Lewis “Les” Ritcherson, born in Hillsboro, Texas in 1926, was the first African American to coach at the University of Wisconsin and the second African American football coach in the Big Ten. Ritcherson began his football career at A.J. Moore High School in Waco. As a senior, he earned All-District Defensive End as Moore High took home the 1942 district title. The team’s talent caught the eye of HBCUs around Texas, and Wiley College in Marshall offered Ritcherson a football scholarship.

Ritcherson attended Wiley from 1943-1946, playing football and basketball all four years and running track for two years. Wiley had an exceptional football program and won the Southwest Athletic Conference three out of Ritcherson’s four years as a player. Wiley’s coaches, Fred and Harry Long, were renowned among Black football coaches. In 1945, the football team went 10-0 and won the Orange Blossom Classic, the national championship game for HBCU football teams, against Florida A&M. Ritcherson’s performance that season and particularly in that game led to renowned sportswriter Fay Young naming him an end on his Black All-American team, an honor that came with a five-dollar prize.

After a short stint as football and debate coach in Midland, Texas, A.J. Moore High School hired Ritcherson in 1950 as head football coach. Moore High under Ritcherson went on to be state champion in 1952 and 1965 and state co-champion in 1951 and 1960. Ritcherson, at the urging of assistant coaches and players, started his son, Lewis Ritcherson Jr., at quarterback his last three years at Moore High. Coaching at Moore High was not without its struggles. The Black teams in the area played midweek games because the white schools played on weekends. This meant that the team often had to travel as far as Dallas or even Corpus Christi on school nights, and often the team bus got in so late that players and coaches would spend the rest of the night in the school gym.

In 1966, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) sent assistant coach Deral Teteak to Texas to scout players. Teteak was impressed by Ritcherson’s coaching during his stop at Moore High, and soon after, Wisconsin Head Coach Milt Bruhn offered Ritcherson the position of receiver’s coach at the university. Although initially unsure about leaving Moore High, Ritcherson decided to take the job. He negotiated an unusual five-year contract with the university after hearing that administration might fire Bruhn the next year. Ritcherson was the first African American coach in any sport at the University of Wisconsin. At this time, Iowa’s Frank Gilliam was the only other Black football coach in the Big Ten.

As expected, the university replaced Bruhn after the 1966 season and hired John Coatta, a former Badger quarterback, to replace him. Coatta hired many of his former teammates as assistants. They greatly influenced his coaching decisions and upended the chain of command. These coaches were also extremely hard on their players, a tactic which Ritcherson felt to be unnecessary, especially when it was not improving the quality of the team.

In the sixties, considerable tension existed between Black and white students on campus, and this tension was prevalent between players and coaches on the football team. Many of the coaches treated the Black players poorly and would not pay attention to the players’ grievances. This led some of the Black players to boycott the team banquet. They also threatened to boycott a game against Minnesota, but Ritcherson felt that such an action could endanger their scholarships, and he talked them out of it. Despite the coldness of the coaching staff, the UW-Madison Athletic Board strove to help the Black players. The board even hired a psychiatrist to examine the players and coaches and suggest new ways to improve both their relationships and the team environment as a whole.

The prejudice of the other coaches affected Ritcherson as much as it affected the players. They often held meetings without him or ignored his opinion when making decisions. Ritcherson especially struggled with the lack of his peers on the staff. To remedy this, he organized the first meeting of Black coaches at predominantly white institutions at the 1970 American Football Coaches Association convention.

After he retired from coaching in 1970, Ritcherson took a job as an affirmative action officer first at UW-Extension, then back at UW-Madison. As an affirmative action officer, Ritcherson’s job was to encourage university departments to hire minorities. It was often difficult to convince departments to hire minorities because of what Ritcherson called the “old buddy system.” This meant that the departments only wanted to hire people they already knew. Despite this and other obstacles, Ritcherson made considerable progress in the university. One of his biggest successes was the program he set up with the nursing school to recruit from North Carolina A&T and Tuskegee Institute. Ritcherson was also instrumental in the creation of the Afro-American Studies Program and encouraged its administrators to hire a diverse staff.

