The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Resources for Teaching Women’s History

Banner image for Resources for Teaching Women's History by Gabrielle Esparza.

From the editors: To mark Women’s History Month, we collected a range of Not Even Past articles and reviews and assembled them here, on a single page devoted to resources on women’s history. We’ve organized our content around seven topics. The articles grouped under each topic heading highlight groundbreaking research. However, they are also intended as a concrete resource for teachers.

The list of resources on this page was initially compiled by Gabrielle Esparza. It has been updated by John Gleb and Atar David.

Topics
  1. Black Women’s History
  2. Suffrage
  3. History of Reproduction
  4. Women’s Activism
  5. Important Figures
  6. Recommended Reading
  7. Recorded Talks and Podcasts

Black Women’s History

One has to only look at a few headlines to see that many view black women organizers as important figures in combating today’s most pressing problems. Articles urging mainstream America to “support black women” or “trust black women” such as the founders of the Black Lives Matter Movement are popular. Publications, such as Time, laud black women’s political leadership—particularly when they mount a challenge to the status quo such as Stacey Abrams’ victory in the Georgia Democratic Governor primary. At the core of these sentiments is the recognition that black women have developed and sustained a liberal democratic politics that is conscious of and responsive to the interconnected effects of racism, capitalism, and sexism and that their approach can offer insight into current socio-political issues. The media often frames these and other women’s efforts as a manifestation of the current political moment divorced from the longer tradition of black women agitators and organizers to which they belong. Many of the black women making headlines today for their work in advancing civil rights and social justice ideals draw from these earlier traditions, including from the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 70s.

Ashley Farmer

Fanny Ward’s 1883 advertisement (above) appeared as an appeal to the editor of the Southwestern Christian Advocate, an African American newspaper published in New Orleans. Scholars use documents like this to examine a number of trends and patterns relevant to the study of slavery. But they also hold great potential for educators to teach about enslaved families, the domestic slave trade, and the effects of emancipation on Black families. This begins by challenging students to consider how slavery resulted in massive familial separation and how it left millions of Americans with a strong desire to reunite with loved ones. 

Signe Peterson Fourmy

Suffrage

In the Austin History Center, there is a curious poster that demands the attention of “WOMEN!” in red, all-capital letters. Below this, a pair of eyes peer out beneath furrowed eyebrows warning “The Eyes of Texas are Upon You: Have You Paid That Poll Tax?” At the bottom of the poster is the instantly recognizable façade of the Alamo, just above the name of the group responsible for the ad, Texas League of Women Voters, Georgetown, Texas.

The poster is in the Jane McCallum collection. After Texas ratified the 19th Amendment in June 1919, the Texas Equal Suffrage Association became the state chapter of the League of Women Voters, and the local suffrage clubs were encouraged to make that transition as well. McCallum was an Austin-area suffragist who went on to spearhead publicity campaigns for the League of Women voters, lead the Women’s Joint Legislative Council, and serve as Texas Secretary of State under two governors. It is likely she had a hand in this particular poster, but we can’t be sure. In fact, there isn’t even a date on the poster, which scholars and archivists have only dated as being from the early 1920s. Both the Texas Equal Suffrage Associations and the League used maternal appeals to get women to pay the poll tax. They argued that this is how Texas funded public schools, and that “90% of Texas educators are women and need a living wage.” The poster is in line with the WWI-era appeals to women to do their duty as citizens.

Rachel Gunter

History of Reproduction

Listeners wanted to discuss any number of issues: work, housing (in short supply as the economy expanded), credit and debt, the struggles of family businesses, and everything having to do with sex. They asked about sexual dilemmas and crises, pregnancy, family life, parents or in-laws (helpful intrusive, or both), and children, but contraception and abortion topped the list of women’s concerns. (Men wrote as well: they, too, were and are implicated in fertility and reproduction.) In 1967, the same year that Grégoire began broadcasting, the Neuwirth law made it legal for the first time, to discuss contraception in public – and cautiously opened the door to approving the sale of selected oral contraceptives, IUDs, and diaphragms. 

Judith Coffin

The experience of migration—the decisions behind it, its major demographics, its rewards and tolls both physical and emotional—has been well studied. In both scholarly and popular depictions, death during migration is also a key theme. Yet migrant women’s experiences of giving birth at sea have received less attention, and the issues of childbirth and sexuality for women who worked at sea—especially side by side with their partners or spouses—very little attention indeed.

What follows will begin to tell that story. It will also reveal some of unexpected nuances. Responses to seafaring pregnancy and its associated risks varied more across class than gender lines. For working women, self-care in the course of pregnancy and childbirth was often out of the question. Their survival depended on risking death—for themselves and their children—to make a living.

