UPDATE, October 2024
The split between the traditional and academic factions of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly (and within the Texas State Historical Association as a whole) has led to the formation of a new historical association in the state and, more recently, to the founding of a new academic publication, The Journal of Texas History (JTxH).
A group of scholars and lay historians formed a new organization in early 2024, The Alliance for Texas History, (ATxH) "to advance inclusive, accurate historical accounts and public discussions about the people, events, and cultures that have shaped Texas's past and present."
Now with more than 500 members, the ATxH will publish the new journal with a tentative target date of May 2025.
Here is the official rationale for establishing the new journal:
"Texas’s population has doubled over the past forty years, yet the number of scholarly journals devoted to the state’s history has remained roughly the same. In the meantime, Texas has grown more diverse, and whole new fields and methodologies have emerged in the historical profession. We believe, then, that there is room—and a real need—for another journal to tell the many stories of Texas and Texans. We are proud to join with our colleagues at other historical organizations in telling those stories."
Previously, on January 16, 2024, the longtime chief historian of the organization, UT Austin Professor Walter Buenger, resigned not only as chief historian but from his lifetime membership on the board. He did so in an emphatic manner:
"Simply put, I can no longer identify with an association that has so clearly left behind long agreed upon principles and habits of good governance and abandoned the wholehearted pursuit of top-quality, inclusive, honest, and accurate history."
TSHA no longer lists the position of chief historian. Instead, the new director of publications, Dr. Richard B. McCaslin, a former professor of history at the University of North Texas, is likely fulfilling that role as well.
Even before these recent events, a group of academic historians had begun efforts to establish a new association. So far, it appears to be a generally likeminded group, most of them academicians who seek to develop a new historical journal along with a significant cohort of members with ties to museums, libraries, and historical associations. At this point, sponsorships and affiliations are unspecified. As of July 11, 2024, the group had 509 dues paying members.
NOTE: ATxH has issued a call for papers for is first annual conference to be held at Texas State University in San Marcos, May 15-17, 2025.
The ultimate break raises the important question of how the leadership of UT Austin will react. Buenger and the TSHA had both been affiliated with the university, which resumed its involvement with TSHA back in 2015. At the time, UT Austin endowed a chair in Texas history, filled by Buenger. According to the website of the UT Austin history department, he continues to hold the position of Foundation Chair in Texas History.
The late UT Austin President Bill Powers said in 2015 that Buenger's role was to "serve as the organization’s chief historian, responsible for working to ensure the highest academic standards for its programming and publications, which include the iconic Texas Almanac, The Handbook of Texas and The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, all of which are constantly updated and publicly accessible online. "
The university also guaranteed "space on campus for the TSHA staff, and the institutions will collaborate on many educational and outreach initiatives, such as Texas History Day, Junior Historians of Texas, and History Awareness workshops for Texas educators. "
The TSHA president at the time, Lynn Denton, lauded the development. "Our affiliation with The University of Texas provides the ideal combination of academic excellence and global reach to reinforce a commitment to the preservation, promotion and protection of Texas history.”
The TSHA had always been housed on a university campus since its original home in Garrison Hall at UT Austin in 1897. In 1971, it moved to the Barker Texas History Center in Sid Richardson Hall. Then, from 2007 to 2015, the University of North Texas, with strong leadership from the late Professor Randolph "Mike" Campbell, provided space for the organization.
But as of this moment, the TSHA lists its address as a building on Lake Austin Boulevard, three and a half miles from the center of the UT Austin campus. This in itself is probably not significant, given that the offices of the UT Press are also located at that site. Still, one must wonder what will happen to the UT Austin affiliation, renewed more than eight years ago through the efforts of former Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and others. UT's current financial contribution to the TSHA is estimated to be about $250,000. If the UT Austin support proves unsustainable (politically or economically), is there another university that will now work with TSHA?
Below are previous posts on this site from 2023 on this unfortunate development for the state of Texas and for its history.
The war over Texas history, discussed in some detail below, might not be over but the conservative faction led by retired oilman J. P. Bryan won what could prove to be the decisive battle in late August when a mediation resulted in the resignation of the president and secretary of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). Both were members of the "academic" group involved in the conflict, while Bryan represents the "non-academic" side. He continues to serve as the organization's executive director, a position that he appears to be using to reshape the TSHA.
Bryan had sued the board president in May, alleging that she and others had violated TSHA bylaws requiring that academics and non-academics have equal representation on the board. The conservatives argued that the definition of an "academic" should include holders of masters degrees who have taught in high school or college. The president and other board members defined an academic as a Ph.D. instructor or professor in a college or university.
The suit was set for trial on September 11. The mediation agreement was announced on August 27, and on September 5, Bryan's attorney confirmed a final settlement.
"I think we completely achieved everything we wanted," Bryan said, according to the Galveston News. And indeed that seems to be the case. The defendants and their attorneys have not commented on the result.
The new president of the TSHA is appeals court justice Ken Wise, a non-academic who was the board vice-president and would have become president anyway next year. A board member elected as a non-academic member at the contentious March 2023 annual meeting will remain on the board but be classified as an academic member because she has a masters degree and has taught as an adjunct at a community college. Her new designation evidently sets in place definitions for academic and non-academic members going forward.
The former president and secretary, both academic members, will be replaced by non-academic members. A currently vacant place will also be filled with a non-academic member. In response to these changes, the managing editor of the TSHA resigned., and a new director of publications, an academic, is in place. So at some point in the relatively near future the board should be balanced in a manner that Bryan has championed, but in what ways will the editorial decision-making be different? Bryan has repeatedly decried the "preferred narrative" he ascribes to academics, "one that demeans the Anglo efforts in settling the western part of the United States for the purpose of spreading freedoms for all. They have a whole different narrative to describe the event.”
“How this whole thing goes will determine the future of the way the history of Texas is written — that’s what it’s all about," he has said.. But who will write that history? The SHQ is a well-known academic historical quarterly, serving as the foremost repository of historical essays and books reviews on Texas history since 1897. In other words, the SHQ has a brand, something Texans should appreciate. That brand is different from, say, many books the TSHA Press publishes, some of which have a popular cast. And the famous Handbook of Texas has yet another brand, a hybrid publication with thousands of entries on every aspect of Texas history. These entries range from older contributions that retain a traditional view of people and events to newer ones that reflect the current interest about the importance of race and gender issues in Texas history. The Almanac of Texas History has yet another brand, a biannual reference publication that is closer to an encyclopedia than it is to an academic journal.
In fact, as noted below, even the SHQ features essays on traditional topics, sometimes written by non-academic historians. Please see A Statistical Summary of SHQ Articles, July 2018--July 2023, farther down.
The statistical summary mentioned above does not seem to justify the conclusion that the SHQ is in fact as slanted toward progressive views as some critics believe. If the new direction of the SHQ involves a dramatic shift away from essays that are controversial or critical of traditionalist views of Texas history and becomes a somewhat more scholarly, right-wing version of Texas Highways magazine (an undeniably excellent publication, but for a lay audience), then the SHQ will lose its brand, the state will find itself with no high-profile historical publication, and serious scholars in Texas and elsewhere will leave the brand in the dust. But, without question, there should be space in the quarterly for scholarly articles with a thoughtful conservative perspective, offering a more tangible balance for many mainstream readers. How Bryan and others can find such contributors and vet their submissions is another issue he faces.
What is most unfortunate about the conflicts of recent years is that their origins might be more rhetorical than substantive. Beginning in 2021, widely distributed comments about the Alamo and and its meaning in Texas and American history, some of them related to the controversial book Forget the Alamo, have elevated contentiousness and undermined respect for the inherent complexity of historical study. The actual content of the SHQ , then, has come to mean less than the emotions invested in the conflict.
HERE IS THE ORIGINAL POST ON THE TSHA CONTROVERSY:
It is July 2023, and the venerable Southwestern Historical Quarterly, the publication of record for Texas history since 1897, is at the center of a bitter legal and ideological battle over its future.
On one side is J.P. Bryan, a wealthy Texan who can claim kinship with nineteenth century empresario Stephen F. Austin. On the other side are current and past presidents of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), which publishes the quarterly, and most academic supporters and contributors.
Bryan claims broad public support for "traditionalist" Texas history that champions early Texans as pioneers dedicated to freedom and westward expansion, the spearhead of Manifest Destiny. Supporters of this type of history generally subscribe to the idea of "Texas Exceptionalism," a commitment not only to the undeniably colorful, dramatic, and consequential history of the state but also to a positive moral inheritance from the state's early leaders.
The academic historians and their supporters argue that the quarterly has evolved over more than a century to recognize groups previously not represented in the journal's pages--Tejanos, Latinos, Blacks, and women. The traditionalists often see this greater inclusion, especially as presented in a "progressive" context, as a threat and, worse, as a repudiation of their ancestors and rightful heritage.
The battle over the future of the quarterly has intensified in the last five years. Currently, Bryan has filed a lawsuit that essentially prevents the board of the TSHA from meeting. The suit is his response to what he claims is an over-representation of academics on the board, which he sees as a violation of TSHA bylaws.
Adding to the controversy and confusion is that Bryan was appointed to an administrative role as executive director, but the board disagrees on whether his appointment was on an interim basis or for a longer term. Before Bryan filed his suit, the board seemed bent on removing him for possibly exceeding his role. Since March, he has been taking some unilateral actions even as the board is unable to act as a result of his suit.
As a recent contributor to the quarterly and as a non-academic, I was extremely curious about the types of articles that have appeared in the quarterly over the last five years. Although I am a member of TSHA and read the quarterly, I did not have a firm picture in my mind regarding the full range of subject matter and the qualifications of all contributors during that time. Like most readers, I chose what appeared to be interesting to me at the moment and did not read other material.
In an effort to answer my own questions about the quarterly's content, I reviewed all 75 articles published between July 2018 and July 2023. No, I do not claim to have read all of them in detail, but I have tried to identify the basic thrust of each and provide brief descriptions, usually in the form of direct quotes form the articles themselves.
The hope is that, with the information below, some interested parties and readers might be able to form a more evidence-based view regarding the ideological and historiographical emphases in the quarterly. My own view is that there has been a definite shift away from 19th century topics, given the persistent attention the period received prior to the 1970s; and with the increased interest in modern (and more controversial) issues, the quarterly has responded appropriately but not to the point of neglecting other periods. Most if not all of the essays dealing with issues of race, ethnicity, and gender were remarkably--and thankfully--free of postmodern jargon and sweeping ideological pronouncements. The word eclectic comes to mind in describing the overall impression left after reviewing the essays.
A Statistical Summary of SHQ Articles, July 2018--July 2023
Please note that I do not have data for the number of submissions by each author category listed below. Without this information, I cannot calculate whether the acceptance rate of articles from authors in a given category, (e.g., Latinos), is high or low in relation to the acceptance rates from authors in the other categories. Given the reputation of the SHQ as a scholarly journal, it is likely, however, that a very large percentage of submissions come from academics with Ph.D.'s.
Articles emphasizing significant race, ethnicity, and gender issues, 26, or 34.7%*
Authors, men, 66, or 79.5% (there were more authors than articles because a few articles had multiple authors)
Authors, women, 17, or 20.5%
Authors, Latino, 13, or 15.7%
Authors, Black, 1, or 1.2%
Authors, Academics with Ph.D., 50, or 60.2%
Authors, Ph.D., independent scholars, 12, or 14.5%
Authors, Graduate students, 7, or 8.4%
Authors, lay or independent scholars, no Ph.D., 14, or 16.9%
Total percentage of articles by non-academic historians, 33, or 39.8%
Percentage of articles by century of topic: 16th century, 1; 18th century, 2; 19th century, 28; 20th century, 36; 21st century, 8.
*13 of these essays, or 50.0%, focus on Black history; 9 of these articles, or 34.6%, focus on the experiences of Latinos and Tejanos; 3 focus on women in Texas history, or 12.5%, not counting 2 other essays that are firsthand, positive reminiscences of women raised on Texas ranches; 1, or 3.9%, focuses on internecine warfare between the Spanish and Indigenous people. A total of 3 of the above essays are about the lynchings of Blacks or Unionists. Two additional essays were on Jewish history in the state. All of these article titles are in boldface within the lengthy section below.
Brief Summaries of 75 Essays in SHQ, July 2018--July 2023.
NOTE: This is a very long section of 7,672 words.
Volumes are listed with the most recent first. Within each volume, the quarterly issues are listed in chronological order. The professional titles and occupations listed for authors were those in effect at the time of publication.
Vol 127, no 1, July 2023
“‘It Is Hard to Tell Who Is Who and What is What’: An Introduction to the Southwestern Historical Quarterly's Special Issue on Greater Reconstruction in the Southwestern Borderlands,” Elliott West, Alumni Distinguished Professor of American History, University of Arkansas. “The Greater Reconstruction would ask us to picture the roughly three decades after the mid-1840s as a drama with two leading actors, the Civil War and expansion, and their aftermath, playing roughly equal roles in the same crucial transition in national life. The two developments followed their own distinct courses and deserve their own telling, but they were also in frequent conversation and interaction. Neither can be understood without the other, and only when we bring them together and give them roughly equal attention will the full national story begin to come truly into focus.”