Ritcherson retired from administration in 1990. He has since been inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Champions and the Waco Independent School District Athletics Hall of Fame. When he passed away in 2019, Lewis Ritcherson had created a lasting impact both on the university and on his players. While he as an individual might not have much national renown, it was his effort and the efforts of all the Black coaches, players, and administrators that were willing to suffer injustice to set a precedent that broke the color line in college sports.

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The Waco Symphony Orchestra is a music organization that brings enrichment to the Central Texas community. The Waco Symphony Orchestra Association, Incorporated, as we know it, began its concerts in 1962. However, an orchestra conducted by Max Reiter began in 1939 as an experiment that laid the foundation for the Waco Symphony Orchestra's classical performances today.

Born in Trieste, Italy, in 1905, Reiter began his musical career as assistant of the Opera of Berlin, and conducted orchestras in other musical centers of Europe. Fleeing from Hitler’s inferno, Reiter went to New York City in 1939 with a dream to land a job as a conductor. After denial from jobs in New York, Reiter collected contact information from musicians in Southern cities, purchased a bus ticket, and headed south. 

Waco was a scheduled stop on Reiter’s bus. While waiting for his connection to Fort Worth, Reiter wandered along the nearby streets and noticed a sign that read, “H. Novich, China.” Recognizing the name from his list of contacts, Reiter introduced himself to Miss Mary Novich, stating that he wanted to start a symphony. At once, Mary and her sister Rae put together a list of local patrons of the arts. Patrons of the arts assured that the Baylor University School of Music faculty and students would support his endeavors, and the university offered Waco Hall as a performance venue.   With much enthusiasm, the new symphony orchestra set the date of its debut performance for April 20, 1939. In the weeks leading to the opening, Baylor faculty and students and local and amateur musicians practiced to play as a single unit. Excitement was in the air. On the evening of the debut concert, Reiter gave the eager audience a bow and raised his baton to bring ninety musicians to attention. Reiter’s orchestra gave their all as they played through four pieces of music that demonstrated the musicians’ disciplined sound and dynamic range. The final piece, Johann Strauss’s Tales from the Vienna Woods, left the audience with a lighthearted touch that rounded out the evening perfectly. At the end of the final piece, well over 1,500 people remained to cheer, yell bravos, and give their approval for the work of the symphony and to plea for continuation of the organization. 

The establishment of a permanent symphony was quick in coming, as local patrons of the arts successfully harnessed the momentum of the opening concert. On May 2, 1939, the Waco Symphony Society was born. Reiter led the symphony to perform for four splendid evenings a year for eleven seasons. In 1950, Reiter relinquished his role as conductor and left forthcoming seasons unplanned.  In 1961, after a decade of no symphony performances in the city, members of the Chamber of Commerce met with Daniel Sternberg, dean of the Baylor University School of Music to speak about reintroducing a symphony. On April 24, 1962, the Waco Symphony Association, Incorporated, was established. Patrons of the orchestra enjoyed the first season of the Waco Symphony as it put on three concerts, including a successful performance by Texas pianist Van Cliburn. Maestro Sternberg led the Waco Symphony Orchestra to success, putting on classical as well as pops concerts, accompanying musical guests, and leading the local debut of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. Sternberg conducted with energy until the end of the orchestra’s twenty-fifth season. For his farewell concert in 1986, Sternberg put on an all-Beethoven concert.  To build on the success of Sternberg, principal second Stephen Heyde, stepped in as conductor. Heyde pushed the musicians to their potential by adding extra rehearsals, and added more local musicians and faculty, and students of the Baylor music school to create an ensemble of which Waco could feel a sense of ownership. While under Heyde’s leadership, the Waco Symphony Orchestra founded the Waco Symphony Youth Orchestra to give young musicians of Central Texas opportunities to perform. Heyde led the Waco Symphony through their fifty-fifth season and continues to lead a group of musicians that breathe life into pieces of music.  Over the years, the Waco Symphony Orchestra has attracted world-class talents such as Frank Sinatra Jr., Art Garfunkel, and renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma to perform for the community. Many years of sold-out shows, holiday concerts, and subscription season performances have brought beauty and tranquility to audiences, and the ensemble continues to serve as a fixture in the cultural life of the community.

