable that no one intervened when previous incidents had foreshadowed future violence. It was regrettable that a few cadets could not stand a little juvenile jeering. It was regrettable that Baylor students used the assault on the Ford as a pretext for greater violence. It was regrettable that neither administration saw what was coming, and after it happened, neither could provide a satisfactory solution going forward. But it was most regrettable that a young man, caught in the current of violent passions that swept through the Cotton Palace stadium on October 30, 1926, lost his life over something so trivial as a halftime performance at a football game.

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PART I I I The Murder

CH A PT ER 9 The Baylor Incident

The decision to cancel all future athletic events between Texas A&M and Baylor for the foreseeable future accomplished the immediate goal of averting further violence between the warring student bodies. The joint statement from the conference between the administrations casting equal blame on each school for the riot and its tragic result had been wise, even if it was unpopular. However, in the hullabaloo that lasted for over a month after the riot, one question had gone unanswered: Who was responsible for the death of Charlie Sessums? While there were multiple eyewitnesses to the fatal moment when Sessums was struck on the side of his head, there was one person who seemed to know more about the killing than anyone else. His name was Herschel Frank Connally, and in 1926 he was serving a single term as the mayor of Waco. Connally’s name was mentioned multiple times in testimony given during the Texas A&M investigation. Cadet Dewitt McKinley confidently testified to the A&M investigators that “you can get reliable evidence” from Connally. Cadet T. P. Ewing testified that the mayor had tried to restrain Sessums during the fight, and thus placed the mayor at the scene when the deadly blow was struck. But that wasn’t all the Texas A&M investigation uncovered about the mayor of Waco.1 It seems that before Charlie Sessums’s parents had even left Waco to return to Dallas with their son’s body, a rumor was making the rounds in town that accused the deceased cadet of being drunk at the time he was wounded. The rumor turned up in the A&M investigation the Monday after the riot when Cadet E. A. Vance told the investigators that it was being alleged in Waco that Cadet Sessums “was so drunk that he did not know what he was doing.” Cadet Vance testified that he had been with Charlie since shortly after the A&M train had arrived in Waco the morning of the game and had remained with him until halftime. Vance also claimed that Sessums had not had anything to drink, and he was certain of this, as he had been in Charlie’s presence the entire time. He even claimed Sessums had been offered a drink at one point but had turned it down. A second cadet, O. D. Disch, also told A&M investigators that he did not suspect THE B AY LO R IN CIDE N T  |  107

Charlie had been drinking. Disch had planned to accompany Charlie to Milford, a small town along the interurban rail line about halfway between Dallas and Waco, and the two had spoken briefly around 11:00 a.m. the morning of the game. Disch and Vance’s testimonies were given credence when William A. Moers, one of the two cadets who had escorted Charlie from the football field to the Cotton Palace emergency medical facility, also claimed that he had not detected any smell of alcohol on Sessums. Of course, the testimony of the three young men could be met with skepticism as the testimony of fellow cadets trying to protect the reputation of one of their own if it were not for two additional reliable sources who claimed firsthand knowledge of Cadet Sessums’s abstemiousness on the day he was injured.2 Hollie Stewart was the nurse on duty at the emergency medical facility at the Cotton Palace when Cadet Sessums was brought in after being wounded. After learning of Charlie’s death a few days after the riot, Stewart was moved to write the young man’s mother and offer her condolences, but her personal letter, long kept by the family among its recollections of the terrible day, offers a refutation of the rumor that Charlie had been drunk at the time of his injury. “Some might say the boys were drinking, but I am so glad to tell you your son was not intoxicated,” Stewart wrote. Her refutation of the rumor was seconded by none other than Dr. Howard Lanham, who treated Charlie at both the Cotton Palace and later at Providence Sanitarium. Lanham later told a private detective who investigated Charlie’s death that if the young man had been drinking whiskey, he could not detect it.3 If Charlie Sessums had been drunk or had the smell of whiskey on him, there were ample witnesses who could have attested to the fact. But the cold, hard truth is that only one person was making the accusation that the slain cadet was drunk, and that person was none other than the mayor of Waco himself, Herschel Frank Connally.4 The mayor apparently spoke quite openly about what he had witnessed during the riot and shared his account of how he had rushed from the grandstand onto the field to try to restore order once the riot had erupted. As he was attempting to convince the students to stop fighting and to return to their seats, he confronted a tall cadet who was chasing after a smaller young man. Connally claimed he placed a hand on the cadet’s shoulder and said, “Now you go on back to your section and I will make this man go to his.” The cadet ignored Connally’s command and brushed past him. Connally claimed to have then watched as the cadet swung his fist twice at 108  |  C H A P T E R 9 

the smaller man before diving at him. That is when the smaller man swung a wooden club about the length of a baseball bat and struck the cadet on the side of his head, the force of the blow knocking him to the ground.5 The mayor’s account had a conspicuous discrepancy from other eyewitness accounts. Connally claimed that Sessums twice tried to hit the smaller man as he pursued him across the field. It was after Sessums’s second failed attempt to strike him that the smaller man swung the club and landed the deadly blow. However, all other witnesses who observed the same pursuit agreed in their testimony that it was the smaller man who twice tried to hit Sessums with the club before landing a third, and ultimately fatal, blow. According to the other witnesses, Sessums had fended off the first two blows with his arm.6 After witnessing the violent blow, Connally walked over to the injured young man and by his own account said to him, “Aren’t you ashamed?” The cadet did not respond, so Connally rolled him over and, recognizing the severity of the injury, told a couple of cadets nearby that they needed to get a doctor for the young man quickly.7 Connally’s claim that he instructed a couple of cadets to get medical help for their injured schoolmate is as troubling as the story the mayor was telling around town that Sessums was intoxicated. Mayor Connally was not a politician by trade. Long before and long after he served a single term as the mayor of Waco, he was known to the citizens of the town as Dr. H. F. Connally, MD. At the time of the riot Dr. Connally was one of the leading medical authorities in the state of Texas, making his instructions for the cadets to get a doctor for their friend all the more baffling. After learning the following day that a young man had died from injuries sustained during the riot, Dr. Connally viewed the body at Waco’s Compton Funeral Home. Connally did not know Charlie Sessums personally, so it was only when he viewed the body of the deceased cadet that he realized the slain young man was the same cadet he had encountered during the riot and had witnessed being struck on the side of his head.8 No one else ever spoke so openly about seeing the blow that killed Charlie Sessums, but sadly, even given his proximity to the crime, the mayor claimed he did not recognize the killer and did not think he would be able to identify him if he ever saw him again. However, the mayor was certain of one detail, and he repeated it to anyone who would listen: the cadet he had attempted to restrain during the riot, and who he had witnessed being struck, had smelled of whiskey when he encountered him near midfield.9 THE B AY LO R IN CIDE N T  |  109

The mayor’s singular insistence that Sessums was intoxicated is suspicious and begs the question of why Dr. Connally would have made such a claim if it were not true. Was he simply mistaken, or did he intend to imply that the cadet was at fault for his own death? Of course, even if Sessums had been intoxicated, or had had only a drink or two the day of the riot and smelled of whiskey, such a fact could not possibly absolve his killer of all culpability. And the discrepancy in the mayor’s version that Sessums twice tried to hit the smaller man before being struck himself, when all other accounts indicate it was the man in the blue suit who had swung at Charlie multiple times, only raises more questions. Was the mayor’s version concocted, and if so, was it intended to provide a cover of self-defense for the guilty party? The answer to why Mayor Connally made the claim about Charlie Sessums smelling of whiskey may have been uncovered by a private detective hired by supporters of Texas A&M to investigate the young man’s death. Discouraged by the apparent lack of interest on the part of local authorities or the officials at Baylor to look into the assault and killing of Charlie Sessums, a group of former students of Texas A&M in Waco decided to take matters into their own hands and hired the services of a private investigator. The famous Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency has protected everything from presidents to railroads to priceless works of art, but they have first and foremost always been known for their stellar investigative abilities. And so it was to the Pinkerton Agency field office in Dallas that the A&M supporters turned to find the man to bring Sessums’s killer to justice.10 The detective assigned to the case was thirty-four-year-old Ila Floyd Benedict, who arrived in Waco to begin his investigation on the morning of Monday, November 22, 1926. Benedict soon discovered he had his work cut out for him. While Mayor Connally seemed more than willing to tell anyone who would listen about his encounter with Sessums during the riot, most people in town did not seem to share the same enthusiasm. There were a few intransigent witnesses, including at least one prominent business leader in Waco, who claimed to have knowledge about the fight and Sessums’s death but refused to divulge what they allegedly knew.11 While there were a few people willing to talk and share what they had heard, or what they thought they knew, for the most part it was as if an unofficial veil of silence had descended upon the city. Detective Benedict’s first two interviews were with R. J. Potts and E. P. Hunter. Benedict wrote in his first daily report on November 22, 110  |  C H A P T E R 9 

1926, that the stories the two men told him were “identically the same.” The story they had each repeated was Mayor Connally’s version of events of his alleged encounter with Charlie Sessums during the riot. The detective happened to be scheduled to meet with Dr. Connally later that evening, but when he arrived at the mayor’s residence at 6:00 p.m. he was informed by Mrs. Connally that the mayor had been called away to perform a surgery and would not be able to meet with him that evening.12 Benedict called on the mayor again the following day, this time at Dr. Connally’s office in Waco’s lone skyscraper, the Amicable Building, located at the corner of 5th Street and Austin Avenue. In addition to his duties as the city’s mayor, Dr. Connally was also the medical examiner for the Amicable Life Insurance Company. Dr. Frank Connally was a very important man, and the Connally family name was well known in Waco and the Central Texas area. The clan hailed from the tiny community of Comanche Springs, just outside the small town of McGregor, located twenty miles southwest of Waco. The most well known member of the family was Tom Connally, the future US senator from Texas and the mayor’s first cousin. While cousin Tom, who was barely a year older than Frank (Dr. Connally’s preferred name) prepared for a life in politics, the future mayor prepared for a life in medicine.13 After graduating from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, the young doctor returned home to central Texas and practiced medicine in a couple of small towns outside of Waco before finally moving to the city in 1912. From that point until his death in 1948 he became a prominent fixture in the city. Prior to serving a single term as mayor beginning in April 1926, an office his son Dr. H. F. Connally Jr. also held for a single term in the 1950s, Connally served as commissioner of the city’s health department. After his term at city hall ended in 1927, Connally was appointed by Texas governor Dan Moody to the state board of medical examiners, eventually becoming the executive secretary of the board. He continued to serve on the board until his death twenty-one years later. Dr. Connally had impeccable credentials and served the citizens of Texas honorably, which makes his conduct concerning the death of Charlie Sessums all the more perplexing.14 In his interview with Detective Benedict, Dr. Connally repeated the story about his encounter with the “tall cadet” during the riot that the detective had heard the previous day, but for the first time Benedict also heard a physical description of Sessums’s killer. Dr. Connally had first noticed the would-be suspect backing out of the throng of students battling on the T HE B AY LO R IN CIDE N T  |  111

field and noted that the smaller man was being pursued by the cadet. He described the suspect as between twenty-three and twenty-five years old, five foot seven to five foot eight in height, 130 pounds, with a medium build and black hair. The mayor apparently got a pretty good look at the suspect in order to be so specific about the suspect’s possible weight and height. Most important, though, Dr. Connally noted the suspect was wearing “a blue serge suit,” and noted that he had a “loud dark tie with a broad white stripe.” Amazingly, despite the rather complete physical description he provided, the mayor claimed he did not feel he would able to identify the young man if he saw him again. Benedict ended his meeting with the mayor without any solid leads to pursue.15 Benedict soon found that the consensus around Waco was that the killer’s identity could not be learned because of the chaotic nature of the riot, and many people felt it was likely even the killer himself was unaware of the harm he had caused. Despite the apathetic attitude that permeated the city, and the unwillingness of many to disclose what they thought they knew, it did not take long for Benedict to build a short list of possible suspects. Some possible suspects during the investigation were easily dismissed, but at least four warranted Benedict’s closer scrutiny. The first solid lead in the investigation was a name that Benedict heard more than once. The young man was popular around Waco and was one of the stars on the Baylor Bears football team. Sam Coates was a hometown hero after playing on both Paul Tyson’s 1922 Waco High championship team and Frank Bridges’s second Southwest Conference championship team in 1924. When Benedict interviewed him on Tuesday, November 23, the young man denied taking part in the fight. John Dockery, the manager of Waco’s Raleigh Hotel, gave the detective a contradictory account. According to Dockery, who identified himself as a relative of Coates, he personally had witnessed Coates taking part in the fight. Sam Coates’s name had emerged as a possible suspect during the investigation conducted at Texas A&M as well, but that investigation seemed to confirm that while Coates likely did strike a cadet over the head with a club, it was most likely Cadet Hart, the second cadet who raced onto the field at the start of the fracas, and not Charlie Sessums. No eyewitness ever placed Coates and Sessums within thirty yards of each other during the fight, and the confusion caused by Coates’s striking Cadet Hart easily explains his being incorrectly named as a suspect in the death of Charlie Sessums.16 The second possible suspect that warranted further investigation could not be so easily cleared. In interviewing Dr. Connally, Benedict had written 112  |  C H A P T E R 9 

in his daily notes that the mayor claimed not to have known or recognized the young man he had witnessed striking Charlie Sessums.17 And this is where the search for Charlie Sessums’s killer takes a most interesting turn. Among the vast archives of the Cushing Memorial Library at Texas A&M is a file box labeled “The Baylor Incident,” the contents of which represent the single largest collection of documents related to the 1926 Cotton Palace riot. Among the assorted items in the file are the transcript of the investigation conducted by A&M officials, an assortment of newspaper and magazine articles about the riot, several letters from the correspondence between Texas A&M president T. O. Walton and Baylor president Samuel Palmer Brooks, and a few other miscellaneous items concerning the fateful day. But the most intriguing piece by far in the small collection is a single-spaced, typewritten, two-page document tantalizingly entitled “Account of Charles M. Sessums’ Death following A&M-Baylor Football Game October 30, 1926 and the Later Death of His Assailant.”18 All that is known of the provenance of the account is that it has been in the university’s archives since at least the early 1970s, though there is evidence in the document itself to suggest that it was written much earlier, and possibly as soon as within a few years after the riot. Equally uncertain is its authorship. The document is not signed, nor did the author choose to reveal his identity in the text. Adding to the mystery of the account is the fact that the author also chose to conceal the identity of the four informants he claimed were the source for the document’s shocking revelation. It would be tempting to dismiss the account as hearsay or rumor if it were not for the fact that its author made no apologies and pulled no punches in naming Charlie Sessums’s killer. If the account is to be believed, the man responsible for the death of Charlie Sessums was a Baylor graduate named Hubert Connally. Hubert happened also to be a member of one of the leading families in Waco and was a third cousin of the city’s mayor, Dr. Frank Connally.19 The more Benedict asked around town, the more it seemed Dr. Connally may have had a personal motivation when he impugned Charlie Sessums’s character by suggesting that the cadet was intoxicated during the riot. Benedict quickly picked up on a trail that offered a possible motive for the mayor’s unique testimony about the events of October 30, 1926, and that might also explain why the local legal authorities may not have wanted to look too closely into the cadet’s death. The one name that came up most frequently as a possible suspect in Benedict’s investigation was none other