“The Brittle West: Secession and Separatism in the Southwest Borderlands during the Civil War Era,” Kevin Waite. He is an associate professor of history at Durham University (UK) and the author of West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (University of North Carolina Press, 2021). “To be sure, the Civil War in the Far West has grown into a flourishing subfield, with a proliferation of books, conferences, and special issues, including the one in which this essay appears. But the majority of these studies concern the war years, rather than the political crises that triggered the shooting. And while a number of excellent state and territorial histories of the West examine the secession crisis in detail, rarely do they consider the collective power of disunionism, which spilled across territorial and state lines to imperil the entire southern half of the country.”
“How Do Markets Trump Warfare? On the Wartime Business of Confederate Supplier Charles Stillman,” David Montejano, Professor Emeritus of Ethnic Studies and History at the University of California, Berkeley. “How did markets supersede war? How did enemies trade with one another? The short answer is through the opportunistic and ostensibly treasonous behavior of exporting and importing merchants, with the critical assistance of neutral foreign intermediaries. Stillman was an exporting merchant of Texas cotton, the Sprague-Reynolds group a receiving merchant, and San Román and a number of Mexican and European merchants the indispensable intermediaries. Mexico provided the neutral space, and the British-flagged merchant marine the neutral vessels.”
“‘Disgraceful in the Extreme from Beginning to End’: The January 1866 Filibustering Raid on Bagdad, Mexico,” Jerry Thompson, Regents and Piper Professor of History at Texas A&M International University in Laredo. “In the final analysis, General [Godfrey] Weitzel perhaps put it best: ‘The whole affair was disgraceful in the extreme from beginning to end.’ [Secretary of State William H.] Seward later told Romero that ‘the capture of Bagdad, far from being a legitimate operation of a belligerent power, or in the interest of a belligerent powers is stated to have been simply a buccaneering scheme.’ As far as Seward was concerned, ‘The sole objective of the expedition seems to have been the pillaging of the town.’”
“Burrill Daniel's Claim: A Freedom Seeker in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands, 1865–1870,” Alice Baumgartner, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern California and the author of South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War (Basic Books, 2020). “Some petitioners [freedmen with claims related to coercive employment] were like Burrill Daniel, African Americans whose enslavers had fled the United States to avoid complying with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment. Others were Indigenous peoples, Chinese coolies, indentured servants, and debt peons who sought to free themselves from coercive labor practices that were not, strictly speaking, chattel slavery. Their claims to freedom under the Thirteenth Amendment and its enabling legislation were significant.”
Vol 126, no 1, July 2022
“Governors, Regents, and New Deal Liberalism: Student Activism at the University of Texas at Austin, 1917–1945,” John Moretta, Ph.D., Rice University, is the author of several books and articles on both Texas and United States history. “Inextricably linked and driving much of the city’s exceptionalism, especially when compared to other southern university towns, were the University of Texas’s students, who, beginning in the early twentieth century through World War II, became the vanguard for sociocultural and political change in the state and institutional reform on their campus.”
“The Treason Case of Erasmo Seguín: A Story of Texas’s First War of Independence,” Jesús F. de la Teja, Regents’ Professor of History and University Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Texas State University, and TSHA president 2007-2008. “It is not surprising, then, that even as they put aside their past differences and enmity to start rebuilding both their personal fortunes and those of their homeland, men such as Veramendi, Navarro, and Seguín chose the evolving federalist ideology as best suited to their province’s fortunes.”
“In Memoriam,” Shirley Caldwell, president of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) for 2002–03, passed away in early June 2021. We regret our delay in memorializing her life and work on behalf of TSHA and other historical organizations in the state. Aside from her presidency, she was chair of TSHA’s development committee, and she and her husband, Clifton, made several generous donations to the organization. She also contributed articles to The Handbook of Texas.
Vol 126, no 2, October 2022
“Cold Beer, Fried Chicken, Communication, and History,” Patrick Cox, Ph.D., president TSHA 2021-2022, author or editor of ten books and hundreds of articles on American and Texas history. “As historians, we must remove the blindfolds and rise to the challenge of effectively and accurately communicating our history to present and future generations. History should not be written or communicated as a preordained and self-justifying myth or as an historical narrative written from the viewpoint of a single group of people. We must ask the difficult questions and seek the ignored, overlooked, and discounted voices and experiences from our past.”
“Land, Race, and the Long Road to the Córdova Rebellion in East Texas, 1826–1839,” Daniel Glenn, Associate Professor of History, St. Edward’s University. “Despite its failure, however, the Córdova Rebellion had a lasting influence on the development of Texas. The incident confirmed Anglo Texans' worst fears about the Tejanos and Indians living amongst them: that they hated the Anglos and, whatever they might say to the contrary, were waiting for the right opportunity to strike.”
“‘Perdió Peleando’: An Examination of Mexican Principles of War in the Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma in South Texas,” Dr. Joseph P. Sánchez, who retired from the National Park Service (NPS). “All was lost, and Arista recognized that the Army of the North had failed. He surmised that despite his plans and adherence to the principles of war, the one element that caused his failure was the lack of total cooperation, especially that of General Canales. Without total cooperation, he could not arouse his badly demoralized troops to fight the Americans.”
“‘Because of Man's Greed for Oil and Gas’: Tanker Surfing and Surf Culture on the Texas Coast,” Thomas Blake Earle, Assistant Professor of History, Texas A&M Galveston. “John Benson, another of Fulbright's wake riders, observed that ‘we can't rely on nature to make waves around here all the time, but we can count on tanker traffic in the Ship Channel.’ Speaking on behalf of ‘Gulf Coast surfers,’ Fulbright concluded, ‘we're damned … We're so desperate we're chasing around oil tankers. That's how desperate we are.’”
Vol 126, no 3, January 2023
“Remembering Randolph B. ‘Mike’ Campbell,” Andrew Torget, Andrew J. Torget holds the University Distinguished Teaching Professorship at UNT and is an officer of the TSHA. “In a fitting coda that would have pleased Mike, what follows [in this issue] is the final piece of scholarship he produced, ‘The Primms of Fayette County: A Biracial Family in Nineteenth Century Texas.’ “[T]he piece addresses the central question at the heart of all of Mike’s work: what did the dark legacies of slavery and the South mean for Texas and the people who made this place their home?”
“The Primms of Fayette County: A Biracial Family in Nineteenth-Century Texas,” Randolph B. Campbell (1940–2022), “was Regents Professor and held the Lone Star Chair in Texas History at the University of North Texas. From 2008 to 2017, he was Chief Historian of the Texas State Historical Association, and from 2005 to 2017, he was editor of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly.” In his last paper, Dr. Campbell wrote, “[W]hy did William Primm not move to a free state such as Illinois, like his father before him, and greatly reduce if not remove entirely the burdens of biracialism for his family? Was it because the practical advantages of his plantation-style life outweighed moral or social considerations? Was he like more famous men—Thomas Jefferson and Sam Houston for example—who knew that slavery was wrong but would not give up their entire lives and free their slaves to right the one impossibly wrong thing in their lives? Primm asked for ‘charity’ from his fellowmen, but readers of his story are still likely to ask if he earned it.”
“Rust Belt Problems, Sunbelt Solutions: St. Louis, Dallas–Fort Worth, and the Migratory History of the ‘Metroplex’ Concept,” Brian M. Ingrassia, Associate Professor of History, West Texas A&M. “Academic social scientists funded by philanthropic foundations may have coined “metroplex,” but Texas boosters transformed the term into a marketing tool in an attempt to signify differences between their own Sunbelt metropolis and the ostensibly decaying cities of the Rust Belt. The shift from the term’s invention by 1950s scholars to its adoption by 1970s admen was astonishing, and it demonstrated the migration not just of people but of ideas.”
“Women’s Lives in a Spanish-Texas Community: San Antonio de Béxar, 1718–1821,” Jesús F. de la Teja, Regents’ Professor (Emeritus) of History and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Texas State University, and president of the TSHA 2007-2008. “The long-held view that the affairs of men are those that matter in historical terms is indefensible once we take into account that women proved critical to the proper functioning of community in San Antonio.”
Vol 126, no 4, April 2023
“Securing the Southwest: The Northern Pursuit of Texas, New Mexico, and California,” Daniel Burge, Ph.D., associate editor at the Kentucky Historical Society. “While historians have faulted the Slave Power for its rapacious desire to expand the boundaries of the United States, part of the blame should certainly reside with northern Democratic expansionists, who were not thralls of southern imperialists.”
“A Portrait of Amos Pollard: The Doctor at the Alamo,” Francis J. Leazes Jr., PhD, is a professor emeritus at Rhode Island College. “[Amos Pollard] abandoned the farm, became a skilled and dedicated doctor and a reformer, and he developed political beliefs associated with abolitionism and westward expansion in his search for respectability and standing. He died in a complicated, contentious cause of liberty, where freedom for some meant enslavement for others.”
“Should We ‘Forget the Alamo’?: Myths, Slavery, and the Texas Revolution,” John Willingham, M.A. in history UT Austin, novelist and independent historian. “On one point, especially, the authors of Forget the Alamo force events to conform to their stated ‘true underlying cause.’ Their claim that ‘the Battle of the Alamo was as much about slavery as the Civil War was about slavery’ ignores striking differences between Texas in 1835–1836 and the South as a whole in 1861.”
“‘Ain't Nothing Free’: Earning an Education at the Houston Junior Market Steer Auction,” Rebecca Scofield, Associate Professor of American history and chair of the Department of History at the University of Idaho. “Most importantly, this event showed how the public/private relationships central to the extension service, 4-H, and FFA in the early twentieth century expanded and became codified in the organization's competitive, individualistic approach to education just as a reckoning with these racial legacies had begun to emerge.”
“The History of DeWitt County (1899) by C. H. Waltersdorf, Publisher and Editor of the Lavaca County News,” James C. Kearney, Ph.D., UT Austin, lives on a historic family ranch in Colorado County near Columbus, Texas. “What better profession to really get to know a community down to the brass-tacks level than that of newspaper editor? Waltersdorf's many years in the profession acquainted him not only with important movers and shakers but also with the common people from all walks of life in the several counties that originally made up DeWitt's Colony: DeWitt, Victoria, Lavaca, Karnes, and Gonzales. It seems he knew everyone and their story.”
Vol 125, no 1, July 2021
“Explosions and Fires at the Ports of Texas City and Houston: A Comparative Analysis of Waterside-Landside Crises, 1947–2019,” Eric Pearson, a retired computer programmer with an M.A. in history from UH-Clear Lake. “The heavy concentration of these oil and gas companies [close to the Houston ship channel] presents the potential danger of explosions and fires, as was seen in 1959 when a major gasoline fire engulfed the tanker Amoco Virginia and in 1979 when the tanker Chevron Hawaii exploded after being struck by lightning while loading oil. These events caused concern that a chain reaction of explosions among the chemical and petroleum industries that line the ship channel could touch off a disaster similar to the one at Texas City that killed more than five hundred people in 1947—the worst industrial accident in the nation's history.
Historians have not fully explored the links between these disasters and how the lessons learned from them were (or were not) applied toward industrial safety and public welfare.”
“The 1870 Military Investigation into the Complaints against William Longworth, Radical Republican County Judge of Wilson County, Texas,” Dale Baum, Professor Emeritus of History, Texas A&M. “‘If it hadn't been for ole Judge Longworth, I might have been a slave for seven years longer by way of a contract my boss wanted to draw up. … He was a little man but he tole de boss just where matters stand, and he explained to me dat I was free.’” William Green, a former slave.
“‘Greed for Land’: W. W. Ashe and the Environmental Roots of the 1921 Flood in Central Texas,” Char Miller is the W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College in Claremont, California. “What complicated these natural processes, and thus was a driver of the devastating floods that wracked each region, was the human impress. In Central Texas, ‘greed for land’ had pushed levees and other informal flood-control works so close to streambeds that it robbed the floodplains’ ability to act as a sponge, thereby intensifying downstream damage. Upstream, excessive grazing had compacted the ground and stripped it of vegetation so that even modest storms could generate major floods. It was no wonder that the deluge on September 9–10 [the 1921 San Antonio flood] had produced such horrific consequences.”
Vol 125, no 2, October 2021
“Adaptation to Thrive: A Blended Heritage on the Texas Border with Mexico,” Mary Margaret McAllen. She was raised on a South Texas ranch and writes about the history of the Southwest and Mexico. “My early life was spent in an open-air museum with historians for parents and grandparents. This trained me to not only value history, but to be ever investigating. I feel so blessed to have been born into a border family with a long and blended heritage. It lends a perspective and depth not all truly understand.”
“Edna Collins’s Camp Swift Murals and German Prisoners of War,” Cynthia Brandimarte, Ph.D., American Studies, the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked as historian for Texas universities, museums, and the state park system. “Collins’s works demonstrate the value placed on murals and other art by the U.S. military during the two world wars and the interwar period. They also record the use of POW artists to create murals in wartime internment camps like Camp Swift. Collins’s story is uncommon; there appear to have been relatively few civilian artists employed by the U.S. military for mural projects, few of those artists were women, and few collections of textual and visual records comparable to those Collins left us have been preserved.”
