Business

Ninnie Baird: Ninnie Baird baked great tasting bread and from a simple beginning in Fort Worth, she went on to found Mrs. Baird's Bakeries. Ninnie had eight surviving children, of which each of the boys and some of the girls helped in the start of the business. The four sons were the main children involved in the growth of the business, which steadily expanded into other cities throughout the state. Today Mrs. Baird's bread and other products are available in parts of Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico.

Ned Barnes: Inventor, who's inventions included a brace to maintain the distance between train rails, an electric projector to display train arrival and departure times, a railway tie plate, and a hot-box cooler and oiler. One patent (no. 1,124,879), for an automatic film-mover, was granted to its two co-inventors, Berger Edmond of Houston, and Ned Barnes.

Charles Doolin: purchased a corn chip recipe, a handheld potato ricer and 19 retail accounts from a corn chip manufacturer for $100, which he borrowed from his mother. Doolin established a new corn chip business, The Frito Company, in his mother's kitchen. Doolin and his mother and brother produced the corn chips, named Fritos. 

Lucile Bishop Smith:  had a long career as an educator, businesswoman, and inventor of Lucille's All Purpose Hot Roll Mix, the nation's first. She was a home economist who established one of the first college level commercial foods and technology departments in the U.S.

T. Boone Pickens:  business magnate and financier. Pickens chairs the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator and corporate raiderduring the 1980s.

Carroll Shelby: automotive designer, racing driver and entrepreneur. He was best known for his involvement with the AC Cobra and later the Mustang-based performance cars for Ford Motor Company known as Shelby Mustangs which he had done since 1965. His company, Shelby American Inc., founded in 1962, currently sells modified Ford vehicles, as well as performance parts

Mary Kay Ash: was an American business woman and founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.

Howard Hughes:  was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, aerospace engineer, film maker and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world. As a maverick film producer, Hughes gained prominence in Hollywood from the late 1920s, making big-budget and often controversial films like The Racket (1928), Hell's Angels (1930), Scarface (1932), and The Outlaw (1943). Hughes was one of the most influential aviators in history: he set multiple world air speed records, built the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 "Hercules" 

Bette Nesmith Graham: inventor of Liquid Paper, founded a company based upon this invention, making her a multi-millionaire. 

Micheal Dell: American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. He is known as the founder and CEO of Dell Inc., one of the world’s leading sellers of personal computers (PCs). He was ranked the 41st richest person in the world on 2012 Forbes Billionaires list, with a net worth of US$15.9 billion as of March 2012.

Edith Mckanna- McKanna became the first woman in Texas to receive a pilot's license and to own her own plane. During her flying career she logged well over 3,000 flying hours. She became a charter member of the Ninety-Nine Club, composed of the first ninety-nine women pilots in America. After American entry into World War II, she volunteered for the Civil Air Patrol and donated her plane to the war effort. For three years she served with the rank of captain at the air force headquarters as a liaison for the Civil Air Patrol and the United States Army Air Force.

In 1945 she returned to Scurry County, organized the Imperial Oil Company, and began securing leases. When her discovery well, the Ossie Buffalo, blew in on the Fuller field, Edith McKanna became the only woman oil operator in the oil boom that centered around the Canyon Reef field. By December 1949 she controlled 86,000 acres and had seven producing wells. She often visited the rig sites on her leases in a white hat and white gloves, a trait she reportedly adopted "to let them know a lady was on the site." She never ventured onto the derrick floor, however, since "man's work" was done there. Time magazine referred to her as the "Lady in the Oil Patch" in a 1949 article, and in February 1951 Mrs. McKanna was awarded a scroll of distinction in the field of petroleum by Vice President Alben Barkley, as one of seven of the Southwest's most distinguished women. She developed her Rock Ledge Farm, near Fluvanna, into a showplace.

Culture

Jack Johnson: John Arthur "Jack" Johnson, nicknamed the Galveston Giant. was an American boxer. At the height of the Jim Crow era, Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion.

"Arizona" Juanita Dranes: born in Sherman, Texas. Born blind, Dranes attended the Texas Institute for Deaf, Dumb and Blind Colored Youth in Austin from 1896 to 1912. She was one of the first gospel artists to bring the musical styles of Holiness churches' religious music to the public in her records for Okeh and performances in the 1920s.

Clarence Hailey Long: was the rugged Texas cowboy sensationalized as the original Marlboro Man

Selena Quintanilla Perez: Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, known mononymously as Selena, was an American singer-songwriter, fashion designer and entrepreneur. Known as the "Queen of Tejano".  

Walter Cronkite: as an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–1981). During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll.

Ornette Coleman: saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s. Coleman's timbre is easily recognized: his keening, crying sound draws heavily on blues music. His album Sound Grammar received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music.

