Before Texas Changed

Before Texas Changed
Author: David Murph
Publisher: Texas Christian University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780875653334

"Growing up in Fort Worth never lacked in excitement for David Murph. In this memoir of life in the '50s, Murph recalls a mischievous childhood punctuated by adventures in driving, occasional acts of accidental arson, more than one trip to the jailhouse, and countless other tales. His adventures included broken windows, brushes with blindness, bull riding, and a pet spider monkey, alongside lessons about life and death and the importance of family. Murph's story brings to life a time when television was new and exciting, parents sided with the law, and people were to be trusted more often than not."--BOOK JACKET.

Changing Texas

Changing Texas
Author: Steve H. Murdock
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2014-03-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1623491665

Drawing on nearly thirty years of prior analyses of growth, aging, and diversity in Texas populations and households, the authors of Changing Texas: Implications of Addressing or Ignoring the Texas Challenge examine key issues related to future Texas population change and its socioeconomic implications. Current interpretation of data indicates that, in the absence of any change in the socioeconomic conditions associated with the demographic characteristics of the fastest growing populations, Texas will become poorer and less competitive in the future. However, the authors delineate how such a future can be altered so that the “Texas Challenge” becomes a Texas advantage, leading to a more prosperous future for all Texans. Presenting extensive data and projections for the period through 2050, Changing Texas permits an educated preview of Texas at the middle of the twenty-first century. Discussing in detail the implications of population-related change and examining how the state could alter those outcomes through public policy, Changing Texas offers important insights for the implications of Texas’ changing demographics for educational infrastructure, income and poverty, unemployment, healthcare needs, business activity, public funding, and many other topics important to the state, its leaders, and its people. Perhaps most importantly, Changing Texas shows how objective information, appropriately analyzed, can inform governmental and private-sector policies that will have important implications for the future of Texas.

Reagan's Comeback

Reagan's Comeback
Author: Gilbert Garcia
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2012-02-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 159534117X

Never before has the story been told of the dramatic turning point when Ronald Reagan found his voice as a presidential contender and overcame the Republican establishment. Reagan's Comeback is the story of how one state, one man, and one month changed national politics forever. Chronicling how Reagan’s political career nearly ended, this turnabout story is told by those who made it happen: campaign volunteers, financiers, political activists, and media observers. Positioning Reagan to win in 1980, the birth of the “Reagan Democrat” transformed Texas from Democratic stronghold to the reliably Republican powerhouse it is today, since producing five Republican presidential candidates and two Republican presidents, with more to follow. Reagan’s rise and victory against Ford in 1976 mirrors the current climate between the Tea Party movement and the GOP. With the 2012 election in sight, there is no better time to finally tell the whole story of how the Reagan Revolution found its launching point.

The Sports Revolution

The Sports Revolution
Author: Frank Andre Guridy
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 431
Release: 2021-03-23
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1477321837

In the 1960s and 1970s, America experienced a sports revolution. New professional sports franchises and leagues were established, new stadiums were built, football and basketball grew in popularity, and the proliferation of television enabled people across the country to support their favorite teams and athletes from the comfort of their homes. At the same time, the civil rights and feminist movements were reshaping the nation, broadening the boundaries of social and political participation. The Sports Revolution tells how these forces came together in the Lone Star State. Tracing events from the end of Jim Crow to the 1980s, Frank Guridy chronicles the unlikely alliances that integrated professional and collegiate sports and launched women’s tennis. He explores the new forms of inclusion and exclusion that emerged during the era, including the role the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders played in defining womanhood in the age of second-wave feminism. Guridy explains how the sexual revolution, desegregation, and changing demographics played out both on and off the field as he recounts how the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers and how Mexican American fans and their support for the Spurs fostered a revival of professional basketball in San Antonio. Guridy argues that the catalysts for these changes were undone by the same forces of commercialization that set them in motion and reveals that, for better and for worse, Texas was at the center of America’s expanding political, economic, and emotional investments in sport.

The Injustice Never Leaves You

The Injustice Never Leaves You
Author: Monica Muñoz Martinez
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-09-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674989384

Winner of the Caughey Western History Prize Winner of the Robert G. Athearn Award Winner of the Lawrence W. Levine Award Winner of the TCU Texas Book Award Winner of the NACCS Tejas Foco Nonfiction Book Award Winner of the María Elena Martínez Prize Frederick Jackson Turner Award Finalist “A page-turner...Haunting...Bravely and convincingly urges us to think differently about Texas’s past.” —Texas Monthly Between 1910 and 1920, self-appointed protectors of the Texas–Mexico border—including members of the famed Texas Rangers—murdered hundreds of ethnic Mexicans living in Texas, many of whom were American citizens. Operating in remote rural areas, officers and vigilantes knew they could hang, shoot, burn, and beat victims to death without scrutiny. A culture of impunity prevailed. The abuses were so pervasive that in 1919 the Texas legislature investigated the charges and uncovered a clear pattern of state crime. Records of the proceedings were soon filed away as the Ranger myth flourished. A groundbreaking work of historical reconstruction, The Injustice Never Leaves You has upended Texas’s sense of its own history. A timely reminder of the dark side of American justice, it is a riveting story of race, power, and prejudice on the border. “It’s an apt moment for this book’s hard lessons...to go mainstream.” —Texas Observer “A reminder that government brutality on the border is nothing new.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

Fort Worth Stories

Fort Worth Stories
Author: Richard F. Selcer
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2021-02-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1574418386

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.