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than the name in the anonymous account in the Texas A&M archives: Hubert Connally. Actually, before Benedict ever heard the name Hubert Connally as a possible suspect, he first heard the name Sniper Connally. It was only upon asking around town that Benedict learned that Sniper was the nickname for the former Baylor football star Hubert Connally. How Hubert received the nickname Sniper seems to be lost to time, but it is safe to say the nickname predated the 1926 riot by a few years and has nothing to do with the allegations or suspicion that he was involved in causing the death of Charlie Sessums. Benedict first learned that Sniper Connally might be the killer on Tuesday, November 23, later on the same day he had interviewed the mayor. The tip of the possible suspect’s nickname was passed to him by W. K. Rooks.20 Rooks had learned of the allegation against Hubert Connally from a customer named Earl B. Patterson while on duty at the Cities Service Filling Station located at 15th Street and Herring Avenue. Detective Benedict visited Rooks a second time the following day and presented him with a prepared written statement detailing how Rooks came to know of Sniper Connally’s alleged involvement in the killing. Rooks acknowledged that the written statement was true, and despite his willingness to talk with the detective, he refused to sign the document, claiming that he did not want to be involved if the matter should end up in court. It was just as well, as two days later, on Friday, November 26, Benedict was able to interview Earl Patterson, who confirmed that he had indeed told Rooks that Sniper Connally was Sessums’s killer, but he said his claim was based on a comment he had overheard the Sunday after the riot, and he was not sure who had actually made the original accusation. It suddenly appeared that another possible lead was going cold.21 It was nearly two weeks later in mid-December before Detective Benedict interviewed Hubert Connally. Hubert told the detective that he had attended the game with his wife and had wanted to go onto the field to help stop the fight once it had begun, but his wife had resisted. Finally, after overcoming her objections, he left the grandstand and joined the mayor on the field, a detail the mayor had failed to mention to Benedict during their interview. However, Hubert claimed that by the time he got to the field, the fighting had ceased. While there was nothing incriminating in his account, Hubert did make a few interesting statements, according to Agent Benedict’s notes.22

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First, despite claiming he wanted to go on the field only to help stop the fight, he claimed that by the time he joined the mayor on the field the fighting had ceased. This raises the question of why did he continue onto the field at all at that point if the fight was already over? Hubert also stated that he had not struck a single blow in the fight. He acknowledged that he had been accused of being Sessums’s killer, but he noted that Sam Coates had also been falsely accused. Finally, Hubert admitted to having spoken about the fight with various Baylor students, and he claimed the general opinion among the students was that they felt no one really knew who the killer was. Despite the opinion expressed by other people around Waco and Baylor that even the killer probably was not aware of the harm he had caused, Hubert was more circumspect and told Benedict he believed that the killer knew he had struck the fatal blow.23 Was this final statement that he believed the killer knew he had harmed Sessums a subtle attempt to offer a half-confession? While it is an interesting question to consider, to answer in the affirmative would be to accept speculation as evidence, and so far, speculation was all Benedict was uncovering. The interview with Hubert Connally yielded no solid evidence, and in fact it appears that at that point Benedict might not have considered Hubert a suspect at all. First, Hubert did not match the description of the killer the mayor had given. According to the 1925 Baylor yearbook the Round Up, Hubert, at five feet nine inches tall, was an inch or two taller than the man in the mayor’s description, and at 171 pounds he weighed more than 40 pounds more than the mayor had estimated the killer weighed.24 Benedict made no mention in his notes of what Hubert might have been wearing the day of the riot, and the possibility that at least at that point in his investigation he no longer considered Hubert a strong suspect, despite the frequency with which his name had been associated with the killing, is strongly suggested by the fact that he interviewed Hubert only one time. That would not be the case with the next suspect detective Benedict investigated.

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CH A PTE R 1 0 “The City With a Soul”

Early in his investigation into the death of Charlie Sessums, Pinkerton detective Ila Floyd Benedict acted on a lead he had received that there was a young man in Waco who could identify the killer. The young man had allegedly discussed the moment Sessums was struck during the Cotton Palace riot in graphic detail at a boarding house just a few blocks east of Baylor’s campus. So begins the curious story of C. T. Johnson.1 The name C. T. Johnson had first been mentioned in association with the killing of Charlie Sessums during the investigation conducted at Texas A&M the week following the riot. Cadet H. C. Norred testified to A&M officials that he knew Johnson from their hometown of Mount Calm, Texas, a small crossroads community about thirty minutes northeast of Waco. Norred recounted that on the evening after the riot he and as many as half a dozen other young men had gathered in Johnson’s room in a boarding house located at 1400 S. 5th Street in Waco. Johnson told Norred and the others that he was about three feet away from Sessums when he was hit, and his recollection was so vivid he even acted out the scene for them just as he had witnessed it during the fight. More important, Johnson also claimed to know the killer’s identity. However, that was information Johnson was not willing to share. Some of the boys tried to guess who it was, but their attempts to get him to say the killer’s name were unsuccessful.2 It is likely the officials at Texas A&M passed this lead to Benedict in November when he began his investigation, and on his second day in Waco he made his way to 1400 S. 5th Street hoping to interview C. T. Johnson. When he arrived at the boarding house he learned that the landlady was a widow named Louise Wilson, but neither she nor C. T. Johnson happened to be at home at the time. Benedict interviewed one of the other boarders, who informed him that Johnson was a senior at Baylor and was studying to be a preacher, but the young man was unable to provide any information useful to the investigation.3 A couple of days later, Benedict finally met C. T. Johnson for the first time. Johnson denied that he had ever made any statement in the presence

of Cadet Norred or any of the other young men about knowing the killer’s identity, but then he made a peculiar remark. He told Benedict that if he did know who had struck the cadet he would only tell it under oath, as he “believed it was nobody’s business who hit Sessums.” Not only was his statement suspicious and improper, Benedict also noted that during the entire interview Johnson was “very nervous” and “continually picked at his fingers.”4 Certainly Johnson’s abundance of nerves can be explained by the possibility that he actually knew damning information that he did not want to tell, but Benedict also observed another possible cause for the young man’s unease. In his investigation notes detailing his interview with Johnson on Thursday, November 26, Benedict described the young man as aged twenty­-three to twenty-five years old, five feet seven or eight inches in height, weighing 150 to 160 pounds, with very black hair and a dark complexion. Even though Benedict did not state it explicitly in his daily report, C. T. Johnson matched Mayor Connally’s description of the killer. After admitting he had taken part in the riot, Johnson refused to talk to Benedict any further. A refusal to cooperate and a similarity to the killer’s description was not proof of guilt, but Benedict’s suspicion had been aroused, and C. T. Johnson quickly became a highly valued person of interest either for his possible role in Sessums’s killing or for the information he might be able to provide. Benedict set out to break Johnson’s silence, and as his luck would have it, an offer of assistance in that very endeavor soon emerged.5 On December 5, near the end of the second week of his investigation, Benedict interviewed C. T. Johnson’s landlady, Louise Wilson, who quickly assured the detective that she could get the information he needed. Unfortunately, Mrs. Wilson, whom Benedict identified in his notes as Informant No. 1, was as unreliable in her assistance as C. T. Johnson was recalcitrant in divulging what he knew. Her offer to assist was followed by a question of what the detective might offer her for her assistance. After informing her that he could not offer her anything, but that he would appreciate any information she could provide, the landlady objected that it would be “almost like murder for her to do this” and cut the interview short. Still, she suggested they meet again in a day or two and urged that any future discussions take place somewhere in town and not at the boardinghouse.6 As luck would have it, Benedict ran into her later that very day around 7:00 p.m., and her reluctance to assist him appeared to have subsided, as she now had a story to tell. She said a day or two after the riot a group of “ THE CIT Y W IT H A S O U L”  |  117

Baylor students almost revealed the killer’s name to her. However, she had halted the discussion, claiming she did not want to know who the killer was. When pressed by Benedict for the names of the students, Wilson once again resisted. She promised to get him the names later in exchange for Benedict’s promise that he would not use her name. Louise Wilson depended upon boarding fees from Baylor students for her livelihood, and being known as an informant would be bad for business. Benedict gave his assurance, and Louise asked him to call her the following day.7 The next day Benedict and Wilson met again, but the only new piece of information she provided the detective was that C. T. Johnson had apparently confided to her a day or two after the riot that he had been about to strike Sessums with a piece of a chair when the “other man hit him,” and that if he were to tell her what he knew, it would ruin him and any possible career he might have in the ministry. Benedict noted in his daily report for December 6 that Louise Wilson was well educated and appeared “refined and reliable.”8 The assessment of her reliability would not hold true as the investigation continued. Over the next two weeks Benedict communicated with Informant No. 1 eight times, but every time she gave a different excuse for her inability to provide him the information she had promised. She claimed she had tried to engage C. T. Johnson in conversation, but he either was busy with his studies, out on a date, back home for the weekend, or simply not in. The one time she admitted to finally being able to press him on the point of who killed Sessums, she claims he laughed it off and said, “You asked me not to tell you this once and I am not going to do it now.”9 Benedict’s final interview with C. T. Johnson was in Johnson’s room on December 19, but the young man still refused to yield any new information. In fact, as Louise Wilson observed, he seemed to be hardening in his resistance to provide any assistance in the investigation. Benedict attempted to reason with him, but Johnson refused again and stated that even a grand jury could not force him to reveal what he knew.10 Benedict pressed Informant No. 1 to be persistent with Johnson, perhaps believing that increasing the pressure upon the young man would eventually cause him to break. Two days later, however, Mrs. Wilson informed the detective that C. T. Johnson had visited with Dr. Samuel Palmer Brooks, and when he returned to the boarding house he informed her he had told Brooks about her and Benedict’s persistence. According to Mrs. Wilson, Johnson claimed Brooks instructed him not to reveal anything to her, and that if he were to be taken before a grand jury he would “get all the help he 118  |  C H A P T E R 1 0 

wanted.” She now believed any further efforts on her part would be futile and feared that if she persisted, Brooks might cause her boarders to leave her home. That was a risk she could not take.11 For at least a couple of weeks in December, C. T. Johnson had been the main focus of Benedict’s investigation, and a somewhat complex image of the young man had emerged. Clyde T. Johnson was the son of a minister from Mount Calm and was preparing to follow in his father’s footsteps. According to Louise Wilson, another boarder named N. O. Thomas had been present during the conversation in which C. T. Johnson had said he was ready to strike Sessums when another man hit the cadet. Thomas had protested to Johnson that he was not much of a preacher if he had been prepared to hit and kill a man, to which C. T. coolly replied that he did not care at the time.12 Two other boarders in Mrs. Wilson’s house were also from Mount Calm, and both claimed to have known Johnson since boyhood. Graves Dyer, whom Cadet Norred had placed in Johnson’s room on Sunday evening, October 31, when C. T. had allegedly told the group of boys he knew who the killer was, told Benedict that he had known Johnson his entire life and described him as a very quiet man and never one to be in trouble. A strikingly different portrait of C. T. Johnson was provided by another boarder, named Dobson, who claimed that he, too, had known Johnson since he was a boy and described a young man who, apparently like his father, liked to boast and argue. Dobson seriously doubted Johnson actually knew anything and suggested he wanted to make himself the focus of attention by claiming he knew something. If that was indeed the case, C. T. Johnson was playing a very dangerous game.13 One piece of information Benedict apparently never uncovered in his investigation is the curious fact that, according to the Waco City Guide, the house at 1400 S. 5th Street where C. T. Johnson lived for the 1926–27 school year had also been the residence of none other than Hubert Connally during his senior year in 1924.14 Is it possible the two young men boarded at the same house at the same time, and was Hubert Connally the man C. T. Johnson saw strike Sessums just seconds before Johnson intended to hit him? Unfortunately, no city guide was published for the year 1925, and due to this regrettable fact it remains unknown whether C. T. Johnson and Hubert Connally ever crossed paths at Louise Wilson’s home. With C. T. Johnson’s continued lack of cooperation, Louise Wilson’s inability to break his silence, the apparent misidentification of Sam Coates as a possible suspect, and nothing more than rumors to suggest Hubert “ T HE CIT Y W IT H A S O U L”  |  119

Connally was the killer, Detective Benedict must have begun to wonder if he would ever be able to bring Sessums’s killer to justice. If he was going to succeed, it was obvious by now he would not receive any official help. Benedict was finding that the city the 1922 Texas A&M yearbook had called “the City With a Soul,” was now the city without a heart. Interviews with the local police and county officials suggested that no real investigation had ever been conducted into Sessums’s death, and when Benedict interviewed President Brooks he discovered that Baylor’s investigation amounted to nothing more than approximately twenty-five conversations with various students, none of whom could provide useful information. Brooks kept neither notes of his discussions with the students nor a list of their names. It appears C. T. Johnson was not the only person in Waco who felt it was nobody’s business to know who killed Charlie Sessums.15 The only consistent information that Benedict kept coming across as he pursued leads throughout Waco was the description of the killer. The composite description from multiple witnesses, including Dr. Frank Connally, was that the killer was twenty-one to twenty-five years old, five feet four inches to five feet six inches in height, weighed 130–40 pounds, had black hair and a dark complexion, and was wearing a blue suit. Some witnesses even indicated the killer was wearing a “blue serge” suit, denoting a specific type of fabric. This description was essentially the same as the one Benedict heard yet again on Sunday, December 19, nearly a month after his initial investigation had begun. This time though, the description had the possibility of breaking the case wide open.16 The description of Sessums’s killer on December 19 came from Baylor’s longtime athletic trainer, Ralph Wolf, who more than providing a recurring description of the killer, was also able to provide a most interesting new lead. For nearly a month the name Sniper Connally had repeatedly come up in interviews about the riot as the most likely suspect. Benedict had learned early in the investigation that Sniper was the nickname of the former Baylor star athlete Hubert Connally, but Ralph Wolf was the first person to reveal to him that there was a second Sniper Connally in Waco. “Little Sniper,” as Edwin Connally was identified in Benedict’s daily report, was a senior at Baylor and a member of the Bears baseball team. Like his cousin Hubert, who had also been rumored to have killed Sessums, Ed was a relative of Dr. Frank Connally. Ed’s father Clarence and the mayor were brothers. Dr. Frank Connally was Little Sniper Connally’s uncle. (At least a third member of the family would be known by the nickname in the 1930s.)17 Wolf related to Benedict how once the riot had started, he and Baylor’s 120  |  C H A P TE R 1 0 

