A West Texas Educator Comes to East Texas: Ralph W. Steen (Sep 3, 2023)
The traffic in Nacogdoches is heavier this weekend, the restaurants are more crowded, and there are a great number of young people milling about our city. Yes, it is time for a new fall semester, the beginning of a new academic year at Stephen F. Austin State University. Spring is the time for renewal by the calendar, but for those of us who spend our time on a college campus, it is late summer that turns the page to a new year, when new freshmen arrive. Such a phase is our time for renewal.
New freshmen will probably begin to explore the campus, and they will no doubt immediately try to find the library—or at least we faculty members hope they will. They will (hopefully) discover that the outside of that building bears the name of Ralph W. Steen. Unfortunately, many of them will have no idea who he was. They will not realize that he remains an icon of our university, a nationally recognized historian, and a man who perhaps shaped the university we all now occupy more than any other figure in the past. So, allow me to use this space to introduce them—and perhaps others—to Dr. Steen.
Born in the small West Texas town of Eula in 1905, Dr. Steen grew up in Clyde as the son of a hardware store owner. A bright student, in 1927 he received an undergraduate degree in history from McMurry College at nearby Abilene. Shortly after graduating from McMurry, he married native Louisianan Gladys Edmonds. Mrs. Steen taught English, and according to Dr. Steen’s close friends, she was his most important—and most strident—editor and confidant.
He chose the University of Texas to continue his graduate studies and received his MA and Ph.D. degrees from that institution in 1929 and 1934. Steen also chose to concentrate on Texas history in his studies. He wrote his MA thesis on colorful Texas governor James Ferguson, and his doctoral dissertation, directed by prominent Texas historian Eugene Barker, when published, would become the first comprehensive study of twentieth-century Texas. He was on his way to becoming a giant in the field.
After Steen finished his doctorate, he took a job teaching at Hillsboro College for a year and then moved on to Texas A&M University in 1935. It would be at A&M that he began to forge a career that would make him one of the most gifted and noted Texas historians of his day. He would remain at A&M for twenty-three years, the last four as chair of the Department of History and Government. He made a reputation as perhaps the foremost authority on Texas political history. Steen cherished his time at Texas A&M, but in 1958 he was ready for a new challenge, so he took the job as President of Stephen F. Austin State College, a position he would hold until 1976.
It would be during Dr. Steen’s tenure that SFA would begin to grow into the significant regional university it is today. Enrollment grew from just under 2,000 students to more than 11,000, and the campus’s physical structure began to grow significantly. Steen became the primary navigator as the school moved from being a teacher’s college into a comprehensive regional university; it received university designation in 1969. Steen became instrumental in raising admission standards, establishing more stringent requirements for the faculty, and presiding over an increased emphasis on research.
Dr. Steen was not without his critics, and in the initial years of his term, he ruffled some feathers. His predecessor, Dr. Paul Boynton, died suddenly in 1958. Boynton, of course, lived in the College’s President’s House, and many people in the community believed that his widow should be allowed to remain there as long as she wished. Dr. Steen did allow Mrs. Boynton ample time to take care of affairs after her husband’s death, but many members of the campus and city community came to believe that Steen had forced her out of the house before she was ready. For those critics, no amount of contrary evidence could convince them otherwise. Steen also agitated the city as the SFA campus grew, particularly when he decided to close access to Raguet Street. However, eventually the vast majority of those in Nacogdoches and on campus came to realize that Dr. Steen was a force for positive change and progress.
Dr. Steen’s accomplishments were many, but perhaps the one that he was most proud, and the most significant was the successful integration of the university in 1964. Nacogdoches was a segregated southern city, and Stephen F. Austin State College, like all Texas state institutions, maintained a segregated campus. Steen became determined to change that, and his determination and leadership allowed SFA to traverse that tricky current a bit easier than many other similar institutions.
Dr. Steen was not an invisible president. According to those who remember him—fewer and fewer of those are around today—he delighted in walking the campus and interacting with students. It was also not uncommon for him to just casually stop by a classroom and listen to the instruction for a bit. Not coincidently, he seemed to gravitate quite a bit toward the classrooms in which history was taught. Despite those early clashes with some parts of the Nacogdoches community, he also evolved into a cherished civic leader, and one who became a prominent booster of Nacogdoches when he made his many trips around the state on university business.
So, I hope when the new freshmen—or perhaps returning students—walk by the building that is the center of scholarship on the campus they will realize the vital contributions of the namesake of the library, a man who came out of West Texas to a small college and helped make it one of the best regional universities in the nation. Also, as the institution embarks on its centennial celebration during the Fall semester, we should give a nod to a man who had quite a hand in making Stephen F. Austin State University what it is today.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu; www.easttexashistorical.org.