Boom to Bust to Boom: The Sunbelt, 1912-1945

Florida developer Dick Pope Sr. with piano and ballet dancer, Cypress Gardens, 1963 (from Saturday Evening Post (reproduced in The Ledger, 10/11/2010)

To recap, the overarching theme of this blog series is the tracing of why three states in particular (Arizona, Texas and Florida) have become the boom states, especially in the 2020s, with major impacts on the American economy, culture, and politics (including race relations). I am also adding in the cumulative impact of the growth of the major cities in these states on the environment, both local and global (for example, Texas is by far the biggest carbon emitter of all the states, with the U.S. second only to China as a global carbon emitter). All in all, a lot of threads to weave together, but, given the importance of this story, I’m not going to shy away from its complexity (while also making it as easy to follow as I can!). In this installment, I will be following this urbanization story through the transformative events of World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, and (the biggest factor of all) World War II!

Arizona: my focus here is mostly on the emergence of Phoenix. Last time I covered its founding as a “frontier” town in the 1870s-1880s, its naming, and its early growth in the Salt River Valley in the southern part of the state (on top of one of the largest prehistoric sites in the Southwest, the canals of the vanished Hohokam indigenous culture). That early town was already intentionally split by racial group, with the ruling Anglo population living on the relatively high ground north of the Salt, while the Mexican and (growing) Black communities were confined to the low ground outside town limits (South Phoenix) with the town’s industries; even the town drains ran waste from the Anglo town downhill to the south! A plant to treat everyone’s water would not be built until 1932. The school system was in the process of becoming fully segregated as well (with Black students at this point staying literally in the basement of the only high school).

Phoenix’s first big boosts were the arrival of a branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad (1887), and especially the construction of the Roosevelt Dam upstream (1911). This project required six years and millions of dollars of federal investment, as one of the first set of dams built by the brand-new U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (a priority of Pres. Theodore Roosevelt). For Phoenix, it meant a dramatic expansion of agriculture (the Salt River Project- 250,000 acres!), turning the town into a major regional economic center. While not even mentioned at the time, that irrigation expansion destroyed one of the Southwest’s biggest “bosque” river forests- the most biodiverse habitat in the area’s very arid Sonoran Desert. The Salt River, which had been a (usually) permanent life-giving stream, became, unless there were heavy rains, a dusty and lifeless riverbed.

Politically, when Arizona became a state in 1912, there were 217,000 inhabitants (including many Native Americans), about a tenth of whom lived in Phoenix. Its first governor was Democratic, with a similar Progressive program to that of the Democratic president elected later in the year (Woodrow Wilson).

Another source of growth into the Twenties and Thirties, poignantly enough, was the arrival of so-called “lungers”- sufferers from tuberculosis, one of America’s greatest killers, and as yet incurable. Those with money were housed in new sanatoriums, getting daily doses of the desert air to improve lung function. Those without money had to live in tent cities, and as such were exiled outside town limits. Most “lungers” and tourists at the time came, if possible, only in the winters (avoiding the scorching Phoenix summers, as there was as yet no broadly available air conditioning).

The brief U.S. intervention in the First World War (Apr. 1917- Nov. 1918) had little long-term effect on Arizona and Phoenix. The growing automobile industry needed far more tires, which in those days used cotton fibers. The war cut off cotton, and also natural rubber, imports; this caused the nation’s biggest tire producer, Goodyear, to buy a large section of desert next to Phoenix, where it built a company town. Given the area’s long growing season and water supply, cotton growing boomed, and there was also an experiment with the guayule plant as a rubber substitute. But the boom ended when the war did (though cotton agriculture continued). A greater impact came from the arrival of the world flu pandemic in late 1918, which killed over 2,000 Arizonans.