assistant coach, Jim Crow, had rushed onto the field to try to break up the fight. He was near an A&M student as the man was struck with the post of a wooden chair by a man in a “blue suit.” While the blow knocked the A&M student down, Wolf did not think the hit was hard enough to kill him. It was only later that Wolf claimed he first learned that there was a rumor among the students at Baylor that Ed Connally was the killer. Unfortunately, Wolf told Benedict he could not remember who had told him about the rumor, and when the detective asked if Ed Connally was the man he had seen strike Sessums, Wolf said he could not be certain. However, he admitted the man in the blue suit was about the same size as Ed.18 That very afternoon Benedict met and interviewed Ed Connally at a house a short distance from the Baylor campus. The young man before him was an incarnation of the suspect that had been described to him many times over the past month. In his notes Benedict recorded that Ed Connally was twenty-one years old, 138 pounds, five feet five to six inches in height, of medium build, with dark hair and a dark complexion. Details about the day of the riot that Ed volunteered during the interview only added to the suspicion that Benedict might finally be face-to-face with the suspect he was seeking.19 Although Ed admitted to being in midst of the fight, he claimed he did not strike anyone, nor was he struck during the melee. However, he did admit to seeing his uncle and even placed himself near the mayor at some point during the chaos. Most important of all, though, was the way he described his own apparel the day of the fight. Ed said he had been wearing a blue serge suit with a short ribbon on his left lapel and a black hat with a striped band. Only some of the witnesses who had provided a description of the killer during both Benedict’s investigation and the investigation conducted by Texas A&M had described the killer as wearing a hat, but this is understandable if the testimony of L. F. Weber during the A&M inquiry is to be believed.20 Weber witnessed Sessums being struck, but he saw the killer only from behind. He described the man as similar in height and weight to the description given by other witnesses, but Weber also noted that the suspect was wearing a blue serge suit and a hat. The suspect’s hat had been knocked off as he was backing out of the crowd, presumably as Sessums was pursuing him. Weber stated that after striking Sessums, the man dropped the club, and he lost sight of him as he ran into the crowd.21 Ed Connally acknowledged there were rumors that he was the man who “ T HE CIT Y W IT H A S O U L”  |  121

had killed Sessums, but he denied that he had anything to do with it and boasted that he could “face any jury and deny the charge.” The day Benedict interviewed Ed “Little Sniper” Connally was also the day of his final interview with C. T. Johnson, during which he pressed Johnson on whether he knew Ed Connally. Johnson admitted to knowing Ed, but when Benedict asked if it was Connally who had killed Sessums, Johnson replied, “I am not going to say,” but then added, “I do not know. You are not going to get me to tell you anything.” Johnson’s failure to clear Ed of suspicion had to have raised a red flag for Benedict. While he seemed to be getting nowhere with Johnson, at least Benedict now had an even more promising new suspect to pursue.22 Only two days after Benedict first learned of the existence and the identity of a second Sniper Connally, the name Ed Connally came up once again in his investigation. Benedict was interviewing Assistant County Attorney Dick Holt, who claimed he had heard that the killer was Ed “Sniper” Connally. Holt admitted it was just a rumor, but he also suggested that it appeared Ed’s uncle, Dr. Connally, seemed to know more about the fight and Sessums’s killer than anyone else. He also informed Benedict that the mayor had been inconsistent in his description of the killer. According to Holt, Dr. Connally originally had described the suspect as tall and wearing a gray suit, but he later changed his description to the more common description of a shorter man wearing a blue suit. But Benedict soon learned the mayor had not always been confused about the killer’s appearance. According to Mrs. Clarence Connally, Ed Connally’s mother, after Sessums died Dr. Connally had told her the killer was about the size of her son and “dressed about the same as he dressed.”23 Benedict interviewed Ed’s mother on Wednesday, December 29, and she understandably expressed concern that her son was a suspect in the violent act that resulted in Charlie Sessums’s death. She informed the detective that she had spoken to her son about the allegations and that he did not appear to be concerned about being considered a suspect. More important, he had told his mother that he had nothing to do with Sessums’s death. Mrs. Connally had also attended the game at the Cotton Palace and estimated that she had been seated no more than thirty feet from Ed. She claimed that Ed had left his seat and joined in the fight only “after the fight was almost over.” It is likely Mrs. Connally was not aware of the fact that Sessums’s injury occurred shortly before the fight came to an end, which just happened to correspond to when she placed her son on the field and involved in the riot. According to L. F. Weber’s testimony to 122  |  C H A P T E R 1 0 

Texas A&M investigators, Sessums was struck just before the Aggie Band began playing “Taps,” shortly before the riot was halted. She also informed the detective that after the fight she did not see her son again during the game. One witness who saw Sessums being hit claimed that two firemen escorted a man in a blue suit from the field, raising the possibility that city officials removed Ed from the action after Sessums’s injury.24 One other clue possibly pointing to Ed Connally as the man who hit and injured Charlie Sessums is a casual description Dr. Frank Connally gave to detective Benedict during their interview on Tuesday, November 23. As Dr. Connally described the tall cadet pursuing the smaller man in a blue serge suit during the riot, he referred to the smaller man six times as being a Baylor student. The mayor even claimed to have visited the Baylor student section at a subsequent game to try to locate the man but had not found him. As noted in chapter 9, Dr. Connally was able to give Benedict a rather detailed description of the smaller man in the blue serge suit, but nowhere in his description did he ever indicate any item or piece of clothing that would have identified the man as a Baylor student. So how exactly had he reached that conclusion? Dr. Connally also claimed he did not recognize the man, but is it possible that the mayor’s identification of the suspect as a Baylor student was actually an unintentional admission that he did recognize the man? And if so, was the man Ed Connally?25 Perhaps realizing he might have said too much, Dr. Connally had closed his interview with Benedict by claiming he had later come to the conclusion that the guilty party was either a former student or just a fan of Baylor, but once again he gave no explanation for how he had reached that conclusion, either. A leading A&M supporter in Waco had a theory about the mayor’s statements. Colonel Abe Gross suggested to Benedict early in the investigation that if the killer was a relative of the mayor, then Dr. Connally was building a defense in case the truth ever became known.26 The clearest indication as to whom detective Benedict considered to be his lead suspects is found in his report filed for Thursday, December 30, 1926. On that date he reported that at 10:30 a.m. he received instructions to contact Y. C. Carlisle of Waxahachie, Texas, in the hopes that Carlisle could travel to Waco and identify either Clyde T. Johnson or Edwin “Little Sniper” Connally as the man who had killed Charlie Sessums. Despite the anonymous statement in the Texas A&M archives that unapologetically identified Hubert C. Connally as the killer, Benedict, the only trained investigator known to have ever conducted a legitimate investigation into .

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Charlie Sessums’s death, apparently no longer even considered Hubert to be a serious suspect.27 The two men to whom he had narrowed his search both matched the physical description most commonly given by numerous eyewitnesses, and both had admitted to taking part in the Cotton Palace riot. Suspect C. T. Johnson placed himself only three feet from Sessums at the time of the fatal blow and allegedly claimed to know who the killer was. Suspect Ed Connally not only admitted to having been in the fight, but he also admitted to having been close enough to see his uncle, Waco mayor Dr. Frank Connally, during the fight. Further, Ed admitted to wearing the exact style of suit, made with the same fabric, that multiple witnesses had described the killer as wearing. Finally, there were persistent rumors around Waco that the killer was none other than a relative of Mayor Connally who went by the nickname Sniper. While the mayor’s third cousin Hubert went by that nickname, more and more it seemed the fingers pointing to a possible Sniper Connally connection to the killing all pointed to Edwin. This was the sum of the circumstantial evidence that had emerged during Benedict’s five-week investigation. His hopes of solving the case rested on whether the gentleman from Waxahachie could provide him a positive identification. It was never to be. By the time Benedict received the instructions to bring Y. C. Carlisle to Waco, C. T. Johnson had already left town for the Christmas holidays, and Louise Wilson informed him Johnson would not be returning to Waco until January 3. In the meantime, Benedict busied himself with chasing other possible leads. He spent the following day, Friday, December 31, conducting more interviews, but none of them held any promise. His last interview for the day was with a Waco detective named Lee Huff. Detective Huff confided to him that he had been clandestinely investigating Sessums’s death, giving further credence to the theory that local officials were acting to protect someone with important connections in the city.28 Despite his good intentions in trying to solve the case, Detective Huff admitted to Benedict that it appeared to him no one in town really knew for certain who had killed Sessums. One of Benedict’s main contacts in town, Abe Gross, had also begun to despair that the investigation would ever provide any legal closure and doubted that a conviction could be obtained in the case. In the end, all of Benedict’s work during the investigation was for naught. At 5:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, Benedict received instructions

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that the investigation was ending, and he was to return to Dallas that evening. No additional reasons were provided at the time, but with the abrupt discontinuation of his investigation, the last formal inquiry into the death and possible murder of Texas A&M cadet Charles Sessums, and any hope of bringing his killer to justice, came to an end.29

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CH A PTE R 1 1 “He Is Just Away”

On April 5, 1927, a little more than five months after the Cotton Palace riot, Texas A&M president T. O. Walton wrote a letter to the parents of Charlie Sessums in which he expressed just how deeply the loss of their son had affected him. Walton wrote, “Personally, I have never had any experience that has grieved me more or about which I have had greater concern.” But all Walton could offer the Sessumses was his tender condolences as he confessed that he had no new information to share with them concerning their son’s death.1 In his letter Walton also restated and reminded A. B. and Mamie Sessums of all that had been done by their friends at A&M to uncover the identity of their son’s killer. He recounted how the investigation at A&M the week following the riot had been unable to “place the responsibility for the act upon any individual.” The investigation had produced a few leads and revealed a few rumors, but none of those led to the killer. Walton also reminded them how he had enlisted the assistance of several former A&M students who lived in Waco to pressure the local authorities to conduct a vigorous investigation into the matter. Once it had become apparent that the county and city authorities had no intention of conducting an investigation, the A&M Former Students Association in Waco had taken it upon themselves to hire the Pinkerton detective to conduct a private investigation, but after more than five weeks in Waco the detective had not succeeded in bringing the killer to justice.2 However, when Detective Benedict was notified that the investigation was ending and was recalled to Dallas on the evening of December 31, 1926, it certainly appeared that the investigation was close to discovering the killer’s identity. Yet looks can be deceiving. Benedict’s hopes of identifying Charlie Sessums’s killer rested on the positive identification of eyewitness Y. C. Carlisle of Waxahachie, Texas. The only problem is that Benedict had already interviewed Y. C. Carlisle on December 22, and despite the fact that Carlisle had provided an accurate general description of the killer that was consistent with other eyewitness testimony, Carlisle had also claimed that he had not paid “enough attention to the man that delivered the blow 126  |  C H A PT E R 1 0 

to identify him now.” He told Benedict he had tried to picture the killer in his mind but did not feel he could make a positive identification. This was the witness upon which the final hopes of Benedict’s investigation had rested; no district attorney would have taken a case to trial on such weak evidence or testimony.3 Even if a suspect had been brought to trial, there was no possibility of a murder conviction. Benedict was told as much by none other than the current assistant county attorney, Dick Holt, who had informed the detective during the final days of the investigation that even if a suspect could be identified and convicted, the charge would be aggravated assault, and the punishment would be a twenty-five-dollar fine. The former A&M students who had borne the cost of the private investigation considered putting another detective on the case after the Christmas holidays, but with the prospect of a better outcome being so low, the cost to continue the investigation was just too high.4 The last attempt to identify Charlie Sessums’s killer was made in early March 1927 by none other than his father, A. B. Sessums. And it appears A. B. had a specific suspect in mind. On March 2, 1927, an attorney named Byrd White from the Dallas suburb of Lancaster wrote a letter to President Brooks in which he explained that the slain cadet’s father had contacted him and that the father believed he might know who was responsible for his son’s death. Byrd then asked Brooks if the mayor of Waco had ever had a nephew attend his university, clearly indicating that A. B. Sessums had narrowed his search to Edwin Connally. Unfortunately, White showed about as much interest in the matter as had most of the witnesses that Ila Benedict had encountered in Waco, as he failed even to get A. B.’s last name correct, identifying him in the letter as “Mr. Sessions.” After making the inquiry about the mayor’s nephew, White used the remainder of the letter to lobby President Brooks for a job for a personal acquaintance.5 Apparently the Sessumses literally could not even pay someone to care about the death of their son Charlie. More shocking than Byrd White’s indifference to the interests of a potential client was the response he received from President Brooks. In his reply, Brooks said that he was unaware if Mayor Connally had ever had a nephew attend Baylor University. The Connally family name was prominent in Waco, and Brooks was at least an acquaintance of the mayor, as the two had attended the meeting with local officials in the county attorney’s office the Tuesday after the riot. Mayor Connally’s third cousin, Hubert Connally, had been a popular player on Baylor’s football and baseball “HE IS J U S T AW AY ”  |  127

teams, and the nephew in question was currently preparing for his senior season as a member of Baylor’s baseball team. Baylor’s athletic trainer, Ralph Wolf, had no trouble learning of the rumors on the Baylor campus that a current student and relative of the mayor was the man who had killed Charlie Sessums. It is almost impossible to believe that Brooks was unfamiliar with the very same rumors.6 Perhaps Brooks may have justified his plausible deniability on the nuance that he might not have known the exact familial relationship between the mayor and the younger Connally suspect. And since the recently concluded private investigation had heavily traded in rumor and innuendo, perhaps Brooks felt that even if he had heard rumors about a connection to the mayor, he was not obliged to continue to spread them. Unfortunately, Brooks did not explain his troubling answer. Brooks did admit to White that he had met with the private detective and had told him he felt he “was on a cold trail.” As for his own efforts, Brooks claimed, “I was never able to find any fact whereupon blame could be put on Baylor.” And then he added, “I dropped the matter.”7 By the time Brooks received Byrd White’s letter in March 1927, nobody in Waco was talking about the Cotton Palace incident any longer. On January 22, 1927, less than three months after the riot and Charlie Sessums’s death, Baylor University and the city of Waco experienced their own tragedy on an unimaginable scale. That afternoon the Baylor basketball team was traveling to Austin for a game against the Texas Longhorns when the bus the team was riding in was struck by a train in the small town of Round Rock, barely half an hour from their destination.8 The weather conditions had been miserable all day as rain fell on and off, and visibility was greatly reduced. After the bus turned south off Main Street in downtown Round Rock, it continued down a slight hill to where the road crossed a set of train tracks. Nobody on the bus heard the train’s whistle as they approached the crossing. Ralph Wolf, in his first year as head coach of the basketball team, was the first person on the bus to spot the fast-approaching train and shouted, “Look out!”9 Joe Potter, a Baylor freshman, was driving the bus that day. In a desperate attempt to put precious space between the bus and the approaching locomotive, Potter attempted to beat the train by crossing the tracks diagonally. The Sunshine Special was traveling approximately sixty miles per hour when it ripped through the back of the bus, sending debris and bodies flying in every direction.10 Eight members of Baylor’s basketball team riding on the bus were also 128  |  C H A P T E R 1 1 

members of the Bears football team, including Clyde “Abe” Kelley and Weir Washam, two of the stars of the Bears’ impressive victory over the Texas A&M Aggies the previous October. Both were popular in their hometown of Waco, where they had known each other since childhood. In high school they had played for Paul Tyson’s Waco Tigers and then decided to continue their friendship and football careers at Baylor. Each had enjoyed personal success during the recent football season, and Kelley had been chosen as the football team captain for the upcoming 1927 season.11 The young men were seated at the back of the bus as it made its long, slow trek to Austin. Washam had opened the window next to him earlier in the trip so that he and some of the boys could chew tobacco and spit out the window without being noticed by their coach. The open window became Washam’s saving grace. When he saw the train racing toward the bus, Washam climbed through the window and jumped to safety, landing in mud only three feet from the tracks. Abe Kelley was right behind him when he made his narrow escape. After he landed, Washam recalled he looked up just in time to see Kelley attempting to escape through the same window. Then he saw the impact. He found his friend’s lifeless body on the cowcatcher on the front of the train almost a thousand feet down the tracks from where the impact had occurred. A story by a fellow teammate who was on the bus later claimed that Kelley had pushed Washam out the window, giving birth to the story of Kelley’s great personal sacrifice to save his friend. Washam, however, never recounted having been pushed by his friend, but he also never publicly denied the claim.12 Ten of the twenty-two passengers on the bus died either instantly from the impact or a short time later. The dozen survivors were transported to local hospitals, where three were treated for critical injuries. Whereas Charlie Sessums’s death had been all but forgotten on both the A&M and Baylor campuses by the time of the tragedy in Round Rock, Baylor memorialized the ten young men who died on January 22, 1927, as the Immortal Ten and retell their tragic story each year as part of the school’s homecoming celebration.13 If there had been a lack of interest in looking into the matter of the death of an Aggie student before the Round Rock tragedy, there was absolutely no appetite for it after the deadly accident. The last thing anybody in Waco wanted to talk about was the feud with Texas A&M and the deceased cadet. They now had their own dead to bury. The 1927 Aggie yearbook The Longhorn honored the brief life and untimely death of Charles Milo Sessums with a single-page tribute and “HE IS J U S T AW AY ”  |  129

