Galveston Quotes

“A year later a judge ordered the Galveston Independent School District to begin integrating, and by 1968 the schools were completely integrated.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“Kelton Sams went on to become president of the student body at Texas Southern University, where he majored in economics and graduated with honors. Later he became a minister in the United Church of Christ, and a black political leader in Texas.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“A handful of students showed up, and he led them to the store’s lunch counter and sat down. Some of the students didn’t sit, but stood around telling Kelton he was going to jail. Reporters showed up, and so did the police. Then a remarkable thing happened. Instead of arresting Kelton, the police positioned themselves around the perimeter of the store and kept order. This encouraged other students to take seats. Too frightened (and too broke) to actually order anything, Kelton Sams had nevertheless done what no black in Galveston had ever done before—dared sit at a segregated lunch counter.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“Ruth and a friend saw a boy carrying a banana and a flashlight, crying and wandering in a daze. He had gotten separated from his father, the boy told them. Using the flashlight to find their way in the darkness, they sought shelter in a ditch and waited until they believed it was safe, then started out across a prairie in the direction of Galveston. They were safely away from the port when the High Flyer blew, showering the night sky with a chemical rainbow and spitting its four-ton turbine four thousand feet across the bay.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“A second explosion a short time later disintegrated a French cargo ship, the SS Grandchamp, scattering sections of decking and great pieces of twisted steel thousands of feet in every direction and igniting secondary fires along the docks and among the oil storage tanks. An airplane circling overhead fell like a shot duck, and a fifteen-foot tidal wave surged across the harbor, carrying barges and ships onto dry land.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“The commission paid attention as Clouser made his case against the offensive sign at Menard Park, then voted to have the sign removed. Moreover, they designated a square block, bordered by Avenues P and Q and 41st and 42nd streets, as a playground for black children. This was a magnificent, though short-lived, victory for Galveston’s blacks. Unfortunately, it created a backlash among a group of white racists. White vigilantes burned crosses at the site of the proposed park, and held a series of indignation meetings. Eventually, they forced a referendum vote, the first in Galveston’s history. By a two-to-one margin the commission was overturned, and the site became a park for white children instead. To placate the blacks the commission voted to turn a second site on what had been the old Lasker homestead into Wright Cuney Park for blacks. Most blacks accepted the compromise, but not John Clouser, who waited a chance to strike back at the power structure.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“The black editor of the City Times wrote that his people had a loving spirit for whites: “The colored people of Galveston are not trying to run the city in her commercial, financial, labor, or political progress, but instead are honestly doing their humble part to help keep things going right.” And things went right—or at least peacefully—until 1928 when a black schoolteacher named John H. Clouser stood before the city commission and demanded that the signs in Menard Park that read FOR WHITE PEOPLE ONLY be removed. Black people paid taxes, too, Clouser reminded the commissioners, and had a right to walk through the park and listen to city band concerts. The city was spending $26,000 a year for the recreation of whites, but not a penny for blacks. “Our children live in alleys,” Clouser said. “There’s no place for them to play.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“John Sealy died in January 1926, in the American Hospital at Neuilly, France, following an attack of influenza contracted in Naples, Italy. His position as head of the Wharf Company was filled by his nephew, George Sealy, Jr., a chip off the old block. George Junior was also chief executive officer of the Cotton Concentration, and the world’s foremost authority on the cross-pollination of oleanders. His mother, Magnolia Willis Sealy, had planted oleanders all over the Island in the 1920s, and had made this poisonous shrub Galveston’s official flower. When the family built the Cotton Concentration complex on West Broadway, George Junior included an oleander nursery that covered fourteen city blocks. Much as his uncle had loved Paris, George Junior loved his nursery: together with the company’s horticultural superintendent, Edward F. Barr, Sealy developed sixty varieties of oleander, each named for a wealthy Galvestonian or a distinguished visitor to the Island. Some critics believed that Sealy spent so much time with his plants that he forgot about the Wharf Company.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“Papa Rose Maceo was a preferred customer at the Moodys’ City National Bank. He borrowed up to a half-million dollars at a time. On his signature alone Maceo could borrow $100,000 for a load of bootleg liquor. He usually repaid the money within two weeks, at 25 percent interest. Big Sam Maceo went to his broker’s office every Monday morning and bought a $25,000 municipal bond: in those days municipal bonds were a foolproof method of laundering money.