“‘It’s a Texas Custom to Show Fight’: The Cultural Politics of Meat Boycotts in Mid-Twentieth Century Texas,” Mark W. Robbin, Professor of History, Del Mar College. “Even if partially fragmented along the lines of class, ethnicity, and race, the boycott was a significant force in Texas.”
Vol 125, no 3, January 2022
“La Salle’s Texas Enterprise and Louis XIV’s Imperial America,” Richard Gross and Craig P. Howard. Gross, an independent historian, has been actively involved in researching La Salle since he was selected to be a member of La Salle Expedition II in 1975; Howard is a forty-year resident of Texas. He had a twenty-seven-year career as a journalist and a parallel career teaching European, American, and world history. “Louis VIV conducted various wars in Europe to expand the borders of France, but little has been written about his more ambitious, and clandestine, imperial aims in the Western Hemisphere…. The ephemeral settlement of René-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, on Garcitas Creek, near Matagorda Bay on the Texas Gulf Coast, was an abject failure, but few realize that the king had approved it as a foothold for his expanding empire and the stage for an invasion of Mexico.”
“A Long Look Ahead: William L. Bray and Early Texas Conservationism,” Char Miller, W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, Pomona College in Claremont, California. “Bray embodied these professionalizing commitments during his decade-long career at the University of Texas, from 1897 to 1907. While there, he mounted a series of robust botanical investigations and rigorous ecological analyses of two regions in the state led him to develop a sophisticated set of policy recommendations for their careful, scientific management. In particular, he made a strong case for the immediate application of conservation measures to control natural-resource exploitation on the Edwards Plateau of Central Texas and in the Piney Woods of East Texas to insure these regions’ ecological stability and economic productivity across time.”
“Early Texas Jewish Settlers, 1830–1845: Were They Really Jewish, and if so, Who Were They?,” Kay C. Goldman, Ph.D., independent historian. “[This essay] will also argue that the Jewish men who ventured into Mexican and Republic-era Texas were not irrelevant to Texas Jewish history; in fact, they were important trailblazers on the frontier and filled similar positions as Jews who settled on frontiers in earlier times. All these settlers were seen as ‘pioneers’ and created a ‘Western Jewish identity.’ Some might not have been observant Jews, but after validating their Jewish connections, they should still be regarded as Jews.”
Vol 125, no 4, April 2022
‘Beyond Big Tex: The Past, Present, and Future of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,” Walter Buenger, Chief Historian, SHQ. “For 125 years, the editors and contributors to the Southwestern Historical Quarterly have preserved primary-source evidence of the past, provided an analysis of that past for the present, and envisioned the future study of Texas and southwestern history. As the essays in this issue from some of the best historians of the region make clear, the balance between preserving past documents, offering fresh interpretations, and arguing for new approaches has changed over time, but you still find notes and documents that highlight evidence, closely argued analysis and narration that offer insight for modern readers, and reviews, review essays, and special features like this particular issue that point us toward the future…. Membership, the history profession, editorial choices, and changes in society and culture have all combined over recent decades to foster an inclusive and up-to-date approach. The content of the Quarterly has moved beyond a celebratory and condemnatory history to one more appropriate and more embracing of faults and accomplishments, reality and ideals, and contributions of all groups and all peoples to the development of Texas.”
“A Team Effort: 125 Years of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,” Richard B. McCaslin, Endowed Professor of History, UNT. “THE SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY IS THE OLDEST continuously published historical quarterly in the United States. But it has changed significantly since its inception in July 1897. It does not even have the same title! It became more diverse in content as its clientele and contributors both increased in academic and demographic diversity. While the Quarterly retained a primary focus on Texas history, reflecting the interests of twelve editors and managing editors, it also became an important source for works on the Southwest and the nation…. But the enduring value of the Quarterly, like the TSHA, is in its acceptance of many points of view from professional and lay scholars alike. This has allowed it to change and grow as the study of history has evolved.”
“On Presence and Absence: Women's History in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, ”Nancy Baker Jones, Ph.D., independent historian. “Although the number of articles about Texas women's history slowly increased between the late 1980s and 2021, there was not a critical mass until the 2005 to 2021 transition stage through which to determine a useful correlation between them and the state of the field, which means that the Quarterly's relationship to Texas women's history is still in progress.”
“Regionalism: Texas History is Southwestern History,” Light Townsend Cummins, Guy M. Bryan Professor of History, Emeritus, at Austin College. He is the author of overa dozen books dealing with the history of Texas and has served as the official State Historianof Texas. “Nonetheless, an important vestige of the Quarterly remaining from prior to World War II still influences the basic structural character of Texas history. Namely, Texas history is not a state-based history, but instead still retains a larger focus that carries its historical study outside its geographical boundaries.”
“Borderlands History in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,” Omar Valerio-Jiménez, Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “Over the last three decades, the Quarterly has published more essays on non-elite borderlands populations than in previous decades. The experiences of Mexican Texans have been explored by various authors. While these essays were not necessarily framed as borderlands studies, they did touch on various themes in the field, including the diverse cultural influences on identity formation, resistance to state-centered practices, and civil rights struggles that transformed local concerns into national policy…. The journal might embrace the strategy of its earliest editors by encouraging graduate students and junior faculty to publish in its pages. Embracing such an approach might lead to more scholarship on environmental concerns, marginalized racial and ethnic groups, and women in the journal's future issues.”
“Tejano History in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,” Arnoldo De León, Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Angelo State University. “Today, Tejano history holds a secure and respected place in the larger study of Texas history. Credit for that standing and warranted recognition is owed to many supporters, believers, and enthusiasts. Not the least of these has been the Southwestern Historical Quarterly…. Collectively, the articles debunked entrenched stereotypes found in the primary sources, among the larger citizenry, and even within the ranks of influential (mainstream) historians. The journal's reputation as the premier academic periodical in Texas studies bolstered authors' standing in the academy and helped advance their professional careers.”
“Coming to Terms with the Texas Revolution in the Pages of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,” James S. Crisp, Professor Emeritus of History at North Carolina State University, has been researching and writing about the era of the Texas Revolution for more than fifty years. “By the twenty-first century, historians Gregg Cantrell and F. Todd Smith could look back in the pages of the Quarterly at their predecessors' efforts to grasp the realities of the Texas Revolution with both caustic criticism and genuine understanding—seeing the blinders as well as the wisdom of hindsight that had produced the various versions of the history of Texas that have informed (and misinformed) its citizens for almost two centuries. If there is any single theme uniting the views of our present generation of scholars, it is an insistence on inclusivity—a determination that no aspect or branch of humanity should be ignored as we tell the whole story of Texas.”
Vol 124, no 1, July 2020
“‘Our Local Board of Health Asserts that No Epidemic of Any Kind Exists in San Antonio’: State vs. Local Expertise in the 1903 Yellow Fever Quarantine,” Ana Luisa Martínez-Catsum, Associate Professor of History, UT Permian Basin. “Not only did State Health Officer George R. Tabor differ with the San Antonio Board of Health and physicians like Amos Graves Sr. over diagnosis, but his view also influenced the economic interests he believed were worth protecting. While he believed a quarantine was necessary to provide consistent guidelines to the state’s railroads, San Antonio locals saw an unneeded deterrent to tourists, who were already a significant aspect of the city’s economy….As the recent coronavirus pandemic has shown, striking a balance between public health measures and economic interests remains difficult and contentious.”
“The Catholic Church in the Diocese of Galveston-Houston and Desegregation, 1945–1984,” Mark Newman, Reader in History, University of Edinburgh. The essay examines “a diocese that by the mid-1960s had a greater black Catholic population (61,961) than even the Archdiocese of New Orleans (55,000) in neighboring Louisiana, the South’s most Catholic state.”
“Rebuilding the Mayfield Mercantile Company: Architecture and Commerce in Sonora, Texas, c. 1900,” Richard B. Wright, Associate Professor of Art History, Texas A&M International University. “Although the town [of Sonora] was isolated, the effects of mass production transformed retailing in this small county seat on the Edwards Plateau. It seems clear that practically no place in the United States remained unchanged.”
Vol 124, no 2, October 2020
“Alonso S. Perales: In Defense of My People,” Emilio Zamora, Professor of History, UT Austin, and president of the TSHA 2019-2020. This paper is about a co-founder of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), who was also a lawyer, activist, and diplomat. The author argues that Perales is an example of important figures who have been excluded from Texas history.
“Post–World War II Tejano Farm Labor: A Remembrance,” Arnaldo de León, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History, Angelo State University. The “remembrance” here is personal, as the author describes his mostly positive experience growing up in a family of field laborers on the Chapman Ranch in Nueces County, a “safe, stable, comforting, nurturing, and to some extent, a place that served well as a salutary setting for decent family upbringings.” He does so, in part, to contrast his experience with that of migrant workers. “By no means was life on small farms as wretched as that for migrant workers toiling for distant corporate bosses; however, hardships there still posed challenges that called for sacrifice and for incessant resolve to resist them.”
“‘I Walked from Dallas, I Walked to Wichita Falls’: Blind Lemon Jefferson's Enduring Ramble,” Joe W. Specht, director of the Jay-Rollins Library at McMurry University. Jefferson, a Black blues and gospel singer and musician, was extremely popular in the 1920s. This essay covers his career in colorful, straightforward detail.
“The Lynching of Mary Jackson in Harrison County, Texas, 1912,” Haley Brown, a graduate student in history at UNT. This paper cites the lynching of Mary Jackson as “a racially motivated crime more than one concerned with the gender norms of the period. One might presume that female victims would be spared by lynch mobs, but as the case of Jackson…shows, Black women of the era were Black first and women second.”
Vol 124, no 3, January 2021
“Where the Cult is in the Hands of the People’: Enlightened Catholicism and Colonization on the Texas Frontier,” Brian Stauffer, Ph.D., CA, is translator and curator of the Spanish Collection at the Texas General Land Office. “Against the predominant narrative of decline, this article argues that religious ideas—and mostly those belonging to the Catholic tradition—exerted a strong influence on the colonization process and helped shape northern Mexican federalism more broadly. In fact, for a variety of influential clerics and colonization boosters, the settlement of Texas was as much a religious project as a political or economic one because it offered an opportunity to promote new kinds of religious communities at the edge of the emerging Mexican nation, in dynamic contraposition to, or in creative dialogue with, religious communities in the United States.”
“In the Trenches of World War I-Era Texas: Letters from Black Railroaders to the United States Railroad Administration,” Theresa A. Case, Professor of History, UH-Downtown. The paper shows how Black railroad workers “risked their relatively stable positions and their personal safety during a time of heightened White racial violence and intimidation to confront company and government officials with an explicit case for equality and dignity.”
“The Marching Priest: The Civil Rights and Labor Activism of Father Sherrill Smith during the 1950s and 1960s,” Mark Newman, Reader in History, University of Edinburgh. This is the story of Fr. Smith, the assistant pastor of St. Joseph Church in San Antonio, “became the first Catholic priest based in the South to participate in a direct-action civil rights protest when he joined the stand-ins at San Antonio's Majestic Theater, which confined African American customers to an upstairs balcony.”
Vol 124, no 4, April 2021
“The Karankawa-Spanish War from 1778 to 1789: Attempted Genocide and Karankawa Power,” Tim Seiter, Ph.D. student in history, SMU. A series of Karankawa attacks on Spaniard triggered a decade of complex and violent interactions, culminating in a struggle between the Karankawa leader Joseph María and the Spanish Governor Cabello. A very detailed study.
“German Midwives of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Texas: Women's Work, Culture, and Fighting ‘Death in the Room’,” Kathleen A. Huston, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist. “…[O]ne of the most frequent, and yet, unexamined of those [physical] dangers was when a woman gave birth. Perhaps this then was the most important work of all in early Texas: a woman's fight for her own and her child's survival in childbirth and the vital work of the midwife beside her battling ‘death in the room’.”
“‘Sail Ho!’: A Civil War Surgeon and the Texas Blockade,” Walter E. Wilson, former U.S. Navy Captain and intelligence officer. “[The surgeon’s] letter offers fresh insight into the personal impact of ineffective military strategies, corruption, death, and infectious diseases that remain relevant in more modern times.”
Vol 123, no 1, July 2019
“The Murder of Conrad Caspar Rordorf: Art, Violence, and Intrigue on the Texas Frontier,” William C. Kearney, an independent historian, novelist, and rancher in Colorado with a Ph.D. in history from UT Austin. “The effects of Rordorf’s murder extended beyond art, however. The circumstances of his death inflamed a growing anti-immigrant (specifically anti-German) sentiment among a faction of the Texas political establishment, which found a vociferous advocate in James Mayfield, ex-secretary of state of the Republic of Texas during the Lamar administration, former legislator, lawyer, and land speculator.”
“When Was the Republic of Texas No More?: Revisiting the Annexation of Texas,” Keith J. Volanto, Professor of History, Collin College; and Gene Preuss, Associate Professor of History, UH-Downtown. “For all its drama, this creation tale of Texas statehood contains the seeds of a glaring misconception that qualifies as historical myth: the idea that the famous “annexation ceremony,” as it is often labeled, signified an actual transfer of sovereignty from the Republic of Texas to the United States. This myth has persisted in spite of the fact that the Republic ended almost two months prior, on December 29, 1845, when the United States government formally annexed Texas.”