Julia Stryker

Women’s Activism

Internal tensions are par for the course in the history of marches on Washington, whether they involved racial justice, women’s rights, or political protest. The several thousand women who paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession, the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, were not as unified as they might have appeared. Participants included immigrant women sweatshop workers, who linked the right to vote to their movement to organize against deadly factory conditions and piecework wages. But noticeably absent from the front of the march were black women’s organizations, who supported the effort but whose participation was spurned by the militant young suffragist Alice Paul, who feared it would jeopardize support from Southern white women. These African American women ended up participating, but they were required to march behind all the other women. All the women who marched down Pennsylvania Avenue stood up to jeers and violence, but they themselves were divided by an ugly racism rooted in political pragmatism.

Laurie Green

Important Figures

Liz’s family tree sprouted strong, adventurous women equal to the men.  A great aunt, Louella Robertson Fulmore, eloquently advocated educational equality for women. Another great aunt, the prominent suffragist, Birdie Johnson, became the first Democratic national committeewoman from Texas. As she exhorted women to organize to make their influence felt at the polls, she declared that it was “our first step” in the exercise of “direct political power.”  No wonder Liz believed that she had inherited her feminist genes.

She was not blind to the shortcomings of her ancestors, whose reputations bore the stain of enslavement and the tragic folly of secession. Nor did her rich Texas legacy confer a sense of privilege or birthright. Instead, it affirmed her belief that ordinary people can overcome adversity to accomplish extraordinary things.  It also instilled a love of Texas history and a respect for its historians, which is why [the Liz Carpenter] award meant so much to her.  Finally, it inspired one of greatest political zingers of all time. When John Connally threw his support to the Republican incumbent President in 1972 and formed a group called “Democrats for Nixon,”  Liz declared that if Connally had been at the Alamo, he would have organized “Texans for Santa Anna.”

Michael Gillette

[I]n treaty port Nagasaki, where opportunity and exploitation went hand in hand, there was no easy distinction to be made between powerful and powerless, oppressor and oppressed, advantaged and disadvantaged. Ōura Kei was not a villain, and she was not a hero; she was an ambitious, driven woman who fought for everything she had and did not hesitate to use the power that she had earned. Her life and its complications helps us understand that inequality was not the exception in treaty port Nagasaki, it was embedded into almost every aspect of everyday life.

Jessa Dahl

Recorded Talks and Podcasts

Citizens at Last: Texas Women Fight for the Vote

Citizens at Last: Texas Women Fight for the Vote

Citizens at Last is a documentary film that tells the story of the grit, persistence, and tactical smarts of the Texas women who organized, demonstrated, and won the vote for women. The film is available via PBS Austin/KLRU and www.citizensatlastfilm.com..

March is Women’s History Month, a time to explore and celebrate the lives of women whose contributions to our state and nation are all but forgotten. The film, Citizens at Last: Texas Women Fight for the Vote, shines a light on the women who led the struggle for the 19th Amendment and beyond.

Ellen Temple, one of the film’s producers, wanted to document this important history. She shared, “For the past few years, I’ve asked, ‘Do you know who Minnie Fisher Cunningham, Christia Adair, Jovita Idar were?’ No one said, ‘Yes’. We Texans love the values embodied in our history—boldness, persistence, great leaders, and hard work. With this film, I want to celebrate those values and the women who have led the fight for the vote in Texas all the way to the present day.”

Screenshot from https://www.citizensatlastfilm.com/. On the website you can also find 5 new short films featuring women in Citizens at Last: Jessie Dent, Elizabeth Peterson, Jovita Idar, elisabet Ney and Lulu B. White.

Making a film about the history of the Texas suffrage movement was truly a Texas-size challenge. For over half a century, many unsung suffragists fought for the right to vote, opposed by the men in power who saw women’s suffrage as a threat to white supremacy. The women became organized and disciplined, called a “machine” by their enemies who said they weren’t “real women.” Politics in Texas was ripe with corruption in the early 1900s, which provided our film with a dramatic narrative.

Texas suffrage leader Minnie Fisher Cunningham faced overwhelming obstacles but her many setbacks only strengthened her determination. Little did I know that her resilience would serve as a role model for our own efforts to make this film.

Minnie Fisher Cunningham (far right) and two other women in front of car holding sign that reads: "Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham for United States Senator." Photo Courtesy of the Austin History Center
Minnie Fisher Cunningham (far right) and two others in front of car holding sign that reads: “Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham for United States Senator.” Source: Austin History Center

Halfway through the making of Citizens at Last, we were hit by the pandemic and its debilitating and necessary shutdowns. For our safety, we retreated to our separate spaces, but we stayed connected using Zoom and continued to collaborate. Key team members worked to keep the flow of research, images, music, and story moving forward. During the next months, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement made our commitment to telling the truth about white supremacy in Texas feel even more crucial.

