Democratic National Convention, 1928

When Jesse H. Jones carried a certified check for $200,000 to Washington in the winter of 1927, Houston was a city of about 300,000, and its midsummer heat worried party officials. The choice is generally seen as a gesture to the dry, Protestant South, which had not hosted a national convention since before the Civil War. On the first roll call Smith fell ten votes short until Ohio switched to him, and Texas alone cast its forty votes for Jones. In November Texas gave Hoover a majority, the first time a Republican presidential candidate had carried the state.

What the plaque says

Democratic National Convention, 1928 Due to the efforts of businessman Jesse H. Jones, the Democratic National Committee chose Houston as the site of the 1928 Democratic National Convention. Located on this site, the 20,000-seat Sam Houston Hall was completed in 64 days at a cost of $200,000. The convention met from June 26 to 29. Major issues addressed included the enforcement of prohibition and the plight of America's farmers. One senator remarked that the 1928 delegates constituted the most disorderly orderly crowd he had ever seen. On June 28 New York Governor Alfred E. Smith (1873-1944) was nominated for president on the first ballot. An anti-prohibitionist, Smith was the first Roman Catholic to be nominated for the U. S. Presidency by a major political party. Senate Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson, a Southerner and supporter of prohibition, received the nomination for vice president on June 29. Smith, who did not attend the convention, later read a formal acceptance speech in Albany, New York. On November 6, Republican candidate Herbert Hoover won the national election by a wide margin. Though Alfred E. Smith had been nominated for the nation's highest office at the Houston convention, he did not carry Texas in the November general election. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.2 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 1.8 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.9 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.3 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Thomas William House — steps away
• Edward Mandell House — steps away
• Houston City, Republic of Texas — steps away
• Sons of the Republic of Texas — 0.2 mi