“Speed Attractions: Urban Mobility and Automotive Spectacle in Pre-World War I Amarillo,” Brian M. Ingrassia, Assistant Professor of History, West Texas A&M. “While Amarillo’s early-1900s development typified America’s Progressive Era in many ways—including automobiles’ essential role in both urban growth and spectacle—in other ways it was atypical insofar as Amarilloans adopted cars even more quickly and thoroughly than people in many larger or older U.S. cities.”
“A Forgotten Early Account of the Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas: P’s Letter to the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, August 1863,” Hershel Parker, a short essay of five pages, elaborating on new sources related to the hanging of forty-one suspected Unionists who opposed conscription into the Confederate Army. Hershel Parker was finalist for Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for the first volume his biography of Herman Melville.
Vol 123, no 2, October 2019
“The Armstrong Ranch: Establishing and Preserving a Legacy,” Sarita A. Hixon, co-manager of the famed Armstrong Ranch, which has been in her family for 150 years. “My mother [Anne Armstrong] soon rose through the ranks of state-level politics in the 1960s, becoming Republican national committeewoman from Texas and finally the first woman co-chair of the Republican National Committee in 1971. (Bob Dole was the other co-chair.) She was appointed counselor to the president by Richard Nixon and continued serving in this position under President Gerald Ford after Nixon’s resignation. When President Ford called late in 1975 and asked her to serve as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, she accepted. She did a terrific job, and she and my father had the time of their lives.”
“The Last Populist: Populism, Modernity, and the Consequential Career of Henry Lewis Bentley (1847–1933),” Gregg Cantrell, Lowe Chair in Texas History at TCU. He is the biographer of Stephen F. Austin, and served as TSHA president, 2015-2016. “This article examines the life and career of one of the original Populists in an attempt to refresh modern memories about the origins of the term and to further refine our understanding of what Populism, in its original incarnation, was all about. Henry Lewis Bentley (1847–1933) is almost entirely forgotten today, but he was one of the principal leaders of the People’s Party both in Texas and nationally. Moreover, a close study of his long and fascinating career not only reveals much about the true nature of 1890s Populism but provides important hints about the roots of our own era’s politics, though not in the ways that those who invoke the term today might expect.”
“The Development of TCU Football and the Construction of TCU Stadium: Building Community and Establishing Legitimacy, 1896–1930,” Benjamin Downs, Assistant Professor of Sports History, Ball State University; Patricia Tutka, Assistant Professor of Sport and Recreation Management, Niagara University; Chad Seigried, Professor of Sport Management, LSU; and Cameron Dean, M.S., a sales associate in Louisiana. “This article describes the history of the development of TCU Stadium, which has been known as Amon G. Carter Stadium since 1951, and other football venues at Texas Christian University from 1896 to 1930. The stadium emerged because the university’s officials wished to persuade potential students, fans, donors, and business interests that TCU was an important, legitimate institution, comparable to (if not better than) other universities in the United States, especially its peers in Texas. Moreover, the structure provided a focal point for the TCU community and Fort Worth.”
Vol 123, no 3, January 2020
“Political Hippies and Hip Politicos: Counterculture Alliance and Cultural Radicalism in 1960s Austin, Texas,” John Moretta, Ph.D., Rice University, Professor of History, Houston Community College. “However, [the Austin] scene did not come out of nowhere; it was built on a foundation largely established in the 1960s.3 It was during that decade that the blend of progressive politics and cultural experimentation that still makes Austin ‘weird’ was defined on the campus of the University of Texas (UT), the result of the unlikely alliance of hippies and New Left politicos. UT's hip/radical coalition transcended the antagonisms between these two groups evident in countercultural centers such as the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City and forged an enduring identity for Texas's capital city.”
“Taming the East Texas "Black Giant”: Ernest O. Thompson and Illusions of Independence, 1930–1935,” Matthew Ware Coulter, Ph.D., Professor of History, Collin College. The term “Black Giant” refers to the oil industry. “The East Texas oil field formed the epicenter of the ‘wild burst,’ and it affected the entire nation. A complex and coordinated effort between the national government and oil-producing states eventually established a framework to bring regulation and stability to petroleum operations in East Texas, and in building the new system Thompson probably played a more important role than any other individual.”
“‘A Chicken for Breakfast at the Expense of Mr. Rebel’: The Journal of Sergeant Nelson Howard, Company E, 13th Maine Infantry on the Texas Coast, 1863–1864,” Jerry Thompson, Regents and Piper Professor, Texas A&M International University, and a specialist on the American Southwest and the Civil War, and president of the TSHA in 2001. “What makes Sergeant Howard unique is that he kept a journal that survives today at the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University. Although Howard's journal only covers three months of the war from late November 1863 until late February 1864, it is a rare and unique window into the activities of the Federals on the Texas coast, their camp life, hardships, and combat experiences. More significantly, it details the capture of Fort Esperanza, a formidable earthen Confederate fortress guarding Cavallo Pass and Matagorda Bay.”
Vol 123, no 4, April 2020
“Refuting History Fables: Collective Memories, Mexican Texans, and Texas History,” Omar Valerio-Jiménez, Associate Professor of History, UT San Antonio, specializes in the analysis of the ways “memories of the U.S.-Mexican War have shaped Mexican-American civil rights struggles, writing, oral discourse, and public rituals.” This essay “explores early efforts to challenge the omissions and negative characterizations of Tejanos in the state’s history and in public school textbooks. Several intellectuals and organizations engaged in these efforts during the 1930s, when the economic stress of the Great Depression increased xenophobia. Anti-immigrant sentiment was directed at ethnic Mexicans in general as Anglo Americans failed to distinguish between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants.”
“A Failed Venture in the Nueces Strip: Misconceptions and Mismanagement of the Beales Rio Grande Colony, 1832–1836,” Kyle B. Carpenter, Ph.D. candidate, SMU. “Historians of Mexican Texas rarely study the empresario grants that failed. Scholars generally relegate the unfulfilled contracts that Mexico awarded to land agents to populate its northern territories to footnotes or brief paragraphs, while the success stories continue to produce books and articles…. The successful grants leave a clearly tangible significance while the failures do not. What valuable takeaways can we glean from a deep analysis of the Beales venture’s demise?”
“Jim Crow and Freedom of Expression in Post-World War II East Texas: The Legal Battle to Show Pinky in Marshall, 1950,” David Lacy, attorney, law professor, doctoral candidate UNT. The paper examines the legal issues over the showing of the film Pinky, “released by Twentieth-Century Fox and directed by Elia Kazan, focused on the theme of racial ‘passing’ by featuring a light-skinned African American woman, Pinky, who ‘passed’ as white.”
Vol 122, no 1, July 2018
“The Cabiness Family Lynching: Race, War, and Memory in Walker County, Texas,” Jeffrey Littlejohn, Professor of History and co-chair of diversity committee, Sam Houston State University; Charles H. Ford, Professor of History, Norfolk State University, shared scholarship with Jeffrey Littlejohn on school desegregation and civil rights struggles in Virginia; Jami Horne, student, SHSU; Briana Weaver, SHSU graduate and member of the doctoral program in history at the University of Alabama. “By tracing the Cabiness family story back to its origins in Texas, this article shows that the 1918 lynching was not an aberration, but actually fit into a much larger story of racial violence that shaped the Lone Star State between 1845 and 1920.”
“‘The Most Turbulent and Most Traumatic Years in Recent Mexican-American History’: Police Violence and the Civil Rights Struggle in 1970s Texas,” Brent M.S. Campney, Associate Professor of History, UT Rio Grande Valley. “This study builds upon a flurry of scholarship focused on racist (primarily mob) violence against Mexican Americans—indeed, persons of Mexican descent broadly—in the American Southwest since 1848.”
“War Is a Great Evil”: Robert E. Lee in the War with Mexico,” Alan Guelzo, Henry R. Luce Professor of History, Gettysburg College. “Lee finally concluded that the ‘war is a great evil. It brings much individual as well as national suffering. The sight of every battle field has made my heart bleed.’ And he had lost whatever taste he had briefly acquired for more conquests.”
Vol 122, no 2, October 2018
“‘A Sea of Blood and Smoking Ruin’: Reflections on Sam Houston and Slavery,” Randolph A. Campbell, Ph.D., University of Virginia, Regents Professor, UNT, eminent scholar of Texas history, and former chief historian of the TSHA. “He had less moral clarity on slavery than we have now, and less than many people had in the mid-nineteenth century, but he knew that the issue could lead to secession and war and the destruction of his beloved Texas….So, should Sam Houston have abandoned the only life that he knew and his efforts to prevent a civil war in order to cleanse himself of the sin of slavery? Obviously the answer to that question is an individual matter. However, everyone should remember while answering it that we today have had more than a century and a half to enhance our moral sensibilities.”
“The Rise and Fall of Ignacio Perez Sr. and Jr., Patriarchs of the Most Powerful Family in Early Nineteenth-Century Texas,” Brady Folsom, adjunct professor of history, UT Arlington. “Following the Texas Revolution, Anglo Texans drastically transformed Texas politics in ways that marginalized Tejano elites. These changes also made it easier for Anglo Americans to use the legal system and violence to divest Tejanos of their property. Nowhere was this change more evident than in the fall of the Pérez family from power.”
“Of Documents and Archives: The First Modern Census of Texas,” Samuel Abell, a history graduate of Texas Tech and an associate of Llano Partners, Ltd., a ranching and real estate firm in Amarillo; and G. Douglas Inglis, retired director of the Texas Tech University Center in Seville, Spain. “The Texas census…was ordered as a piece of an empire wide survey but became a part of the larger Spanish policy to develop the imperial frontiers of the empire to secure them against the threat of Native American and European rivals.”
Vol 122, no 3, January 2019
“‘The Best Bargain . . . Ever Received’: The 1968 Commission on Civil Rights Hearing in San Antonio, Texas,” Ignacio Garcia, Professor of Western and Latino History at Brigham Young University. “Although mostly forgotten now, the hearing proved important because it came at a time when Mexican American activism was transitioning from moderate to militant; highlighted the issues that affected the barrios…as no other event had before; provided a forum for experts, educators, and politicians to speak about the history of anti-Mexican discrimination in the Southwest; and allowed the grievances of ordinary Mexican Americans to be heard in their own voices.”
“Por la Raza, Para la Raza: Jovita Idar and Progressive-Era Mexicana Maternalism along the Texas–Mexico Border,” Elizabeth Garner Masarik, a doctoral student in history at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and a Fellow at the university’s Humanities Institute and Gender Institute. “Jovita Idar stood firm in the doorway, hands gripping the frame on either side. Her tall form and long skirt shielded the printing presses behind her. Mounted Texas Rangers, or ranches as Tejanos and people of Mexican heritage derogatorily called them in 1914 Laredo, slowed their horses until they stopped mere feet in front of her. The Rangers were there on orders from the U.S. government to shut down the Spanish-language newspaper, El Progreso.”
“Dr. Gertrude Helmecke: A Young German American Woman's Life in Denton Texas, 1916–1917,” Steven M. Collins, a US Army veteran and a doctoral student at UNT. “In 1917, German Americans often preferred to be Germans first and Americans second. However, American patriotism—and suspicion of ‘hyphenism’—once war between Germany and the United States seemed likely challenged this way of being. Gertrude's letters are an example of the resulting frustration that many German Americans experienced.”
Vol 122, no 4, April 2019
“Un-Southern”: Buffalo Bill, the Texas State Centennial, and Texas’s Western Turn,” Jacob W. Olmstead, Ph.D, TCU, Curator of Historic Sites for the Church of Latter Day Saints. “On February 22, 1936, Centennial officials announced that a bronze replica of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s The Scout, a sculpture of Colonel William F. Cody, also known as Buffalo Bill, would greet visitors at the entrance of the new Hall of Fine Arts on the Centennial grounds…. Several Dallas-based Confederate commemorative groups, believing that Buffalo Bill served during the Civil War as a Union spy, swiftly denounced the decision. Such sectional outcries stood in stark contrast to the progressive and exceptional state that Texas Centennial planners hoped to introduce to Americans during the celebration.”
“Henry Schuhl: The Wayward Rabbi of Dallas’s Temple Emanu-El,” Richard F. Selcer, professor or adjunct at community colleges and universities, author of numerous books, with a Ph.D. from TCU. “He was the golden boy of Cincinnati’s Jewish community, then he came to Dallas and turned the staid Temple Emanu-El on its ear. During his lifetime he was a religious seeker, a politician, a labor leader, a con man, and a fugitive from justice in addition to being a distinguished rabbi. He caused one of the great religious scandals of the nineteenth century, earning him comparisons to a notable contemporary, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the famed Brooklyn clergyman.”
“Upon No Account Were They to Undertake an Invasion of Mexico”: American Troops and the Third Battle of Ciudad Juárez, June 1919,” John A. Hamilton, retired US Army officer, independent historian, with an MA from USC. “Although Madero was trying to negotiate a peaceful federal surrender, Orozco and Villa ignored that approach and attacked. The revolutionaries tried to keep from firing into El Paso, but bullets crossed the border into the city. However, hundreds of El Paso citizens put themselves in harm’s way when they flocked to the border to watch the battle from the tops of buildings and railroad cars.”
