When inmate David Ruiz sued the director of the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC), William J. Estelle, in 1972 over dangerous and degrading living and working conditions, he set in motion a ...

Talk to any old hand about Texas political history, and reference to the days when "yellow dog Democrats" ran the state is bound to come up. Even now, when such animals are an endangered species in ...

(Voters know) that any document that you have to amend 20 times every other year is broke. It's sort of a Texas tragedy, actually, that we can't seem to come to grips with the fact that we need a new ...

James Edward (Pa) Ferguson (1871-1944), Texas governor, son of James Edward and Fannie (Fitzpatrick) Ferguson, was born on August 31, 1871, near Salado, Bell County, Texas. When he was four years old, ...

After the Civil War two amendments were added to the U.S. Constitution that explicitly guaranteed the rights of African Americans as citizens. The 14th Amendment (ratified in 1868) prohibited states ...

Wilbert Lee (Pappy) O'Daniel (1890-1969), Texas governor and United States senator, was born in Malta, Ohio, on March 11, 1890, one of two children of William Barnes and Alice Ann (Thompson) O'Daniel.

John Bowden Connally, Jr. (1917-1993), thirty-eighth governor of the state of Texas, was born on a farm near Floresville, Texas, on February 27, 1917, one of eight children of John Bowden and Lela ...

Dorothy Ann Willis (1933-2006) was born September 1, 1933, in Lakeview, Texas. Richards received a bachelor's degree from Baylor University and a teaching certificate from the University of Texas. She ...

Miriam Amanda Wallace (Ma) Ferguson (1875-1961), first woman governor of Texas, daughter of Joseph L. and Eliza (Garrison) Wallace, was born in Bell County, Texas, on June 13, 1875. She attended ...

Unlike most western states, Texas today has almost no Indian lands, the result of systematic warfare by Texas and the United States against indigenious groups in the nineteenth century that decimated ...

Open to any party primary voter Held the night of primary election Selects delegates to county or district convention, one for each 25 votes for party's gubernatorial candidate in last elections ...

A new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds Texas voters broadly aligned with the overall agenda outlined by the governor, legislative leaders, and lawmakers, though there are stark, ...