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Rebecca Pines Shelton Sparks, often referred to as Mother Sparks, was a laywoman from Missouri who moved to Texas with her family before the Civil War. Sparks married a Confederate veteran of the Texas Calvary and a Texas Ranger, Thaddeus Pinckney Sparks, and the Sparkses moved to McLennan County in the 1870s. There, Thaddeus Sparks accumulated wealth as a saddle-maker, and secretary of the Waco Improvement Company and First National Bank. Towards the turn of the century, Waco was booming with industrial business in which men such as Thaddeus Sparks prospered, and a growing number of women wanted a chance to be a part of it. The Waco workforce took a turn as women left rural areas because of poor crop yields and low cotton prices and moved to the big city to pursue new opportunities as businesswomen.

Because of her great enthusiasm for missionary work through the Methodist Church, Sparks used her skills and family money for the greater good. Most women who moved to the city were inexperienced, received a small salary, and could not pay the rent for higher-priced boardinghouses, so Sparks stepped in to meet that need. In 1900, Sparks established a cooperative home for middle-class working women in Waco at 1118 Franklin Avenue. Sponsored by the Methodist Mission Federation, the Rebecca Sparks Co-operative Home’s mission was to provide women with safe, chaperoned surroundings that allowed them to comfortably transition into the workforce. Students of Baylor University also stayed under the roof.

Local citizens furnished the rooms of the house and rules allowed twenty-four residents to stay under the roof at one time. Residents paid thirty-six cents per day and were required to clean their living spaces in order to stay in the cooperative home. The tenants shared spaces and socialized in a common area that included a piano, record player, games, and reading materials. The young women grew close and spent time together making candy, sewing, sharing magazines, and hosting parties in which they could invite their friends. All activities took place under the supervision of a deaconess of the Methodist church.

Mismatched chairs and impersonal decorations filled the home, suggesting that the house had an atmosphere formed by a variety of people rather than a single family. Over the years, furniture became shabby from use, repairs needed to be made, and furnishes of the house needed to be touched up to provide the residents with comfort and to ease their minds from the workday. Methodist women of Waco held fundraisers in the form of country fairs to raise funds to update the home.

The Methodist Church sponsored the cooperative home, and even though girls were not required to be a part of the Methodist denomination, religious training was an emphasis of the home’s mission and a requirement of the residents. Religious leaders adorned the mantle in the common room to remind tenants that Sparks’s home was a Christian one. Every girl attended church and Sunday school, led prayers before meals, and took turns leading evening prayer services known as Vespers. These communal activities led the women of the house to live together harmoniously.

Sparks fell ill in 1919 and passed away in 1920, and the home was renamed the Rebecca Sparks Inn. The cooperative home continued to provide a space for working women sixteen years after Sparks’s death. The facility closed in 1936, and the home’s lumber was taken for the construction of Rebecca Sparks Memorial Methodist Church in Bellmead, Texas, to honor Sparks, who provided a haven for countless young women who called the place home.

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For eighty-eight years, the William Cameron House stood as a nineteenth-century architectural treasure near the intersection of Austin Avenue and Thirteenth Street. The fine embellishments on the mansion dazzled Waco residents and helped it to become a familiar and revered residential landmark of the city. 

Born in Scotland on January 11, 1834, William Cameron moved to the United States in 1852 and worked as a construction foreman for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Cameron enlisted for the Union Army during the Civil War and was captured at the Battle of Springfield in 1861. After his release, Cameron worked in Missouri to supply grain for the government. While in Missouri, Cameron married Letitia Stewart and had two children. In 1865, Cameron began work for the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad and soon built retail lumberyards along the rail lines toward the Southwest and continued accumulating wealth. Cameron’s first wife died very early in life, and Cameron then married Flora Ann Berry of Little Rock, Arkansas. He became the father of three more children and provided generously to them all. The family moved to Waco, Texas, in 1876, where Cameron opened an additional lumberyard and headquarters for the William Cameron Company. He also got involved in the grain and flour mill business, and was a director at the First National Bank of Waco. 

