Texas Local Series – serie

Changing Perspectives charts the pivotal period in Houston's history when Jewish and Black leadership eventually came together to work for positive change. This is a story of two communities, both of which struggled to claim the rights and privileges they desired. Previous scholars of Southern Jewish history have argued that Black-Jewish relations did not exist in the South. However, during the 1930s to the 1980s, Jews and Blacks in Houston interacted in diverse and oftentimes surprising ways. The distance between Houston's Jews and Blacks diminished after changing demographics, the end of segregation, city redistricting, and the emergence of Black political power. Allison Schottenstein shows that Black-Jewish relations did exist during the Long Civil Rights Movement in Houston.

Fort Worth Stories is a collection of thirty-two bite-sized chapters of the city's history. Did you know that the same day Fort Worth was mourning the death of beloved African American 'Gooseneck Bill' McDonald, Dallas was experiencing a series of bombings in black neighborhoods? Or that Fort Worth almost got the largest statue to Robert E. Lee ever put up anywhere, sculpted by the same massive talent that created Mount Rushmore? Or that Fort Worth was once the candy-making capital of the Southwest and gave Hershey, Pennsylvania, a good run for its money as the sweet spot of the nation?A remarkable number of national figures have made a splash in Fort Worth, including Theodore Roosevelt while he was President; Vernon Castle, the Dance King; Dr. H.H. Holmes, America's first serial killer; Harry Houdini, the escape artist; and Texas Guinan, star of the vaudeville stage and the big screen. Fort Worth Stories is illustrated with 50 photographs and drawings, many of them never before published. This collection of stories will appeal to all who appreciate the Cowtown city.

Two Counties in Crisis offers a rare opportunity to observe how local political cultures are transformed by state and national events. Utilizing an interdisciplinary fusion of history and political science, Robert J. Dillard analyzes two disparate Texas counties—traditionalist Harrison County and individualist Collin County—and examines four Reconstruction governors (Hamilton, Throckmorton, Pease, Davis) to aid the narrative and provide additional cultural context.Commercially prosperous and built on slave labor in the mold of Deep South plantation culture, East Texas’s Harrison County strongly supported secession in 1861. West Texas’s Collin County, characterized by individual and family farms with a limited slave population, favored the Union. During Reconstruction, Collin County became increasingly conservative and eventually bore a great resemblance to Harrison County. By 1876 and the ratification of the regressive Texas Constitution, Collin County had become firmly resistant to all aspects of Reconstruction.

Our Stories: Black Families in Early Dallas enlarges upon two publications by the late Dr. Mamie McKnight’s organization, Black Dallas Remembered—First African American Families of Dallas (1987) and African American Families and Settlements of Dallas (1990). Our Stories is the history of Black citizens of Dallas going about their lives in freedom, as described by the late Eva Partee McMillan: “The ex-slaves purchased land, built homes, raised their children, erected their educational and religious facilities, educated their children, and profited from their labor.” Our Stories brings together memoirs from many of Dallas’s earliest Black families, as handed down over the generations to their twentieth-century descendants. The period covered begins in the 1850s and goes through the 1930s. Included are detailed descriptions of more than thirty early Dallas communities formed by free African Americans, along with the histories of fifty-seven early Black families, and brief biographies of many of the early leaders of these Black communities. The stories reveal hardships endured and struggles overcome, but the storytellers focus on the triumphs over adversity and the successes achieved against the odds. The histories include the founding of churches, schools, newspapers, hospitals, grocery stores, businesses, and other institutions established to nourish and enrich the lives of the earliest Black families in Dallas.

In Texas, to hear the words “Duval County” evokes Archie and George Parr, politics, and corruption. But this does not represent the full truth about this South Texas county and its Tejano citizens. Duval County Tejanos showcases Tejanos engaged in community life: they organized politically, cultivated land, and promoted agriculture, livestock raising, the local economy, churches, schools, patriotic celebrations, and social activities. In 1876 Duval County citizens formally petitioned Nueces County for the opportunity to organize themselves. During the late nineteenth century, the Duval County economy exhibited vitality and adaptability; sheep and cattle raising and cotton farming anchored and sustained the local economy. By the twentieth century, the political atmosphere intensified under the Parrs as Tejanos pushed forward their agenda of assuming their proper role, consistent with their numbers.