The split between the traditional and academic factions of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly (and within the Texas State Historical Association as a whole) has led to the formation of a new historical association in the state and, more recently, to the founding of a new academic publication, The Journal of Texas History (JTxH).
A group of scholars and lay historians formed a new organization in early 2024, The Alliance for Texas History, (ATxH) "to advance inclusive, accurate historical accounts and public discussions about the people, events, and cultures that have shaped Texas's past and present."
Now with more than 500 members, the ATxH will publish the new journal with a tentative target date of May 2025.
Here is the official rationale for establishing the new journal:
"Texas’s population has doubled over the past forty years, yet the number of scholarly journals devoted to the state’s history has remained roughly the same. In the meantime, Texas has grown more diverse, and whole new fields and methodologies have emerged in the historical profession. We believe, then, that there is room—and a real need—for another journal to tell the many stories of Texas and Texans. We are proud to join with our colleagues at other historical organizations in telling those stories."
Previously, on January 16, 2024, the longtime chief historian of the organization, UT Austin Professor Walter Buenger, resigned not only as chief historian but from his lifetime membership on the board. He did so in an emphatic manner:
"Simply put, I can no longer identify with an association that has so clearly left behind long agreed upon principles and habits of good governance and abandoned the wholehearted pursuit of top-quality, inclusive, honest, and accurate history."
TSHA no longer lists the position of chief historian. Instead, the new director of publications, Dr. Richard B. McCaslin, a former professor of history at the University of North Texas, is likely fulfilling that role as well.
Even before these recent events, a group of academic historians had begun efforts to establish a new association. So far, it appears to be a generally likeminded group, most of them academicians who seek to develop a new historical journal along with a significant cohort of members with ties to museums, libraries, and historical associations. At this point, sponsorships and affiliations are unspecified. As of July 11, 2024, the group had 509 dues paying members.
NOTE: ATxH has issued a call for papers for is first annual conference to be held at Texas State University in San Marcos, May 15-17, 2025.
The ultimate break raises the important question of how the leadership of UT Austin will react. Buenger and the TSHA had both been affiliated with the university, which resumed its involvement with TSHA back in 2015. At the time, UT Austin endowed a chair in Texas history, filled by Buenger. According to the website of the UT Austin history department, he continues to hold the position of Foundation Chair in Texas History.
The late UT Austin President Bill Powers said in 2015 that Buenger's role was to "serve as the organization’s chief historian, responsible for working to ensure the highest academic standards for its programming and publications, which include the iconic Texas Almanac, The Handbook of Texas and The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, all of which are constantly updated and publicly accessible online. "
The university also guaranteed "space on campus for the TSHA staff, and the institutions will collaborate on many educational and outreach initiatives, such as Texas History Day, Junior Historians of Texas, and History Awareness workshops for Texas educators. "
The TSHA president at the time, Lynn Denton, lauded the development. "Our affiliation with The University of Texas provides the ideal combination of academic excellence and global reach to reinforce a commitment to the preservation, promotion and protection of Texas history.”
The TSHA had always been housed on a university campus since its original home in Garrison Hall at UT Austin in 1897. In 1971, it moved to the Barker Texas History Center in Sid Richardson Hall. Then, from 2007 to 2015, the University of North Texas, with strong leadership from the late Professor Randolph "Mike" Campbell, provided space for the organization.
But as of this moment, the TSHA lists its address as a building on Lake Austin Boulevard, three and a half miles from the center of the UT Austin campus. This in itself is probably not significant, given that the offices of the UT Press are also located at that site. Still, one must wonder what will happen to the UT Austin affiliation, renewed more than eight years ago through the efforts of former Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and others. UT's current financial contribution to the TSHA is estimated to be about $250,000. If the UT Austin support proves unsustainable (politically or economically), is there another university that will now work with TSHA?
Below are previous posts on this site from 2023 on this unfortunate development for the state of Texas and for its history.
The war over Texas history, discussed in some detail below, might not be over but the conservative faction led by retired oilman J. P. Bryan won what could prove to be the decisive battle in late August when a mediation resulted in the resignation of the president and secretary of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). Both were members of the "academic" group involved in the conflict, while Bryan represents the "non-academic" side. He continues to serve as the organization's executive director, a position that he appears to be using to reshape the TSHA.
Bryan had sued the board president in May, alleging that she and others had violated TSHA bylaws requiring that academics and non-academics have equal representation on the board. The conservatives argued that the definition of an "academic" should include holders of masters degrees who have taught in high school or college. The president and other board members defined an academic as a Ph.D. instructor or professor in a college or university.
The suit was set for trial on September 11. The mediation agreement was announced on August 27, and on September 5, Bryan's attorney confirmed a final settlement.
"I think we completely achieved everything we wanted," Bryan said, according to the Galveston News. And indeed that seems to be the case. The defendants and their attorneys have not commented on the result.
The new president of the TSHA is appeals court justice Ken Wise, a non-academic who was the board vice-president and would have become president anyway next year. A board member elected as a non-academic member at the contentious March 2023 annual meeting will remain on the board but be classified as an academic member because she has a masters degree and has taught as an adjunct at a community college. Her new designation evidently sets in place definitions for academic and non-academic members going forward.
The former president and secretary, both academic members, will be replaced by non-academic members. A currently vacant place will also be filled with a non-academic member. In response to these changes, the managing editor of the TSHA resigned., and a new director of publications, an academic, is in place. So at some point in the relatively near future the board should be balanced in a manner that Bryan has championed, but in what ways will the editorial decision-making be different? Bryan has repeatedly decried the "preferred narrative" he ascribes to academics, "one that demeans the Anglo efforts in settling the western part of the United States for the purpose of spreading freedoms for all. They have a whole different narrative to describe the event.”
“How this whole thing goes will determine the future of the way the history of Texas is written — that’s what it’s all about," he has said.. But who will write that history? The SHQ is a well-known academic historical quarterly, serving as the foremost repository of historical essays and books reviews on Texas history since 1897. In other words, the SHQ has a brand, something Texans should appreciate. That brand is different from, say, many books the TSHA Press publishes, some of which have a popular cast. And the famous Handbook of Texas has yet another brand, a hybrid publication with thousands of entries on every aspect of Texas history. These entries range from older contributions that retain a traditional view of people and events to newer ones that reflect the current interest about the importance of race and gender issues in Texas history. The Almanac of Texas History has yet another brand, a biannual reference publication that is closer to an encyclopedia than it is to an academic journal.
In fact, as noted below, even the SHQ features essays on traditional topics, sometimes written by non-academic historians. Please see A Statistical Summary of SHQ Articles, July 2018--July 2023, farther down.
The statistical summary mentioned above does not seem to justify the conclusion that the SHQ is in fact as slanted toward progressive views as some critics believe. If the new direction of the SHQ involves a dramatic shift away from essays that are controversial or critical of traditionalist views of Texas history and becomes a somewhat more scholarly, right-wing version of Texas Highways magazine (an undeniably excellent publication, but for a lay audience), then the SHQ will lose its brand, the state will find itself with no high-profile historical publication, and serious scholars in Texas and elsewhere will leave the brand in the dust. But, without question, there should be space in the quarterly for scholarly articles with a thoughtful conservative perspective, offering a more tangible balance for many mainstream readers. How Bryan and others can find such contributors and vet their submissions is another issue he faces.
What is most unfortunate about the conflicts of recent years is that their origins might be more rhetorical than substantive. Beginning in 2021, widely distributed comments about the Alamo and and its meaning in Texas and American history, some of them related to the controversial book Forget the Alamo, have elevated contentiousness and undermined respect for the inherent complexity of historical study. The actual content of the SHQ , then, has come to mean less than the emotions invested in the conflict.
HERE IS THE ORIGINAL POST ON THE TSHA CONTROVERSY:
It is July 2023, and the venerable Southwestern Historical Quarterly, the publication of record for Texas history since 1897, is at the center of a bitter legal and ideological battle over its future.
On one side is J.P. Bryan, a wealthy Texan who can claim kinship with nineteenth century empresario Stephen F. Austin. On the other side are current and past presidents of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), which publishes the quarterly, and most academic supporters and contributors.
Bryan claims broad public support for "traditionalist" Texas history that champions early Texans as pioneers dedicated to freedom and westward expansion, the spearhead of Manifest Destiny. Supporters of this type of history generally subscribe to the idea of "Texas Exceptionalism," a commitment not only to the undeniably colorful, dramatic, and consequential history of the state but also to a positive moral inheritance from the state's early leaders.
The academic historians and their supporters argue that the quarterly has evolved over more than a century to recognize groups previously not represented in the journal's pages--Tejanos, Latinos, Blacks, and women. The traditionalists often see this greater inclusion, especially as presented in a "progressive" context, as a threat and, worse, as a repudiation of their ancestors and rightful heritage.
The battle over the future of the quarterly has intensified in the last five years. Currently, Bryan has filed a lawsuit that essentially prevents the board of the TSHA from meeting. The suit is his response to what he claims is an over-representation of academics on the board, which he sees as a violation of TSHA bylaws.
Adding to the controversy and confusion is that Bryan was appointed to an administrative role as executive director, but the board disagrees on whether his appointment was on an interim basis or for a longer term. Before Bryan filed his suit, the board seemed bent on removing him for possibly exceeding his role. Since March, he has been taking some unilateral actions even as the board is unable to act as a result of his suit.
As a recent contributor to the quarterly and as a non-academic, I was extremely curious about the types of articles that have appeared in the quarterly over the last five years. Although I am a member of TSHA and read the quarterly, I did not have a firm picture in my mind regarding the full range of subject matter and the qualifications of all contributors during that time. Like most readers, I chose what appeared to be interesting to me at the moment and did not read other material.
In an effort to answer my own questions about the quarterly's content, I reviewed all 75 articles published between July 2018 and July 2023. No, I do not claim to have read all of them in detail, but I have tried to identify the basic thrust of each and provide brief descriptions, usually in the form of direct quotes form the articles themselves.
The hope is that, with the information below, some interested parties and readers might be able to form a more evidence-based view regarding the ideological and historiographical emphases in the quarterly. My own view is that there has been a definite shift away from 19th century topics, given the persistent attention the period received prior to the 1970s; and with the increased interest in modern (and more controversial) issues, the quarterly has responded appropriately but not to the point of neglecting other periods. Most if not all of the essays dealing with issues of race, ethnicity, and gender were remarkably--and thankfully--free of postmodern jargon and sweeping ideological pronouncements. The word eclectic comes to mind in describing the overall impression left after reviewing the essays.
A Statistical Summary of SHQ Articles, July 2018--July 2023
Please note that I do not have data for the number of submissions by each author category listed below. Without this information, I cannot calculate whether the acceptance rate of articles from authors in a given category, (e.g., Latinos), is high or low in relation to the acceptance rates from authors in the other categories. Given the reputation of the SHQ as a scholarly journal, it is likely, however, that a very large percentage of submissions come from academics with Ph.D.'s.
Articles emphasizing significant race, ethnicity, and gender issues, 26, or 34.7%*
Authors, men, 66, or 79.5% (there were more authors than articles because a few articles had multiple authors)
Authors, women, 17, or 20.5%
Authors, Latino, 13, or 15.7%
Authors, Black, 1, or 1.2%
Authors, Academics with Ph.D., 50, or 60.2%
Authors, Ph.D., independent scholars, 12, or 14.5%
Authors, Graduate students, 7, or 8.4%
Authors, lay or independent scholars, no Ph.D., 14, or 16.9%
Total percentage of articles by non-academic historians, 33, or 39.8%
Percentage of articles by century of topic: 16th century, 1; 18th century, 2; 19th century, 28; 20th century, 36; 21st century, 8.
*13 of these essays, or 50.0%, focus on Black history; 9 of these articles, or 34.6%, focus on the experiences of Latinos and Tejanos; 3 focus on women in Texas history, or 12.5%, not counting 2 other essays that are firsthand, positive reminiscences of women raised on Texas ranches; 1, or 3.9%, focuses on internecine warfare between the Spanish and Indigenous people. A total of 3 of the above essays are about the lynchings of Blacks or Unionists. Two additional essays were on Jewish history in the state. All of these article titles are in boldface within the lengthy section below.
Brief Summaries of 75 Essays in SHQ, July 2018--July 2023.
NOTE: This is a very long section of 7,672 words.
Volumes are listed with the most recent first. Within each volume, the quarterly issues are listed in chronological order. The professional titles and occupations listed for authors were those in effect at the time of publication.
Vol 127, no 1, July 2023
“‘It Is Hard to Tell Who Is Who and What is What’: An Introduction to the Southwestern Historical Quarterly's Special Issue on Greater Reconstruction in the Southwestern Borderlands,” Elliott West, Alumni Distinguished Professor of American History, University of Arkansas. “The Greater Reconstruction would ask us to picture the roughly three decades after the mid-1840s as a drama with two leading actors, the Civil War and expansion, and their aftermath, playing roughly equal roles in the same crucial transition in national life. The two developments followed their own distinct courses and deserve their own telling, but they were also in frequent conversation and interaction. Neither can be understood without the other, and only when we bring them together and give them roughly equal attention will the full national story begin to come truly into focus.”