Actress Angela Smith portrays Carrie Chapman Catt in Citizens at Last. Source: Nancy Schiesari
Actress Angela Smith portrays Carrie Chapman Catt in Citizens at Last. Source: Nancy Schiesari

The finished film resonates even more after the 2020 national election when our voting rights, the cornerstone of our democracy, were violently contested. Suffrage took generations to achieve the goal of a federal amendment and the extension of the vote to people of every race and ethnicity. The inspiring story of these brave women reminds us that as filmmakers we can be part of the continuum that helps shape our future for the greater good.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions. 

From Butte to Here

From Butte to Here by Gwendolyn Lockman

From the Editors: From There to Here is a new series for Not Even Past in 2021. It builds off a past initiative but expands its focus to document the journeys taken by individual graduate students to Garrison hall and the University of Texas at Austin. Gwendolyn Lockman, who is completing her PhD in History, shares her story with us. For more about Gwendolyn, see her spotlight here.

It took one visit to the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives to fall in love. The archives are in historic firehouse No. 1 on Quartz Street in Butte, the copper metropolis that brought my maternal ancestors to Montana from Ireland, Slovenia, Utah, and Michigan. I decided my experience in the sports industry, prior to grad school, gave me enough background to work on the history of Butte’s amusement park, Columbia Gardens. The park was popularized by copper king William Andrews Clark in the late nineteenth century and maintained by the Anaconda Company after Clark’s death. After nearly a century as one of Butte’s central cultural institutions, the Anaconda Company shut down the Gardens in September 1973 to expand open-pit mining. The pavilion burned down in November of that year.

I asked my relatives about their memories of the park, which they visited for generations, but I did not see this project as what is sometimes described as “me-search.” I am motivated by the history of the park and its role in the relationships between capital and labor, between mining and the environment. In fact, I thought the project had no connection to my ancestors, until newspaper research on the Gardens revealed a long-disappeared great-great-grandfather.

People walk on sidewalks below a large building. Above the photo, the ad reads "All Butte goes to Columbia Gardens... Butte's only pleasure resort."
Advertisement for Butte’s Columbia Gardens. Source: Souvenir history of the Butte Fire Department by Peter Sanger, Chief Engineer

Owen McCabe was a candidate for president of Local No. 1 of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) when he gave a speech on the history of organized labor in the United States for Butte’s Labor Day 1909 celebrations at Columbia Gardens. The WFM election occurred the next day: Owen came in third.

Owen was my mother’s mother’s father’s father. He was born in County Monaghan, Ireland in March 1873. He immigrated to the United States in the 1890s and settled in Montana. In May 1896, he married Nora Reid, another Irish immigrant to Montana, at St. Paul’s Church in Anaconda, the smeltertown which processed the ore from the Butte mines. Owen and Nora lived in Anaconda, north of Butte in Walkerville, and in Ronan, on the Flathead Indian Reservation, where they homesteaded. Nora and Owen had seven children: Patrick, Joseph, Victor, Mary, John, Frank, and Nora.

Headline "Greatest Holiday of Organized Labor is Enjoyably Celebrated in Butte: Stirring Addresses Delivered before great gathering at Columbia Gardens by Owen McCabe and James E. McNally--Weather Smiles Upon the Workers, and Exercises and Sports are great Success."
The Butte Miner, September 7, 1909.

Owen was entrepreneurial, charming, intelligent, and fiercely principled. He mined and homesteaded, somehow earning enough money to make multiple return visits to Ireland. He adamantly opposed unbridled corporate power. We have one of his notebooks, in which he copied down labor speeches and songs, and wrote drafts of his own speeches.

Owen’s disappearance is intriguing even now. He left behind Nora and seven children in 1915, though Patrick died that November. Owen sold off all the equipment he had on the homestead in Ronan in March 1915. Someone, likely Owen, posted in the Ravalli Republic newspaper that Mrs. McCabe and her children were leaving for Canada, where they would join Mr. McCabe to live there permanently. Nora and the children never went to Canada. It is likely Owen paid for the notice about moving to Canada and left the family shortly thereafter, regardless of whether Canada was ever a part of his plans.

My great-grandfather, Frank McCabe, was about three years old when his father disappeared. Frank looked for Owen for decades. Nora insisted he was dead, but Frank never believed it. He drove my grandmother and great-grandmother to a remote Nevada mining town where he thought he had traced his father. Owen was not there, alive or dead.

