Browsing by Subject "Texas history"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9

Constructing place, building commuity : the archaeology and geography of African American freedmen's communities in central Texas
(2016-05) Scott, Jannie Nicole; Franklin, Maria; Denbow, James; Luzzadder-Beach, Sheryl; Monroe, J. Cameron; Wilson, Samuel
This dissertation focuses on how African Americans residing in southern freedmen’s communities engaged with their institutional spaces, specifically educational and religious centers, between the years of 1870 and 1940. Using Antioch Colony, a freedmen’s community established in Hays County, Texas, as a case study I argue that Black Americans constructed their social institutions to enculturate members of the community into ideologies of self-help and reciprocal obligation. These ideologies were collectively believed to provide the best avenue for achieving equal rights, dismantling structural inequality, and combating anti-Black racism. Through a multidisciplinary study integrating methods of archaeological excavation, artifact analysis, archival information, and geographic information systems, I demonstrate how Black Americans used material culture and the built environment, as facilitated through their social institutions, to enact and reproduce such behaviors. In this manner, I engage with geographic theories of place to position social institutions as spaces produced to resist the dehumanization and subjugation of Black citizens in the postemancipation United States.
Cultures of Dissent: Comparing Populism in Kansas and Texas, 1854-1890
(2014-03-05) Keyworth, Matthew Jerrid
In 1892, People?s Party candidate James Weaver won more than a million votes and four states in his bid for the presidency. Despite finishing third, the fledgling party?s promising start worried Democrats and Republicans alike. Although Populists demonstrated strength across the South and in the West, Kansas and Texas stood at the movement?s center. Populism grew outward from areas first settled by whites in the 1850s. Farmers in both states initially struggled with new climates, crops, and soils, and they turned to neighbors for help in facing challenges great and small. The culture of mutual aid that developed enabled survival while forging a sense of community?and responsibility for the common weal?that endured through century?s end. In addition to impediments erected by Mother Nature, early homesteaders faced the obstacle of settling in contested places. Anxieties surrounding Bleeding Kansas ensnared even those who cared little about slavery, just as fear of ?Indian depredations? consumed Texans. In both circumstances many believed that federal authorities at best ignored?and at worst added to?their problems. Kansans and Texans walked divergent paths following the Civil War. The Sunflower State reaped the benefits of fighting for the victors and flourished socially through the early 1870s, as a multitude of fraternal, educational, and recreational organizations took root. Texas staggered through Reconstruction, but Republicans finally provided citizens in northern counties long-sought answers to ?the Indian question,? loosening the Democratic Party?s grip on the region. By the 1880s, disaffected farmers in both states drew on cultures that prized mutual aid and voluntary association and encouraged skepticism of traditional party politics. Disparate paths converged by 1890, when rural Kansans and Texans arrived at the same solution to the economic problems that plagued them both: formation of a third party solely beholden to their interests.
History of Baylor University
(1941-07) Williams, Earl Francis
This thesis has been written for those who love Baylor University and wish to know the rich history of the "grand old school." The purpose has been to show the development of the institution from its beginning in the days of the Republic of Texas to the present-day Baylor University whose influence extends to many parts of the world. In tracing this history, it was necessary to show Texas as it was prior to the year 1845 and that in these early years of Texas, a movement for higher education was slowly but surely gathering force. Many prominent Baptists were the leaders in this movement, which led to the founding of Baylor University at Independence. This same desire to provide an opportunity for higher education led to the founding of the institution which was later to become Waco University and then Baylor University at Waco. Baylor University at Independence passed away, but there was left an influence that is still felt in the lives of the hundreds of students who continue to pass through the portals of Baylor University at Waco. An effort has been made to portray the life and spirit of Baylor University and to show how the ideals of these leaders who made Baylor University possible are still evident in the life and traditions of the institution and are molding the aims and ambitions of the students of Baylor of the present day. Thanks are due to R.A. Burleson, the son of Doctor Rufus C. Burleson; to Pat M. Neff, President of Baylor University and to others whose first hand information concerning Baylor University under Doctor Burleson has been helpful in writing this thesis.