a poem. The yearbook tribute reads in part, “Aggie of ours, in manhood’s prime, / Time leaves little but names. / But you and yours will always live / in Aggie halls of fame.”14 But somehow in Aggieland they did forget. To this day no memorial or mention of Charles Milo Sessums is found on the campus of Texas A&M University. For a school that so famously honors its tradition-rich past, they somehow forgot to remember Charlie Sessums. In time, Charlie’s father, mother, and sister Grace were buried alongside him in the somber shade of a spread of majestic oaks, facing the setting sun. The only memorial to his brief life is a cold gray stone with his name and the years 1902–26. In death he was given the name his friends and family knew him by in life, Charlie. Below his name is etched a simple epitaph of a truth no parent should have to endure; a mournful sigh or the echo of a forlorn hope, “He is just away.” Before Texas A&M president T. O. Walton and Baylor president Samuel Palmer Brooks decided to cancel all future athletic contracts between their schools, Waco News-Tribune sports editor Jinx Tucker had urged the rivals to move beyond the terrible events at the Cotton Palace and to continue their series. In his “Sport Hotshots” column on November 12, 1926, Tucker argued that instead of ending the rivalry, “It would be far better for all concerned to forget the episode, and call it a closed incident without further drastic action.”15 It took five years, but the rivals finally heeded his advice. Once the enflamed passions of the rival student bodies had subsided, Texas A&M and Baylor University at last agreed it was time to meet on the gridiron once again. The reunion was set for October 24, 1931. The Baylor student newspaper, the Lariat, observed the day before the game that during the four seasons when the two schools had not met in any athletic competition, Baylor had come to realize it was “far more desirable to meet A. & M. on friendly terms than otherwise.” Gone were the days of the Cotton Palace series. This time the game was held at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field, marking the first time the Bears had ever played on their rival’s home field. To demonstrate that there were no lingering feelings of ill will, the cadets even planned to host the Baylor students who made the trip to College Station at a dinner after the game. Expressions of collegiality were mutual, as the Baylor Lariat declared the day before the game that “there will be only the most friendly feelings towards the Aggies from Baylor.”16 In a recap of the game, the Lariat mused that if the world had ended at halftime, Baylor would have claimed another victory over their old rivals. The Bears had picked up where they left off against the Aggies in 1926 by taking a 7–0 halftime lead. But the game did not end at halftime, and 130  |  C H A P T E R 1 1 

the second half belonged entirely to the Aggies, who shredded the Baylor defense for five touchdowns on the way to a lopsided 33–7 A&M victory.17 Even more noteworthy was the fact that the game was contested and decided without any incident on or off the field. The Lariat gushed that “never before in the history of Baylor University have the students been more cordially received and more royally entertained.” In fact, the reception and restoration of relations had been so successful, the paper declared, “It is impossible for any other time to overshadow that welcome extended by the Aggieland inhabitants.” Baylor and Texas A&M were happily declared to once more be “friendly enemies on the gridiron.” As for all that had transpired between them in the past, well, perhaps the Lariat said it best: “The dead past has been buried by the dead, so to speak.”18 That final statement was truer than even the author perhaps knew or intended. As Baylor and Texas A&M renewed their rivalry in 1931, there were a few important individuals from the 1926 saga who were absent from the reunion. Six months before Baylor and Texas A&M renewed their football rivalry, President Brooks passed away on May 14, 1931, following more than a year-long battle with cancer. Brooks’s twenty-nine years as president of Baylor are remembered as an era of change and great expansion for the school, and his incumbency remains unsurpassed in length in the university’s history. During his tenure attendance at Baylor more than quadrupled from 738 students to 3,039 students. He is credited with opening Baylor’s colleges of medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy, the establishment of Baylor Hospital in downtown Dallas, the founding of the school’s first seminary, and the reopening of the university’s law school. Samuel Palmer Brooks is remembered as a man of integrity and Christian virtue and a leader with considerable vision. It would be fair to say that the part he played in the handling of the aftermath of the 1926 Cotton Palace riot serves as a reminder that this good man was not without his faults. He is not alone in that regard, as the entire cast of characters in the tragic story of the Cotton Palace riot were all revealed to be sadly all too human.19 Less than two months after Brooks’s death, a fire truck racing to a grass fire in west Waco on July 4, 1931, collided with a sedan that failed to yield at an intersection. Witnesses reported that both vehicles were traveling fast when they collided. The fire truck, an apparatus known as a pumper, flipped over and landed upside down, spilling its crew members on the side of the road. One firefighter was pinned under the overturned vehicle, while all of the other passengers were thrown clear. Amazingly, all of the crew escaped with only minor injuries, but the sedan’s lone occupant was not as fortunate.20 “HE IS J U S T AW AY ”  |  131

Witnesses described the terrifying scene and violent collision and reported that the sedan had burst into flames on impact. According to an eyewitness account, the burning vehicle “keeled over and rode high on the hood of the fire truck before it struck a tree, broke the tree short off, jammed against another tree, and caused the fire truck to turn over and land upside down.” The crew of a second fire truck following behind the pumper witnessed the wreck and struggled for several minutes to remove the driver from the burning vehicle. When they finally freed the corpse from its fiery tomb, the body had been burned beyond recognition. The only clue to the driver’s identity was a gold football the driver used as a watch fob. From that one item investigators were able to determine that the deceased was none other than Hubert Connally, the one-time suspected killer of Charlie Sessums.21 Until his death, Hubert had remained a popular figure around Waco, enjoying his status as a former star athlete at Baylor University. Ironically, shortly before his death Hubert had suffered a head injury in a baseball game and was still recovering at the time of his death. It can only be speculated whether the injury played any part in the cause of the July 4 accident. J. O. Franklin operated a service station at the corner of 25th and Gorman Streets, where the fatal collision occurred, and witnessed the entire tragedy. According to Franklin, Hubert Connally’s car was traveling at a reasonable rate of speed when it continued through the intersection and directly into the path of the approaching fire truck. Franklin said he supposed Connally had not seen the truck even though the “pumper’s siren was shrieking loudly.”22 Whatever secrets Hubert Connally may or may not have known about the events of October 30, 1926, went with him to his grave. As for Mayor Connally’s nephew Edwin, the other Sniper Connally, any secrets he may have known about Charlie Sessums’s death went to the grave with him as well. After graduating from Baylor in the spring of 1927, Edwin followed in his uncle’s footsteps and enrolled at the University of Texas Medical College at Galveston to prepare for a medical career. In August 1929, during a visit to the Texas hill country town of Lampasas, Edwin contracted pneumonia. After a ten-day illness, on August 26, 1929, he passed away.23 Both Hubert and Edwin are buried in the Connally family portion of Waco’s Oakwood Cemetery. As for Pinkerton detective Benedict’s other lead suspect, Clyde T. Johnson, it is uncertain which path he ultimately followed after his graduation from Baylor in the spring of 1927. Perhaps he became a minister of the gospel after all, or maybe guilt over failing to disclose what he 132  |  C H A P TE R 1 1 

knew about the death of Charlie Sessums eventually drove him to a more secular profession in which he might not have had to so readily face the consequences of his behavior in Waco. By 1931 even the once great Cotton Palace Exposition was no more. Its demise precipitated by the Great Depression, its gates were closed forever on October 19, 1930. More than eight million patrons had passed through its turnstiles during twenty-one memorable seasons. The midway, the roller coaster, the horse track with its football stadium in the infield, and even the vast main building were all eventually demolished. Faint scars, barely visible in overhead photographs, still trace the path from the entrance on the corner of Clay Avenue and 13th Streets to the site of the grand exposition hall. A few years after its closing, the city built a new football field at the south end of where the former stadium had once stood, on the corner of 15th Street and Dutton Avenue. Opened in 1936 and later named Municipal Stadium, the new facility became the home of Baylor University football games until the opening of Baylor Stadium in 1950.24 As for Baylor and Texas A&M, the two schools competed annually in football for the next eighty-one years, with the exception of 1943–44 when Baylor did not field a team as a result of manpower shortages caused by World War II. Beginning in 1932, Baylor even resumed its practice of scheduling the Aggies as their homecoming opponents in the years Texas A&M visited Waco and continued the tradition each even-numbered year through 1974.25 Following the 1926 season and the severance of athletic relations between Baylor and Texas A&M, the annual Thanksgiving grudge match between the Longhorns and the Aggies regained its undisputed status as the premier rivalry in the state of Texas. Yet for a span of more than half a century, from 1931 to 1985, the Battle of the Brazos was unmatched as the most competitive rivalry in the Southwest Conference. During that span the Aggies held only a slim 25–23–5 series lead, and no other pairing in the conference compared in the number of closely decided contests. In addition to the five ties, the margin of victory was a touchdown or less in twenty-four of the annual games between the Bears and the Aggies. No other Southwest Conference pairing came even close. By the final season of the Southwest Conference in 1995, and seven decades after the 1926 riot, most fans of Texas A&M and Baylor knew little or nothing about the rivalry’s long-forgotten darkest day, and even though the proverbial ax had been buried many years before, one final piece of unfinished business still remained. “HE IS J U S T AW AY ”  |  133

EPI LOGUE Taps

Perhaps the last word to ever come out of Aggieland concerning the Cotton Palace riot was recorded in the November 18, 1926, issue of The Texas Aggie, and declared that the source of Baylor’s “jealousy and ill feeling against” the A&M College was due in large part to the sizable following the Aggies had among the citizens of Waco. Following the riot, the magazine somberly noted, “It probably will be some time before the Corps goes back to Baylor.”1 Nobody would have imagined just how long it would actually be. A discharge of a cannon signaled the start of the march. The first echoes of the Texas Aggie “War Hymn” reverberated through Waco’s downtown corridors as more than two thousand khaki-clad cadets stepped off in unison. That afternoon, October 21, 1995, the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets’ beloved Texas Aggie football team was set to battle the Baylor Bears for the last time as members of the Southwest Conference.2 The venerable old league was breathing its last breath before retiring forever into the pages of the history books. Baylor and Texas A&M, along with the University of Texas and Texas Tech University, had announced they would be leaving the league at the conclusion of the 1995 season. The foursome was set to join the members of the Big 8 Conference in the fall of 1996 to form a new league with the uninspiring name of the Big 12 Conference. The final season in the eighty-one-year-long history of the Southwest Conference seemed the perfect time for one final, long overdue act of reconciliation. As the corps marched the nearly three-mile route south along Waco’s Franklin Avenue from downtown to Baylor’s Floyd Casey Stadium, they were cheered by friendly crowds, many dressed in the familiar maroon and white of Texas A&M interspersed with a smaller sprinkling of green and gold of the hometown Baylor Bears. As expected, there were some gibes at the cadets’ expense, but nothing more was reported than good-natured ribbing from the hosts. The cadets displayed discipline and class as they E PILO G U E  |  135

kept their eyes forward and their steps straight until they entered the stadium grounds and their march came to an end.3 It had been almost seventy years to the day since they had last marched in Waco way back in 1925. For those keeping score, the Aggies won the final Southwest Conference game against Baylor 24–9.4

136  |  E P I L OGU E 

A PPENDI X A Announcement of the Cancellation of Athletic Contracts between the A&M ­College of Texas and Baylor University

Waco, Texas December 8th, 1926 In consideration of the strained athletic relations now existing between the student bodies of Baylor University and A&M College, we, the Presidents, of the said two institutions hereby cancel all existing ­athletic contracts heretofore made by these schools. This is done without prejudice to either institution. Appeal is made to the public that it will help us to grow a better ­feeling between the two student bodies, to the end that at some future time a renewal of games may be made, and the games played according to the high ideals that govern both institutions.

—T. O. Walton President of A&M College —S. P. Brooks President of Baylor University

APPEND I X B A Letter from Samuel Palmer Brooks to the Parents of Charlie Sessums

November 1, 1926 Dear Mr. And Mrs. Sessums: In this letter I desire, for myself officially and for my colleagues of the faculty, to express to you and the other members of your family our ­sor­rowful regrets over the death of your son. Such words as these, in your grief, may seem cold, but I assure you as a parent that my heart beats in abiding sympathy with you both. My prayer is that you may have the comfort that can only come from God who helps those who trust Him. Very Sincerely,

—S. P. Brooks President

A PPENDI X C Account of Charles M. Sessums’ Death following A&M-Baylor Football Game, ­October 30, 1926, and the Later Death ­ of His Assailant

Chas. M. Sessums, a cadet of the A.&M. College of Texas, Class of 1927 and whose home address was 715 Peak Street, Dallas, Texas, died in the Providence Sanitarium, Waco, Texas, on Sunday October 31, 1926. Cadet Sessums’ death was caused by head injuries received during a nearriot between halves of the football game played the previous afternoon, between the teams of Baylor University and the A.&M. College. The game was played on the grounds of the Cotton Palace Exposition in the City of Waco. (See the Waco News-Tribune, Sunday, October 31, 1926, for a detailed account of the football game. On page 1 of the same paper appears a brief account of the near riot and of the injury to Cadet Sessums. Other than the name of Sessums, no other individuals are mentioned by name. Photostatic copy attached. See “Dallas Morning News,” Monday, November 1, 1926, for a front page account. Photostatic copy attached.) In an endeavor to determine the name of the individual who wielded the chair or club which caused the fatal injury to cadet Sessums, the writer interviewed quite a few citizens of Waco who were present at the game. Of those interviewed, only four were able to give information of a positive nature. The only point of doubt acknowledged by individuals was: Whether the assault upon cadet Sessums was by means of a two by four club or by a chair. The newspaper account does mention that chairs were carried on to the field by spectators as they left the grandstand and rushed on to the playing field. During interviews no names were mentioned, nor were questions of a leading nature asked, in an effort to determine the name of the individual who did deliver the fatal blow upon cadet Sessums. One of the individu-

als interviewed, now a prominent citizen of Waco, and a most active Aggie in the first quarter of this century, and who does not wish to be quoted by name, furnished the following information. On Sunday morning following the game a conference was held in the office of Horace E. Trippet (now deceased). Representatives of both Baylor and A&M ex-students were present. The decision finally reached was to the effect that the whole incident should be forgotten, and no further controversy be raised or encouraged. This action was taken because of the fact that cadet Sessums’ parents informed that they did not wish to press the matter, neither did they desire that any charges be filed or pressed against any individual or group. My informant who was present at the conference, as a representative of Waco, A&M ex-students, further informed: cadet Sessums’ parents considered the entire affair in a most philosophical manner. They were most gracious in their word to the conferees, and advised that the death of their son, while causing them personal grief, could be looked upon as the result of no pre-meditation or willful intent on the part of neither an individual nor a group. All action had occurred as the result of the excitement and on the “spur of the moment.” All four of my informants agreed that the name of the individual who wielded the instrument and delivered the fatal blow was Hubert C. Connally. The following information has been copied from Waco City Directories, as noted, with reference to the listing of the above named:

Vol. XXII, 1923–1924

Student, Baylor University, rooms 1400 So. 5th Street

Vol. XXIII, 1926–1927 (Constance), Mgr. Sterling Show Store, home 1029 No. 16th Street Vol. XXIV, 1928–1929

(Constance), Salesman, Welling Motor Co., home, 2402 Gorman Avenue

Vol. XXV, 1930–1931

(Constance), Salesman, Independent Tire Co., home 928 North 24th Street

Vol. XXVI, 1932–1933 Does not list the name of Connally. However, the name of his widow, Constance Connally, is listed as living at 2215 Morrow Avenue, the home of her father. 142  |  A P P END I X C 

The Sunday edition of the Waco Tribune Herald, July 5th, 1931, gives full details of an accident which occurred at 3:45 p.m., July 4th at the intersection of 25th and Gorman. Connally drove directly into the path of a Waco Fire Department pumper, which was speeding out Gorman Avenue to the site of a fire. Connally was instantly killed. Attached hereto is a photostat copy of Connally’s death certificate. It is felt that above information does give sufficient references from which it may be definitely established that Connally died as the result of an automobile accident, as claimed by my four positive informants who are also positive in their statements that Connally did deliver the fatal blow to the head of cadet Sessums. Source: The original of this document is found in the Baylor Incident File, Texas A&M University Archives, Cushing Library, College Station.