Last Chance in Texas

Last Chance in Texas
Author: John Hubner
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2008-04-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1588361632

A powerful, bracing and deeply spiritual look at intensely, troubled youth, Last Chance in Texas gives a stirring account of the way one remarkable prison rehabilitates its inmates. While reporting on the juvenile court system, journalist John Hubner kept hearing about a facility in Texas that ran the most aggressive–and one of the most successful–treatment programs for violent young offenders in America. How was it possible, he wondered, that a state like Texas, famed for its hardcore attitude toward crime and punishment, could be leading the way in the rehabilitation of violent and troubled youth? Now Hubner shares the surprising answers he found over months of unprecedented access to the Giddings State School, home to “the worst of the worst”: four hundred teenage lawbreakers convicted of crimes ranging from aggravated assault to murder. Hubner follows two of these youths–a boy and a girl–through harrowing group therapy sessions in which they, along with their fellow inmates, recount their crimes and the abuse they suffered as children. The key moment comes when the young offenders reenact these soul-shattering moments with other group members in cathartic outpourings of suffering and anger that lead, incredibly, to genuine remorse and the beginnings of true empathy . . . the first steps on the long road to redemption. Cutting through the political platitudes surrounding the controversial issue of juvenile justice, Hubner lays bare the complex ties between abuse and violence. By turns wrenching and uplifting, Last Chance in Texas tells a profoundly moving story about the children who grow up to inflict on others the violence that they themselves have suffered. It is a story of horror and heartbreak, yet ultimately full of hope.

Before Brown

Before Brown
Author: Gary M. Lavergne
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2010-08-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292778023

“Like Texas’s founding fathers, Sweatt fearlessly faced evil, and made Texas a better place. His story is our story, and Gary Lavergne tells it well.” –Paul Begala, political contributor, CNN Winner of the Coral Horton Tullis Prize for Best Book of Texas History by the Texas State Historical Association Winner of the Carr P. Collins Award for Best Work of Non-fiction by the Texas Institute of Letters On February 26, 1946, an African American from Houston applied for admission to the University of Texas School of Law. Although he met all of the school’s academic qualifications, Heman Marion Sweatt was denied admission because he was black. He challenged the university’s decision in court, and the resulting case, Sweatt v. Painter, went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Sweatt’s favor. In this engrossing, well-researched book, Gary M. Lavergne tells the fascinating story of Heman Sweatt’s struggle for justice and how it became a milestone for the civil rights movement. He reveals that Sweatt was a central player in a master plan conceived by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for ending racial segregation in the United States. Lavergne masterfully describes how the NAACP used the Sweatt case to practically invalidate the “separate but equal” doctrine that had undergirded segregated education for decades. He also shows how the Sweatt case advanced the career of Thurgood Marshall, whose advocacy of Sweatt taught him valuable lessons that he used to win the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954 and ultimately led to his becoming the first black Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers

Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers
Author: Brian Kilmeade
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2020-05-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0525540547

The New York Times bestseller now in paperback with a new epilogue. In March 1836, the Mexican army led by General Santa Anna massacred more than two hundred Texians who had been trapped in the Alamo. After thirteen days of fighting, American legends Jim Bowie and Davey Crockett died there, along with other Americans who had moved to Texas looking for a fresh start. It was a crushing blow to Texas’s fight for freedom. But the story doesn’t end there. The defeat galvanized the Texian settlers, and under General Sam Houston’s leadership they rallied. Six weeks after the Alamo, Houston and his band of settlers defeated Santa Anna’s army in a shocking victory, winning the independence for which so many had died. Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers recaptures this pivotal war that changed America forever, and sheds light on the tightrope all war heroes walk between courage and calculation. Thanks to Kilmeade’s storytelling, a new generation of readers will remember the Alamo—and recognize the lesser known heroes who snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

Out of Darkness

Out of Darkness
Author: Ashley Hope Pérez
Publisher: Carolrhoda Lab ®
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2015-09-01
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1467776785

A Michael L. Printz Honor Book "This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion—the worst school disaster in American history—as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people. "[This] layered tale of color lines, love and struggle in an East Texas oil town is a pit-in-the-stomach family drama that goes down like it should, with pain and fascination, like a mix of sugary medicine and artisanal moonshine."—The New York Times Book Review "Pérez deftly weaves [an] unflinchingly intense narrative....A powerful, layered tale of forbidden love in times of unrelenting racism."―starred, Kirkus Reviews "This book presents a range of human nature, from kindness and love to acts of racial and sexual violence. The work resonates with fear, hope, love, and the importance of memory....Set against the backdrop of an actual historical event, Pérez...gives voice to many long-omitted facets of U.S. history."―starred, School Library Journal