I give you my word : the ethics of oral history and digital video interpretation at Texas historic sites
(2012-05) Cherian, Antony, 1974-; Roy, Loriene; Norkunas, Martha K.; Galloway, Patricia; Doty, Philip; Seriff, Suzanne
This dissertation examines the process of using oral history and digital video to revise interpretation and represent more inclusive histories at three rural Texas historic sites—-Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site, the Lyndon Baines Johnson State Park, and Varner-Hogg Plantation—-21st century sites that, to varying degrees, have persisted to interpret a Texas master narrative that is no longer socially tolerable in its silencing of marginalized Texas voices. In particular, the dissertation focuses on complicated and rarely discussed ethical issues that surfaced during my work from 2001 to 2006 shooting, editing, and situating interpretive documentary videos at the each of the three sites. Historic sites in Texas, like others across the United States and worldwide, have been receiving increasing pressure from scholars and community groups to represent women, racial minorities, and other marginalized groups more prominently in the narratives they interpret. Oral history and digital media have played key roles in this ongoing movement. Oral history has widely been touted as a tool to democratize history, and advocates of digital video interpretation cite its affordability, relative ease of use, and its ability to “say so much in so little time.” These factors are all the more compelling for local, regional, and state-wide historic sites that are chronically under-funded, under-staffed, and that must often interpret multiple, complicated narratives with very little time or space in which to present them. However, little has been done to explore the unique and complicated ethical issues that arise from using oral history and digital video at historic sites. This dissertation takes a case study approach and uses as its intellectual framework ideas of reflective practice, part of the contemporary discourse among public history practitioners. Each case study introduces the site through a critical analysis of the images and texts produced by the site; presents the central historical silence at each site; describes the solution that oral history and digital video interpretation was expected to provide; and then uses the project’s process-generated video footage and records to examine key situations that led me to raise ethical questions about the individual projects and the overall enterprise.
The life of Governor Samuel Willis Tucker Lanham
(1930) Lanham, Martha Anderson
It is the purpose of this paper to give the career of S.W.T. Lanham showing the part he had during the periods of struggle and strife through which the United States passed during the years of his life, as soldier of the Confederacy in the War between the States, as pioneer on the western frontier of Texas, as teacher in a log cabin school house, as lawyer and District Attorney, as Congressman from a district of eighty-odd counties, and finally as Governor of Texas.
Mennonite language, culture, history, and education: a general overview and review of the literature
(Texas Tech University, 2004-08) Angulo, C. Teresa; Benavides, Alfredo H.; Midobuche, Eva
A unique population of immigrants has been identified in West Texas. They are largely from Mexico, but they are of neither Native American, nor of Hispanic descent. Instead, they are Mennonites; and though they stand out most visibly through their costume, language, and outstanding work ethic, they remain isolated from the mainstream and mysterious to even their closest neighbours. Their children attend local schools and seem to acculturate well. Yet then they are withdrawn at an early age, much to the frustration of teachers and administrators. Little is commonly known about Mennonite culture and origins. This paper presents an overview of various aspects of the Mennonites' unique background in the hope of fostering a greater understanding of their roots and their world view, and eventually, their educational needs.
Opening the closed shop: the Galveston Longshoremen's Strike, 1920-1921
(Texas A&M University, 2005-02-17) Abel, Joseph Anthony
Beginning in March of 1920, the Galveston coastwise longshoremen?s strike against the Morgan-Southern Pacific and Mallory steamship lines was a pivotal moment in the history of organized labor in Texas. Local and statewide business interests proved their willingness to use the state apparatus by calling on Governor William P. Hobby and the Texas National Guard to open the Port of Galveston. Despite this, the striking dockworkers maintained the moral support of many local citizens from a variety of social classes, including small merchants and officials of the Galveston municipal government. By February of 1921, however, the segregated locals representing the striking longshoremen had fallen victim to the divisive racial tactics of the shipping companies, who implemented the open-shop policy of non-discrimination in hiring on their docks. Further demonstrating the capital-state alliance, the Texas legislature passed Governor Hobby?s notorious Open Port Law in October 1920, making it virtually illegal for dockworkers and others to engage in strikes deemed harmful to commerce. This legislation and the nearly yearlong strike not only destroyed the coastwise longshore unions in Galveston, but ushered in a decade of repression from which Texas?s organized labor movement did not recover for many years.