Kathy Whitworth: American professional golfer. Throughout her playing career she won 88 LPGA Tour tournaments, more than anyone else has won on either the LPGA Tour or the PGA Tour. In 1981 she became the first woman to reach career earnings of $1 million on the LPGA Tour. She is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Barbara Smith Conrad: American operatic mezzo-soprano of international acclaim. In 1957, Barbara Conrad became the focus of a racial controversy revolving around her role in a student opera at The University of Texas at Austin. Pressure from the Texas Legislature forced her removal from the cast, and her story received national media coverage. Barbara continued her education at The University of Texas at Austin and received her Bachelor of Music degree in 1959.Barbara Conrad went on to perform with Metropolitan Opera, Vienna State Opera, Teatro Nacional in Venezuela, and many others.

Tex Avery: animator, cartoonist, voice actor and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during The Golden Age of Hollywood animation. He did his most significant work for the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, creating the characters of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Droopy, Screwy Squirrel, and developing Porky Pig, Chilly Willy (this last one for the Walter Lantz Studio) into the personas for which they are remembered.

Katherine Anne Porter: Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her 1962 novel Ship of Fools was the best-selling novel in America that year, but her short stories received much more critical acclaim. She is known for her penetrating insight; her work deals with dark themes such as betrayal, death and the origin of human evil

Sheryl Swoopes: retired American professional basketball player and the head coach of the women's basketball team of Loyola University Chicago. She was the first player to be signed in the WNBA when it was created. She has won three Olympic Gold Medals and is a three-time WNBA MVP. Frequently referred to as the "female Michael Jordan," Swoopes is famous for both her offensive and defensive skills.

Janis Joplin: was an American singer-songwriter who first rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of the psychedelic-acid rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company

O.Henry: American writer. O. Henry's short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings.

Katherine Stinson: From 1917 to 1928, Katherine Stinson was the nation's foremost daredevil stunt pilot. In 1912, she soloed after only four hours of instruction and became the fourth U.S. woman to earn a pilot's license. An Alabama native, she and her mother, Emma, founded the Stinson Aviation Company in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1913. Later that year, the family moved to San Antonio to establish the Stinson School of Flying. Stinson Field still operates there. Stinson, known as the "Flying Schoolgirl," toured the country, thrilling thousands of viewers at fairs with her daring stunts. In a plane she built, she became the first woman and fourth pilot in the U.S. to master the "loop the loop." In Los Angeles in 1915, she became history's first night skywriter, spelling out "CAL" with flares. That year she also flew the first airmail route in Texas, and was the first woman to serve in the U.S. Aviation Reserve Corps.

Scientists & Intellectuals

Beatrice Tinsley: astronomer and cosmologist whose research made fundamental contributions to the astronomical understanding of how galaxies evolve with time.

Bernard A. Harris: former NASA astronaut. On February 9, 1995, Harris became the first African American to perform an extra-vehicular activity (spacewalk), during the second of his two Space Shuttle flights.

Jack Kilby: electrical engineer who took part (along with Robert Noyce) in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1958. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2000. He is also the inventor of the handheld calculator and the thermal printer. Already Featured in exhibit. 

Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau:  was a chemical engineer who designed the first commercial penicillin production plant. She was also the first female member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

C. Wright Mills: sociologist, and a professor of sociology at Columbia University from 1946 until his death in 1962. Mills was published widely in popular and intellectual journals, and is remembered for several books. Among them The Power Elite, which introduced that term and describes the relationships and class alliances among the U.S. political, military, and economic elites, White Collar, on the American middle class, and The Sociological Imagination, where Mills proposes the proper relationship in sociological scholarship between biography and history

Kalpana Chawla: born in Karnal, India. She was the first Indian-American astronaut and first Indian woman in space. She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator. In 2003, Chawla was one of the seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

Denton A. Cooley: heart surgeon famous for performing the first implantation of a total artificial heart

Richard Smalley: was the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University, in Houston, Texas. In 1996, along with Robert Curl, also a professor of chemistry at Rice, and Harold Kroto, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of a new form of carbon, buckminsterfullerene ("buckyballs"), and was a leading advocate of nanotechnology and its many applications, including its use in creating strong but lightweight materials as well as its potential to fight cancer.

Military

Doris "Dorie" Miller: (October 12, 1919 – November 24, 1943) was a cook in the United States Navy noted for his bravery during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He was the first African American to be awarded the Navy Cross, the third highest honor awarded by the U.S. Navy at the time, after the Medal of Honor and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. The Navy Cross now precedes the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. Miller's acts were heavily publicized in the black press, making him the iconic emblem of the war for African Americans--their "Number One Hero" Already Featured in Exhibit 

Additional information/pictures may be found in the Naval Historical collection, Dept. of Navy [information found in "Texas and the Nation" curatorial notes 

Audie Murphy:  (June 20, 1925 – May 28, 1971) was one of the most famous and decorated American combat soldiers of World War II. He was awarded every U.S. military combat award for valor available from the U.S. Army, and was also decorated by France and Belgium. Already Featured in Exhibit 

