Bücher der Reihe Jack and Doris Smothers Series in Texas History, Life, and Culture

Twelve essays by noted Reconstruction-era historian Barry A. Crouch which explore the African American experience in Texas following emancipation.

';Detail[s] the grassroots interplay among the variety of ideologies, individuals, and organizations that made up the Chicano movement in San Antonio, Texas.' Journal of American History In the mid-1960s, San Antonio, Texas, was a segregated city governed by an entrenched Anglo social and business elite. The Mexican American barrios of the west and south sides were characterized by substandard housing and experienced seasonal flooding. Gang warfare broke out regularly. Then the striking farmworkers of South Texas marched through the city and set off a social movement that transformed the barrios and ultimately brought down the old Anglo oligarchy. In Quixote's Soldiers, David Montejano uses a wealth of previously untapped sources, including the congressional papers of Henry B. Gonzalez, to present an intriguing and highly readable account of this turbulent period. Montejano divides the narrative into three parts. In the first part, he recounts how college student activists and politicized social workers mobilized barrio youth and mounted an aggressive challenge to both Anglo and Mexican American political elites. In the second part, Montejano looks at the dynamic evolution of the Chicano movement and the emergence of clear gender and class distinctions as women and ex-gang youth struggled to gain recognition as serious political actors. In the final part, Montejano analyzes the failures and successes of movement politics. He describes the work of second-generation movement organizations that made possible a new and more representative political order, symbolized by the election of Mayor Henry Cisneros in 1981. ';A most welcome addition to the growing literature on the Chicana/o movement of the 1960s and 1970s.' Pacific Historical Review

A history of independent African American settlements in Texas during the Jim Crow era, featuring historical and contemporary photographs.In the decades following the Civil War, nearly a quarter of African Americans achieved a remarkable victory-they got their own land. While other ex-slaves and many poor whites became trapped in the exploitative sharecropping system, these independence-seeking individuals settled on pockets of unclaimed land that had been deemed too poor for farming and turned them into successful family farms. In these self-sufficient rural communities, often known as "e;freedom colonies,"e; African Americans created a refuge from the discrimination and violence that routinely limited the opportunities of blacks in the Jim Crow South.Freedom Colonies is the first book to tell the story of these independent African American settlements. Thad Sitton and James Conrad focus on communities in Texas, where blacks achieved a higher percentage of land ownership than in any other state of the Deep South. The authors draw on a vast reservoir of ex-slave narratives, oral histories, written memoirs, and public records to describe how the freedom colonies formed and to recreate the lifeways of African Americans who made their living by farming or in skilled trades such as milling and blacksmithing. They also uncover the forces that led to the decline of the communities from the 1930s onward, including economic hard times and the greed of whites who found legal and illegal means of taking black-owned land. And they visit some of the remaining communities to discover how their independent way of life endures into the twenty-first century."e;Thad Sitton and James H. Conrad have made an important contribution to African American and southern history with their study of communities fashioned by freedmen in the years after emancipation."e; -Journal of American History"e;This study is a thoughtful and important addition to an understanding of rural Texas and the nature of black settlements."e; -Journal of Southern History

A political scientist and Republican party insider examines how Texas made its dramatic shift from Democratic stronghold to GOP dominance.In November 1960, the Democratic party dominated Texas. Democrats held all thirty statewide elective positions as well as the entire state legislature. Fifty years later, this stronghold had not only been lostit had reversed. In November 2010, Republicans controlled every statewide elective office, as well as the Texas Senate and House of Representatives. The state's congressional delegation in Washington was comprised of twenty-five Republicans and nine Democrats.Red Stateexplores why this transformation took place and what these changes imply for the future of Texas politics. Wayne Thorburn analyzes a wealth of data to show how changes in the state's demographicsincluding an influx of new residents, the shift from rural to urban, and the growth of the Mexican American populationhave moved Texas through three stages of party competition, from two-tiered politics to two-party competition, and then to the return to one-party dominance, this time by Republicans. Thorburn reveals that the shift from Democratic to Republican governance has been driven not by any change in Texans' ideological perspective or public policy orientationeven when Texans were voting Democrat, conservatives outnumbered liberals or moderatesbut by the Republican party's increasing identification with conservatism since 1960.