Phoenix, like the rest of the nation, recovered quite quickly from the postwar recession, and the boom times (the “Roaring” part of the decade) began about 1923. Downtown Phoenix sprouted new elegant commercial buildings. The key year was 1926, when the city was finally connected to the main national network; soon after its government built an airport for the new-fangled passenger planes. Its Black community finally got its own segregated high school. At the end of the decade, the city got its own $750,000 grand Spanish-style movie palace, the Orpheum (newly restored today). It and a handful of other large buildings now included the new technology of air conditioning, still very much a luxury. While tourism was taking off, the general economy and its working class jobs were still based on natural resources: agriculture (both produce, a specialty of Japanese immigrants, and irrigated cotton) and copper mining (largely used for electric wiring). Phoenix was now the largest city in the state, surpassing Tucson, but still small by the national scale (about 48,000). Arizona also gained an invaluable political presence in Congress; Carl Hayden, a well-respected Democrat and a consummate dealmaker, moved from the House (where he had been Arizona’s first delegate in 1912) to the Senate in 1926, where he would head the powerful Appropriations Committee. He would pursue his goal of bringing more water, and therefore jobs, to the state for decades (not retiring until 1969!). Another major political event, in 1924, was the grant of citizenship to Native Americans- though it came with a big catch, that each state would set the rules. When two men from the Gila River reservation tried to vote in 1928, they were turned away by the registrar, and were denied again when they sued (Porter v. Hall). In practical terms, Arizona’s 22 indigenous nations would be denied the vote until the 1970s!

Corner of facade of Orpheum Theater, Phoenix (from Wikipedia)

The Depression, which in Arizona didn’t fully hit until 1933, brought all of its glamor and prosperity to a screeching halt. Copper and cotton prices nosedived, as did tourism, leading to the second-highest state unemployment in the nation. Phoenix was also flooded with penniless white migrants, fleeing their farms on the southern Plains, ruined by the decade-long Dust Bowl drought. On the state’s western edge, on the Colorado River, the largest dam yet built (the Hoover Dam) was under construction, but, while it did reduce flooding, it did little as yet for the state’s economy.

Invaluable help, as it had before with the Roosevelt Dam in 1911, came from distant Washington. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal invested vast sums ($342 million) in sparsely populated Arizona, through its smorgasbord of new agencies (50 in all!). The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) built trails and facilities in city parks and in the state’s wide array of national forests and parks (further expanded by FDR). The FSA (Farm Security Agency) built tent camps for the white “Okie” migrants. The REA (Rural Electrification Administration) brought power to the farms and small towns in the vast countryside, with the help of more hydropower from more big dams. The various public works agencies created the state’s first modern system of paved roads. Cotton prices rebounded, though not at a boom level. While minorities got few of the benefits, all of these projects employed thousands (41,000 for the CCC alone), and voters showed their gratitude by giving FDR and his Democrats landslide margins in 1932 and 1936. The New Deal caused a long-term reshaping of politics, including the creation of two important political careers: young pro-New Deal Ernest McFarland defeated long-term Democratic Senator Henry Ashurst in 1940, and square-jawed and charismatic conservative Republican Barry Goldwater, heir to the state’s most important department store chain, began the rise that would culminate in his being the party’s nominee for president in 1964.

By the late ‘30s, foreign crises were multiplying, and Roosevelt was nudging a reluctant nation into a military buildup to protect us against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. For Arizona and Phoenix, World War II would be the transformative event that would create spectacular growth through a permanent shift to a manufacturing (and military-related) economy. Arizona would add more people (250,000) in the 1940s than at any other time, second only to California, and Phoenix would more than double in size (to 107,000). The decisive national moment happened when FDR announced, after the fall of France to Hitler in 1940, that he wanted the immediate construction of 50,000 planes, an unheard of number and a colossal federal investment. The decisive state moment followed in 1941. Capitalizing on the advantages of Arizona for aviation, with its open spaces, sunny climate, and cheap land, Sen. Carl Hayden responded by getting the Army Air Corps (one of the forerunners of today’s Air Force) to build major airfields, with 4 near Phoenix and another next to Tucson. One of them, Luke, would be the single biggest training ground for combat pilots in the nation. So many workers moved to Phoenix that many had to live in new trailer parks. All of this new construction also catapulted a developer, Del Webb, to historic importance, as will be seen. He will start by constructing airfields, but also Arizona’s two internment camps for Japanese-Americans (Poston and Gila River; both on remote Indian reservations). To add an absurdity to the overall tragedy, the line drawn by the War Department for “relocation” ran right through Phoenix- if a Japanese-American lived to the west, they had to go to one of the camps; if on the other, they could stay! At another remote desert spot outside Tucson was Fort Huachuca; it would house and train the majority of Black soldiers in World War II.

