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VIDEO INTRODUCTION:
Meet
members of the families we profiled.
LINKS TO
EVERY CHAPTER
1900:
Winds of Change
Slideshow
1910-1918:
Destination: Dallas
Slideshow
1919-1929:
Hope vs. Hate
Slideshow
1930-1935:
Getting By
Slideshow
1936-1941:
A Wider World
Slideshow
1942-1945:
War
Slideshow
1946-1949:
Sudden City
Slideshow
1950-1951:
The Cat
Slideshow
1952-1963:
All Fall Down
Slideshow
1964-1971:
Push and Pull
Slideshow
1972-1979:
Picking up the Pieces
Slideshow
1980-1991:
The Fast Lane
Slideshow
1992-1999:
Present Tense
Slideshow
1999:
A Family Album
Slideshow
ALSO
From
the publisher
Family
trees
About
the reporters
Additional
links
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| | How
this account
was reported
The material in this narrative was collected primarily through extensive
interviews with members of each of the six families, their friends,
colleagues and acquaintances. Reporters also gathered and reviewed
pertinent documents, including family letters and scrapbooks, as well
as news accounts, city directories and birth, death, financial and
property records. Direct quotes are drawn either from letters or other
documents, the memories of people who were present or established
family lore. The same is true of accounts pertaining to the characters'
states of mind. Information about the history of Texas and Dallas
was gathered from news accounts and from the many excellent books
on those subjects. The writers are indebted to the historians and
journalists who have pieced together the history that serves as the
background for this narrative. A list of pertinent reading appears
on the additional links page. |
The 20th century: It arrived in a horse-drawn wagon;
it departs aboard the international space station. It skirted the abyss
of nuclear annihilation; it touched the pinnacle of genetic immortality.
In 1900, Dallas was a bustling but raw railroad town of 43,000. Today,
it is the center of an urban hive that numbers 5 million. Along the way,
it has been the castle in a cotton kingdom, the backdrop for a president's
murder and the cradle of the computer age.
Look around you. Many of the families that are your neighbors did
not start the century here. This piece of ground, this way station on
the fertile North Texas prairie, has drawn refugees, visionaries and fortune-seekers
from Alabama and Alsace; Athens, Texas, and Athens, Greece; Ciudad Acu-a
and Ho Chi Minh City.
This is the story of six families:
The Santerres came from France, to build a socialist utopia.
The Vielmas, from Mexico, to escape a revolution.
The Harpers, from Ohio, to raise a patrimony in cotton.
The McMillans left East Texas to slip the bonds of racial bigotry.
The Kahns quit the Old World when its promise wore thin.
The Clines said farewell to Galveston when precious little of it
was left standing.
Along the way, a few of them made history. All of them lived it.
Through Depression and disaster, in wars for freedom at home and
abroad, during a century of abrupt and often vexing change, they have
loved, worked, built things, lost things, fought for what they believed
in, and worried for their children's future.
Among them, they tell the story of the century.
Staff
Reporters: Ira J.
Hadnot, Victoria Loe Hicks, Barbara Kessler, Bill Marvel, Allen Pusey, Enrique
Rangel, Kevin Sherrington, Tim Wyatt
Photographer: Huy Nguyen
Design Director: Marilyn Glaser Bishkin
Photo Editor: Paula Nelson
Editors: Robert Compton, Howard Swindle
Copy Editor: Eric Nelson Researcher: Julie Wilson
Photo Technicians: Gary Barber, Susan Chalifoux, Samir Taleb, John
Zak
Database Managers: Dan Peters, Jim Rossman
Dallasnews.com
Site manager: Gerry Barker
Special projects editor: John Cranfill
Design: Chris Willis, Chris Kozlowski, Raleigh Swick, Tony Barrajas
Photo editor: Leslie White
Copy editing: Susan Krasnow
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