Additional information/pictures may be found in the National Archives GR 3.4.249 [found in Texas and the Nation Curatorial notes]  

Oveta Culp Hobby : Oveta Culp Hobby was the first secretary of the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, first commanding officer of the Women's Army Corps, and chairperson of the board of the Houston Post Already Featured in exhibit 

Additional information may be found in "Texas Women: Pictorial History" by Ruthe Winegarten. U.S. Army. Information found in the Texas and the Nation Curatorial Notes   

Felix Longoria Jr.: Mexican-American soldier, who served in the United States Army during World War II and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His death instigated the Felix Longorai affair. The Felix Longoria affair became an early example of a unifying event in the Mexican American civil rights movement. The intervention of Dr. Hector García and the American GI Forum in the matter led to an increased interest around the country in opening local chapters of the organization. Among Mexican Americans and Hispanics across the country, the incident became a rallying point and a recruiting tool for the GI Forum that soon had chapters across the US

Social Change

Sarah Weddington: Sarah Ragle Weddington, is an American attorney, law professor, and former Texas state legislator best known for representing "Jane Roe" in the landmark Roe v. Wade case before the United States Supreme Court

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa: (September 26, 1942 – May 15, 2004) was a scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. She loosely based her most well-known book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, on her life growing up on the Mexican-Texas border and incorporated her lifelong feelings of social and cultural marginalization into her work.

** The archives of the Benson Library have a whole collection of Gloria Anzaldúa's work

Jesse Daniel Ames: Jessie Daniel Ames was a Texas suffragist and civil-rights activist who fought against lynching in the South. Ames founded the Texas League of Women Voters in 1919 and was its first president. She believed that it was the responsibility of women's organizations to try and solve racial problems. In 1924 Ames became the director of the Texas branch of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC), and she was promoted to the position of director of the CIC Women's Committee at the organization's headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929. In 1930 Ames founded the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL).

José Angel Gutiérrez: is an attorney and professor at the University of Texas at Arlington in the United States. He was a founding member of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) in San Antonio in 1967, and a founding member and past president of the Raza Unida Party, a Mexican-American third party movement that supported candidates for elective office in Texas, California, and other areas of the Southwestern and Midwestern United States.

Wendy Kopp: Wendy Sue Kopp is the Founder and Chair of the Board of Teach For America, a national teaching corps

Alicia Dickerson Montemayor: was a Latina activist from Laredo, Texas, the first woman elected to a national office not specifically designated for a woman, having served as vice president general of the interest group, the League of United Latin American Citizens. She was also the first woman to serve as associate editor of the LULAC newspaper and the first to write a charter to fund a LULAC youth group. Montemayor urged the inclusion of girls and women into Latin American activism and also promoted the interests of middle-class Mexican-Americans.

Ada Dement: Ada Dement served as chair of the Peace and Function Committee for the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and as a member of the Board of Control. She also worked as senior Texas state supervisor for girls and on the general committee for the Texas Commission on Interracial Cooperation. In 1930 Dement was elected president of the Texas Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (TACWC), later called the Texas Association of Women’s Clubs. Under her leadership, the organization started a scholarship fund, promoted a training school for delinquent black girls, and helped develop a hospital for black tuberculosis patients. Furthermore, the TACWC doubled the size of its membership and even worked closely with the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs. In 1941 Dement became the first Texan elected to serve as president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC), a role she maintained until her death in 1945. While there, she was instrumental in transferring the Frederick Douglas home, located in Washington, D.C., into the care of the NACWC.

Jovita Idar: journalist, political activist and civil rights worker. Idar strove to advance the civil rights of Mexican-Americans. Jovita wrote articles under a pseudonym, exposing the poor living conditions of Mexican American workers and supported the Mexican Revolution which started in 1910

Politicians

Kay Bailey Hutchinson: Kay Bailey Hutchison is a former United States Senator from Texas. She is a member of the Republican Party. In 2001, she was named one of the thirty most powerful women in America by Ladies Home Journal

Leon Jaworski: Jaworski's greatest fame came from his tenure as Watergate Special Prosecutor, when he managed a protracted contest with President Nixon to secure evidence for the trial of former senior administration officials on charges relating to the Watergate cover-up. Initially believing that only Nixon's aides had committed misconduct, he learned that Nixon had discussed the Watergate cover-up with the accused on numerous occasions and that these conversations had been recorded by the White House taping system. This discovery caused Jaworski to request tapes of sixty-four presidential conversations as evidence for the upcoming criminal trial, but Nixon refused to release them, citing executive privilege.

Lauro Cavazos: Lauro Fred Cavazos Jr. is a U.S. educator. He served as Secretary of Education, and was the first Hispanic to serve in the United States Cabinet.

Barbara Jordan: Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 – January 17, 1996) was an American politician and a leader of the Civil Rights movement. She was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction, the first southern black female elected to the United States House of Representatives, and the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous other honors. On her death she became the first African-American woman to be buried in the Texas State Cemetery Already Featured in Exhibit