The rapid rise of migrant labor in Texas in the 1940s brought large numbers of laborers to Waco. To accommodate this new situation, the city of Waco acquired funds to build the Waco Farm Labor Camp, a…

Jeffie Obrea Allen Conner was born in 1895 on her family’s farm in Harrison Switch, Texas. She was the oldest of three children born to Meddie Lilian and Jeff D. Allen. Harrison Switch, later known as…

After Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the United States into World War II, production increased dramatically at home to aid the war effort overseas. In short order, munitions factories popped up…

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Farmers’ Improvement Society (FIS) worked to help poor farmers escape the cycle of debt caused by the share cropping and credit system which…

For nearly half a century, cotton reigned as king of Waco's economy, establishing the once small frontier town as a thriving urban center known throughout the country. The area later named Waco…

Waco’s rapid development established it as one of the most significant urban centers of the South by the late nineteenth century. Home to one of the longest-spanning suspension bridges in the country,…

The city of Waco derives its name from the agrarian indigenous group that originally resided in the area. The Waco, or Wi-iko, Indians were a tribe of the Wichita that arrived in Central Texas in the…