Through recent DNA testing, we found out we were related to a family in New Zealand. Their patriarch, Thomas James Smith, came from Ireland by way of the United States, where he mined copper in Montana. The Smith’s photos of Thomas were unmistakably Owen. They struggled to trace their genealogy back to Ireland but knew that Thomas Smith was probably an assumed name. The mining bosses chased Thomas out of the U.S. because of his union activity. Owen was probably a wobbly, a member of the radical Industrial Workers of the World (I say “probably” because I have not yet confirmed this in the historical record), in addition to a WFM member. Butte’s most infamous lynching took place in 1917, roughly two years after Owen’s disappearance, when parties unknown violently murdered IWW organizer Frank Little. Owen may have left the U.S. to avoid a similar fate.

Elderly man smiles, looking directly at camera.
Thomas James “Jim” Smith, aka Owen McCabe, circa 1940, New Zealand. Source: Author.

When I take a break from combing through city planning documents, maps, reports, photographs, and journals, I dig around looking for Owen and my other family members. I spend a lot of time walking historic uptown Butte and thinking about Owen. Until 1914, the Butte Miner’s Union Hall was at 317 North Main Street, around the corner from the Archives today. An explosion destroyed the Union Hall during the fracas of an intra-union fight. My apartment looks out on the Hennessy Building, the former headquarters of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. One ancestor organized against the Company, while another–my great-grandfather, Thomas Arthur Ryan–worked on the sixth floor of the Hennessy as an ACM Co. purchasing agent. He, too, walked these same streets when he got off the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway from Anaconda to come to work. My great-grandmother Mary McCabe (née Bolkovatz) came to Butte from Anaconda to attend the Butte Business College, studying to become a personal secretary. My grandfather and many generations of uncles worked the Anaconda Smelter, processing the ore pulled from the Butte hill.

After work at the archives, I often drive the 26 miles to Anaconda, wishing the train still ran. I think about the land, the millions of years ago the Rocky Mountains formed, the people who inhabited it prior to European settlement, the immigrants who came looking for work. I visited great-grandmothers and great-great aunts and uncles in Anaconda growing up. I attended many funerals at St. Peter’s Church (St. Paul’s is gone) and Mount Olivet Cemetery, the “new” cemetery. I realized this spring that I didn’t know where Nora’s grave was. My family knew we had ancestors in one of the “old cemeteries” in the foothills above Anaconda. I searched by foot until I found them in Mount Carmel, the Catholic cemetery. One family plot includes Nora McCabe, her brothers Thomas and Michael Reid, and Nora’s children Mary, Patrick, and Victor. The Reids and McCabes are buried within 50 yards of relatives through the other side of my mother’s family: my great-great-great-great-grandfather James Ryan, my great-great-great-grandparents Thomas and Mary Ryan, and their daughters, Margret and Geraldine, who died as children. Another fifty yards to the north are my great-great-grandparents Laura and Timothy Ryan, Timothy’s brother, Emmett Joseph, and Laura and Timothy’s son, Timothy Jr.

Reid McCabe Plot at Mt. Carmel
James Thomas and Mary Ryan Plot at Mt. Carmel
Timothy, Laura, Timmy, and Emmet Ryan Plot at Mt. Carmel

My friends and colleagues know I am proud of my Montana roots. I feel even more connected to this place as I think of these ancestors as I walk Butte and Anaconda, as I dig through the histories of these places and my family. My dissertation is not about them, but it led me to them.

Gwendolyn Lockman is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. History. Her dissertation project, “Recreation and Reclamation: Parks, Mining, and Community in Butte, Montana,” investigates the history of outdoor leisure spaces, union identity, and environmental health in an industrial copper mining city. Her work is supported by the Carrie Johnson Fellowship, the Charles Redd Fellowship in Western American History, the Mining History Association Research Grant, and Dumbarton Oaks through the Garden and Landscape Studies Workshop, part of the Mellon Initiative in Urban Landscape Studies. At UT, Gwen is an affiliate of the Center for Sports Communication and Media in the Moody College of Communication, completed a Women’s and Gender studies portfolio, and has contributed to the History Department as a co-leader of the Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality, social media manager, History Graduate Student Council Representative, and web news assistant. She earned her MA in History at UT in 2020. Before graduate school, Gwen worked in the legal department for the Washington Nationals. She earned her BA in American Studies from Georgetown University. She is originally from Poplar, Montana, and calls Missoula, Montana home. 

Banner Image: Quartz Street Fire Station, Butte, Montana (1901), from Souvenir history of the Butte Fire Department by Peter Sanger, Chief Engineer

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

From Rock Island to Here

From Rock Island to Here

From the Editors: From There to Here document the journeys taken by individual graduate students to Garrison hall and the University of Texas at Austin. Gabrielle Esparza, who is completing her PhD in History, shares her story with us. For more about Gabrielle, see her spotlight here.

