"They came, they saw, they liked it," Stanley Marcus recalls of 1936 - the year "the rest of America discovered Texas." That year, in the midst of the nation's depression, the Lone Star State extravagantly celebrated the centennial of its independence from Mexico with fervor, fanfare, and hoop-la. Spawned by pride, patriotism, and a large measure of economic self-interest, the 1936 centennial observances marked a high tide of ethnocentrism in Texas and etched a new image of the state.
In 1923 the Advertising Clubs of Texas launched the centennial movement to advertise the state...