“The Brittle West: Secession and Separatism in the Southwest Borderlands during the Civil War Era,” Kevin Waite. He is an associate professor of history at Durham University (UK) and the author of West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (University of North Carolina Press, 2021). “To be sure, the Civil War in the Far West has grown into a flourishing subfield, with a proliferation of books, conferences, and special issues, including the one in which this essay appears. But the majority of these studies concern the war years, rather than the political crises that triggered the shooting. And while a number of excellent state and territorial histories of the West examine the secession crisis in detail, rarely do they consider the collective power of disunionism, which spilled across territorial and state lines to imperil the entire southern half of the country.”
“How Do Markets Trump Warfare? On the Wartime Business of Confederate Supplier Charles Stillman,” David Montejano, Professor Emeritus of Ethnic Studies and History at the University of California, Berkeley. “How did markets supersede war? How did enemies trade with one another? The short answer is through the opportunistic and ostensibly treasonous behavior of exporting and importing merchants, with the critical assistance of neutral foreign intermediaries. Stillman was an exporting merchant of Texas cotton, the Sprague-Reynolds group a receiving merchant, and San Román and a number of Mexican and European merchants the indispensable intermediaries. Mexico provided the neutral space, and the British-flagged merchant marine the neutral vessels.”
“‘Disgraceful in the Extreme from Beginning to End’: The January 1866 Filibustering Raid on Bagdad, Mexico,” Jerry Thompson, Regents and Piper Professor of History at Texas A&M International University in Laredo. “In the final analysis, General [Godfrey] Weitzel perhaps put it best: ‘The whole affair was disgraceful in the extreme from beginning to end.’ [Secretary of State William H.] Seward later told Romero that ‘the capture of Bagdad, far from being a legitimate operation of a belligerent power, or in the interest of a belligerent powers is stated to have been simply a buccaneering scheme.’ As far as Seward was concerned, ‘The sole objective of the expedition seems to have been the pillaging of the town.’”
“Burrill Daniel's Claim: A Freedom Seeker in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands, 1865–1870,” Alice Baumgartner, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern California and the author of South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War (Basic Books, 2020). “Some petitioners [freedmen with claims related to coercive employment] were like Burrill Daniel, African Americans whose enslavers had fled the United States to avoid complying with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment. Others were Indigenous peoples, Chinese coolies, indentured servants, and debt peons who sought to free themselves from coercive labor practices that were not, strictly speaking, chattel slavery. Their claims to freedom under the Thirteenth Amendment and its enabling legislation were significant.”
Vol 126, no 1, July 2022
“Governors, Regents, and New Deal Liberalism: Student Activism at the University of Texas at Austin, 1917–1945,” John Moretta, Ph.D., Rice University, is the author of several books and articles on both Texas and United States history. “Inextricably linked and driving much of the city’s exceptionalism, especially when compared to other southern university towns, were the University of Texas’s students, who, beginning in the early twentieth century through World War II, became the vanguard for sociocultural and political change in the state and institutional reform on their campus.”
“The Treason Case of Erasmo Seguín: A Story of Texas’s First War of Independence,” Jesús F. de la Teja, Regents’ Professor of History and University Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Texas State University, and TSHA president 2007-2008. “It is not surprising, then, that even as they put aside their past differences and enmity to start rebuilding both their personal fortunes and those of their homeland, men such as Veramendi, Navarro, and Seguín chose the evolving federalist ideology as best suited to their province’s fortunes.”
“In Memoriam,” Shirley Caldwell, president of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) for 2002–03, passed away in early June 2021. We regret our delay in memorializing her life and work on behalf of TSHA and other historical organizations in the state. Aside from her presidency, she was chair of TSHA’s development committee, and she and her husband, Clifton, made several generous donations to the organization. She also contributed articles to The Handbook of Texas.
Vol 126, no 2, October 2022
“Cold Beer, Fried Chicken, Communication, and History,” Patrick Cox, Ph.D., president TSHA 2021-2022, author or editor of ten books and hundreds of articles on American and Texas history. “As historians, we must remove the blindfolds and rise to the challenge of effectively and accurately communicating our history to present and future generations. History should not be written or communicated as a preordained and self-justifying myth or as an historical narrative written from the viewpoint of a single group of people. We must ask the difficult questions and seek the ignored, overlooked, and discounted voices and experiences from our past.”
“Land, Race, and the Long Road to the Córdova Rebellion in East Texas, 1826–1839,” Daniel Glenn, Associate Professor of History, St. Edward’s University. “Despite its failure, however, the Córdova Rebellion had a lasting influence on the development of Texas. The incident confirmed Anglo Texans' worst fears about the Tejanos and Indians living amongst them: that they hated the Anglos and, whatever they might say to the contrary, were waiting for the right opportunity to strike.”
“‘Perdió Peleando’: An Examination of Mexican Principles of War in the Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma in South Texas,” Dr. Joseph P. Sánchez, who retired from the National Park Service (NPS). “All was lost, and Arista recognized that the Army of the North had failed. He surmised that despite his plans and adherence to the principles of war, the one element that caused his failure was the lack of total cooperation, especially that of General Canales. Without total cooperation, he could not arouse his badly demoralized troops to fight the Americans.”
“‘Because of Man's Greed for Oil and Gas’: Tanker Surfing and Surf Culture on the Texas Coast,” Thomas Blake Earle, Assistant Professor of History, Texas A&M Galveston. “John Benson, another of Fulbright's wake riders, observed that ‘we can't rely on nature to make waves around here all the time, but we can count on tanker traffic in the Ship Channel.’ Speaking on behalf of ‘Gulf Coast surfers,’ Fulbright concluded, ‘we're damned … We're so desperate we're chasing around oil tankers. That's how desperate we are.’”
Vol 126, no 3, January 2023
“Remembering Randolph B. ‘Mike’ Campbell,” Andrew Torget, Andrew J. Torget holds the University Distinguished Teaching Professorship at UNT and is an officer of the TSHA. “In a fitting coda that would have pleased Mike, what follows [in this issue] is the final piece of scholarship he produced, ‘The Primms of Fayette County: A Biracial Family in Nineteenth Century Texas.’ “[T]he piece addresses the central question at the heart of all of Mike’s work: what did the dark legacies of slavery and the South mean for Texas and the people who made this place their home?”
“The Primms of Fayette County: A Biracial Family in Nineteenth-Century Texas,” Randolph B. Campbell (1940–2022), “was Regents Professor and held the Lone Star Chair in Texas History at the University of North Texas. From 2008 to 2017, he was Chief Historian of the Texas State Historical Association, and from 2005 to 2017, he was editor of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly.” In his last paper, Dr. Campbell wrote, “[W]hy did William Primm not move to a free state such as Illinois, like his father before him, and greatly reduce if not remove entirely the burdens of biracialism for his family? Was it because the practical advantages of his plantation-style life outweighed moral or social considerations? Was he like more famous men—Thomas Jefferson and Sam Houston for example—who knew that slavery was wrong but would not give up their entire lives and free their slaves to right the one impossibly wrong thing in their lives? Primm asked for ‘charity’ from his fellowmen, but readers of his story are still likely to ask if he earned it.”
“Rust Belt Problems, Sunbelt Solutions: St. Louis, Dallas–Fort Worth, and the Migratory History of the ‘Metroplex’ Concept,” Brian M. Ingrassia, Associate Professor of History, West Texas A&M. “Academic social scientists funded by philanthropic foundations may have coined “metroplex,” but Texas boosters transformed the term into a marketing tool in an attempt to signify differences between their own Sunbelt metropolis and the ostensibly decaying cities of the Rust Belt. The shift from the term’s invention by 1950s scholars to its adoption by 1970s admen was astonishing, and it demonstrated the migration not just of people but of ideas.”
“Women’s Lives in a Spanish-Texas Community: San Antonio de Béxar, 1718–1821,” Jesús F. de la Teja, Regents’ Professor (Emeritus) of History and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Texas State University, and president of the TSHA 2007-2008. “The long-held view that the affairs of men are those that matter in historical terms is indefensible once we take into account that women proved critical to the proper functioning of community in San Antonio.”
Vol 126, no 4, April 2023
“Securing the Southwest: The Northern Pursuit of Texas, New Mexico, and California,” Daniel Burge, Ph.D., associate editor at the Kentucky Historical Society. “While historians have faulted the Slave Power for its rapacious desire to expand the boundaries of the United States, part of the blame should certainly reside with northern Democratic expansionists, who were not thralls of southern imperialists.”
“A Portrait of Amos Pollard: The Doctor at the Alamo,” Francis J. Leazes Jr., PhD, is a professor emeritus at Rhode Island College. “[Amos Pollard] abandoned the farm, became a skilled and dedicated doctor and a reformer, and he developed political beliefs associated with abolitionism and westward expansion in his search for respectability and standing. He died in a complicated, contentious cause of liberty, where freedom for some meant enslavement for others.”
“Should We ‘Forget the Alamo’?: Myths, Slavery, and the Texas Revolution,” John Willingham, M.A. in history UT Austin, novelist and independent historian. “On one point, especially, the authors of Forget the Alamo force events to conform to their stated ‘true underlying cause.’ Their claim that ‘the Battle of the Alamo was as much about slavery as the Civil War was about slavery’ ignores striking differences between Texas in 1835–1836 and the South as a whole in 1861.”
“‘Ain't Nothing Free’: Earning an Education at the Houston Junior Market Steer Auction,” Rebecca Scofield, Associate Professor of American history and chair of the Department of History at the University of Idaho. “Most importantly, this event showed how the public/private relationships central to the extension service, 4-H, and FFA in the early twentieth century expanded and became codified in the organization's competitive, individualistic approach to education just as a reckoning with these racial legacies had begun to emerge.”
“The History of DeWitt County (1899) by C. H. Waltersdorf, Publisher and Editor of the Lavaca County News,” James C. Kearney, Ph.D., UT Austin, lives on a historic family ranch in Colorado County near Columbus, Texas. “What better profession to really get to know a community down to the brass-tacks level than that of newspaper editor? Waltersdorf's many years in the profession acquainted him not only with important movers and shakers but also with the common people from all walks of life in the several counties that originally made up DeWitt's Colony: DeWitt, Victoria, Lavaca, Karnes, and Gonzales. It seems he knew everyone and their story.”
Vol 125, no 1, July 2021
“Explosions and Fires at the Ports of Texas City and Houston: A Comparative Analysis of Waterside-Landside Crises, 1947–2019,” Eric Pearson, a retired computer programmer with an M.A. in history from UH-Clear Lake. “The heavy concentration of these oil and gas companies [close to the Houston ship channel] presents the potential danger of explosions and fires, as was seen in 1959 when a major gasoline fire engulfed the tanker Amoco Virginia and in 1979 when the tanker Chevron Hawaii exploded after being struck by lightning while loading oil. These events caused concern that a chain reaction of explosions among the chemical and petroleum industries that line the ship channel could touch off a disaster similar to the one at Texas City that killed more than five hundred people in 1947—the worst industrial accident in the nation's history.
Historians have not fully explored the links between these disasters and how the lessons learned from them were (or were not) applied toward industrial safety and public welfare.”
“The 1870 Military Investigation into the Complaints against William Longworth, Radical Republican County Judge of Wilson County, Texas,” Dale Baum, Professor Emeritus of History, Texas A&M. “‘If it hadn't been for ole Judge Longworth, I might have been a slave for seven years longer by way of a contract my boss wanted to draw up. … He was a little man but he tole de boss just where matters stand, and he explained to me dat I was free.’” William Green, a former slave.
“‘Greed for Land’: W. W. Ashe and the Environmental Roots of the 1921 Flood in Central Texas,” Char Miller is the W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College in Claremont, California. “What complicated these natural processes, and thus was a driver of the devastating floods that wracked each region, was the human impress. In Central Texas, ‘greed for land’ had pushed levees and other informal flood-control works so close to streambeds that it robbed the floodplains’ ability to act as a sponge, thereby intensifying downstream damage. Upstream, excessive grazing had compacted the ground and stripped it of vegetation so that even modest storms could generate major floods. It was no wonder that the deluge on September 9–10 [the 1921 San Antonio flood] had produced such horrific consequences.”
Vol 125, no 2, October 2021
“Adaptation to Thrive: A Blended Heritage on the Texas Border with Mexico,” Mary Margaret McAllen. She was raised on a South Texas ranch and writes about the history of the Southwest and Mexico. “My early life was spent in an open-air museum with historians for parents and grandparents. This trained me to not only value history, but to be ever investigating. I feel so blessed to have been born into a border family with a long and blended heritage. It lends a perspective and depth not all truly understand.”
“Edna Collins’s Camp Swift Murals and German Prisoners of War,” Cynthia Brandimarte, Ph.D., American Studies, the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked as historian for Texas universities, museums, and the state park system. “Collins’s works demonstrate the value placed on murals and other art by the U.S. military during the two world wars and the interwar period. They also record the use of POW artists to create murals in wartime internment camps like Camp Swift. Collins’s story is uncommon; there appear to have been relatively few civilian artists employed by the U.S. military for mural projects, few of those artists were women, and few collections of textual and visual records comparable to those Collins left us have been preserved.”
