What does it mean to be Indian today? Specifically, what does it mean to be an Alabama-Coushatta Indian living on a reservation in East Texas, geographically far from ancestral territory and removed in time and by the intervention of white missionaries and government agents from the traditions and lifestyles of one's forebears?
All of the most emotional issues among contemporary Southeast Texas Native Americans--including repatriation of remains, educational funding, health care, and cultural preservation--in some way address the question of personal identity. Difficulties in determining...

The pioneering figures presented here have forged new paths for women in fields ranging from nursing, pharmacy, public health, and dentistry to general and hospital practice, hospice care, virology, surgery, and psychiatry. Their stories reveal the special obstacles they faced and overcame as women practicing in a demanding, traditionally all-male field. They also chronicle the history of medicine in the state generally since, although there was discrimination and resistance to accepting them, their accomplishments paralleled and in some instances led the development of medical practice and...

Throughout the history of Dallas, women have worked both alongside and apart from the men now remembered as the city's founders and builders. In truth, women helped to create the definitive forms of urban life by establishing organizations and agencies that altered the responsibilities and functions of local government, amended the public conception of political issues, changed the city's physical structure, and affected the day-to-day lives of thousands of people.
In "Women and the Creation of Urban Life, " Elizabeth York Enstam examines how women stretched, redefined, and at times...

In turn-of-the-century Texas, newspapers routinely offered only fashion and social news to their women readers. Pauline Periwinkle, the pen name of Isadore Miner Callaway, changed this with her weekly column for the Woman's Century Page of the "Dallas Morning News" which encourage women to take part in the Progressive Era by becoming involved in reform efforts in their cities and towns.
As the first woman editor for "Dallas Morning News, " Pauline Periwinkle was a catalyst for numerous local reforms and was widely read by women across Texas. Viewing women's clubs as an ideal vehicle for...

On Thanksgiving Day, 1921, a man in Waco listened intently to a series of dots and dashes coming over his crystal radio receiver. The electronic signal spelled out "T FP 8Y L." The man took off his headphones, walked over to a window, and with a megaphone yelled out that window, "Texas forward pass; eight yard loss." He was receiving the broadcast account of the annual Turkey Day football rivalry between the Agriculture and Mechanical College of Texas and Texas University, being played at Kyle Field in College Station and broadcast in a play-by-play, coded account over 5XB, the college's...

When faced by the Court-ordered "all deliberate speed" time frame for school desegregation, a fearful Houston school board member urged the city to "make haste slowly," in order for the school system to receive decisions based on sound judgment and discretion.
Houston, Texas, had what may have been the largest racially segregated "Jim Crow" public school system in the United States when the Supreme Court declared the practice unconstitutional in 1954. Ultimately, helped by members of its business community, Houston did desegregate its public schools and did so peacefully, without making...

Starting in 1916, Texans built seventeen four- and five-masted sailing ships out of East Texas pine, making a significant contribution in World War I. The ships' careers carried them to Europe, South America, both American coasts, and even eighty miles up the Danube River.
In "Wooden Ships from Texas, " Richard W. Bricker brings to light this fascinating, but little-known, period in Texas maritime history. Bricker unearthed a considerable quantity of archival material, allowing him to describe them and make at least a partial career tracking of each vessel.
The first ship built was...

In February, 1830, eighteenyearold Theodore Pavie traveled west on the Camino Real from Natchitoches, in the new state of Louisiana, to Nacogdoches, Texas, which remained under Mexican rule. Events of his trip inspired him to write stories rich in details of the LouisianaTexas border region after he returned to France.
"Le Negre" depicts the internal dynamics of a Louisiana slave community in an elemental tale of good versus evil. Pavie contrasts the nobility of the tragic hero, once a tribal chief in Africa, with the inhumanity of his white overseer.
"Le Lazo" is one of the first...

During Queen Victoria's reign, many working-class immigrants came to America. Because of their shared language, Anglo ethnicity, and familiarity with English-based customs, these immigrants rapidly blended into American life. John W. Leonard and J. W. L. "Will" Johnson were two such Englishmen; they came to Beaumont, Texas, in 1869, assimilated quickly, and became "invisible immigrants."
Living in Beaumont for almost fifteen years, Johnson and Leonard carved out careers as teachers, lawyers, and newspapermen. Johnson operated a school, edited the "Neches Valley News, " and helped...

Details the career of Lula B. White, executive secretary of the Houston, Texas, branch of the NAACP. White was a significant force in the struggle against Jim Crow laws during the 1940s and 1950s. Places her in her proper perspectives in Texas, Southern, African American, women's, and general Americ