Drawing on a wealth of previously unused primary sources, this book offers the first full-scale assessment of the much-reviled Texas State Police and its role in maintaining law and order in Reconstruction Texas.

Now in paperback-the acclaimed biography of one of Texas's most influential and controversial judges, with a new epilogue that traces William Wayne Justice's impact and legacy.

Much has been debated about the presence of undocumented workers along the South Texas border, but these debates often overlook the more complete dimension: the region's longstanding, undocumented economies as a whole. Borderlands commerce that evades government scrutiny can be categorized into informal economies (the unreported exchange of legal goods and services) or underground economies (criminal economic activities that, obviously, occur without government oversight). Examining long-term study, observation, and participation in the border region, with the assistance of hundreds of locally embedded informants, The Informal and Underground Economy of the South Texas Border presents unique insights into the causes and ramifications of these economic channels.The third volume in UT-Pan American's Borderlife Project, this eye-opening investigation draws on vivid ethnographic interviews, bolstered by decades of supplemental data, to reveal a culture where divided loyalties, paired with a lack of access to protection under the law and other forms of state-sponsored recourse, have given rise to social spectra that often defy stereotypes. A cornerstone of the authors' findings is that these economic activities increase when citizens perceive the state's intervention as illegitimate, whether in the form of fees, taxes, or regulation. From living conditions in the impoverished colonias to President Felipe Calderón's futile attempts to eradicate police corruption in Mexico, this book is a riveting portrait of benefit versus risk in the wake of a "no-man's-land" legacy.

A senior scholar of Latino political action examines the intriguing incongruities in post-WWII Texas politics, particularly the curious flourishing of Latino leadership during the state's simultaneous transition to conservatism.

The shocking story of the black inmate who was acquitted after killing two high-ranking prison guards in a case that publicized the horrors of Texas's "plantation-style" prison system

Mark Carroll draws on legal and social history to trace the evolution of sexual, family, and racial-caste relations in the most turbulent polity on the southern frontier during the antebellum period (1823-1860).

In the first comprehensive history of the region, Jefferson Morgenthaler traces the history of La Junta de los Rios from the formation of the Mexico-Texas border in the mid-19th century to the 1997 ambush shooting of teenage goatherd Esquiel Hernandez by

A rich critical study of the literary legacies bestowed by the late Americo Paredes (1915-1999), and the intellectual paths he created as one of the forebears of Mexican American Studies.

This book tells the stories of the vaqueros of the Wild Horse Desert for fourth- through eighth-grade students.

This groundbreaking book is at once a general history and a celebration of Tejanas' contributions to Texas over three centuries.

How Texans of Mexican ancestry have established a cultural province in this Texas-Mexico borderland that is unlike any other Mexican American region.

A comparative history of Mexican-American Protestants that describes how they have created a truly indigenous, authentic, and empowering faith tradition in the Mexican-American community.

The largest single-volume collection of interviews with 50 of Texas's most important writers-including a photo and bibliography for each author.

This literary biography thoroughly investigates how Horton Foote's life and worldview have shaped his works for stage, television, and film.

The first complete, annotated publication of the reminiscences of San Antonio native and Battle of San Jacinto veteran Jose Antonio Menchaca, with commentary that contextualizes and debates Menchaca's claims while delivering a rich portrait of Tejano life in the nineteenth century.

Tells the story of the Republic of the Rio Grande and its people from the perspective of individuals who lived in this region from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century

An account of the people and poliics of Texas during the 1820s.

In telling the story of a long-ago crime and its tragic results, de la Garza sheds new light on the interethnic struggles that defined life on the U.S.-Mexico border a century ago.