“‘It’s a Texas Custom to Show Fight’: The Cultural Politics of Meat Boycotts in Mid-Twentieth Century Texas,” Mark W. Robbin, Professor of History, Del Mar College. “Even if partially fragmented along the lines of class, ethnicity, and race, the boycott was a significant force in Texas.”
Vol 125, no 3, January 2022
“La Salle’s Texas Enterprise and Louis XIV’s Imperial America,” Richard Gross and Craig P. Howard. Gross, an independent historian, has been actively involved in researching La Salle since he was selected to be a member of La Salle Expedition II in 1975; Howard is a forty-year resident of Texas. He had a twenty-seven-year career as a journalist and a parallel career teaching European, American, and world history. “Louis VIV conducted various wars in Europe to expand the borders of France, but little has been written about his more ambitious, and clandestine, imperial aims in the Western Hemisphere…. The ephemeral settlement of René-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, on Garcitas Creek, near Matagorda Bay on the Texas Gulf Coast, was an abject failure, but few realize that the king had approved it as a foothold for his expanding empire and the stage for an invasion of Mexico.”
“A Long Look Ahead: William L. Bray and Early Texas Conservationism,” Char Miller, W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, Pomona College in Claremont, California. “Bray embodied these professionalizing commitments during his decade-long career at the University of Texas, from 1897 to 1907. While there, he mounted a series of robust botanical investigations and rigorous ecological analyses of two regions in the state led him to develop a sophisticated set of policy recommendations for their careful, scientific management. In particular, he made a strong case for the immediate application of conservation measures to control natural-resource exploitation on the Edwards Plateau of Central Texas and in the Piney Woods of East Texas to insure these regions’ ecological stability and economic productivity across time.”
“Early Texas Jewish Settlers, 1830–1845: Were They Really Jewish, and if so, Who Were They?,” Kay C. Goldman, Ph.D., independent historian. “[This essay] will also argue that the Jewish men who ventured into Mexican and Republic-era Texas were not irrelevant to Texas Jewish history; in fact, they were important trailblazers on the frontier and filled similar positions as Jews who settled on frontiers in earlier times. All these settlers were seen as ‘pioneers’ and created a ‘Western Jewish identity.’ Some might not have been observant Jews, but after validating their Jewish connections, they should still be regarded as Jews.”
Vol 125, no 4, April 2022
‘Beyond Big Tex: The Past, Present, and Future of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,” Walter Buenger, Chief Historian, SHQ. “For 125 years, the editors and contributors to the Southwestern Historical Quarterly have preserved primary-source evidence of the past, provided an analysis of that past for the present, and envisioned the future study of Texas and southwestern history. As the essays in this issue from some of the best historians of the region make clear, the balance between preserving past documents, offering fresh interpretations, and arguing for new approaches has changed over time, but you still find notes and documents that highlight evidence, closely argued analysis and narration that offer insight for modern readers, and reviews, review essays, and special features like this particular issue that point us toward the future…. Membership, the history profession, editorial choices, and changes in society and culture have all combined over recent decades to foster an inclusive and up-to-date approach. The content of the Quarterly has moved beyond a celebratory and condemnatory history to one more appropriate and more embracing of faults and accomplishments, reality and ideals, and contributions of all groups and all peoples to the development of Texas.”
“A Team Effort: 125 Years of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,” Richard B. McCaslin, Endowed Professor of History, UNT. “THE SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY IS THE OLDEST continuously published historical quarterly in the United States. But it has changed significantly since its inception in July 1897. It does not even have the same title! It became more diverse in content as its clientele and contributors both increased in academic and demographic diversity. While the Quarterly retained a primary focus on Texas history, reflecting the interests of twelve editors and managing editors, it also became an important source for works on the Southwest and the nation…. But the enduring value of the Quarterly, like the TSHA, is in its acceptance of many points of view from professional and lay scholars alike. This has allowed it to change and grow as the study of history has evolved.”
“On Presence and Absence: Women's History in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, ”Nancy Baker Jones, Ph.D., independent historian. “Although the number of articles about Texas women's history slowly increased between the late 1980s and 2021, there was not a critical mass until the 2005 to 2021 transition stage through which to determine a useful correlation between them and the state of the field, which means that the Quarterly's relationship to Texas women's history is still in progress.”
“Regionalism: Texas History is Southwestern History,” Light Townsend Cummins, Guy M. Bryan Professor of History, Emeritus, at Austin College. He is the author of overa dozen books dealing with the history of Texas and has served as the official State Historianof Texas. “Nonetheless, an important vestige of the Quarterly remaining from prior to World War II still influences the basic structural character of Texas history. Namely, Texas history is not a state-based history, but instead still retains a larger focus that carries its historical study outside its geographical boundaries.”
“Borderlands History in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,” Omar Valerio-Jiménez, Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “Over the last three decades, the Quarterly has published more essays on non-elite borderlands populations than in previous decades. The experiences of Mexican Texans have been explored by various authors. While these essays were not necessarily framed as borderlands studies, they did touch on various themes in the field, including the diverse cultural influences on identity formation, resistance to state-centered practices, and civil rights struggles that transformed local concerns into national policy…. The journal might embrace the strategy of its earliest editors by encouraging graduate students and junior faculty to publish in its pages. Embracing such an approach might lead to more scholarship on environmental concerns, marginalized racial and ethnic groups, and women in the journal's future issues.”
“Tejano History in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,” Arnoldo De León, Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Angelo State University. “Today, Tejano history holds a secure and respected place in the larger study of Texas history. Credit for that standing and warranted recognition is owed to many supporters, believers, and enthusiasts. Not the least of these has been the Southwestern Historical Quarterly…. Collectively, the articles debunked entrenched stereotypes found in the primary sources, among the larger citizenry, and even within the ranks of influential (mainstream) historians. The journal's reputation as the premier academic periodical in Texas studies bolstered authors' standing in the academy and helped advance their professional careers.”
“Coming to Terms with the Texas Revolution in the Pages of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,” James S. Crisp, Professor Emeritus of History at North Carolina State University, has been researching and writing about the era of the Texas Revolution for more than fifty years. “By the twenty-first century, historians Gregg Cantrell and F. Todd Smith could look back in the pages of the Quarterly at their predecessors' efforts to grasp the realities of the Texas Revolution with both caustic criticism and genuine understanding—seeing the blinders as well as the wisdom of hindsight that had produced the various versions of the history of Texas that have informed (and misinformed) its citizens for almost two centuries. If there is any single theme uniting the views of our present generation of scholars, it is an insistence on inclusivity—a determination that no aspect or branch of humanity should be ignored as we tell the whole story of Texas.”
Vol 124, no 1, July 2020
“‘Our Local Board of Health Asserts that No Epidemic of Any Kind Exists in San Antonio’: State vs. Local Expertise in the 1903 Yellow Fever Quarantine,” Ana Luisa Martínez-Catsum, Associate Professor of History, UT Permian Basin. “Not only did State Health Officer George R. Tabor differ with the San Antonio Board of Health and physicians like Amos Graves Sr. over diagnosis, but his view also influenced the economic interests he believed were worth protecting. While he believed a quarantine was necessary to provide consistent guidelines to the state’s railroads, San Antonio locals saw an unneeded deterrent to tourists, who were already a significant aspect of the city’s economy….As the recent coronavirus pandemic has shown, striking a balance between public health measures and economic interests remains difficult and contentious.”
“The Catholic Church in the Diocese of Galveston-Houston and Desegregation, 1945–1984,” Mark Newman, Reader in History, University of Edinburgh. The essay examines “a diocese that by the mid-1960s had a greater black Catholic population (61,961) than even the Archdiocese of New Orleans (55,000) in neighboring Louisiana, the South’s most Catholic state.”
“Rebuilding the Mayfield Mercantile Company: Architecture and Commerce in Sonora, Texas, c. 1900,” Richard B. Wright, Associate Professor of Art History, Texas A&M International University. “Although the town [of Sonora] was isolated, the effects of mass production transformed retailing in this small county seat on the Edwards Plateau. It seems clear that practically no place in the United States remained unchanged.”
Vol 124, no 2, October 2020
“Alonso S. Perales: In Defense of My People,” Emilio Zamora, Professor of History, UT Austin, and president of the TSHA 2019-2020. This paper is about a co-founder of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), who was also a lawyer, activist, and diplomat. The author argues that Perales is an example of important figures who have been excluded from Texas history.
“Post–World War II Tejano Farm Labor: A Remembrance,” Arnaldo de León, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History, Angelo State University. The “remembrance” here is personal, as the author describes his mostly positive experience growing up in a family of field laborers on the Chapman Ranch in Nueces County, a “safe, stable, comforting, nurturing, and to some extent, a place that served well as a salutary setting for decent family upbringings.” He does so, in part, to contrast his experience with that of migrant workers. “By no means was life on small farms as wretched as that for migrant workers toiling for distant corporate bosses; however, hardships there still posed challenges that called for sacrifice and for incessant resolve to resist them.”
“‘I Walked from Dallas, I Walked to Wichita Falls’: Blind Lemon Jefferson's Enduring Ramble,” Joe W. Specht, director of the Jay-Rollins Library at McMurry University. Jefferson, a Black blues and gospel singer and musician, was extremely popular in the 1920s. This essay covers his career in colorful, straightforward detail.
“The Lynching of Mary Jackson in Harrison County, Texas, 1912,” Haley Brown, a graduate student in history at UNT. This paper cites the lynching of Mary Jackson as “a racially motivated crime more than one concerned with the gender norms of the period. One might presume that female victims would be spared by lynch mobs, but as the case of Jackson…shows, Black women of the era were Black first and women second.”
Vol 124, no 3, January 2021
“Where the Cult is in the Hands of the People’: Enlightened Catholicism and Colonization on the Texas Frontier,” Brian Stauffer, Ph.D., CA, is translator and curator of the Spanish Collection at the Texas General Land Office. “Against the predominant narrative of decline, this article argues that religious ideas—and mostly those belonging to the Catholic tradition—exerted a strong influence on the colonization process and helped shape northern Mexican federalism more broadly. In fact, for a variety of influential clerics and colonization boosters, the settlement of Texas was as much a religious project as a political or economic one because it offered an opportunity to promote new kinds of religious communities at the edge of the emerging Mexican nation, in dynamic contraposition to, or in creative dialogue with, religious communities in the United States.”
“In the Trenches of World War I-Era Texas: Letters from Black Railroaders to the United States Railroad Administration,” Theresa A. Case, Professor of History, UH-Downtown. The paper shows how Black railroad workers “risked their relatively stable positions and their personal safety during a time of heightened White racial violence and intimidation to confront company and government officials with an explicit case for equality and dignity.”
“The Marching Priest: The Civil Rights and Labor Activism of Father Sherrill Smith during the 1950s and 1960s,” Mark Newman, Reader in History, University of Edinburgh. This is the story of Fr. Smith, the assistant pastor of St. Joseph Church in San Antonio, “became the first Catholic priest based in the South to participate in a direct-action civil rights protest when he joined the stand-ins at San Antonio's Majestic Theater, which confined African American customers to an upstairs balcony.”
Vol 124, no 4, April 2021
“The Karankawa-Spanish War from 1778 to 1789: Attempted Genocide and Karankawa Power,” Tim Seiter, Ph.D. student in history, SMU. A series of Karankawa attacks on Spaniard triggered a decade of complex and violent interactions, culminating in a struggle between the Karankawa leader Joseph María and the Spanish Governor Cabello. A very detailed study.
“German Midwives of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Texas: Women's Work, Culture, and Fighting ‘Death in the Room’,” Kathleen A. Huston, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist. “…[O]ne of the most frequent, and yet, unexamined of those [physical] dangers was when a woman gave birth. Perhaps this then was the most important work of all in early Texas: a woman's fight for her own and her child's survival in childbirth and the vital work of the midwife beside her battling ‘death in the room’.”
“‘Sail Ho!’: A Civil War Surgeon and the Texas Blockade,” Walter E. Wilson, former U.S. Navy Captain and intelligence officer. “[The surgeon’s] letter offers fresh insight into the personal impact of ineffective military strategies, corruption, death, and infectious diseases that remain relevant in more modern times.”
Vol 123, no 1, July 2019
“The Murder of Conrad Caspar Rordorf: Art, Violence, and Intrigue on the Texas Frontier,” William C. Kearney, an independent historian, novelist, and rancher in Colorado with a Ph.D. in history from UT Austin. “The effects of Rordorf’s murder extended beyond art, however. The circumstances of his death inflamed a growing anti-immigrant (specifically anti-German) sentiment among a faction of the Texas political establishment, which found a vociferous advocate in James Mayfield, ex-secretary of state of the Republic of Texas during the Lamar administration, former legislator, lawyer, and land speculator.”
“When Was the Republic of Texas No More?: Revisiting the Annexation of Texas,” Keith J. Volanto, Professor of History, Collin College; and Gene Preuss, Associate Professor of History, UH-Downtown. “For all its drama, this creation tale of Texas statehood contains the seeds of a glaring misconception that qualifies as historical myth: the idea that the famous “annexation ceremony,” as it is often labeled, signified an actual transfer of sovereignty from the Republic of Texas to the United States. This myth has persisted in spite of the fact that the Republic ended almost two months prior, on December 29, 1845, when the United States government formally annexed Texas.”