Author’s Note: Caution should be used when considering this account. While it is certainly intriguing, the anonymous nature of the account, and the lack of identification of any of the four informants, makes its claims hearsay at best and spurious at worst. Certain details, such as the address given for Cadet Sessums, are known to be inaccurate. The Sessums family no longer resided at the Peak Avenue address at the time of Cadet Sessums’s death. Further, Cadet Sessums’s parents were not in Waco on the morning of October 31, 1926, when the alleged conference was held and at which the document claims the decision was made to let the matter of the riot and Charlie Sessums’s death rest. The description of the melee at the Cotton Palace as a near-riot is a gross understatement if eyewitness accounts, and those of the participants, are to be believed. The claim that a conference held on the day of Sessums’s death and attended by his parents concluded that the entire event should be forgotten is in direct contradiction to his father’s later actions, the actions of the administration at Texas A&M, and the efforts by former students of Texas A&M in Waco to uncover the killer’s identity. There is also no other mention of such a conference in any of the testimony or contemporary reporting on the riot. Finally, the document’s claim that Hubert C. Connally was cadet Sessums’s killer is only repeated here and is not substantiated by any evidence or testimony of fact. Nor is this claim original, as Connally had been named as a suspect by multiple sources in the days after the riot.

A C C OU NT OF C H A R LES M. S E S S U MS ’ DE AT H  |  143



In weighing the evidence of the document’s claims against the other

known testimony and evidence, the author reached the conclusion that while intriguing, and worthy of consideration, the document’s claims did not outweigh the evidence and testimony provided by sources during both Texas A&M’s and Pinkerton detective Benedict’s investigations. The reader is welcome to reach his or her own conclusion.

144  |  A P P END I X C 

Notes

The details of the private investigation into the death of Charlie Sessums conducted by Pinkerton detective Benedict contained in chapters 9 and 10 are sourced from Detective Benedict’s investigation notes dated November 22 through December 31, 1926. Those notes were provided to me by the Sessums family and are not currently available to the public. Additionally, in the following notes the name of the Baylor student newspaper is cited in multiple ways because the paper altered its name periodically over the course of its history. Each citation identifies the paper by the name under which it operated at the time of the citation, while in the text of the book I refer to the newspaper as either the Lariat or the Baylor Lariat, regardless of era. Introduction. The Battle of the Brazos 1. The Round-Up (Baylor University yearbook), 1923, 192. 2. Sam Whitlow, “25,000 Expected to See Annual Grid Classic on Cotton Palace Field,” Daily Lariat, October 30, 1926. 3. “Baylor Bears Crush Texas Aggies 20 to 9,” Dallas Morning News, October 31, 1926. 4. T. O. Walton letter to S. P. Brooks, November 1, 1926; Brooks Smith letter to S. P. Brooks, November 18, 1928; and S. P. Brooks letter to Brooks Smith, November 20, 1928, all in the Texas Collection, Baylor University.

Chapter 1. The Most Tragic Event 1. Lavonia Jenkins Barnes, The Texas Cotton Palace, Waco, Texas (full-page reproduction of original advertisement on back side of photo insert following page 36). 2. “Students Urge Severance of Athletic Relations with A.&M.,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 4, 1926. 3. “All Sections of the State Send Large Delegations for One of the Biggest Palace Days,” Waco Times-Herald, October 30, 1926. 4. “Baylor Bears Crush Texas Aggies 20 to 9,” Dallas Morning News, October 31, 1926. 5. The Longhorn (Texas A&M College yearbook), 1923, 128; 1925, 162; 1927, 65;

“Force at Work Finishing Up College–Bryan Road Field Survey for Maps,” Bryan Weekly Eagle, August 26, 1926. 6. Johnnie J. Myers, Texas Electric Railway, 90, 171, 196. 7. Morrison & Fourmy’s General Directory of the City of Waco, 1890, 212; 1893, 230; 1894, 247; “Funeral Services Slated Monday for Mrs. Sessums,” Dallas Daily Times-Herald, April 14, 1952; W. R. Poage, McLennan County—Before 1890, 92.8. 8. “Injuries in Football Clash Cost Life of Dallas Youth: Officer A&M Cadet Corps,” Dallas Morning News, November 1, 1926; Pinkerton Detective Ila Floyd Benedict Daily Investigative Reports, Sessums Family Private Collection (hereafter cited as Benedict Reports), December 17, 1926. 9. Walton to Brooks, November 1, 1926. 10. Death Certificate of Charles Milo Sessums, citing certificate number 35807, McLennan County, Texas Department of Health, State Vital Statistics Unit, Austin.

Chapter 2: Brazos Bottom 1. John Graves, Goodbye to a River, 17; Kenneth E. Hendrickson Jr., “Brazos River,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/ online/articles/rnb07, accessed June 25, 2017, published by the Texas State Historical Association. 2. William Stuart Red, A History of the Presbyterian Church in Texas, 224; Henry C. Dethloff, A Centennial History of Texas A&M University 1876– 1976, 5; “Why Not a Graduate School at Baylor?” Baylor Lariat, November 4, 1922. 3. Red, Presbyterian Church, 224. 4. Dethloff, Centennial History, 12–13. 5. Ibid., 5. 6. Ibid., 8. 7. Ibid., 12. 8. Ibid., 11–12, 14–15, 27. 9. John A. Adams Jr., Keepers of the Spirit, 12; Dethloff, Centennial History, 3, 18, 43. 10. Adams, Keepers of the Spirit, 89. 11. Dethloff, Centennial History, 571. 12. Eugene W. Baker, To Light the Ways of Time, 18. 13. Lois Smith Murray, Baylor at Independence, 15, 21; Eugene W. Baker, In His Traces: The Life and Times of R. E. B. Baylor, 64; Baker, To Light the Ways, 11. 14. Murray, Baylor at Independence, 24. 15. “Why Not a Graduate School at Baylor?” Baylor Lariat, November 4, 1922; Van Darden, “BU Remembers Its History,” Baylor Lariat, March 24, 2006;

146  |  N O T E S T O P A GE S 9 – 1 7

Murray, Baylor at Independence, 70, 107. 16. Baker, To Light the Ways, 46. 17. “University Athletics,” Waco Times-Herald, December 4, 1899. 18. “Varsity Wins,” Fort Worth Daily Gazette, February 25, 1894. 19. “The A. and M. College,” Galveston Daily News, February 27, 1893. 20. Harold V. Ratliff, The Power and the Glory, 13. 21. Ibid., 16; Wilbur Evans and H. B. McElroy, The Twelfth Man, 26–28; Lou Maysel, Here Come the Texas Longhorns 1893–1970, 6. 22. Evans and McElroy, Twelfth Man, 274. 23. Baker, To Light the Ways, 72. 24. Ibid., 76. 25. Kern Tips, Football—Texas Style, 2–3. 26. Baker, To Light the Ways, 78; 2013 Baylor Football Media Almanac (Waco: Baylor University Department of Athletics, 2013), 93. 27. Murray Greenberg, Passing Game: Benny Friedman and the ­Transformation of Football, 20; John J. Miller, The Big Scrum, 208–13. 28. “Baylor Win a Great Victory,” Waco Times-Herald, November 12, 1899; Evans and McElroy, Twelfth Man, 19; Dethloff, Centennial History, 103; Baker, To Light the Ways, 116; “Battle of Giants,” Waco Times-Herald, November 18, 1899; Alan J. Lefever, The History of Baylor Sports, 29; “Baylor’s Team Goes Down in Defeat,” Waco Times-Herald, December 1, 1899. 29. Neil Farmer, “Baylor–A&M Feud Romantic, Violent: Brazos Brothers Play for 87th Time,” Houston Chronicle, October 18, 1990. 30. Will Parchman, “Rivalry Stands Test of Time,” Baylor Lariat, October 26, 2001. 31. Farmer, “Baylor–A&M Feud”; Jim Dent, The Junction Boys, 165. 32. Baker, To Light the Ways, 81; Charles Carver, Brann the Iconoclast, 142–48; Patricia Bernstein, The First Waco Horror, 15–16. 33. Roger N. Conger, A Pictorial History of Waco, rev. ed., 21–22; S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon, 174–83; Dethloff, Centennial History, 156–57. 34. Dethloff, Centennial History, 157. 35. Ibid., 167, 176; Adams, Keepers of the Spirit, 39, 47–48, 54; Farmer, ­“Baylor–A&M Feud”; Joe Tom Davis, Legendary Texians, 4:151.

Chapter 3: Friendly Enemies 1. S. P. Brooks letter to J. C. Rickman, July 31, 1924, Texas Collection, Baylor University; Mike Copass, “Stage Set for Premier Battle of Conference on Cotton Palace Bill,” Daily Lariat, November 1, 1924. 2. 2013 Baylor Football Media Almanac, 93, 125. 3. Ibid., 125. 4. Eugene W. Baker, To Light the Ways of Time, 105–6. 5. “Colleges Organize an Athletic Body,” Dallas Morning News, May 7, 1914; Har-

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old V. Ratliff, The Power and the Glory, 2; Kern Tips, Football Texas Style, 19. 6. Tips, Football Texas Style, 8–9; Ratliff, Power and Glory, 2. 7. Wilbur Evans and H. B. McElroy, The Twelfth Man, 61. 8. Ibid., 55, 56. 9. Caesar Hohn, Dutchman on the Brazos: Reminiscences of Caesar (Dutch) Hohn, 62, 68–69; Evans and McElroy, Twelfth Man, 61. 10. Ratliff, Power and Glory, 1–2; “Colleges Organize an Athletic Body.” 11. Ratliff, Power and Glory, 2; Tips, Football Texas Style, 19. 12. Ratliff, Power and Glory, 3. 13. Denne H. Freeman, That Good Old Baylor Line, 23. 14. Ratliff, Power and Glory, 19–20; Tips, Football Texas Style, 14–15. 15. Ratliff, Power and Glory, 21–23; Tips, Football Texas Style, 20. 16. Lavonia Jenkins Barnes, The Texas Cotton Palace, Waco, Texas, 1–5. 17. Roger N. Conger, A Pictorial History of Waco, rev. ed., 13. 18. Barnes, Texas Cotton Palace, 2, 4, 9. 19. Ibid., intro., v; Conger, Pictorial History of Waco, 15. 20. S. P. Brooks letter to C. R. Turner, October 13, 1923, Texas Collection, Baylor University. 21. “Farmers Defeat Bears,” The Lariat, November 13, 1919; “Baylor Beat A&M in Epochal Game 13 to 7,” Baylor Lariat, November 4, 1922; “Pittman Runs 60 Yard for Score; Aggie Charge Is Ground to Pieces,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 1, 1924. 22. “A&M Cadets Invade Waco,” The Lariat, November 16, 1916. 23. “Baylor Holds Aggies to One Touchdown in Hard Fought Game,” The Lariat, November 15, 1917; “Cadet Rooters Come to Waco,” The Lariat, November 15, 1917. 24. “Farmers Defeat Bears,” The Lariat, November 13, 1919; Paul S. Adams, “Bears and Farmers Have Hard Struggle on Cotton Pal. Field,” Baylor Lariat, November 9, 1920. 25. Ratliff, Power and Glory, 35, 100; Freeman, That Good Old Baylor Line, 52; John J. Miller, The Big Scrum, 213. 26. Freeman, That Good Old Baylor Line, 27. 27. “Editorial,” Minnesota Magazine, September 1900, 32; E. A. McGowan, “The Twelfth Player,” Iowa Alumnus, November 1912, 30; “‘Pottie’ McCullough Honored As Tigers’ Most Valued Man,” Waco News-Tribune, January 13, 1924; Ben Meyer, “Yell Leader Is ‘Twelfth Man’ on Football Squad, and Wins Many Games, Says Bridges of Baylor,” Waco News-Tribune, November 30, 1924. 28. Evans and McElroy, Twelfth Man, 12. 29. Robert W Robertson Jr., The Wonder Team, 365, 591–92; Henry C. Dethloff, A Centennial History of Texas A&M University, 1876–1976, 512. 30. Evans and McElroy, Twelfth Man, 15–16.

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31. Ibid., 11, 16; Robertson, Wonder Team, 380; Robert W. Maxwell, “Texas A. and M.’s Victory Puts Another Small College on America’s Football Map,” Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, January 3, 1922; “Aggies Will Get Diamond Football!” Bryan Daily Eagle, January 4, 1922; Jinx Tucker, “Farmers Triumph over Kentuckians,” Waco News-Tribune, January 3, 1922; Jinx Tucker, “Aggies Put Texas in Limelight,” Waco News-Tribune, January 4, 1922; “Aggies Schedule Is an Ambitious One,” Galveston Daily News, August 27, 1922; “Gold Footballs Received By A.& M. Football Team,” Houston Post, January 12, 1922. 32. “Aggie Defeats Have Left String of Gang Fights, Conference History Shows,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 4, 1926; The Longhorn (Texas A&M College yearbook), 1923, 206; Daniel Russell testimony, in “Report of Investigation of Fight between A. and M. and Baylor Students at Cotton Palace, Waco, Texas, October 30, 1926,” Baylor Incident File, Texas A&M University Cushing Library Archives (hereafter cited as A&M Investigation), 81. 33. “Everybody Coming Saturday to See B. U. Beat A. and M.,” Baylor Lariat, November 1, 1922. 34. “Moreover, Beat A. and M.,” Baylor Lariat, November 1, 1922. 35. “Everybody Coming Saturday.” 36. 2013 Baylor Football Media Almanac, 93, 125. 37. Freeman, That Good Old Baylor Line, 33; “Baylor Beat A&M in Epochal Game.” 38. “Aggie Defeats Have Left String of Gang Fights”; The Longhorn (Texas A&M College yearbook), 1923, 195. 39. “Two Thousand A.& M. Cadets Parade over Down Town Streets,” Baylor Lariat, November 3, 1923; T. S. Compere, “Aggies Fight Bears to Tie: 0–0,” Baylor Lariat, November 3, 1923. 40. Baker, To Light the Ways, 136; “4,000 in Two Mile Parade: Alumni Endorse Dr. Brooks,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 1, 1924. 41. “2000 Cadets Parade before Thousands,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 1, 1924; “2,000 A. & M. Cadets Leave for Waco 6AM,” Daily Lariat Alumni Edition, November 1, 1924. 42. “Pittman Runs 60 Yard for Score,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 1, 1924; “50,000 Attendance for Cotton Palace Today Is Prediction,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 1, 1924. 43. “Pittman Runs 60 Yard for Score”; “Events Leading Up to Tragic Death of Cadet Are Recited,” Bryan Daily Eagle, November 8, 1926. 44. “Will Celebrate Win from A. & M. in Full Is Plan of Leaders,” Daily Lariat, November 3, 1924. 45. “Where Is Famous Aggie Spirit? Is Cry from Crowds Who Saw Game,” Daily Lariat, November 3, 1924. 46. Ibid.; “$250 Offered for Names of Cadets Who Hit Baylor Woman with Club

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and Fist,” Daily Lariat, November 3, 1924. 47. “$250 Offered for Names.” 48. “Where Is Famous Aggie Spirit?” 49. “Baylor and Aggie Parade Most Colorful in Years,” Daily Lariat, October 31, 1925. 50. “Where Is Famous Aggie Spirit?”; “Baylor Fans Uphold Famous Slogan of ‘Sportsmanship, Then Victory’ after Game,” Daily Lariat, November 3, 1925.