While residing in Waco, Cameron built a mansion for his wife Flora and their three children. The house was completed in 1885 as a surprise for his wife. The designer of the sophisticated structure architect was William Winant Larmour, the same man who designed the construction on Baylor University’s Old Main and Burleson Halls. The house was beautifully decorated with white architectural millwork and ironwork and boasted a French blue background. Highlights of the mansion included windows made of heavy crystal glass, massive mahogany stairs that complimented the parquet flooring, and a roof topped with an iron-crowned cupola. The plentiful space served as a home for Cameron, his family and in-laws, and provided space for domestic employees.

After the death of Cameron in 1899, the house was passed down to his son, William Waldo Cameron, and then to his grandson, Edward Cameron Bolton, who saw the home fit for demolition. Coca-Cola Bottling Company bought the home and made plans to clear the property. Many citizens of Waco were disappointed; however, historic preservation was out of the question due to the condition of the house, its immense size, and the level of upkeep required. In 1966, a young entrepreneur, Homer Owen, took the responsibility of selling the contents of the house before demolition. Citizens of Waco were excited to pay fifty cents apiece to view the inside of the house, while antique buyers encountered a feast. Everything inside, outside, and even parts of the house were for sale. Contents included love letters from Cameron to his second wife, proving that he was a very affectionate man. Doors, windows, trunks, evening clothes, wedding attire, and even structural items went into the hands of buyers. 

Once the interest of the public swayed from Cameron’s house, mysterious reports came to light about the presence of a ghost. As Homer Owen was preparing for the demolition of the house, vandals broke into the home and caused damages, and as a result, Owen stayed in the house to keep watch during the night. Owen laid awake and reported strange noises and footsteps. He asked several individuals such as teenage boys, Baylor University students, and carpenters to stay in the house overnight and keep watch. Some of the guests stayed overnight but never returned, and some only lasted half the night. Many citizens of Waco rejected the stories, while some took them seriously and provided a theory that it was the ghost of the architect trying to drive people away to keep them from demolishing the house, or that it was the ghost of William Cameron himself.

After many years of serving as a beautiful landmark in Waco, the empty house caught fire in 1966, and the remainder of the house was later demolished. Today the William Cameron house rests in photographs, history books, and the memories of the citizens of Waco.

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During the early twentieth century, Waco experienced economic growth, large amounts of community engagement and recreation, as well as racial tension and military training. Photographer Fred A. Gildersleeve, nicknamed “Gildy,” immortalized the lives and times of this community dynamic by snapping thousands of photographs of the city spanning over forty years.

The man who would become Waco’s most famous photographer, Fred Gildersleeve, was born near Boulder, Colorado, on June 30, 1880, to Captain Allen Jesse and Sarah Ellen Pew Gildersleeve. His father Allen was a Civil War veteran, having served as a Union Army Captain in the Missouri Cavalry, 14, Regiment, Company D, and died in 1881 at the age of 46. After his father’s death, the family moved to Kirksville, Missouri, near the mother’s family. There, young Fred became a race horse jockey and attended the Model School (part of the Normal School) graduating at the age of 16.

His photography career then began at the age of eighteen when he was given an 1898 Kodak box camera by his mother. Because Gildersleeve used a printing method that relied on sunlight to develop the image on solio paper, he could only photograph when it was sunny outside. He prospered anyway, photographing students and selling the photographs for twenty-five cents apiece, earning about six dollars a week, which paid for his education. Gildersleeve then moved on to study photography in Effingham, Illinois, where he honed his skill through capturing images of flowers, lizards, and still-lifes. After graduating from the Illinois College of Photography in 1903, he worked in Chicago for a year and half before moving to Waco in 1905 to open his own studio. His sister, Jessie Ellen, arrived in Waco around the same time to work as a doctor of Osteopathy. Their mother, Sarah Gildersleeve later joined them and lived with her daughter. Fred married Florence Jennette Boyd on December 24, 1908, in Texarkana, Arkansas, who then joined him in Waco.

The shutterbug was easily recognizable as he cruised around Waco on a motorcycle with his assistant riding along in the sidecar, and then later upgraded to a Model T Ford. His box-style camera, wooden tripod, and spunky personality captured Waco’s talent and development, while the city supported Gildy in his career in return. Gildersleeve became a pioneer in the field of industrial photography in Texas and was invited to photograph more places and affairs than any other photographer in Waco. Examples include his commercial photography from the air in the mid-1910s. He made himself famous by photographing a pioneer flyer circling the Amicable building in 1911, along with capturing oil fields in Mexia and taking the first aerial photos known to exist of Baylor University. His ability to use magnesium powder to create “flashlight” to illuminate night-time photographs broke national records.