I haven’t yet mentioned Sen. Ernest McFarland’s big contribution, not just to Arizona, but to the nation. He was the single biggest force behind the passage of the GI Bill in 1944, which provided massive funding for the returning soldiers so that they could resume, or start, college-level educations (my own dad got to finish his Amherst degree). As I’ll cover in the next post, a very large number of those GIs who were trained in Arizona will settle in the state…

Texas: When I left off last time with the story of the Texas cities, the state had really entered its modern industrial stage with the discovery of its vast oil resources (Spindletop, 1901). Oil quickly became the major source of wealth, displacing the old economy of cattle, cotton, and timber. Its discovery especially benefited Houston and Dallas. In Houston, master developer Jesse Jones helped raise half the cost of the Ship Channel (to match federal funding), which involved intensive dredging of the 40 miles of Buffalo Bayou connecting the city to the Atlantic. When it was completed, at the same time as the Panama Canal, in 1914, Houston became one of the nation’s major ports (displacing nearby Galveston, devastated by a hurricane in 1900). As for Dallas, its banking boomed with oil investment. Austin, though the capital, at this point was still quite small (partly because its state university was much smaller than today). Another big boost for the whole state was the federal oil depletion allowance, passed in 1913 and expanded in 1926, which allowed oil prospectors to avoid tax on a large part of their drilling costs. A vast new oilfield, dwarfing anything before, was found in 1931. As a result, Houston and Dallas were able to continue to prosper during the worst part of the Depression. By 1930, Houston was the state’s largest city at 300,000, narrowly surpassing Dallas.

c. 1927 photo of Houston during building boom (from Univ. of Houston Digital Library)

West Texas was not so fortunate; in the Panhandle, its farmers had plowed up too much of the grassland during World War I, only to have the wheat price collapse in the 1920’s, followed by the devastating Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s (in which the topsoil literally blew away). This impoverishment of Texas farmers meant that many white farmers abandoned the countryside, either moving to the cities or leaving the state (as part of the “Grapes of Wrath” migration to California). Another migration, also out of the countryside, was Black- part of the Great Migration of millions out of the South from 1915 into Northern cities, both for jobs and to escape the relentless humiliation and violence of segregation (especially with the the KKK’s revival- early 1920s).

As in Arizona, the arrival of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, with his multitude of New Deal programs, also greatly benefited Texas. But there was an important difference: Texas already had exceptional political connections, and power, at the federal level. That started back with Edward House, a Texas millionaire who became Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s closest advisor by 1912. House introduced Jesse Jones to Wilson, who, excited to find a fellow Southern Democrat with leadership potential and business expertise, offered Jones various high-level jobs. Jones refused them, until he was offered that of heading the American Red Cross’s work with the military in France in World War I. Jones’s next triumph was in attracting the Democratic National Convention to Houston in 1928- the first time either party had met in the South since 1860. No less than 25,000 delegates arrived that summer (despite being cooled only by high-powered fans!). There was some bad publicity when a Black man was lynched not far from the Convention (quickly hushed up), and the nominee, Irish Catholic New Yorker Al Smith, unfortunately proved very unpopular with Protestant Southern Democrats (even Texas voted for Republican Herbert Hoover that November!). But the publicity of the Convention for Houston was invaluable.

And then in 1930, the Democrats won back control of Congress after a decade out of power. That empowered more Texans. Long-term Congressman John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner became House Speaker, and five other Texans, including Garner’s protege Sam Rayburn (who would become Speaker later too), became chairmen of important committees. In the 1932 campaign, Garner ran against Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination, a clear sign of the rise of Texas in politics; he lost, but he cut a deal with FDR and became his vice president in 1933-37 (the first Texan to hold that office). Finally, FDR kept Jones in the job Hoover had given him, that of running the powerful Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which made large federal loans to banks and other big corporations to keep them profitable through the darkest years of the Depression. Many of those loans would be made to Texas businesses.