“Speed Attractions: Urban Mobility and Automotive Spectacle in Pre-World War I Amarillo,” Brian M. Ingrassia, Assistant Professor of History, West Texas A&M. “While Amarillo’s early-1900s development typified America’s Progressive Era in many ways—including automobiles’ essential role in both urban growth and spectacle—in other ways it was atypical insofar as Amarilloans adopted cars even more quickly and thoroughly than people in many larger or older U.S. cities.”
“A Forgotten Early Account of the Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas: P’s Letter to the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, August 1863,” Hershel Parker, a short essay of five pages, elaborating on new sources related to the hanging of forty-one suspected Unionists who opposed conscription into the Confederate Army. Hershel Parker was finalist for Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for the first volume his biography of Herman Melville.
Vol 123, no 2, October 2019
“The Armstrong Ranch: Establishing and Preserving a Legacy,” Sarita A. Hixon, co-manager of the famed Armstrong Ranch, which has been in her family for 150 years. “My mother [Anne Armstrong] soon rose through the ranks of state-level politics in the 1960s, becoming Republican national committeewoman from Texas and finally the first woman co-chair of the Republican National Committee in 1971. (Bob Dole was the other co-chair.) She was appointed counselor to the president by Richard Nixon and continued serving in this position under President Gerald Ford after Nixon’s resignation. When President Ford called late in 1975 and asked her to serve as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, she accepted. She did a terrific job, and she and my father had the time of their lives.”
“The Last Populist: Populism, Modernity, and the Consequential Career of Henry Lewis Bentley (1847–1933),” Gregg Cantrell, Lowe Chair in Texas History at TCU. He is the biographer of Stephen F. Austin, and served as TSHA president, 2015-2016. “This article examines the life and career of one of the original Populists in an attempt to refresh modern memories about the origins of the term and to further refine our understanding of what Populism, in its original incarnation, was all about. Henry Lewis Bentley (1847–1933) is almost entirely forgotten today, but he was one of the principal leaders of the People’s Party both in Texas and nationally. Moreover, a close study of his long and fascinating career not only reveals much about the true nature of 1890s Populism but provides important hints about the roots of our own era’s politics, though not in the ways that those who invoke the term today might expect.”
“The Development of TCU Football and the Construction of TCU Stadium: Building Community and Establishing Legitimacy, 1896–1930,” Benjamin Downs, Assistant Professor of Sports History, Ball State University; Patricia Tutka, Assistant Professor of Sport and Recreation Management, Niagara University; Chad Seigried, Professor of Sport Management, LSU; and Cameron Dean, M.S., a sales associate in Louisiana. “This article describes the history of the development of TCU Stadium, which has been known as Amon G. Carter Stadium since 1951, and other football venues at Texas Christian University from 1896 to 1930. The stadium emerged because the university’s officials wished to persuade potential students, fans, donors, and business interests that TCU was an important, legitimate institution, comparable to (if not better than) other universities in the United States, especially its peers in Texas. Moreover, the structure provided a focal point for the TCU community and Fort Worth.”
Vol 123, no 3, January 2020
“Political Hippies and Hip Politicos: Counterculture Alliance and Cultural Radicalism in 1960s Austin, Texas,” John Moretta, Ph.D., Rice University, Professor of History, Houston Community College. “However, [the Austin] scene did not come out of nowhere; it was built on a foundation largely established in the 1960s.3 It was during that decade that the blend of progressive politics and cultural experimentation that still makes Austin ‘weird’ was defined on the campus of the University of Texas (UT), the result of the unlikely alliance of hippies and New Left politicos. UT's hip/radical coalition transcended the antagonisms between these two groups evident in countercultural centers such as the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City and forged an enduring identity for Texas's capital city.”
“Taming the East Texas "Black Giant”: Ernest O. Thompson and Illusions of Independence, 1930–1935,” Matthew Ware Coulter, Ph.D., Professor of History, Collin College. The term “Black Giant” refers to the oil industry. “The East Texas oil field formed the epicenter of the ‘wild burst,’ and it affected the entire nation. A complex and coordinated effort between the national government and oil-producing states eventually established a framework to bring regulation and stability to petroleum operations in East Texas, and in building the new system Thompson probably played a more important role than any other individual.”
“‘A Chicken for Breakfast at the Expense of Mr. Rebel’: The Journal of Sergeant Nelson Howard, Company E, 13th Maine Infantry on the Texas Coast, 1863–1864,” Jerry Thompson, Regents and Piper Professor, Texas A&M International University, and a specialist on the American Southwest and the Civil War, and president of the TSHA in 2001. “What makes Sergeant Howard unique is that he kept a journal that survives today at the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University. Although Howard's journal only covers three months of the war from late November 1863 until late February 1864, it is a rare and unique window into the activities of the Federals on the Texas coast, their camp life, hardships, and combat experiences. More significantly, it details the capture of Fort Esperanza, a formidable earthen Confederate fortress guarding Cavallo Pass and Matagorda Bay.”
Vol 123, no 4, April 2020
“Refuting History Fables: Collective Memories, Mexican Texans, and Texas History,” Omar Valerio-Jiménez, Associate Professor of History, UT San Antonio, specializes in the analysis of the ways “memories of the U.S.-Mexican War have shaped Mexican-American civil rights struggles, writing, oral discourse, and public rituals.” This essay “explores early efforts to challenge the omissions and negative characterizations of Tejanos in the state’s history and in public school textbooks. Several intellectuals and organizations engaged in these efforts during the 1930s, when the economic stress of the Great Depression increased xenophobia. Anti-immigrant sentiment was directed at ethnic Mexicans in general as Anglo Americans failed to distinguish between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants.”
“A Failed Venture in the Nueces Strip: Misconceptions and Mismanagement of the Beales Rio Grande Colony, 1832–1836,” Kyle B. Carpenter, Ph.D. candidate, SMU. “Historians of Mexican Texas rarely study the empresario grants that failed. Scholars generally relegate the unfulfilled contracts that Mexico awarded to land agents to populate its northern territories to footnotes or brief paragraphs, while the success stories continue to produce books and articles…. The successful grants leave a clearly tangible significance while the failures do not. What valuable takeaways can we glean from a deep analysis of the Beales venture’s demise?”
“Jim Crow and Freedom of Expression in Post-World War II East Texas: The Legal Battle to Show Pinky in Marshall, 1950,” David Lacy, attorney, law professor, doctoral candidate UNT. The paper examines the legal issues over the showing of the film Pinky, “released by Twentieth-Century Fox and directed by Elia Kazan, focused on the theme of racial ‘passing’ by featuring a light-skinned African American woman, Pinky, who ‘passed’ as white.”
Vol 122, no 1, July 2018
“The Cabiness Family Lynching: Race, War, and Memory in Walker County, Texas,” Jeffrey Littlejohn, Professor of History and co-chair of diversity committee, Sam Houston State University; Charles H. Ford, Professor of History, Norfolk State University, shared scholarship with Jeffrey Littlejohn on school desegregation and civil rights struggles in Virginia; Jami Horne, student, SHSU; Briana Weaver, SHSU graduate and member of the doctoral program in history at the University of Alabama. “By tracing the Cabiness family story back to its origins in Texas, this article shows that the 1918 lynching was not an aberration, but actually fit into a much larger story of racial violence that shaped the Lone Star State between 1845 and 1920.”
“‘The Most Turbulent and Most Traumatic Years in Recent Mexican-American History’: Police Violence and the Civil Rights Struggle in 1970s Texas,” Brent M.S. Campney, Associate Professor of History, UT Rio Grande Valley. “This study builds upon a flurry of scholarship focused on racist (primarily mob) violence against Mexican Americans—indeed, persons of Mexican descent broadly—in the American Southwest since 1848.”
“War Is a Great Evil”: Robert E. Lee in the War with Mexico,” Alan Guelzo, Henry R. Luce Professor of History, Gettysburg College. “Lee finally concluded that the ‘war is a great evil. It brings much individual as well as national suffering. The sight of every battle field has made my heart bleed.’ And he had lost whatever taste he had briefly acquired for more conquests.”
Vol 122, no 2, October 2018
“‘A Sea of Blood and Smoking Ruin’: Reflections on Sam Houston and Slavery,” Randolph A. Campbell, Ph.D., University of Virginia, Regents Professor, UNT, eminent scholar of Texas history, and former chief historian of the TSHA. “He had less moral clarity on slavery than we have now, and less than many people had in the mid-nineteenth century, but he knew that the issue could lead to secession and war and the destruction of his beloved Texas….So, should Sam Houston have abandoned the only life that he knew and his efforts to prevent a civil war in order to cleanse himself of the sin of slavery? Obviously the answer to that question is an individual matter. However, everyone should remember while answering it that we today have had more than a century and a half to enhance our moral sensibilities.”
“The Rise and Fall of Ignacio Perez Sr. and Jr., Patriarchs of the Most Powerful Family in Early Nineteenth-Century Texas,” Brady Folsom, adjunct professor of history, UT Arlington. “Following the Texas Revolution, Anglo Texans drastically transformed Texas politics in ways that marginalized Tejano elites. These changes also made it easier for Anglo Americans to use the legal system and violence to divest Tejanos of their property. Nowhere was this change more evident than in the fall of the Pérez family from power.”
“Of Documents and Archives: The First Modern Census of Texas,” Samuel Abell, a history graduate of Texas Tech and an associate of Llano Partners, Ltd., a ranching and real estate firm in Amarillo; and G. Douglas Inglis, retired director of the Texas Tech University Center in Seville, Spain. “The Texas census…was ordered as a piece of an empire wide survey but became a part of the larger Spanish policy to develop the imperial frontiers of the empire to secure them against the threat of Native American and European rivals.”
Vol 122, no 3, January 2019
“‘The Best Bargain . . . Ever Received’: The 1968 Commission on Civil Rights Hearing in San Antonio, Texas,” Ignacio Garcia, Professor of Western and Latino History at Brigham Young University. “Although mostly forgotten now, the hearing proved important because it came at a time when Mexican American activism was transitioning from moderate to militant; highlighted the issues that affected the barrios…as no other event had before; provided a forum for experts, educators, and politicians to speak about the history of anti-Mexican discrimination in the Southwest; and allowed the grievances of ordinary Mexican Americans to be heard in their own voices.”
“Por la Raza, Para la Raza: Jovita Idar and Progressive-Era Mexicana Maternalism along the Texas–Mexico Border,” Elizabeth Garner Masarik, a doctoral student in history at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and a Fellow at the university’s Humanities Institute and Gender Institute. “Jovita Idar stood firm in the doorway, hands gripping the frame on either side. Her tall form and long skirt shielded the printing presses behind her. Mounted Texas Rangers, or ranches as Tejanos and people of Mexican heritage derogatorily called them in 1914 Laredo, slowed their horses until they stopped mere feet in front of her. The Rangers were there on orders from the U.S. government to shut down the Spanish-language newspaper, El Progreso.”
“Dr. Gertrude Helmecke: A Young German American Woman's Life in Denton Texas, 1916–1917,” Steven M. Collins, a US Army veteran and a doctoral student at UNT. “In 1917, German Americans often preferred to be Germans first and Americans second. However, American patriotism—and suspicion of ‘hyphenism’—once war between Germany and the United States seemed likely challenged this way of being. Gertrude's letters are an example of the resulting frustration that many German Americans experienced.”
Vol 122, no 4, April 2019
“Un-Southern”: Buffalo Bill, the Texas State Centennial, and Texas’s Western Turn,” Jacob W. Olmstead, Ph.D, TCU, Curator of Historic Sites for the Church of Latter Day Saints. “On February 22, 1936, Centennial officials announced that a bronze replica of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s The Scout, a sculpture of Colonel William F. Cody, also known as Buffalo Bill, would greet visitors at the entrance of the new Hall of Fine Arts on the Centennial grounds…. Several Dallas-based Confederate commemorative groups, believing that Buffalo Bill served during the Civil War as a Union spy, swiftly denounced the decision. Such sectional outcries stood in stark contrast to the progressive and exceptional state that Texas Centennial planners hoped to introduce to Americans during the celebration.”
“Henry Schuhl: The Wayward Rabbi of Dallas’s Temple Emanu-El,” Richard F. Selcer, professor or adjunct at community colleges and universities, author of numerous books, with a Ph.D. from TCU. “He was the golden boy of Cincinnati’s Jewish community, then he came to Dallas and turned the staid Temple Emanu-El on its ear. During his lifetime he was a religious seeker, a politician, a labor leader, a con man, and a fugitive from justice in addition to being a distinguished rabbi. He caused one of the great religious scandals of the nineteenth century, earning him comparisons to a notable contemporary, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the famed Brooklyn clergyman.”
“Upon No Account Were They to Undertake an Invasion of Mexico”: American Troops and the Third Battle of Ciudad Juárez, June 1919,” John A. Hamilton, retired US Army officer, independent historian, with an MA from USC. “Although Madero was trying to negotiate a peaceful federal surrender, Orozco and Villa ignored that approach and attacked. The revolutionaries tried to keep from firing into El Paso, but bullets crossed the border into the city. However, hundreds of El Paso citizens put themselves in harm’s way when they flocked to the border to watch the battle from the tops of buildings and railroad cars.”