My great-grandpa Earl died when I was eight years old. I knew him as a frail old man, who sometimes called me by the wrong name. Gabriela instead of Gabrielle. At his funeral, I met a much younger version of my great-grandpa through the stories and photographs my relatives shared. The old pictures fascinated me. I fixated on a photo of him in his army uniform, which displayed the U.S. and Mexican flags behind him. Below his portrait, the caption read: “Aurelio Esparza. Entered American Forces Nov. 18, 1941. May God see that he returns after performing his duty.”

Man in uniform sits for portrait. The U.S. and Mexican flags are painted behind him. Below his portrait, the caption reads: “Aurelio Esparza. Entered American Forces Nov. 18, 1941. May God see that he returns after performing his duty.”

I had never heard the name Aurelio before. I had only known Earl. A name that my father and grandfather both carried in his honor. I asked why my great-grandpa changed his name from Aurelio. My dad joked, “Aurelio sounded a lot like unemployed.” A comment I would not fully grasp for a few more years.

Nobody offered many details about his original name. My great-grandma Shirley—his wife—may have been the only one who could answer my questions, but she fell ill on the morning of his funeral. Shirley never recovered and died only a month after Earl. I figured I would never know why he changed his name and how he settled on Earl, so I dropped my fixation on “Aurelio” and focused on Earl’s military service. My grandpa Mick (he never went by his given name of Earl) shared that his dad rarely talked about the war, but he offered me specifics about where Earl was stationed and in which unit he served. This led me to school projects on the Normandy Campaign and General Patton. I tried to imagine what my great-grandpa had experienced but also began to recognize these years as just one brief part of his life.

Earl circa 1943
Earl circa 1943

My focus shifted to understanding who Earl was before and after the war. Following his military service, he moved to Illinois to work at the International Harvester Farmall Plant in the Rock Island. His wife Shirley got a job there during the war. Earl and Shirley had met in North Dakota in the late 1930s. Her family farmed in Grafton, and Earl traveled there from Texas as a migrant farmworker each year.

By 1942, Earl and Shirley had three children. They welcomed four more after settling in Illinois. Their kids, including my grandpa, never learned Spanish although Earl spoke it with his extended family. As a child, I wondered why my great-grandpa anglicized his name and neglected to teach his children Spanish.

Shirley and Earl with their oldest son (and author’s grandpa) Earl “Mickey” Esparza, circa 1947.
A woman sits in an armchair and smiles. A man stands to her right, resting his arm on the back of the chair.
Earl and Shirley, undated.

As I got older, I felt a sense of shame about my inability to speak the language. Our last name always drew questions about my identity. These were often followed by questions about whether I understood or spoke Spanish. I dreaded admitting that I only knew a few words, and I wished my great-grandpa had shared the language with his children and grandchildren. But I also came to understand that he had given up aspects of his culture to build a life in the U.S.

This loss shaped my academic path. I trace my decision to study history and language to my great-grandpa. In college, I double majored in history and Spanish. Determined to learn the language my family had lost, I studied abroad and then applied for a Fulbright fellowship to Argentina. The fellowship seemed like magical thinking, but somehow, I won it. Before sharing the news with anyone else, I called my grandpa Mick. I remember him saying, “I wish my dad were still here. He would be so proud.” I had never shared with my grandpa Mick that my interest in history, the Spanish language, and Latin America stemmed from his father, my great-grandpa. Yet, he seemed to instinctively understand and always supported my ambitions. He drove me to college visits, helped me figure out finances, and bought my textbooks every semester. I would not have pursued history without my great-grandpa, but I would not be a historian without my grandpa.

Four people sit on a couch looking toward something off camera.
The author (center) with her great-grandpa (left), grandpa (right), and cousin (far right)

Gabrielle Esparza is a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American history, with a focus on twentieth-century Argentina. Her research interests include democratization, transitional justice, and human rights. She holds a B.A. in History and Spanish from Illinois College and received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Argentina in 2017. There she taught at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Gabrielle graduated with her M.A. in History from the University of Texas at Austin in 2020. Her master’s thesis The Politics of Human Rights Prosecutions: Civil Military Relations during the Alfonsín Presidency, 1983-1989 examines the evolution of President Raúl Alfonsín’s human rights policies from his candidacy to his presidency, which followed Argentina’s most repressive dictatorship. At the University of Texas at Austin, Gabrielle has served as a graduate research assistant at the Texas State Historical Association and contributed to the organization’s Handbook of Texas. She also served as co-coordinator of the Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality in 2020-2021 and as associate editor of Not Even Past from January 2021 to August 2022.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Looking Back at Barbara Jordan

Looking Back at Barbara Jordan

From the editors: This article first appeared in QT Voices, which is the online magazine of the LGBTQ Studies Program at The University of Texas at Austin. For the original article see here.