As for state politics, it continued to be a one-party Democratic state, controlled by a handful of powerful white men, Jones included (known as the “Suite 8F Group” for the hotel room where they met in Houston!). It included the brothers Brown, George and Herbert, who headed the state’s biggest construction company (Brown & Root). Although women (white anyway), as in Arizona, had gotten the vote in 1918, two years before the national amendment, they had no influence yet in the state legislature (and there were none yet elected to Congress). And nonwhites (Mexicans and Blacks; Texas had long ago driven out its indigenous peoples) continued to have their votes suppressed or controlled, thanks to the poll tax, the threat of violence, and the 1923 restriction of the Democratic primary to whites only. The advent of the New Deal did open the door for a set of progressive politicians, the first in state history, starting with James “Jimmy” Allred, who became governor in 1935, and including his protege, future Sen. Ralph Yarborough; San Antonio mayor and then Congressman Maury Maverick; and a young rising star from central Texas, Congressman (and future President) Lyndon Johnson.

Both the Depression and New Deal profoundly affected Texas politics. Almost inevitably, Roosevelt, and these New Dealer Texans, proved too liberal for Garner and his very conservative allies. The big break between them came in 1937, after FDR won reelection by a massive margin, and then tried to overcome opposition from the Supreme Court by putting Garner in charge of expanding the Court’s size (to weaken its conservatives). Garner (and many others), successfully opposed the “packing” plan, which ended his influence as vice president (though the break also ended the careers of the New Dealers within the state, other than Johnson’s). As for Dallas, thanks to its newspaper publisher Ted Dealey, it became known for decades for its extreme right-wing politics.

The ruling Democratic power brokers objected even more when he defied precedent and ran for a third term in 1944, while dumping Texan John Nance Garner for a liberal running mate (Henry Wallace). At the same time, a large percentage of the war workers were migrating in from conservative Republican states (such as Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, and Kansas (Blacks were mostly excluded from the aviation jobs). These developments inspired a faction of Texas Democrats, conservative white supremacists, to organize as the “Regulars,” with the aim of challenging Roosevelt’s renomination, for an unprecedented fourth term, at the 1944 Convention. The Regulars also launched what today would be called “culture wars,” purging the curriculum and faculty of the state’s leading university, UT-Austin (even firing the president when he defended his professors!). Roosevelt did win the nomination (and election), but many Regulars started an historic shift into backing the Republican Party (at the national level, beginning with Dewey in 1944). Another sign of the conservative backlash was the defeat of Roosevelt’s New Deal politicians in the state (Allred, Yarborough, and Maverick). Lyndon Johnson, who ran for the U.S. Senate in 1941, survived by cutting a backroom deal- attacking liberal Rep. Maury Maverick, in return for support by the Regulars for his Senate race. Maverick lost, but so (narrowly) did Johnson, who stayed in the US House.

As in Arizona, it would be World War II that would catapult Texas’s cities to populations in the millions. There would be two driving factors: first, Texas’s oil (which would literally fuel the American war machine in both the Pacific and Europe), and, second (again like Arizona), being chosen, from 1940 (when FDR won his third term), as a top place for military bases, especially airfields (and as a crucial site for building warplanes, as well). In all, there were 142 installations built in Texas in just 5 years. Two deserve special mention: first, Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, which became the largest pilot training facility in the world (including training future president George H.W. Bush, and, after the war, John McCain and Neil Armstrong). Second, the WASP (Women’s Airforce Service Pilots) base at Avenger Field, commanded by star pilot Jackie Cochran. That base was all-female, except for a handful of male instructors and other officers; WASPs had the job of ferrying aircraft from factories to combat areas anywhere in the world. A major downside was that, despite their service hazards, they were counted as civilians (they weren’t given benefits until 1977!).

Brown & Root, the state’s top construction company, built 359 military ships on the Houston Ship Channel, employing 25,000. Aviation companies, mostly centered in Dallas and Fort Worth, were even bigger employers. Just one, Consolidated, more than doubled the number of industrial workers in Fort Worth! The importance of all this military investment would become clear by the end of the war, as many thousands of the workers and vets settled permanently in the state’s major cities.