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“THE MACEOS changed the rules in Galveston. The underworld become the overworld. Activities that had been merely tolerated became part of the mainstream economy. Professional criminals became respected businessmen—and friends, not to say patrons, of the police commissioner.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“In the months and years that followed, the Maceos expanded their empire until it included dozens of casinos, nightclubs, and betting parlors, not only on the Island but in such small mainland towns as Texas City, Kemah, La Marque, and Dickinson. Motorists driving south on the highway from Houston spoke of crossing the Maceo-Dickinson Line. With their unabashed attitude toward sin and corruption, the Maceos brought prominence, notoriety, and an enduring nickname to the Island. For the next three decades it was known as the Free State of Galveston.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“Quinn liked the Maceo brothers. Rose was mean, tough, and calculating. Sam was smooth and diplomatic. When Quinn and Dutch Voight opened the Island’s first big-time nightclub in 1926, the Maceos were included in the partnership. The Hollywood Dinner Club was built from ground up, at 61st and Avenue S, on the western edge of the city, beyond the seawall. Instantly, it was the swankiest night spot on the Gulf coast—Spanish architecture, crystal chandeliers, rattan furniture, a dance floor bigger than the ballroom at the Galvez. And air conditioning! The Hollywood was the first air-conditioned night club in the country. Sam Maceo gave instructions that the temperature be maintained at 69 degrees, on the theory that drinkers who were cool didn’t feel the booze, and drinkers who didn’t feel the booze were lousy performers at the crap tables.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“Two other promising newcomers in the early days of Prohibition were Rosario (Rose) Maceo and his younger brother, Salvatore (Sam) Maceo. Born in Palermo, Sicily, the Maceos migrated to Louisiana with their family around the turn of the century, and moved to Galveston in 1910. The Maceo brothers were barbers. Sam worked in the shop at the Galvez Hotel, and Rose operated a single barber chair in a corner of a seafood canteen at Murdoch’s Pier. Rose passed out glasses of “Dago Red” wine to his customers, and sold bottles of liquor concealed in hollowed-out loaves of French bread.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“The other major smuggling outfit, the Downtown Gang, was distinguished by its reputation for having considerably more guts than brains. The Downtown Gang was headed by a dandy named Johnny Jack Nounes, a legendary high roller who wore a diamond stickpin and carried a roll of hundred-dollar bills as thick as a cucumber. Johnny Jack was famous for his generosity. He gave toys to kids at Christmas, and once spent $40,000 on a party at the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York, where silent film stars Nancy Carroll and Clara Bow are said to have bathed in expensive champagne. He was equally famous for his careless approach to business. He sometimes hijacked truckloads of booze belonging to rival smugglers, and once stiffed a group of Cubans by paying for their boatload of rum with soap coupons.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“Eventually, two rival gangs divided up the Island, using Broadway as a line of demarcation. The Beach Gang, so called because it landed most of its goods on West Beach, occupied the south half of the Island. It was led by an oldtime mobster named Ollie J. Quinn, and his partner, Dutch Voight. A rotund, unfailingly pleasant man, Quinn was an Island icon. On Sundays he faithfully attended services at the First Baptist Church, always placing a hundred-dollar bill in the collection plate. In secular circles, however, Quinn was the acknowledged kingpin of Galveston vice. He ran a joint at 21st and Postoffice called the Deluxe Club, and leased slot machines and other gambling equipment through his Modern Vending Company. Quinn and Voight ran a dependable, relaxed, downhome operation, known for its tolerance to competition and its commitment to peace among outlaws.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“Starting in the spring of 1919, schooners from Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamas began running booze to the Island, up to 20,000 cases at a time. The ships dropped anchor thirty-five miles out at sea, at a rendezvous point southwest of Galveston called Rum Row, and the booze was off-loaded into small powerboats or flat-bottomed launches for delivery to spots along the miles of deserted beach. The boats usually beached in shallow water, and work crews waded out and carried the goods to shore. Each case was wrapped in a burlap sack, and two sacks were tied together for easy handling. Sometimes the goods were delivered to remote piers at Offatt’s Bayou, or to one of the coves near San Luis Pass.