His 1911 photo of Waco’s Prosperity Banquet set a record for being the largest flash photo ever at that time. The event seated 1,200 people and ran the length of two city blocks. His skills at photo enlargement also set records. In 1913, he enlarged a panoramic photograph of Waco’s Texas Cotton Palace to 120 inches wide (ten feet) becoming the largest photo print in existence. He had a representative from Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York, bring him the photo paper to do so. He also photographed the construction of the Amicable Life Insurance Company Building “Alico” in Waco. The structure, being 22 stories tall, held the title of being the tallest building in the Southwestern United States upon construction in 1911.

Further, Gildersleeve was an active and prominent member in the Waco community. The Standard Blue Book of Texas, 1920, lists him as being a member of the Masons, York Rite, Shriners, Rotary Club, Ad Club, Young Men’s Business League (Y.M.B.L.), Chamber of Commerce, and as serving on the committees of Liberty Loan, the Salvation Army, and the Red Cross. His involvement with these groups and organizations allowed him to prosper in his photography business as well as give back to his community. When the Y.M.B.L. went on their “Trade Excursions” to promote the city of Waco, Gildersleeve joined them as both a photographer and member. As well as being a professional photographer, Gildersleeve also owned and operated the “Kodak Place,” his own studio in Waco (pinned on the map below), for several decades. There he developed film brought in by customers and sold Gildersleeve photo prints directly to the public, including his images printed on postcards. These picture postcards featured businesses and events. Most infamously, Gildersleeve took photos of the Jesse Washington Lynching in May 1916. Outside of Waco, Gildersleeve is well-known as the photographer who profited from distributing and selling postcards of this gruesome event. Although not intended by Gildersleeve, these images of the lynching and mob action became important evidence used in the NAACP’s anti-lynching campaign.

Gildersleeve’s background in racing horses also instilled a lifelong love for athletics. He was contracted by Baylor University from 1909 until the mid-1950s. He photographed Baylor’s sporting events including football, etc. His camera lens also captured the history of theater productions, soldiers at Camp MacArthur, parties, picnics, places of worship, circuses, weddings, funerals, politicians, automobiles, planes, and anything else related to life in Waco. Gildersleeve’s affections also included hunting and fishing. His state-of-the-art photography equipment captured rainbows in New Mexico, boatloads of bass in Guerrero, Mexico, as well as images of the Texas coast. Even though his antiquated large format equipment seemed cumbersome, his skills were still in demand by those in Waco who had known his work for decades.

In his later career, hundreds of acetate negatives were tragically lost in a back-alley dumpster after Gildersleeve’s marriage of thirty years ended in divorce in 1943. Luckily a collection of glass negatives survived the messy split. The couple never reconciled and remained apart the remainder of their lives. Florence continued to live in Waco after their separation and died March 31, 1965, at the age of 79. Gildersleeve’s health declined earlier in the 1950s. He died in Waco on February 26, 1958 at age 77 and was buried next to his sister, Dr. Jessie Ellen Gildersleeve in Waco Memorial Park. The cause of death was listed on his death certificate as pneumonia with complications from arterial scoliosis.

Gildersleeve’s last will and testament left around 1,400 surviving glass negatives to his good friend and local historian, Roger Norman Conger, who realized the importance of his work and later gave them to The Texas Collection at Baylor University where they are preserved today. The Texas Collection has just published a new book through the BU Press called: “Gildersleeve-Waco’s Photographer.” It contains a select few of Fred Gildersleeve’s original 8×10 inch glass plate negatives and photo prints that were digitized from originals held in the Gildersleeve-Conger Collection #430 and throughout the archives. Fred Gildersleeve was a pioneer in his photography career, as well as a citizen who was supportive of the community and was able to preserve over forty years of Waco’s history through clear and sharp images. Through his photography, Gildersleeve and the history of Waco are well remembered.

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