As of the end of the war in 1945, Texas’s overall population actually dropped, below 7 million (due to the departure of many of the 1 1/2 million soldiers and countless war workers). But the state’s economy and culture had permanently changed- no longer was it fundamentally rural, dominated by small towns, farms and ranches. Its cities had grown by 33% in just three years, and new industries, such as aviation, would stay too, alongside Texas’s global industry, oil. Its politics would also never be the same, with the federal-level split of the ruling Democratic Party. The long-existing power structure, of a handful of conservative white segregationist men was about to come under challenge for the first time in many decades. One sure sign was Franklin Roosevelt’s disenchantment, as the war emergency was ending, with Jesse Jones, who had run the financing of war industries; he was pushed out of his powerful roles in early 1945 (just before Roosevelt’s death in April made Truman president). An energized Black civil rights movement, led by returning Black veterans and the brilliant lawyers of the NAACP, won its first important victory when the Supreme Court banned Texas’s all-white primary (Smith v. Allwright, 1944). Economically, Texas was all set for postwar record prosperity, but its political direction was at this point anything but certain.

Florida: When I left off in the discussion of Florida’s early population growth, the entire state was still remarkably sparsely populated, containing less than a million people as late as 1920. The largest town, Jacksonville, was still less than 100,000 people. Growth had begun, thanks to three wealthy pioneers: Henry Flagler, Henry Plant, and Bertha Palmer. By the 1910s, these three had laid down the first important transportation infrastructure (railroads) down the long peninsula, and Flagler (thanks in large part to exploiting Black workers) had jumpstarted new towns like Palm Beach and Miami. Down the center of the state, the citrus industry was now blossoming too, shipping oranges and grapefruits north by the new rail network. The country’s rich had, following the example of the pioneers, begun to take notice of Florida’s winter sunshine and turquoise waters by now, starting with James Deering’s grandiose Vizcaya mansion in Miami, which cost $15 million to build (1914-22). Unlike most later Florida builders, this millionaire conserved the native vegetation (it’s now a museum). But Florida did not attract masses of ordinary Americans, as tourists and residents, until its first real road system was built in the 1920’s.

It was really one man’s marketing genius that created the first Florida land boom, the idea that instant riches could be made from selling south Florida real estate (which was mostly in the form of the vast Everglades wetlands). That man was entrepreneur and race car driver Carl Fisher of Indianapolis, who created the glamorous resort of Miami Beach on its mangrove-covered barrier island. For his remarkable story (and for the larger story of the Land Boom, not just important for Florida but for its part in the hedonistic frenzy of the Roaring Twenties!), I highly recommend “Bubble in the Sun,” by Christopher Knowlton. By relentless and creative publicizing, Fisher sold America on the fantasy of a tropical paradise, creating the same sort of mass mania that would later fuel the boom of Wall Street stocks. He was also helped by the almost complete lack of Prohibition enforcement in the state. The boom was very short-lived, peaking around 1924 to 1926, as mansions and hotels went up on the beaches, and enormous inland areas were drained and cleared for ordinary-sized housing (most of which never got built!). The boom also did the first large-scale damage to Everglades hydrology and wildlife, through the building of the east-west highway called the Tamiami Trail, completed in 1928. In bisecting the huge wetland, it acted as a dike, interrupting the flow of freshwater, and resulted in incalculable animal roadkills!. During the boom’s heyday, 300,000 flooded into the state. But the dream, and most fortunes (including Fisher’s), ended abruptly, thanks to another kind of flooding- two catastrophic hurricanes, in 1926 and 1928. Knowlton goes on to show how the scale of financial losses, for middle-class Americans suckered into the Boom, was a major contributor to the wider catastrophe of the Great Depression.