Chapter 4: A Perfect Day 1. “Weather Forecast,” Daily Lariat, October 30, 1926; “Weather,” Waco News-Tribune, October 31, 2017; Jack Hawkins, “Bruin Team Spurred to Frenzy of Fighting Fury for Traditional Battle,” Waco Times-Herald, October 29, 1926. 2. “History,” Baylor University Homecoming, accessed March 15, 2017, http:// www.baylor.edu/homecoming/index.php?id=865385; “Campus History,” Waco High School, accessed March 15, 2017, http://wacohigh.wacoisd.org/ cms/One.aspx?portalId=8273&pageId=8671. 3. “Tyson, Paul Leighton,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed October 30, 2015, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fty04, published by the Texas State Historical Association; Kevin Sherrington, “Waco Coach Heard Cheers, Then Whispers,” Dallas Morning News, September 1, 1999. 4. Bill McMurray, “Tyson’s Terrors at Waco,” Waco Heritage and History, 17 (Summer–Winter 1986): 1, 3; “Tyson, Paul Leighton,” Handbook of Texas Online; The Daisy Chain (Waco High School yearbook), 1922, 117; 1923, 69; Bill McMurray, “Waco’s Mighty Tigers,” Waco Heritage and History, 17 ­(Summer–Winter 1986): 10. 5. Paul Moore, “Sports Notes,” Corsicana Daily Sun, December 22, 1923; “Greatest Record Ever Made by Any High School Team in the United States,” Waco Heritage and History 17 (Summer–Winter 1986), 65. 6. Harold V. Ratliff, The Power and the Glory, 181. 7. Ibid., 183. 8. Ibid., 101. 9. Ibid., 54, 101. 10. Denne H. Freeman, That Good Old Baylor Line, 53, 54; Eugene W. Baker, To Light the Ways of Time, 137. 11. “Morley Jennings New Athletic Director,” Daily Lariat, April 6, 1926; “Recognition Comes to Baylor Mentor,” Daily Lariat, November 1, 1926; “Morley Jennings to Coach Baylor for First Season,” Corsicana Daily Sun, September 7, 1926; Kern Tips, Football Texas Style, 227. 12. S. P. Brooks letter to C. Cottingham, January 27, 1927, Texas Collection, Baylor University; “Weighed in the Balances,” Waco News-Tribune, April 6, 1926. 13. Tips, Football Texas Style, 76.

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14. W. K. Stratton, Backyard Brawl, 73–74; Ratliff, Power and Glory, 54. 15. Stratton, Backyard Brawl, 75; Harold V. Ratliff, I Shook the Hand, 35; Ratliff, Power and Glory, 135. 16. Stratton, Backyard Brawl, 4–5; Ratliff, I Shook the Hand, 34. 17. Wilbur Evans and H. B. McElroy, The Twelfth Man, 77–78; Ratliff, Power and Glory, 29. 18. John A. Adams Jr., Keepers of the Spirit, 93; Ratliff, Power and Glory, 28; Evans and McElroy, The Twelfth Man, 78. 19. Ratliff, Power and Glory, 30; Evans and McElroy, The Twelfth Man, 84. 20. Ratliff, Power and Glory, 182. 21. “Visitors Willing to Call It a Game,” Daily Arkansas Gazette, November 26, 1915; Evans and McElroy, The Twelfth Man, 278. 22. Hawkins, “Bruin Team Spurred to Frenzy.” 23. “Waco Is Waving Mass Green and Gold, Red-White,” Waco Times-Herald, October 29, 1926; “Fifteen Hundred in March through Business Section,” Daily Lariat, October 30, 1926. 24. “Thousands of Alumni and Exes Revisit Alma Mater for Annual Celebration,” Waco Times-Herald, October 29, 1926; “What Happens Today,” Daily Lariat, October 30, 1926; “Homecoming Thousands See Sensational Bear Assault,” Waco News-Tribune, October 31, 1926; “Between Halves at the Baylor–A. and M. Annual Football Game,” Daily Lariat, November 1, 1926; “Baylor Spirit Is Aroused at Homecoming,” Waco Times-Herald, October 30, 1926. 25. “1500 Cadets to Back Farmers at Game,” Daily Lariat, October 30, 1926; Jinx Tucker, “Bruins Confident of Winning Battle,” Waco News-Tribune, October 30, 1926; “Wm. Cameron & Co. Advertisement,” Waco News-Tribune, October 30, 1926; “Welcome Dana X. Bible and Your Texas Aggies Advertisement,” Waco News-Tribune, October 30, 1926. 26. “1500 Cadets to Back Farmers.” 27. “All Around the Town,” Waco News-Tribune, October 31, 1926; “Prepare for 2,000 at Barbeque Today,” Daily Lariat, October 30, 1926. 28. “Two Thrilling Grid Battles for Weekend,” Waco Times-Herald, October 28, 1926; “Waco Is Waving Mass.” 29. “13,000 Tickets Sold on Morning of Game,” Daily Lariat, October 30, 1926; “Baylor Spirit Is Aroused.” 30. “Just Before the Battle,” Waco News-Tribune, October 31, 1926. 31. “Baylor Bears Crush Texas Aggies 20 to 9,” Dallas Morning News, October 31, 1926. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Jinx Tucker, “Aggies Helpless Before Driving Spirit of Bruins,” Waco

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News-Tribune, October 31, 1926. 35. “Baylor Bears Crush Texas Aggies.” 36. Jack Hawkins, “Bruins Tear thru A. & M. in 20–9 Victory,” Waco Times-­ Herald, October 31, 1926. 37. “Baylor Bears Crush Texas Aggies.” 38. Ibid.; Hawkins, “Bruins Tear thru A. & M.”; “Between Halves.”

Chapter 5: All Hades Broke Loose 1. “Bear Parade Follows Game,” Waco Times-Herald, October 31, 1926. 2. “Recognition Comes to Baylor Mentor,” Daily Lariat, November 1, 1926. The item cited is found on the “To The Reader” page at the front of a book by Dana Olmstead titled Morley Jennings: The Builder of Men. The book lists no publisher information and no publication date. An approximation of the date may be drawn from a letter from Jennings’s wife, Bess, and signed 1985, which is located at the conclusion of the book. The letter references Jennings’s death, which occurred on May 13, 1985. 3. “Between Halves at the Baylor–A. and M. Annual Football Game,” Daily Lariat, November 1, 1926; “Real School Spirit,” Daily Lariat, October 23, 1931. 4. “Eye-Witness Tells of Student Clash at Cotton Palace,” Daily Lariat, November 3, 1926. 5. Ibid. 6. R. L. Ware testimony, in “Report of Investigation of Fight between A. and M. and Baylor Students at Cotton Palace, Waco, Texas, October 30, 1926,” Baylor Incident File, Texas A&M University Cushing Library Archives, 3. 7. “Eye-Witness Tells of Student Clash.” 8. Charlie Ayers testimony, in A&M Investigation, 11; John H. Hume testimony, in A&M Investigation, 17. 9. DeWitt McKinley testimony, in A&M Investigation, 87–88; T. P. Ewing testimony, in A&M Investigation, 93; Ayers testimony, 11–12; Hume testimony, 17–18; Loran Laughlin testimony, in A&M Investigation, 26; “Events Leading Up to Tragic Death of Cadet Are Recited,” Bryan Daily Eagle, November 8, 1926. 10. J. D. Langford testimony, in A&M Investigation, 20. 11. “Between Halves”; “300 Extra Seats for A. and M. Game,” Waco Times-Herald, October 9, 1926; “Events Leading Up to Tragic Death.” 12. Langford testimony, 20; “No Trouble at First Stunt,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 4, 1926. 13. “Baylor Women Who Were on Ford Car Make Statements,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 4, 1926; Benedict Reports, December 17, 1926; Langford testimony, 21; J. B. Parkhill testimony, in A&M Investigation, 16; W. L. Lee testimony, in A&M Investigation, 84. 14. “Baylor Women Make Statements.”

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15. Helen Pool, “Rainbow of American Youth Flashes Its Color at Baylor University Homecoming,” Waco News-Tribune, October 31, 1926; “Between Halves.” 16. “Eye-Witness Tells of Student Clash”; G. L. Hart testimony, in A&M Investigation, 77; “No Trouble at First Stunt”; Captain Montgomery testimony, in A&M Investigation, 6; Lee testimony, 82. 17. Langford testimony, 21, 23; Lee testimony, 83. 18. “Baylor Women Make Statements”; “Eye-Witness Tells of Student Clash”; Lee testimony, 83. 19. Kent Keeth, “Eyewitness to a Melee,” Baylor Line, September 1985; Langford testimony, 21. 20. Benedict Reports, December 14, 15, 19, 29, 1926; H. W. Eitt testimony, in A&M Investigation, 75–76; Hume testimony, 19; M. E. Culli testimony, in A&M Investigation, 48. 21. D. X. Bible testimony, in A&M Investigation, 74; Ware testimony, 1–2; “Between Halves”; Raymond Owens testimony, in A&M Investigation, 41; “Cadet Is Knocked Unconscious when Students Clash,” Waco News-Tribune, October 31, 1926. 22. Langford testimony, 21; Culli testimony, 48; Hart testimony, 77–78; W. A. Moers testimony, in A&M Investigation, 61. 23. Ewing testimony, 95; “Funeral Services for Chas. Sessums, Texas Aggie Cadet,” Bryan Daily Eagle, November 2, 1926; Ware testimony, 3. 24. E. A. Vance testimony, in A&M Investigation, 100–101. 25. Hume testimony, 20; Vance testimony, 100–101; Benedict Reports, December 18, 1926. 26. L. F. Weber testimony, in A&M Investigation, 33; Mark Woodrum testimony, in A&M Investigation, 36–37. 27. Owens testimony, 40; Woodrum testimony, 37. 28. Moers testimony, 63; Owens testimony, 41; Woodrum testimony, 37; Weber testimony, 34. 29. Moers testimony, 60–61, 63; Hume testimony, 19. 30. Langford testimony, 22. 31. “Between Halves”; Benedict Reports, November 23, 1926; “Statement on College Clash,” Dallas Morning News, November 5, 1926; “Events Leading Up to Tragic Death.” 32. Langford testimony, 22; Keeth, “Eyewitness to a Melee”; “Between Halves.” 33. Langford testimony, 22. 34. Ibid.

Chapter 6: Hard for Wisdom to Find Its Way 1. Charles M. Sessums in Alexander B. Sessums household, US Census, 1910, Clovis Ward 1, Curry County, New Mexico, citing enumeration district (ED) 54, sheet 11B, family 259, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington,

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DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll 914; microfilm 1,374,927, Family History Library (FHL), Salt Lake City, Utah. 2. Morrison & Fourmy’s General Directory of the City of Waco, 1890, 212; 1893, 230; 1894, 247; Alexander Sessums, US Census, 1900, Township 2 N, Ranges 3–4 E, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, citing enumeration district (ED) 133, sheet 31B, family 416, NARA microfilm publication T623 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1972); microfilm 1,241,847, FHL; US Census, 1910. 3. Charley Sessums, 1912, “Oklahoma, School Records, 1895–1936,” database with images, FamilySearch, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2NVLHR1, 3 February 2017; Worley’s City Directory, Dallas, 1915, 684; 1918, 826; 1919, 958; 1921, 1,327; “Funeral Services Slated Monday for Mrs. Sessums,” Dallas Daily Times-Herald, April 14, 1952. 4. Worley’s City Directory, Dallas, 1915, 684. 5. The Forester (yearbook, Forest Avenue High School, Dallas), 1917, 86, 93; 1918, 102. 6. Ibid., 1918, 34. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 39–42. 9. Worley’s City Directory, Dallas, 1919, 958; 1922, 1,278. 10. Benedict Reports, December 22, 1926. 11. Ibid.; Hollie Stewart letter to Jemima Sessums, November 10, 1926, Sessums Family Private Collection; Benedict Reports, December 22, 1926. 12. “Injuries in Football Clash Cost Life of Dallas Youth, Officer A&M Cadet Corps,” Dallas Morning News, November 1, 1926. 13. Benedict Reports, December 22, 1926; Howard Lanham letter to Jemima Sessums, November 6, 1926, Sessums Family Private Collection. 14. Sally Jenkins, The Real All Americans, 293–94. 15. Ibid., 294. 16. Ibid., 296–97, 315. 17. Amy Rippel and Beth Kassab, “Skull Injury Killed Earnhardt, Autopsy Confirms,” Orlando Sentinel, February 20, 2001; “Injuries in Football Clash”; “Injuries Prove Fatal to A. and M. Student,” Daily Lariat, November 1, 1926. 18. Lanham to Jemima Sessums, November 6, 1926; Benedict Reports, December 22, 1926. 19. “Injuries in Football Clash.” 20. “To Confer on Sessums’ Death,” Dallas Morning News, November 2, 1926. 21. “Brooks and Walton to Hold Conference on Outcome of Game,” Daily ­Lariat, November 1, 1926. 22. “Injuries in Football Clash”; “Body of Cadet Lies in State at Homes,” Waco Times-Herald, November 1, 1926; “To Confer on Sessums’ Death.” 23. “Officers Discuss Sessums’ Death,” Dallas Morning News, November 3, 1926.

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24. “Funeral Services for Chas. Sessums, Texas Aggie Cadet,” Bryan Daily Eagle, November 2, 1926. 25. “Officers Discuss.” 26. “Statement on College Clash,” Dallas Morning News, November 5, 1926; S. P. Brooks letter to J. H. Ray, November 9, 1926, Texas Collection, Baylor University. 27. S. P. Brooks letter to C. P. Miller, November 5, 1926, Texas Collection, Baylor University; “Statement on College Clash.” 28. “Statement on College Clash.”