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“There was one other reason, however, that the Great Depression went almost unnoticed in Galveston, and it was the biggest reason of all: the rackets. Gambling and prostitution had always thrived in Galveston—particularly so in times of economic hardship—but the national crisis that really jump-started Galveston’s economy and kept it at full throttle for years was Prohibition. In its fifteen-year run, from 1919 to 1933, Prohibition altered the city’s power structure and changed its character.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“Ike Kempner incurred the wrath of the Moodys and many other wealthy families in 1907 when he fought against an ordinance that would require blacks to sit at the rear of streetcars. Not only did he oppose the ordinance, Kempner made certain that the names of those who signed petitions favoring it were published and distributed across the Island. In the space of a few weeks about one-third of the Island’s maids, coachmen, and cooks quit in protest. But the ordinance was passed anyway, and remained in force for more than fifty years.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“The Kempners helped the Sealys maintain control of the wharves because they needed the Sealys’ support for their own agenda. They were activists, constantly devising what they considered to be cures for the Island’s malaise—building a bridge to Pelican Island, filling in mud flats, extending the seawall, advocating new parks and playgrounds. The Moodys recognized no malaise, and liked Galveston just the way it was. To the Moodys, the Kempners and the Sealys were arrogant fools. To the Kempners, the Moodys were cretins who exhibited, as I. H. Kempner wrote, “the smugness and the self-conceit of those whose wealth so far exceeds their civic pride.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“A wildcatter named Patillo Higgins leased a thousand acres along an inconspicuous hill called Spindletop, near Beaumont, but ran out of money before he completed drilling. Looking for investors, Higgins first contacted John D. Rockefeller at Standard Oil, but Rockefeller wasn’t interested. Finally, he found a backer named Joseph Cullinan, a Pennsylvanian who had set up a refinery in North Texas, at Corsicana, and who had experience in raising seed money for drilling operations. Cullinan had heard of the Moodys of Galveston and decided to visit the Island and offer them a chance to invest. The story of that meeting is one of the Island’s enduring legends. During the negotiations, the story goes, Cullinan happened to mention that he had recently paid $10,000 for a painting by a well-known New England artist. The look that passed between Colonel Moody and his son would have fried a ship’s anchor—ten grand for a single picture! The Moodys decided that anyone that gullible wasn’t worth additional conversation, and they dismissed Cullinan as quickly as possible. Cullinan and Higgins eventually hooked up with a gambler and speculator named John W. “Bet-a-Million” Gates, who had hung around Texas in the late 1890s trying to peddle barbed wire, and in his dealings had acquired ownership of the Kansas City & Southern Railroad. Gates’ railroad connections were an invaluable asset for a field as isolated as Spindletop, and he agreed to take 46 percent of the action. On January 10, 1901, Spindletop blew in with such force that it shattered the derrick and spit drills and equipment hundreds of feet in the air. The raging spout of oil measured a steady 160 feet—it was nine days (and a loss of half a million barrels) before they got it capped and controlled. So prodigious was the strike that at the time it was estimated that Spindletop could supply one-sixth of the world’s oil. The company in which the Moodys declined to invest became known as Texaco.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“On its south lawn, honeymooners from all over the country sat on wooden swings, watching the tropical moon, listening to the roar of the Gulf, and wondering, perhaps, what would happen when another severe hurricane hit the Island. The answer to that question came in 1915. The storm hit with such fury that it lifted a three-masted schooner out of the water and tossed it over the top of the seawall, and hurled four-ton blocks of granite riprap across the boulevard. The storm blew out windows, flooded downtown streets, and demolished nearly all the buildings beyond 53rd Street. On the Island eight died, compared with more than three hundred on the mainland and Bolivar. But the seawall did its job. In the ballroom of the Galvez Hotel people drank champagne and danced the night away.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“and pumped sand from Offatt’s Bayou. By 1911 more than 2,100 structures had been raised, and more than 16 million cubic yards of fill spread across the Island. It took 700 jackscrews to lift the newly restored 3,000-ton St. Patrick’s Church a mere five feet, but they did it without interrupting services.