In Women in the Texas Populist Movement, Marion K. Barthelme presents more than a hundred letters from Texas farm women, who were becoming ever more alert to the political and economic forces impacting their lives. The agrarian reform movement was a major element of political life in Texas, and women's letters to the Texas Farmers' Alliance newspaper became increasingly passionate and forthright in expressing their concerns. The women discover a camaraderie through their letters - a recognition of their common aspirations and frustrations with a system that dismisses their experiences....

Texas A&M University Press has released a paperback edition of "Czech Voices: Stories from ""Texas"" in the Amerikan narodni kalenda. "Originally published in 1991, "Czech Voices "comprises ten short memoir-essays written by some of the earliest Czech immigrants to Texas. Translated and edited by Clinton Machann and James W. Mendl, Jr., "Czech Voices" offers a clear window to the lives of Czech immigrants on a difficult frontier.
Each of the ten autobiographical sketches had been published in the "Amerikan narodni kalenda "(a Czech-language magazine in Chicago. (That publication s...

Though three times burned in effigy for his political activities, Ashbel Smith was an admired and influential leader in nineteenth-century Texas. A doctor educated at Yale and abroad, the "father of Texas medicine" championed higher standards of medical practice and helped found the state's medical society. He worked persistently to establish free public education in Texas and in his later years led the way in founding Prairie View State Normal School, the University of Texas (which he also served as regent), and the university's medical school at Galveston.
In the first full-length...

An innovative contribution to the growing body of research about urban African-American culture in the South, Black Dixie is the first anthology to track the black experience in a single southern city across the entire slavery/post-slavery continuum. It combines the best previously published scholarship about black Houston and little-known contemporary eyewitness accounts of the city with fresh, unpublished essays by historians and social scientists.
Divided into four sections, the book covers a broad range of both time and subjects. The first section analyzes the development of scholarly...

On a few sandy acres in the middle of the harsh, wild prairie of South Texas, young Helen Sewell grew to adulthood, as hardy and tenacious as the brush that grew around her. This is her story.
In 1908, at the age of eleven, Helen moved with her family to what would later become Jim Hogg County. Shaped by her rugged environment, she worked with her father in the field doing a man's work for three years, without benefit of schools, churches, or medical attention. Then, filled with desire for an education, she began to acquire an unorthodox, haphazard one that eventually led to college. She...

Fountain Goodlet Oxsheer--like "Slaughter" or "Goodnight"--was an unusual and appealing name for one of Texas' most dynamic cattle ranchers. Once the baron of an intricate network of ranches that stretched from Oklahoma and the Texas Staked Plains down to northern Mexico, Oxsheer prospered, endured, and sought to run his empire and live by his own code of ethics. But the great ranching era ended, and twentieth-century phenomena such as world war and materialistic lifestyles joined the Dust Bowl tempest to obscure his renown and obliterate his fortune.
The forgotten cattle king is brought...

The architecture of an area reflects and indeed embodies its history. When a significant portion of that architecture is lost, so is the grasp later generations have on their heritage. With more than 250 historical photographs and drawings and thoughtful commentary, Willard Robinson recaptures for Texans the cultural history of their state through the architecture that is gone.
This handsome volume is unique in picturing comprehensively both public and private buildings and in illustrating the entire history of the state's architecture, unhindered by the difficulties of finding extant...

Travel between southwestern towns at the turn of the century was an arduous experience. There were no longer any stagecoaches to carry travelers. Railroads did criss-cross the region, but they did not go through every burg. Motor cars were appearing, but not everyone could afford them. W. B. Chenoweth saw this void in transportation service. He designed a six-cylinder "motor driven stage coach," and in 1907 he coaxed a few passengers into the vehicle for a trip from Colorado City to Snyder, Texas.
As soon as passengers became used to Chenoweth's noisy coaches, the dusty paths, and, most...