Chapter 7: Through! 1. “Presidents of Both Institutions Issue Joint Statement,” Daily Lariat, November 4, 1926. 2. J. D. Langford testimony, in A&M Investigation, 23; “No Letter Received by Baylor Yell Leader,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 4, 1926; “Through!” Daily Lariat Extra, November 4, 1926; “Petition Circulated Today after Issue of Lariat Appears,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 4, 1926. 3. “Petition Circulated”; S. P. Brooks letter to D. P. Wallace, November 8, 1928, Texas Collection, Baylor University. 4. “Petition Circulated.” 5. Ibid. 6. “Where Is Famous Aggie Spirit? Is Cry from Crowds Who Saw Game,” Daily Lariat, November 3, 1924; “Through!” 7. “Battalion Comments on Aggie Spirit at New Mexico Game,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 4, 1926. 8. “Aggie Defeats Have Left String of Gang Fights, Conference History Shows,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 4, 1926. 9. “Through!”; “Aggie Defeats Have Left String of Gang Fights”; “Riot Reigns on Gridiron,” Waco Daily Times-Herald, November 10, 1908. 10. “Riot Reigns on Gridiron”; “Austin Boys Win from A. and M.,” Dallas Morning News, November 10, 1908. 11. “Riot Reigns on Gridiron.” 12. “Through!”; W. L. Lee testimony, in A&M Investigation, 82. 13. “Through!”; “How We Stand,” Daily Lariat, November 1, 1926.

Chapter 8: There Shall Be No Regrets 1. T. O. Walton letter to S. P. Brooks, November 8, 1926, Texas Collection, Baylor University; S. P. Brooks letter to T. O. Walton, November 22, 1926, Texas Collection, Baylor University. 2. Walton to Brooks, November 8, 1926. 3. Ibid. 4. “Through!” Daily Lariat Extra, November 4, 1926.

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5. “Events Leading Up to Tragic Death of Cadet Are Recited,” Bryan Daily Eagle, November 8, 1926. 6. Ibid.; J. D. Langford testimony, in A&M Investigation, 22; “Cadet Is Knocked Unconscious When Students Clash,” Waco News-Tribune, October 31, 1926; “A. & M. Official Makes Statement,” Daily Lariat Extra, November 4, 1926. 7. “Events Leading Up to Tragic Death”; “Question Is Up to College Officials, Declare Students,” Daily Lariat, November 8, 1926. 8. “Events Leading Up to Tragic Death.” 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. S. P. Brooks letter to J. H. Ray, November 9, 1926, Texas Collection, Baylor University. 12. Walton to Brooks, November 8, 1926. 13. “Lampoon Thrusts Caused Princeton to Break Relations,” Daily Lariat, November 18, 1926. 14. “The Collegian Is Still Boiling Mad,” Dallas Morning News, November 12, 1926. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. “Athletics Relations between Two Schools Indefinitely Broken,” Daily Lariat, December 13, 1926; “A. & M. College and Baylor U. Break All Athletic Relations,” Bryan Daily Eagle, December 9, 1926. 19. “A. & M. College and Baylor U. Break All Athletic Relations.

Chapter 9: The Baylor Incident 1. De Witt McKinley testimony, in A&M Investigation, 88; T. P. Ewing testimony, in A&M Investigation, 95. 2. E. A. Vance testimony, in A&M Investigation, 100; O. D. Disch testimony, in A&M Investigation, 103; W. A. Moers testimony, in A&M Investigation, 61. 3. Hollie Stewart letter to Jemima Sessums, November 10, 1926, Sessums Family Private Collection; Benedict Reports, December 22, 1926. 4. Benedict Reports, November 23, 1926. 5. Ibid. 6. Rubie A. Baker testimony, in A&M Investigation, 64; Mark Woodrum testimony, in A&M Investigation, 41. 7. Benedict Reports, November 23, 1926. 8. “New Waco Mayor,” Waco Times-Herald, April 16, 1926; Benedict Reports, November 23, 1926; Vance testimony, 100. 9. Benedict Reports, November 23, 1926. 10. T. O. Walton letter to A. B. Sessums, April 5, 1927, Sessums Family Private Collection.

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11. Benedict Reports, December 7, 1926. 12. Ibid., November 22, 1926. 13. Ibid., November 23, 1926; “Dr. Connally Funeral Due 5PM Monday,” Waco Times-Herald, July 17, 1948; “New Waco Mayor.” 14. “Dr. Connally Funeral.” 15. Benedict Reports, November 23, 1926. 16. Ibid., November 22, 23, 1926. 17. Ibid., November 23, 1926. 18. “Account of Charles M. Sessums’ Death Following A&M–Baylor Football Game October 30, 1926 and the Later Death of His Assailant,” Baylor Incident File, Texas A&M University Cushing Library Archives, College Station. 19. Ibid.; Benedict Reports, December 13, 1926. 20. Benedict Reports, November 23, 24, 1926; “Sniper Connally Hurt; Groesbeck Beats Palestine,” Waco News-Tribune, July 20, 1924. 21. Benedict Reports, November 23, 24, 26, 1926. 22. Ibid., December 13, 1926. 23. Ibid. 24. The Round-Up (Baylor University yearbook), 1925, 135.

Chapter 10: “The City with a Soul” 1. H. C. Norred testimony, in A&M Investigation, 85–86. 2. Ibid. 3. Benedict Reports, November 23, 1926. 4. Ibid., November 25, 1926. 5. Ibid., November 25, December 5, 1926. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., December 6, 1926. 9. Ibid., December 8, 9, 11, 17, 18, 1926. 10. Ibid., December 19, 1926. 11. Ibid., December 19, 21, 1926. 12. Ibid., December 7, 1926. 13. Ibid., December 3, 20, 1926. 14. Morrison & Fourmy’s General Directory of the City of Waco, 1924, 206. 15. The Longhorn (Texas A&M College yearbook), 1922, 206; Benedict Reports, December 17, 1926. 16. Benedict Reports, December 19, 1926. 17. Ibid.; “Baylor Blanks Dons 2–0; Ferguson Drives Across Winning Runs,” Daily Lariat, March 24, 1938. 18. Benedict Reports, December 19, 1926. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid.; L. F. Weber testimony, in A&M Investigation, 33–35.

NO T E S T O PAG E S 1 0 9 –1 2 0  |  157

21. L. F. Weber testimony, 33–35. 22. Benedict Reports, December 19, 1926. 23. Ibid., December 21, 29, 1926. 24. Ibid., December 14, 29, 1926; Weber testimony, 34. 25. Benedict Reports, November 23, 1926. 26. Ibid., November 23, 24, 1926. 27. Ibid., December 30, 1926. 28. Ibid., December 28, 31, 1926. 29. Ibid.

Chapter 11: He Is Just Away 1. T. O. Walton letter to A. B. Sessums, April 5, 1927, Texas Collection, Baylor University. 2. Ibid. 3. Benedict Reports, December 22, 1926. 4. Ibid., December 21, 1926; Walton to Sessums, April 5, 1927. 5. Byrd White letter to S. P. Brooks, March 2, 1927, Texas Collection, Baylor University. 6. S. P. Brooks letter to Byrd White, March 3, 1927, Texas Collection, Baylor University; Benedict Reports, December 19, 1926. 7. Brooks to White, March 3, 1927. 8. Frank Baldwin, “Baylor Bus Tragedy Which Claims 10 Lives Described in Graphic Words by Eyewitness,” Waco News-Tribune, January 23, 1927. 9. Todd Copeland, The Immortal Ten, 36. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 15–19; “3000 Fill Chapel to Pay Tribute to Train Crash Heroes,” Daily Lariat, January 25, 1927. 12. Copeland, Immortal Ten, 40, 70; “Survivor of Tragic Crash Says Boys Were Laughing about Sam Bass When Death Intervened,” Waco News-Tribune, January 23, 1927. 13. Copeland, Immortal Ten, 41–50, 81. 14. The Longhorn (Texas A&M College yearbook), 1927, 80. 15. Jinx Tucker, “Sports Hotshots,” Waco News-Tribune, November 12, 1926. 16. “Real School Spirit,” Daily Lariat, October 23, 1931; Elton Miller, “Bruins and Farmers Renew Relations on Kyle Field Gridiron,” Daily Lariat, October 23, 1931; “Bear-Aggie Ticket May Reach 600,” Daily Lariat, October 23, 1926. 17. Elton Miller, “Sports Notes,” Daily Lariat, October 27, 1931. 18. Ibid. 19. Eugene W. Baker, To Light the Ways of Time, 149–51; “Baylor of Today Is Tribute to Ability of Deceased ‘Prexy,’” Daily Lariat, May 14, 1931. 20. “One Wacoan Killed and Four Painfully Injured When Heavy Fire Pumper Crashes into Small Sedan,” Waco Sunday Tribune-Herald, July 5, 1931.

158  |  N O T E S T O P A GE S 1 2 0 – 1 3 0 

21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. “‘Sniper Connally,’ Student-Athlete, Claimed by Death,” Waco News-Tribune, August 27, 1929. 24. Lavonia Jenkins Barnes, The Texas Cotton Palace, Waco, Texas, intro., v; Alan J. Lefever, The History of Baylor Sports, 36; Baker, To Light the Ways, 186; 2013 Baylor Football Media Almanac, 93, 132. 25. Data is based on author’s analysis of all Southwestern Conference game scores from 1931 to 1985 as reported in media guides for the seven member schools: Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, Rice, TCU, SMU, and Arkansas.

Epilogue: Taps 1. “The Baylor Tragedy,” Texas Aggie, November 18, 1926. A photocopy of the article is located in the Baylor Incident File, Texas A&M University Cushing Library Archives. Page number is missing from that copy. 2. Teresa Talerico, “Cadets Invade Bear Country,” Waco Tribune-Herald, October 22, 1995. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid.

NOTE S  T O PAG E S 1 3 1 –1 3 6  |  159

Bibliography

Archival Sources “Account of Charles M. Sessums’ Death Following A&M-Baylor Football Game October 30, 1926 and the Later Death of His Assailant,” Baylor Incident File, Texas A&M University Archives, Cushing Library, College Station. Death Certificate of Charles Milo Sessums, citing certificate number 35807, McLennan County, Texas, Texas Department of Health, State Vital Statistics Unit, Austin. Letters to A. B. and Mamie Sessums, Sessums Family Private Collection. (As of the time of publication, these documents are not available to the public.) Pinkerton Detective Ila Floyd Benedict Daily Investigative Reports, Sessums Family Private Collection. (As of the time of publication, these documents are not available to the public.) Report of Investigation of Fight between A. and M. and Baylor Students at Cotton Palace Waco, Texas, October 30, 1926, Baylor Incident File, Texas A&M University Archives, Cushing Library, College Station. Samuel Palmer Brooks Papers, Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, Texas. United States Census Records, 1900 and 1910. Microfilm.

Books Adams, John A., Jr. Keepers of the Spirit. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001. Baker, Eugene W. In His Traces: The Life and Times of R. E. B. Baylor. Waco: Big Bear Books, 1996. ———. To Light the Ways of Time. Waco: Baylor University Press, 1987. Barnes, Lavonia Jenkins. The Texas Cotton Palace, Waco, Texas. Waco: Heritage Society of Waco, 1964. Bernstein, Patricia. The First Waco Horror. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. Carver, Charles. Brann the Iconoclast. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1957. Conger, Roger N. A Pictorial History of Waco, rev. ed. Waco: Texian Press, 1964. Copeland, Todd. The Immortal Ten. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006. The Daisy Chain (yearbook). Waco: Waco High School, 1922 and 1923. Davis, Joe Tom. Legendary Texians, vol. 4. Austin: Eakin, 1989. Dent, Jim. The Junction Boys. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 1999.

Dethloff, Henry C. A Centennial History of Texas A&M University, 1876–1976, vols. 1 and 2. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1975. Evans, Wilbur, and H. B. McElroy. The Twelfth Man. Huntsville: The Strode Publishers, 1974. The Forester (yearbook). Dallas: Forest Avenue High School, 1917 and 1918. Freeman, Denne H. That Good Old Baylor Line. Huntsville: The Strode Publishers, 1975. Graves, John. Goodbye to a River. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960. Greenberg, Murray. Passing Game: Benny Friedman and the Transformation of Football. New York: Public Affairs, 2008. Gwynne, S. C. Empire of the Summer Moon. New York: Scribner, 2010. Hohn, Caesar. Dutchman on the Brazos: Reminiscences of Caesar (Dutch) Hohn. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963. Jenkins, Sally. The Real All Americans. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Lefever, Alan J. The History of Baylor Sports. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013. The Longhorn (yearbook). College Station: Texas A&M College, 1922–27. Maysel, Lou. Here Come the Texas Longhorns, 1893–1970. Fort Worth: Stadium Publishing Company, 1970. Miller, John J. The Big Scrum. New York: Harper Collins, 2011. Morrison & Fourmy’s General Directory of the City of Waco. Galveston: Morrison & Fourmy, 1890–94). Murray, Lois Smith. Baylor at Independence. Waco: Baylor University Press, 1972. Myers, Johnnie J. Texas Electric Railway. Chicago: Central Electric Railfans’ Association, 1982. Olmstead, Dana. Morley Jennings: The Builder of Men. Self-published, n.d. Poage, W. R. McLennan County—Before 1890. Waco: Texian Press, 1981. Ratliff, Harold V. I Shook the Hand. San Antonio: The Naylor Company, 1948. ———. The Power and the Glory. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1957. Red, William Stuart. A History of the Presbyterian Church in Texas. San Antonio: The Steck Company, 1936. Robertson, Robert W., Jr. The Wonder Team. Louisville: Butler Books. The Round-Up (yearbook). Waco: Baylor University, 1923 and 1925. Stratton, W. K. Backyard Brawl. New York: Crown Publishers, 2002. Tips, Kern. Football Texas Style. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1964. 2013 Baylor Football Media Almanac. Waco: Baylor University Department of Athletics, 2013. Worley’s City Directory, Dallas. Dallas: John F. Worley Directory Co., 1915–22.

162  |  B I B L IOGR A PH Y 

Newspapers and Magazines Baylor Lariat, 1916–2006. Baylor Line, 1985. Bryan Daily Eagle, 1926. Corsicana Daily Sun, 1923–26. Daily Arkansas Gazette, 1915. Dallas Daily Times-Herald, 1952. Dallas Morning News, 1926–99. Fort Worth Gazette, 1894. Galveston Daily News, 1893–1922. Houston Chronicle, 1990. Houston Post, 1922. Iowa Alumnus, 1912. Minnesota Magazine, 1900. Orlando Sentinel, 2001. Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, 1922. Texas Aggie magazine, 1926. Waco Heritage and History, vol. 17 (1986). Waco News-Tribune, 1924–27. Waco Times-Herald, 1899–1948. Waco Tribune-Herald, 1995.