As one might imagine, that Depression was especially catastrophic for Florida. Tourism, and migration, nearly disappeared in the early 1930’s. Florida was one of just 4 states in which unemployment went past 20%! St. Petersburg actually put up signs at the city limits: “Warning: Do Not Come Here Seeking Work- A City’s First Duty is To Employ Its Own Citizens”. The state government, laying off many of its workers, grew desperate. It tried to imitate Nevada’s solution of legalized gambling- allowing it on horse and dog racing- and brought in a unique new sport- the Basque sport of jai alai (similar to racquetball in bouncing a ball off a wall). The town of Key West got so desperate that in 1934 it surrendered its self-government to a New Deal official, Julius Stone, who acted as a kind of benevolent dictator, installing sewers, repairing the airport, and bringing in the nucleus of an artists’ colony (the most famous resident of the time, Ernest Hemingway, had already arrived in 1928 and bought a house in 1931). He was there to witness a great tragedy, when the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 hit the camp of the workers, mostly World War I vets, brought in to rebuild the 113-mile Overseas Highway (replacing Flagler’s railroad). At least 257 vets were crushed or drowned (as well as 228 civilians).

Throughout this period, thousands of African Americans, faced with an extreme form of Jim Crow oppression, continued to migrate out of the state (as well as many poor whites, likewise disenfranchised by the poll tax). Isabel Wilkerson, in her Pulitzer-winning book on the Great Migration, “The Warmth of Other Suns,” tells the story of George Starling, who escaped exploitation as a citrus worker and built a new life in New York. And Blacks in Miami were banned from all public spaces in the downtown. This was the state where, for decades, white tourists in Palm Beach could hire Black locals to cycle them around town, in what were nicknamed “Afromobiles”! Those Blacks who remained found some social sanctuary at a handful of segregated beaches, such as Manhattan and American Beaches.

Two events helped to relieve Florida’s Depression pain by mid-decade: Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, and the advent of Florida’s great innovation in mass tourism, the theme park. The Civilian Conservation Corps, as it did across the country, brought in 49,000 construction jobs for young (mostly white) men, building the first system of state parks and planting 13 million trees. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) employed another 40,000, artists and writers, including Florida’s own Black writer Zora Neale Hurston (who set her most famous novel, 1937’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” during the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane). The WPA also built a host of public facilities (stadiums, libraries, bridges, etc.). As in other states, the voters, who had chosen Republican Herbert Hoover in 1928, responded by giving FDR big margins in his four elections (1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944). The New Deal’s popularity, as it had in Texas, also created a long career for a rare liberal Democratic politician, Claude Pepper, elected to both the US House and Senate. But overall the state government remained in the hands of a small number of conservative segregationists from the rural northern Panhandle, the so-called “Pork Chop Gang,” led by Edward Ball, who controlled the area’s biggest employer, DuPont’s St. Joe timber and paper company. The root of their power, as well as the overall “Solid South” pattern of Democratic Party control, was a grotesquely unequal apportionment system for state representatives, one which gave equal representation to both counties with tiny populations and to the state’s growing cities. It would last for decades. The first blow to this undemocratic system would come in 1944, when (in Smith v. Allwright) the Supreme Court would outlaw the all-white primary.

The first true theme park was Cypress Gardens in 1936, which was the creation of Dick Pope Sr. and his wife Julie. Though it started as a showcase for Florida’s exotic plants, the Popes, master marketers, quickly expanded its attractions in the late 1930s and World War II years, adding young women dressed as Southern belles and popularizing water skiing. The Gardens were also used for many Hollywood films, including “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” and especially those with swimming star Esther Williams. Pope himself was an attraction, as he was “quite the showman and used to wear suits that were banana-colored, coral-colored or lime-colored. One of his frequent outfits was a turquoise suit, trimmed in pink, worn with bright white shoes. He would wear bright red jackets with checked ties. He had many nicknames including Mr. Florida, Mr. Water Skiing, Grand Poobah of Publicity, Maharaja of Muck and the Swami of the Swamp.” Another idea for tourism that would bear fruit was that of creating an Everglades national park. Congress did authorize it in 1934, but with the insistence that the state buy its land (which, with the Depression, it was unable to do). The park, largest in the East, would not take on reality until 1947.

The Popes soon had many imitators, such as the porpoise stunt shows at Marineland (from 1938), and including (eventually) one Walt Disney!

But, as for Arizona and Texas, it was really World War II which ignited Florida’s explosive growth, which has only accelerated to today. As with other states, military bases and personnel began to arrive before Pearl Harbor (1939-41), providing welcome economic relief (just one airfield outside Tallahassee increased the capital’s population 25%!). The biggest of all of the 172 installations was Camp Blanding, on 160,000 acres outside Jacksonville, which trained 55,000 at a time (at one point it was the 4th largest city in the state!). Another big boost came when two Florida scientists invented a method for concentrating orange juice. Demand for citrus, especially for the US and Allied militaries, made that industry extremely profitable throughout the war.