On the University of Texas campus, amid the Confederate monuments and buildings named for architects of Jim Crow, the statue of Barbara Jordan invites us to read the landscape differently. Our campus is a place where a “nest of homosexuals” was fired in the 1940s; where the dean of students canceled a Gay Liberation Front dance in the 1970s; where, in the 1990s, a member of the College of Liberal Arts Promotion and Tenure Committee argued that a lesbian professor should be denied tenure because she was violating the state’s sodomy law; where employees with same-sex partners did not get benefits and compensation equal to their heterosexual colleagues until the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision in 2015; where trans students could not put their correct names on diplomas until just this year. So it’s a delicious irony that, at the University’s main entrance at 24th and Whitis, we are welcomed to the University by an iconic figure in queer, Black, disabled, and feminist histories, refusing to let us see those stories as separate.

As depicted in bronze, Jordan stands firmly on sensible shoes, fists planted on substantial hips, her gaze piercing from beneath a strong brow and a short haircut, the sleeves of her suit jacket pushed up to the elbows. The statue was unveiled in 2009, following a week of special events honoring Jordan as the first Black congresswoman from the South, the moral voice of the Watergate hearings, recipient of the 1994 Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a beloved professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. It was the first statue of a woman (not a Winged Victory or an unnamed mother, but a real historical woman) at UT. Incredibly, it’s still the only one.

Official portrait of Barbara Jordan
Barbara Jordan. Source: Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives.

Most campus statues were installed as marks of honor from University presidents or the Board of Regents. But the Barbara Jordan statue, like the ones recognizing César Chavez and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., resulted from a grassroots effort, years of advocacy and fundraising by students. The women’s service organization Orange Jackets, one of UT’s oldest, noticed back in 2002 that women were not represented by public art on campus.  They quickly agreed that Barbara Jordan was the right figure to break that barrier, as she had so many others. Over the next few years, as the students who had started the effort graduated, a Barbara Jordan Statue Committee was formed in the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement—the student affairs, not academic administration, side of the campus. At the time, Dr. Sherri Sanders  of the DDCE said that the memorial was meant to serve as a reminder of justice, freedom, and civil rights: “That has driven many of the decisions we have made—from placement of the statue underneath the Battle Oaks, to our choice of quotes by Jordan on the stelae surrounding the statue.”

Of course, Jordan’s legacy as a civil rights icon is complicated. In 1960s and 1970s Texas, she was the moderate candidate, who often garnered votes at the expense of more radical rivals known for their involvement in the civil rights movement. Although she broke barriers as the first African-American woman from the South to be elected to Congress, she always refused to “represent,” saying in a 1976 Texas Monthly profile, for example, “I am neither a Black politician nor a female politician. I am a politician.” As is so often the case with queer history, we’ll be disappointed if we look to Barbara Jordan to find either a secret radical or a blameless victim. Like many figures in LGBTQ+ history, she was brilliant, talented, clever, complicated, and sometimes disappointing. Queer.

These knotty contradictions are hiding in plain sight, just like the Barbara Jordan statue. Jordan’s queerness and her disability were the open secrets of her seventeen years on the faculty at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. She had left public life abruptly, shortly after being elected to her third term in Congress in 1976. At the time, her biographer Mary Beth Rogers writes, everyone wondered “why she would give up such a promising career at the height of her powers, the peak of her influence.” But Jordan “stayed silent and left most questions unanswered.”

Barbara Jordan statue at UT
Barbara Jordan Statue at UT Austin. Source: Richard Denney, hmdb.org

From my perspective as a queer studies scholar, however, the answers are there. Queer studies methodologies teach us how to see and interpret them. Much is made of the fact that Jordan never publicly identified as lesbian or queer. But it’s equally important that she never publicly admitted that she had multiple sclerosis, despite the fact that she used a wheelchair full-time after 1988. Even her closest friends, according to Rogers, never had a conversation with Jordan about either her mobility or her love life.

In her 2000 biography, Rogers balks at describing Nancy Earl, with whom she shared a home in Austin from 1976 until her death in 1996, as Jordan’s partner. “Speculation on the sex lives of public figures is a popular pastime. I declined to do that in my work on Barbara Jordan,” she writes. Jordan never spoke about her illnesses and disabilities, either, but Rogers has no qualms about outing her in that arena. Queer studies scholars are familiar with this assumption: that someone’s identity and relationships are so stigmatizing that they deserve a special privacy, out of “respect” for the wishes of the deceased. In fact, what’s being respected is the oppressive circumstances that hid these relationships in the first place, downplaying the importance of lovers and partners in someone’s life in a way that actually cements those homophobic assumptions into the historical record.

