Thomas Jefferson "Stout" Jackson, born in 1890 in North Texas to a rancher and Baptist minister and his wife, was raised to value physical labor and good health and developed enough strength to work as a professional strongman by age 17. He took his act on the road through Texas, Oklahoma, and Central and South America, and as silent films grew popular he began showing them in tents alongside his performances. After retiring from the strongman business in the 1930s, he recognized the lack of Spanish-language entertainment in South Texas despite the large Tejano and Latino population. In 1935, he and his wife Beatrice moved to Robstown and opened the Teatros Carpas, tent theaters that quickly won community acclaim. He worked with a Spanish-language film distributor and first set up tents and projectors across the region before concentrating on theaters in Robstown, Kingsville, Falfurrias, and Alice. Tejano workers and their families flocked to the theaters, where Jackson presented prominent Mexican and other Spanish-language entertainers in connection with screenings of their films, along with variety acts and occasional Anglo performers. After World War II, he began constructing permanent theater buildings of tubular steel and concrete that were structurally sound and resistant to weather, vandalism, and fire. He also designed drive-in movie screens, fireproof housing, and bomb shelters. The last Teatro Carpa closed in 1963 as legal racial segregation came to an end, and Jackson died in an Austin nursing home in 1976.