The materiality of Tejano identity
(2016-12) Hanson, Casey; Wade, Maria Fátima, 1948-; Creel, Darrell; Franklin, Maria; Doolittle, William; Menchaca, Martha
Scholars have examined Tejano identity through various theoretical and methodological lenses, but in general, all are interested in highlighting Tejano agency in the development of Texas. As diachronic examinations of identity, these investigations are often situated in terms of shifting ethnic identities, where a broad range of backgrounds came to share common concepts of Tejano identity through shared experiences and the dynamic context of the frontier. This dissertation builds upon this research and comprehensively evaluates Tejano identity through an examination of the archaeological record from a perspective based in theories of materiality. Like previous investigations, my dissertation is a diachronic study that conceptualizes Tejano identity as a changing ethnic identity, but as an examination rooted in material culture studies, my dissertation provides a new perspective into the role of Tejano agency in the development of region. My dissertation asks what objects and what material practices were integral to the formation of Tejano identity and how did those practices change over time? To answer these questions, I compared the material worlds of various Tejano families and individuals from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and explored how objects were enmeshed in the work of subject formation over time. In my dissertation, I present the archaeological and archival data from three case study sites, the eighteenth century deposits at Spanish Governor’s Palace (41BX179), the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century deposits at and the Delgado Cistern (41BX1753) and the Mexican Period Padrón-Cháves Midden and Siege of Béxar entrenchment (41BX1752) as well as a number of other related sites. The comparative analyses reveal that local traditions, technologies, and practices contributed to the establishment of a distinct regional identity in the early eighteenth century. Many aspects of this identity endured into the nineteenth century, although other aspects of identification began to shift due to the introduction of new material practices through an illicit trade network that helped to forge a unified Tejano identity across frontier communities. Finally, the unprecedented amount of goods introduced to the frontier along with Anglo-American colonists during the Mexican Period exposed Tejanos to an array of new practices that fractured Tejano identity and reshaped the frontier.
?"Won't we never get out of this state??": western soldiers in post-civil war Texas, 1865-1866
(Texas A&M University, 2005-02-17) Beall, Jonathan Andrew
After the Civil War, the government needed to send an occupation force into Texas to help rebuild the state government and confront the French Imperialist forces that had invaded Mexico. Unfortunately, the government was required to use volunteers because the Regular Army was not yet prepared to handle such a mission. Using citizen soldiers for peacetime occupation was a break from past military tradition, and the men did not appreciate such an act. Historians of Reconstruction Texas have focused on state politics, the rampant violence in the state throughout this period, and the role of freedmen in situating themselves to an uncertain and hostile society. Studies of the military in post-Civil War Texas have examined the army?s role in the state?s political reconstruction, but largely ignore the soldiers. Additionally, these works tend to over-generalize the experience and relations of the troops and Texans. This thesis looks at Western citizen soldiers, comprising the Fourth and Thirteenth Army Corps as well as two cavalry divisions, stationed in Texas after the war from the Rio Grande to San Antonio to Marshall. Beginning with the unit?s receiving official orders to proceed to Texas after the surrender of the principal Confederate forces in 1865, it follows the movements from wartime positions in Tennessee and Alabama to peacetime posts within Texas. The study examines Texan-soldier relations as they differed from place to place. It also investigates the Westerners? peacetime occupation duties and the conditions endured in Texas. The thesis argues that there was diversity in both the Western volunteers? experiences and relations with occupied Texans, and it was not as monolithic as past historians have suggested. Specifically, this study endeavors to supplement the existing historiography of the army in Texas during Reconstruction. Broadly, this thesis also hopes to be a more general look at the use of citizen soldiers for postwar occupation duty.

Browsing by Subject "Texas history"

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