Jordan’s political career had been threatened by homophobic attacks since she started in politics in Houston’s Third Ward in the early 1960s. Jordan lost her first race, for election to the Texas House, in 1964. According to a 1996 story in the queer magazine The Advocate, Jordan “had a female companion in the early 1960s who joined her on the campaign trail.” Advisors warned that their closeness could damage her political chances. The Advocate, speaking to people who knew her at the time, reported, “Jordan listened and, without putting up a fight, agreed to impose a public distance between herself and the companion.” As so often in queer history, we see that it’s hard to sustain relationships that are secret and considered damaging. For Jordan, “the relationship did not last long after that.”

In the Texas Monthly cover profile, Bill Broyles wrote that in 1970, supporters of her opponent in the Democratic primary again “began spreading rumors about Jordan’s sex life.” Although Jordan won that primary handily and was elected to Congress, it was clear that, without a visible heterosexual partner, Jordan’s personal life could still be a political liability. The stakes were high. In the course of his research, Broyles said, he had heard Barbara Jordan described as: “a genius, a hero, the best politician of this century, the salvation of American politics, a mythic figure, the main inspiration for a troubled time, a woman of high destiny,” and “a cross between Lyndon Johnson and Mahatma Gandhi.” Broyles ended his piece by observing, “all she really wants to do is be President.” That’s what the country lost to the oppression and stigma Jordan faced—and internalized–around her queerness and disability.

Nancy Earl, seated, looks into the distance. She holds a beer.
Nancy Earl, 1985. Source: Texas Southern University, Portal to Texas History.

It had been easier for Jordan to keep her relationships out of the public eye back in Texas, when her affairs were short-lived and her public profile was lower. Jordan moved from her hometown of Houston to Austin in 1966 to start her legislative career. In the more liberal capital city, and perhaps also out from under her preacher father’s eye, Jordan found new friends. Those interviewed by The Advocate described Jordan as “straightforward about her sexual orientation in private.”  “`She never denied who she was,’ said a friend who, like nearly everyone who knew her personally, asked not to be identified. `It just was not the public’s need to know.’”

In a 1979 memoir, Jordan described going on a camping trip with friends during this period: “At some point in the evening, Nancy Earl arrived, and that was the first time we’d met face to face.” (And the queer studies scholar asks: had they talked on the phone? Written letters? Was it a set-up?) Jordan describes Earl as “tanned and tow-haired.” “Nancy and I sat there playing the guitar; we had just met but we were singing and drinking and having a swell time.” Telling the story without spilling the tea, Jordan goes on, “I had had a great time and enjoyed myself very much. I remember I thought: This is something I would like to repeat. I’d like to have another party like that. Nancy Earl is a fun person to be with…I could relax and enjoy myself…I had discovered I could relax at parties like that where I was safe.”

Nancy Earl and Barbara Jordan bought a five-acre plot of land together in 1976 and built a home. They entertained and socialized as a couple, but Nancy remained in Texas when Barbara first went to Washington in 1972. During her years in Congress, Jordan distinguished herself by serving on the House Judiciary Committee that adopted articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon. The hearings were nationally televised. Her preacher’s-daughter alto became the voice of the nation’s conscience. She cast her questioning of Nixon and his associates as an act of patriotism, intoning statements that became famous such as: “My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.” This was the Barbara Jordan that Lyndon Johnson loved.

Photograph of Barbara Jordan at a judicial hearing for the House Judiciary Committee. She is wearing a light-colored dress, sitting at a desk with a microphone, and visible from the chest up.
Barbara Jordan at a hearing for the House Judiciary Committee, 1974. Source: Texas Southern University, Portal to Texas History.

In 1976, Jordan received a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Later that year, she began using a cane. Nancy Earl moved to Washington to live with her and help in her office, but before long, Jordan made the shocking announcement that she would be leaving politics. In the DC fishbowl, her relationship with Earl was suddenly much more visible, though Jordan did not attribute her exit from politics to either her health or potential scrutiny of Nancy’s role in her life. Instead, she said only, “my internal compass tells me to divert my energy to something different and to move away from demands which are all-consuming.”

In another era, perhaps she could have used the cliché that she wanted to spend more time with her family.