Fort Worth Characters 2 is a sequel to Fort Worth Characters (UNT Press, 2009) by Richard F. Selcer, the preeminent historian of Fort Worth. This book continues the theme of human-interest stories of twenty-five more characters pulled from Fort Worth history. Some, like Frank James, were already famous when they came to Fort Worth. Others, like “Stutterin’ Sam” Dowell, were “discovered” here before going on to fame and fortune on the national stage. How about a character who might have been the inspiration for detective Nancy Drew? Or a female reporter who was the first American to score an interview with the president of Mexico? How about a husband-wife pair who might have been the first African American “power couple”? Or an abortion doctor convicted at trial in Fort Worth in 1913? These and more are covered in the pages of Fort Worth Characters 2.

Fort Worth from World War II to 1960 reviews Fort Worth’s history during the challenging times of World War II, the postwar adjustment period, and the first full decade of the Cold War. Harold Rich tells the story in broad strokes with foci on local crime and criminals, vice, the police, race relations, and economic development. What emerges is a portrait of a growing city developing major urban accoutrements such as industrialization, freeways, and an art infrastructure while also struggling with an active and sizable criminal underworld and the emerging Civil Rights Movement. The overall impression is that the nearly two decades from 1942 to 1960 were critical to transitioning Fort Worth from a nineteenth- to a twentieth-century city, but the end result was not an unqualified success. Fort Worth would achieve significant economic progress in the 1940s, especially from the addition of Convair, that would expand its population at a fast pace but would lose much of that momentum in the 1950s. During both decades the police confronted rising demands related to traffic control and internal corruption that most notably affected their ability to deal with gambling and prostitution, both of which seemed to be everywhere. As the 1950s drew to a close, both vices began to subside, more from a decline in public acceptance than from police activity. In the 1940s and 1950s, Fort Worth’s criminal underworld was a major presence, heavily involved in vice and in several daring robberies, including a thwarted plan to rob Carswell Air Force Base. The most notorious gangsters met their ends in a long-running series of internal conflicts that began during the war and destroyed most of that underworld. At the same time, the postwar period witnessed the spread of illegal drug use across broad societal lines, sparking a corresponding response by police. In contrast, little changed regarding race relations despite the efforts of many local activists and favorable rulings emanating from the nation’s courts. More significant progress would come in the 1960s and accelerate thereafter.

Sometimes, history isn't what it appears to be. For instance, in the early 1920s, a thriving Southern Black community was literally voted out of existence by local white citizens. The North Texas city of Denton, which was sometimes described as a "Ku Klux Box," was also home to the Quakertown neighborhood. There, Black Texans worked hard to overcome the legacy of slavery, build financial success and family stability, educate their children, and worship God as they saw fit. And they did it all right in the middle of town. A model of "racial uplift" for over forty years, the community was eventually targeted by their white neighbors.Rather than using the torches and nooses often associated with the Jim Crow era, Denton's white supremacists perpetrated a devastating act of civic violence. Cloaking themselves in the legitimacy associated with city government, institutions of higher learning, fraternal orders, and civic improvement groups, they were able to cover their tracks while they planned a large-scale racist dispossession. Then, in 1920, they got access to the most destructive weapon they'd deploy—the vote for women.Quickly, the very existence of Quakertown was put on the (whites-only) ballot, disguised as a beautification measure. By a narrow margin, the Black community was slated for destruction in 1921. Once the community removal was complete, Denton's white community used the language of democracy and majority rule to cover up the whole thing. This is the story of Black success amid the challenges of Jim Crow Texas, the way that white supremacists were able to manipulate democratic ideals to oppress their neighbors, and the legacy a deformed social memory left behind.