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Sunday, November 5, 2000

Legendary strongman, theater founder honored
Stout Jackson built string of Spanish-language tent theaters for migrants, residents of South Texas
By Jeremy Schwartz
Caller-Times

George Tuley/Caller-Times

E.T. Walker (left), assistant superintendent of Robstown school district, and Elmon Ray Phillips, chairman of the Nueces County Historical Commission, help unveil a marker honoring Stout Jackson.

ROBSTOWN - Thomas Jefferson "Stout" Jackson once lifted 6,472 pounds of cotton with his back, a feat that enshrined him in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
   But for thousands of residents here and around South Texas, the legendary strongman is best remembered for bringing Spanish-language movies and Mexican film stars to migrant workers in the middle of the century.
   At a time when entertainment options for Spanish-speaking Mexican-Americans were virtually nil in South Texas, Stout Jackson opened his Teatros Carpas, or tent theaters, throughout the region.
   Barred from Anglo theaters, workers and their families packed the tent theaters by the thousands to see Mexican movies and entertainers like Cantinflas, said Robstown historian Craig Edge.
   "(Jackson) provided a respite from a difficult existence," Edge said.
   On Saturday, under steady drizzle, the Nueces County Historical Commission unveiled a historical marker commemorating Jackson and his theaters.
   The marker, the third in Robstown, is located on the site of Jackson's Robstown theater, which burned in 1966, and what is now home to the Robstown school district's Alternative Learning Center on Main Street.
   "I'm glad the marker is not just about his strongman feats, but also about what he (and his wife, Beatrice) did for the area," said Jackson's granddaughter, Judy Peterson, of Mazaomanie, Wis., who attended the ceremony.
   Ines Ramon, chairman of the Robstown Area Historical Commission, remembered going to the theater, which drew up to 3,000 a night, as a small boy.
   "When the movies got sad, I would go under my chair," Ramon said.
   "I would ask my mom, 'is the sad part over yet?' "
   Jackson's road from skinny farm boy to acclaimed strongman and theater owner is a colorful one.

Jackson

   Born in 1890 on a ranch near Perrin in North Texas, Jackson learned the value of clean living and physical fitness early from his father, a rancher and Baptist minister.
   Childhood taunts over his size drove Jackson to chopping cord wood and cedar posts as a way to build up his body, and by the age of 15, Jackson could backlift 1,500 pounds.
   Two years later, Jackson became a professional strongman and took his act on the road where he also tried to share his Baptist beliefs.
   He traveled around North and South America, calling himself the world's strongest man and offering $1,000 to the owner of any team of horses that could out-pull him.
   His legend grew when he lifted an airplane off the ground in 1927, freeing a trapped pilot who had crashed during an airshow in Abilene.
   His travels brought him to South Texas and Mexico where he began to identify with Hispanic culture and became close to migrant field workers.
   He opened his first tent theater in 1935 in Robstown, after seeing the lack of entertainment options for Hispanics and realizing the economic possibilities of a Spanish-language theater.
   Wildly successful, Jackson opened large, permanent tent theaters in Alice, Falfurrias and Kingsville by the 1960s, when the rise of television and an end to segregation signaled the downfall of the theaters.
   Toward the end of his career, Jackson experimented with different building designs and sent several designs to the U.S. Patent Office.
   Jackson died in 1976 in an Austin nursing home.
   The bodies of Jackson and his wife, who served as a midwife to hundreds of migrant families, were moved in 1996 from a Pflugerville cemetery to Memorial Park Cemetery in Robstown.
   "I used to love to go and listen to his stories," said Jackson's grandson Scot Jackson, who lives in Colorado.
   "And what he was talking about was not so much his feats of strength, like you would think, but the things he wanted to do in the future."

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