Waco's brush with WWI
By Terri Jo Ryan Tribune-Herald staff writer
President Woodrow Wilson had pledged during his re-election campaign in 1916 to keep the nation out of the World War that had been raging across Europe since August 1914.
But just weeks after his second inauguration, public sentiment had been turned by German attacks on American merchant vessels, and Wilson asked Congress in 1917 to declare war on Imperial Germany and its allies.
Waco, a city of 45,000 people far removed from warfare, found itself a home-front battleground: Some Baylor University professors were fired for alleged pro-German sympathies. Churches formed by German immigrants stopped using the mother tongue lest they be accused of disloyalty. Public schools forbade the teaching of the “enemy’s language.” And several ethnic newspapers in Central Texas closed their doors.
The summer of 1917, Waco also became home to two military installations that proved vital to the local economy.
In July 1917, Camp Mac-Arthur was established northwest of the city, between Bosqueville and Speegleville roads. A month later, Rich Field, an Army Air Corps facility, opened west of town on land that now boasts the Heart O’ Texas Fairgrounds and Waco High School.
The first troops stationed at Camp MacArthur came from National Guard units in Wisconsin and Michigan, some of which had been demobilized from service on the Mexican border pursuing the revolutionary Pancho Villa (1877-1923).
Waco residents welcomed the strangers with hospitality and activities to make them feel more at home. Soldiers were invited to church services, Red Cross dances and community celebrations of their arrivals and departures.
The presence of the doughboys in Waco also led to two major social changes: the end of legalized prostitution and the prohibition of liquor sales.
Sources: Handbook of Texas Online; Waco Heritage and History (an educational journal published by Historic Waco Foundation); Waco: Images of America, by Eric S. Ames (2009); WorldWar1.com.
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