Black Texas leader assassinated
94 years ago on April 24th, 1931
On this day in 1931, O. P. DeWalt, president of the Houston NAACP, was assassinated. The 1910 graduate of Prairie View College worked as a real estate agent and school principal before opening the Lincoln Theater, the first exclusively black theater in Houston. He was heralded for standing up to the Ku Klux Klan, which was growing again. He fought against the exclusionary white primaries of the Democratic party and pushed for the establishment of a branch of the National Urban League in Houston. Funeral services were held first in Houston and then in Livingston, where he was born and is buried.
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From Cabeza de Vaca's ship-wreck in 1528 through the Texas Revolution to present day—almost 500 years of recorded history—a myriad of significant events in Texas history have occurred. These events are arranged by day of the year to allow the reader to see into the past on any specific day.
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