Aerial view of Florida's largest military base, Camp Blanding (from Florida Memory)

The news of the Pearl Harbor attack (Dec. 7, 1941), followed by US entry into the war, was of course not nearly so positive. Tourism (at first) nosedived again. While Hawaii and Alaska faced direct threats from Japan, it was Florida that faced the greatest risk in the war against Germany. German submarines began picking off American freighters, especially oil tankers, right off its coast, starting in Feb. 1942. One sub also landed a team of commandos, intent on sabotage, at Ponte Vedra on the Atlantic coast in June, though all four were soon caught. Faced with the surge of people of all the services into the state (a total of 2.1 million in the war years!), the federal government soon ran out of housing. To the great relief of the hospitality industry, it moved many (especially officers) into hotels in 1942-43. By the time they were moved onto their bases, tourism had revived (nearly 2.5 million came to the state by 1945, almost as many as before Pearl Harbor, escaping drab daily lives of rationing and dull factory work). As with Arizona and Texas, a large percentage would settle in the state after the war (even Pres. Truman would establish a “Summer White House” in Key West in 1946!).

The war experience of minorities was not nearly so positive. World War II was the last war with military segregation (Black units were almost entirely commanded by white officers). The Navy restricted Black sailors to noncombat roles such as serving food, and the Marines initially admitted no Blacks. Very few Black women were allowed into the new uniformed female services (such as Army WACs and Navy WAVEs). Not surprisingly, Black soldiers did not get a warm welcome in Florida towns, especially from all-white police forces, and there were frequent fights (five Black soldiers were dishonorably discharged in Tallahassee). As for Black civilians, there were abundant jobs, such as in shipbuilding (the federal government even brought in 75,000 “guest workers” from the Bahamas and Jamaica). But the shortage also brought a new form of exploitation. In several towns, school boards tried to shut down Black schools, and sheriffs forced the students to do farm work (until protests forced the policy to be reversed). There were many cases of white police arresting young Blacks for “vagrancy” and sending them to do forced labor. All of these experiences would, combined with the militancy of returning veterans, lead to the birth of the modern civil rights movement after 1945.

Conclusion: So- what did all of these developments mean for these 3 states, individually and collectively? Florida saw the most dramatic population surge of the three, its ‘20s Land Boom, but that lasted just a few years and ended with a crash; it also started (and ended) with the smallest population in the South. All three states benefited enormously in terms of short-term jobs and long-term infrastructure (including roads, bridges, and access to electricity) from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs (1933-1942). Texas benefited in the Depression years through huge new oil discoveries, though that wealth did not reach much beyond the white majority in its cities. Florida added mass tourism to citrus in the 1930s. During these decades, Arizona’s economy rested on mining, agriculture, and tourism (especially winter visitors to Phoenix). Texas’s rested on oil foremost, but also on banking, chemicals, and agriculture. But, in all three cases, it was World War II’s sudden military buildup, involving billions of dollars, hundreds of bases, and millions of men and women (many migrating into the states, both in uniform and as civilian manufacturing workers), that truly set the stage for the explosive growth of these states after 1945. Politically, the New Deal programs opened a deep crack in the ruling Democratic Party. It, for a moment, allowed the election of pro-union politicians who supported Roosevelt’s broad array of social programs. But in all three cases the same small elite of conservative low-tax and anti-union Democrats kept long-term control, helped by the arrival of Northern migrants who traditionally voted Republican. Black, indigenous, and Hispanic minorities, while they did benefit from programs such as public housing projects, and from the growth in manufacturing jobs, all remained almost completely disenfranchised, with no one representing them, even in local governments. African Americans migrated out of Texas and Florida in particular all through this time. But all three minorities will, against fierce resistance, be making major political gains in the near future.

That's it for this installment! The next will cover the postwar boom, air conditioning, DDT, and the battle over civil rights (1946-1965). I hope that you've enjoyed the series so far!