B IB LIO G R APHY  |  163

Index Note: Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations. “Account of Charles M. Sessums’ Death following A&M-Baylor Football Game October 30, 1926, and the Later Death of His Assailant,” 111 AddRan University, 19 Aggieland, 15, 26, 129, 130, 133 Aggies, 7, 8, 21, 23, 24, 33, 36-39, 48, 50–51, 52, 53–57, 61, 65, 73, 93–94, 99, 128, 129–130, 132, 133–134; Baylor’s biggest rival, 45; conference bullies, 94; lack of sportsmanship, 41; led by Dana Bible, 32, 50–51; nickname of student body, 20; play in Dixie Classic, 34–35; replaced Farmers in popularity, 20, 34; Southwest Conference champions, 48–49; with a cannon, 1 Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, 7, 13–14, 18, 23, 53, 79, 81. See also Texas A&M University Allen, W.S., 8, 10, 42, 51, 72, 78 Amicable Building, 109 Amicable Life Insurance Company, 110 Austin American Statesman, 18 Austin College, 18, 19 Austin, Stephen F., 12, Austin, Texas, 13, 17, 18, 19, 22, 30, 46–49, 127–128 Baker, Eugene, 46 Baptist General Convention of Texas, 17 Barron, Hollis, 80 Bartlett, D. W., 70 Battle of the Brazos rivalry, 1, 21, 132

Battle of the Brazos (naval battle), 12 Battalion, 93-94 Baylor-A&M Friendship Car, 41 Baylor Bears, 7, 8, 21, 24–25, 28, 29, 32–33, 35, 36–37, 39, 41, 44, 50–57, 61, 111, 119, 128–129, 132–133 Baylor Bulldogs, 20 Baylor Ford, 41. See also bucking Ford Baylor Incident, 104 “The Baylor Incident” file, 112 Baylor, Robert Emmett Bledsoe, 15. See also Judge Baylor Baylor University, 1, 2, 7–11, 16, 17, 22, 27, 30, 42, 44, 81, 97, 126, 127, 130; administration banned football, 25; alma mater That Good Ole Baylor Line, 51; Baylor-A&M Friendship car, 41; Baylor Stadium, 132; cancel athletic events with Texas A&M, 107; coeducational, 16, 21; donkey incident, 36; first Southwest Conference champions, 29; first Southwest Conference football game, 28; football arrives on campus, 19–20; forfeits championship, 29; Floyd Casey Stadium, 133; freshman team, 53, 65, 69; Golden Wave Marching Band, 51; homecoming, 38, 41, 43, 52; in Independence, 18; investigation, 118; join Big 12, 133; largest margin of victory over Texas A&M, 25; mascot, 20; motto, 17; oldest university in Texas, 13; relocate to Waco, 18; reunion with Texas A&M, 129–130; rivalry with Texas A&M, 1, 3, 7, 21,

22, 24–25, 29, 31–42, 45, 49, 57, 67, 93, 129–130, 132–134 (See also Battle of the Brazos rivalry); run by Texas Baptist, 21; school spirit, 51; stockpiles of weapons, 62, 99; student newspaper (See also Lariat), 1, 24, 40, 41, 94, 96, 97; students, 64-66, 68, 69, 72, 91, 92, 96, 99, 102, 117; Sul Ross at Baylor, 23; 1926 Texas A&M game, 53–57 Bellmont, L. Theo, 27 Benedict, Ila Floyd (also Detective Benedict), 109–123, 125–126, 131 Bible, Dana Xenophon, 32, 34-35, 36, 45, 46-52, 55-56, 62, 88 Bible Plan, 47–48 Big 8 Conference, 133 Big 12 Conference, 133 Brann, Williams Cowper, 22 Brazos Bottom, 21, 23, 26, 31 Brazos River, 12–13, 17, 23 Bridges, Frank, 32–33, 36–37, 43, 44, 46–47, 61, 111 Brooks, Samuel Palmer, 2, 8, 10–11, 24, 39, 46, 47, 79, 83, 102, 117–118, 126–127, 129; conference with T. O. Walton, 80; correspondence with T. O. Walton, 97–98, 100, 112; interviewed by detective Benedict, 119; joint statement with T. O. Walton, 91; death, 130 Brooks, T. D., 80 Bryan, Texas, 15, 18, 21, 44, 98 Bryan Eagle, 80 bucking Ford, 39, 41, 65, 68, 91, 100 Burleson, Rufus C., 17

Carlisle Indian School, 77 Carlisle, Y. C., 122–123, 125 Carnegie Technical Institute, 29 Cathedral Latin High, 44 Centre College, 34 Chevigny, John “Jack,” 47–48 Civil War, 13-14, 23 Coates, Sam, 44, 54-55, 69, 87, 111, 114, 118 College Station, Texas, 8, 10, 15, 21, 32, 47, 50, 52, 61, 78, 79, 80, 83, 96, 98, 129 Columbia, Texas, 12 Comanche Springs, Texas, 110 Connally, Edwin (Ed), 87, 119, 120-123, 126 131 Connally, Jr., H. F., 110 Connally, Herschel Frank (also H. F. Connally, Mayor), 72, 80, 106-112, 116, 119, 121–123, 126, 131 Connally, Hubert, 87, 112–114, 118-119, 122–123, 126, 130–131 Connally, Mrs. Clarence, 121 Connally, Tom, 110 Corps of Cadets (also called the corps), 8–9, 15, 21, 32, 38, 39, 41, 52, 66, 79, 93, 94, 95, 98, 99, 101, 133 Cotton Bowl, 35 Cotton Palace, 1, 2, 7, 29, 30–32, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 45, 51–53, 63, 66, 68, 69, 72–73, 76, 90, 107, 121 Cotton Palace Riot, 2, 62, 65, 81, 94, 102, 112, 115, 123, 125, 127, 129, 130, 133; firsthand account of, 63–64 Crow, Jim, 120 Cushing Memorial Library, 65, 112

cadets, 1–3, 20, 21, 25, 32, 36, 38–41, 52, 65, 66-68, 70, 71–73, 76, 79, 80, 81–82, 91–102, 107–108, 129, 133 Campbell, Dave, 21 Canton Bulldogs, 78

Daisy Chain, 44 Dallas, Texas, 8–11, 17, 25–26, 28, 34–35, 50, 52, 66, 74, 76, 79, 106– 107, 109, 124, 125, 126, 130 Dallas University, 49

166  |  I N D EX 

Dallas Fair Park, 34, 74 Dallas Morning News, 8, 27, 56, 67, 78, 81, 101, Didzun, Esther, 62–64, 68 Disch, O. D., 105–106 Dixie Classic, 34–35 Dobson, 117 Dockery, John, 111 Dyer, Graves, 118 Earnhardt, Dale, 78 Eichenlaub, Ray, 77 Ewing, T. P., 69–70, 106 Farmers, 18, 20, 24, 26, 29, 34, 35, 39 Ford, Henry, 20 Forest Avenue High School, 75 Forester, 75 Franklin, J. O., 130 Friley, Charles E., 80 Gildersleeve, Fred, 66 Gill, E. King, 35 Gross, Abe, 122, 123 Grove Hill Cemetery, 79 Hardin-Simmons University, 19 Hart, G. L., 68–69, 86, 111 Harvard University, 101 Harvard Lampoon, 101 Hawkins, Jack, 50 Heisman, John, 45 Hohn, Dutch, 27 Holt, Dick, 121, 126 Houston and Texas Central Railway, 15 Huff, Lee, 123 Hume, John, 70 Hunt, Oliver Joel, 44–45, 50, 54–56, Hunter, E. P., 109 Iconoclast, 22 Immortal Ten, 128

Independence, Texas, 17 interurban, 9, 10, 107. See also Texas Electric Railway Company Jefferson-Moore High, 43 Jennings, Morley, 47, 50, 52, 54, 55, 61, 88; Builder of Men, 61 Johnson, C. T. (Clyde), 87, 115–119, 121, 122, 123, 131 Johnson, John Drew “Boody”, 44 Jones, Anson, 16 Judge Baylor, 16. See also Robert Emmett Bledsoe Baylor Justiss, Mattie Bell, 41 Katy Railroad, 9, 74 Kelley, Clyde “Abe,” 44, 54–55, 128 Kennedy, Charles W., 101 killer, 2–3, 11, 64, 70–71, 99, 108–126, 131 Lamar, Mirabeau, 13–15 Langford, J. D., 65-68, 72-73, 91, 98 Lanham, Howard, 76-78, 107 Lariat (also Baylor Lariat), 36–40, 42, 43, 57, 61–63, 67, 91–101, 129–130 Lee, W. L., 68, 86, 95 Little Sniper, 119, 121, 122 Longhorn, 38, 128 Los Brazos de Dios, 12. See also Brazos River Louisiana State University, 27–28, 48 Maysel, Lou, 18 McGregor, Texas, 110 McKinley, Dewitt, 106 McKinley, William, 20 Mississippi College, 36, 50 Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, 9 Moers, Jr., William, 71–72, 107 Moody, Dan, 110 Moran, Charley, 26–29, 34–35

IN DE X  |  167

Moses, A. T., 63, 68, 72 Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862 (Morrill Act), 14–15 Morris, George, 54, 56 Mount Calm, Texas, 115, 118 Municipal Stadium, 132 murder, 2–3, 124, 126 murdered, 2, 99 National Guard, 1 Nealon, Clark, 33 “Nearer My God to Thee,” 79 Nebraska Cornhuskers, 47–48 Newberry, Willard, 66, 68 Norman, Louise, 68 Norred, H. C., 115–116, 118 Notre Dame Fighting Irish, 43, 77 Oakwood Cemetery, 23, 131 Oklahoma A&M College, 27 Oklahoma State University, 27 Ole Miss, 28 Ouachita Baptist Tigers, 47, 50 Owens, Raymond B., 71 Padgett Park, 30 Patterson, Earl, 113 Paul Quinn College, 30 Pinkerton National Detective Agency (also Pinkerton Agency), 3, 109 Pittman, B.J., 37 Pittman, Ralph, 39, 40 Potter, Joe, 127 Potts, R. J., 109 Princeton Tigers, 101 Princeton University Athletic Council, 101 Providence Sanitarium, 76, 107 Raleigh Hotel, 73, 111 Ratliff, Harold, 32–33, 45 Ray, John H., 100

168  |  I N D EX 

ringers, 26–28 Republic of Texas, 13, 16, 17 Rice Institute, 28, 45 Richfield High, 43 Rockne, Knute, 43 Rooks, W. K., 113 Roper, Bill, 101 Ross, Shapley, 22, 23 Ross, Sul (Lawrence Sullivan), 22–23 Round Rock, Texas, 127–128 Round Up, 114 Royal, Darrell, 48 Rule, Texas, 12 Sam Houston State, 49 San Felipe de Austin, 12 Sessums, A.B. (Alexander), 8–11, 74, 78, 125–126 Sessums, Charlie (Charles Milo, Cadet Sessums, Lieutenant Sessums), 9, 61, 63–64, 69, 74–78, 80, 92, 98, 99, 100, 111, 125–129, 131–132; cause of death, 11; death, 10; entered Texas A&M, 9; funeral, 79; investigation of death, 106–124; photo of death certificate, 85; photo of headstone, 85; participation in the riot, 70–72; photo and tribute 84 Sessums, George, 9, 74 Sessums, Grace, 9–11, 74, 75, 129 Sessums, Harry, 9, 75, 76 Sessums, J. R. (John), 10 Sessums, Joseph, 9, 74 Sessums, Mamie (Jemima), 8–10, 74, 78, 125 Sessums, William, 10 Sikes, J. V., 55 Simmons College, 19 Simmons, J. A., 54–55 Slade, Louis, 44 SMU, 45, 50–52, 66, 94 Sniper Connally, 113, 119, 121, 123, 131

Southwest Conference, 24, 26, 27–29, 31–35, 43–45, 47–51, 67, 111, 132– 134; first football game 28 Southwestern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, 26. See also Southwest Conference Southwestern University, 27 Stanford, R. B., 78 Stegall, Leslie, 80 Stewart, Hollie, 107 Stonerod, Thomas, 29, 33 Southwest Texas State, 49 Sunshine Special, 126 Surfside, 11 “Taps,” 72, 79, 122 133 Taylor, Sallie, 30 Teacup War, 101 Teaff, Grant, 21, 61 Texas A&M (also A&M), 1–3, 8–11, 48–53, 62, 76, 78, 79, 80, 91–97, 100–102, 109, 119, 122, 125–126, 128–129 (See also Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas); administration, 2; Aggie War Hymn, 79, 133; Baylor Incident file, 112–113, 122; centennial history, 1; Cushing Archives, 64; dispute with Texas, 26–28; donkey incident, 36; early football history, 18; fight song Goodbye to Texas University, 53; first football team, 18; first game against Texas, 18, 19; first institution of higher education in Texas, 13, 15; Former Students Association, 124; investigation, 63–73, 75, 79, 91, 95, 98, 106, 111, 115, 120, 122, 125; known as Farmers, 20, 34; Kyle Field, 129; rivalry with Baylor, 1, 3, 7, 21, 22, 24–25, 29, 31–42, 45, 49, 57, 67, 93, 129–130, 132–134 (See also Battle of the Brazos rivalry);

Southwest Conference champions, 33, 34; Star Spangled Banner, 64, 72; statement by committee of Seniors, 98–100; Sul Ross at Texas A&M, 23; rivalry with Texas, 27; Twelfth Man tradition, 34–35; 1926 Baylor game, 53–57 Texas Aggie, 132 Texas (also University of Texas), 13–14, 17–19, 20, 26–29, 33, 47–49, 94–95, 133 Texas Baptist Education Society, 16 Texas Baptists, 17, 21 Texas Christian University (also TCU), 19, 35, 50 Texas Cotton Palace. See Cotton Palace Texas Electric Railway Company, 9–10 Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association (TIAA), 26 Texas Longhorns, 26, 27, 29, 46–49, 94, 127, 132 Texas Medical College at Galveston, 131 Texas Rangers, 1, 22-23 Texas State Fair, 75 Texas Tech University, 133 Texas University Interscholastic League, 44 Thomas, N.O., 118 Tokonohono, 12. See also Brazos River Trantham, Henry, 80 Treuckmann, William, 95 Tryon, William Milton, 16 Tucker, Jinx, 35, 52, 129 Turner, F. H., 72, 80 Twelfth Man, 34–35 Tyson, Paul Leighton, 43–45, 69, 111, 128 Union Baptist Association, 16 University of Mississippi, 28 University of Nebraska, 46 University of Oklahoma, 26, 27, 29, 33

IN DE X  |  169

University of Texas. See Texas Utay, Joe, 34 Vance, E. A., 70, 106–107 Vanderbilt University, 110 Varsity, 17-18, 20 Velasco, 11 Waco, 1, 3, 7–11, 17, 19–23, 28, 30–32, 33, 36, 38–40, 43, 44, 46, 47, 50–53, 61–62, 65–66, 69, 70, 72, 74, 78, 80, 81, 83, 91, 95, 96–99, 101–102, 106– 112, 114–115, 119, 122–123, 125–128, 130–134 Waco City Guide, 30, 118 Waco Tigers, 43–45, 128 Waco Times-Herald, 56, 57, 66 Waco University, 17 Walton, Thomas O. (T. O.), 2, 10–11, 76, 78, 79, 80, 89, 91, 97–98, 100– 102, 112, 125, 129

170  |  I N D EX 

Ware, R. L., 63, 70, 72, Warner, Glenn “Pop,” 33 Washam, Weir, 44, 54–56, 128 Washington and Jefferson, 34 Washington-on-the-Brazos, 12, 16–17 Weber, L. F., 70-71, 120, 121 Welch, Gus, 77 Wells, L. N. D., 79 White, Byrd, 126–127 Wilson, Louise, 115–118, 123 Wilson, Woodrow, 75 Wolf, Ralph, 119–120, 127 Wood, Frank, 91 Woodrum, Mark, 70–71 Yale Bulldogs, 101 Yell Practice, 79