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“The property would be raised from its current grade of 5.3 feet to 12.2 feet, thus requiring a fill of almost seven feet. That would take 17,144 cubic yards of material, which meant that the actual cost of raising the man’s property to grade would be $3,171. But the owner would pay nothing, not even his normal taxes. On the other hand, owners of property not in the canal’s path would have to pay for the raising of their houses, as well as their taxes: the city would pay for the fill. Amazingly, the entire project was carried off without a single condemnation suit, demonstrating the spirit with which Islanders approached a feat that amounted to pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“To bring the city to a level that would protect it from the ravages of the sea, every house, every building, every church and school over an area of five hundred blocks had to be raised on jackscrews and filled under with sand. Streets had to be torn apart and repaved. Streetcar tracks, water pipes, gas lines, trees, and even cemeteries had to be elevated. The grade would vary across the Island, from seventeen feet at the beach to ten feet or less at Broadway: the average was about thirteen. The technology of jacking up large buildings had been used successfully during Chicago’s grade elevation: Alfred Noble had worked on that project.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“At its base the wall was sixteen feet thick, tapering to a width of five feet at its top. The seventeen-foot-high wall presented a concave face to the sea, driving the force of the waves upward and back over onto themselves. To protect the toe of the wall from the constant pounding of the sea, a twenty-seven-foot apron of riprap—giant granite boulders—was laid in front, extending out into the Gulf at high tide. The first piling was hammered into place in October 1902. A year and four months later, the initial three-mile section was completed. The wall started at the south jetty on the east end of the Island, followed 6th Street to Broadway, then angled to the beach. From there it ran straight up to 39th Street. In the meantime, the federal government authorized extending the wall from 39th to 53rd, so that it would protect the army installations at Fort Crockett. This mile-long section was completed in October 1905. Over the years the county continued to extend the wall until by 1960 it was 10.4 miles long and girded one-third of the Gulf coastline.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“The Denver construction company of J. M. O’Rourke built the seawall in sixty-foot sections, using massive and sophisticated equipment and techniques never seen before in Texas. Giant four-foot-square blocks of granite and carloads of gravel came by rail from Granite Mountain west of Austin. Forty-two-foot pilings were shipped from the forests of East Texas. Four-horse wagons delivered the materials to the Little Susie line at 15th and Avenue N, and from there they were hauled on specially constructed tracks to the excavation along the beach where the wall would eventually sit. Steam-powered pile drivers that looked like oil derricks hammered the pilings down into the clay stratum, and work crews covered the pilings with foot-thick planking that became the base for the wall. Once the materials started”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“Alfred Noble had built bridges across the Mississippi, constructed the breakwater across the lakefront at Chicago, and helped build the locks at Sault Ste. Marie. Ripley had served with the Corps of Engineers in Galveston—he had designed the wagon bridge across the bay—and was considered an expert on Island pecularities like tides, winds, currents, and the workings of storm tides on sand and subsoil. This latter field of expertise was especially vital since the 1900 storm had drastically rearranged the Island’s topography.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“Engineers were regarded as the heroes of the new millennium, and Galveston’s board of commissioners voted to put its problem in the hands of three of the best known—Colonel Henry M. Robert, Alfred Noble, and H. C. Ripley. Robert, who had recently retired from the Army Corps of Engineers (and was famous for having drafted Robert’s Rules of Order), knew Galveston well. He had been instrumental in deepening the harbor, and had recommended constructing a dike between Pelican Island and the mainland, to redirect the current and prevent sedimentary deposits from clogging the channel. He had also recommended building a breakwater along the beach, a recommendation that, had it been approved, might have saved thousands of lives in the 1900 storm. But it had been rejected, beaten back by the argument that such a construction would obscure the view and play hell with the tourist trade.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“The crisis created by the hurricane was the perfect excuse for a political power play—if Galveston had been Nicaragua, what Kempner and his friends accomplished might have been described as a bloodless coup. The instruments of insurrection were in place. Kempner was already city treasurer, and minister of finance for the Central Relief Committee. Kempner, John Sealy, Morris Lasker, and Bertrand Adoue provided a link between the Central Relief Committee and the Deep Water Committee. By simply withholding taxes, members of the DWC created the illusion that the Jones administration was being irresponsible and probably dishonest in handling the public purse. Whatever the DWC had in mind, the Galveston Daily News could be counted on for support. When Mayor Jones accused the DWC of using the hurricane to bring down the duly elected government, the newspaper charged that the mayor was appealing to “class differences.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“Two weeks after the hurricane, Will Moody, Jr., purchased a thirty-room mansion at 2618 Broadway, for ten cents on the dollar.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island