VOTE!
Watching returns on Elm St. (photo: Dallas Public Library)
by Paula Bosse
Today is Election Day! If you haven’t already gotten out to vote, today is your last chance. Do it!
One of my favorite “discoveries” I’ve stumbled across since doing this blog is learning how Dallasites (and other Americans across the country) once got continuously-updated news of election returns: crowds gathered to watch results which were projected onto the side of a building. The photo above shows people in the early 1920s standing in front of the Dallas Times Herald building (the one with the pillars, at 1305 Elm) watching returns projected from the newspaper offices onto a building across the street. Before TV and radio and 24-hour news coverage, this was the way many large cities kept their citizens informed on election night.
Read more about that interesting slice of history in the Flashback Dallas post “How Dallas Used To Get Election Returns.”
Also of Election Day interest, check out these posts:
- “‘A Woman Knows Real Live News When She Sees It’ — 1915,” about woman’s suffrage in Dallas (women were not allowed to vote in Texas until 1919).
- “Voting Day,” which has inspiring photos of young people voting.
Happy voting!
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Copyright © 2020 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
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