In Texas university holdings, entry to history and culture

At age 90, William Blair Jr., a former Negro League pitcher, Dallas-area civil rights leader and longtime newspaperman, came to the realization that much of the history he had lived through had already been forgotten by younger generations.

“They don’t know. They don’t read nothing,” he said by telephone this week from his office at The Elite News, the publication he founded in 1960 to bring light to Dallas’s often-overlooked black community.

He recently turned over the photographs, newspapers and memorabilia he had collected to the University of Texas at Arlington Special Collections Library. It took seven trucks to haul Mr. Blair’s collection to the university, which intends to develop a public exhibition around it.

Mr. Blair hopes visitors to the exhibition, particularly young ones, will develop a deeper appreciation for the area’s history. “There’s stuff in there they don’t know,” he said. “That’s stuff I’ve had for years.”...