Jordan still adamantly denied that she had a serious health problem. By the 1990s, she was dealing not only with MS, but with diabetes, leukemia, hypertension, and pneumonia. As a professor at the University of Texas, she was lifted in and out of her car into a wheelchair for years, by friends, colleagues and students with whom she never discussed her health or declining mobility. In the last few months of her life, her doctor and friend, Dr. Rambie Briggs, remembers Jordan glancing at a sheaf of medical records he was holding while visiting her in the hospital. He recalls her saying, “Well, you won’t have to keep all that a secret much longer.” The Houston Chronicle identified Nancy Earl as Jordan’s “longtime companion” in their obituary.

Barbara Jordan sitting in a wheelchair and holding a bouquet of flowers. She is wearing a pink dress with a black vest, and visible from the knees up.
Barbara Jordan, undated. Source: Texas Southern University, Portal to Texas History.

Jordan’s death in 1996 brought renewed attention to her personal life, but those closest to her still did not want to talk about her lesbianism. One begged the Advocate reporter, “Do you really have to write this story?” Nancy Earl would say only: “I was there morning and night to help her get up and get showered and get dressed and go to work…People can say what they want. She was a friend of mine. You can write what you want.” By the late 1990s, however, the politics of “outing” had come to the queer liberation movement, and publications like The Advocate felt that a new public—a queer public—demanded and deserved to know. It was a matter of pride. As one reader wrote in a letter to the editor about the story, “I am especially anxious for all those of every community who idolized Jordan to know she was a lesbian.” Rus Cooper-Dowda expressed a similar sentiment about Jordan’s use of adaptive technology in 2002. Cooper-Dowda recalls watching Jordan give a speech, while using a cane, at the Democratic National Convention: “By the end of the speech, I was consumed by the need to know her disability. I found no information to help me anywhere. Imagine if she had gone public with her MS then — or even by her speech at the next convention? Would I have accepted my own disability better and faster, when the time finally came? Maybe. Maybe.”

The statue on the University of Texas campus does a lot of iconographic work to both conceal and reveal who Barbara Jordan was. One of the Orange Jackets activists said that the group initially wanted to show their hero(ine) seated in her wheelchair, visibilizing her disability. After a lengthy process of submission and re-submission, the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement selected the current design, in which Jordan is standing and speaking. Nevertheless, I see in the statue’s sensible shoes both Jordan’s classic lesbian style, and her need for solid footing as her mobility declined.

Barbara Jordan’s story is one of tremendous overcoming. Said a friend, quoted in The Advocate: “For years she would refuse to tell people what [illness] she had. She was not defined by her physical conditions, her sexual orientation, or the color of her skin. If you were to define her by any of those areas, Barbara Jordan would roar.” Jordan’s statue faces the buildings where Black Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and LGBTQ Studies, with our Disability Studies commitments, are housed. We hear that roar, and we gently whisper back: we see you anyway, Barbara. You can relax at our party.

With thanks to Dan Oppenheimer for sharing his research on Barbara Jordan with me, and to Karma Chávez, Alison Kafer, and Stephen Russell for providing feedback and additional sources.

Lisa L. Moore (she/her) is Archibald A. Hill Professor of English, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, and Director of the LGBTQ Studies Program at The University of Texas at Austin.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

NEP Faculty Feature: Dr. Daina Ramey Berry

NEP Faculty Feature - Dr. Daina Ramey Berry

As some of our readers may know, the Chair of the History department, Dr. Daina Ramey Berry, will leave UT to become the next Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at UC Santa Barbara. In addition to being a brilliant scholar, inspirational teacher, and remarkable leader, Dr. Berry has also been an incredible contributor to Not Even Past and an extraordinarily generous supporter of the magazine since its creation. To celebrate all Dr. Berry has done, we have compiled the following introduction to her many publications and contributions to NEP.

Biography

Daina Ramey Berry is currently the Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History and Chairperson of the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a Fellow of Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and the George W. Littlefield Professorship in American History and the former Associate Dean of The Graduate School. In 2022, she will become the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at UC Santa Barbara.

Professor Berry completed her BA, MA and PhD in African American Studies and U.S. History at the University of California Los Angeles. She is “a scholar of the enslaved” and a specialist on gender and slavery as well as Black women’s history in the United States. Berry is the award-winning author and editor of six books and several scholarly articles. One of her recent books, The Price for their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to the Grave, in the Building of a Nation (Beacon Press, 2017) received three book awards including the Phyllis Wheatley Award for Scholarly Research from the Sons and Daughters of the US Middle Passage; the 2018 Best Book Prize from the Society for the History of the Early American Republic (SHEAR); and the 2018 Hamilton Book Prize from the University Coop for the best book among UT Austin faculty. Berry’s book was also a finalist for the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize awarded by Yale University and the Gilder Lehrman Institute in New York.

Dr. Berry has appeared on several syndicated radio and television networks including: NBC/TLC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?”  where she reconstructed the enslaved ancestry of Spike Lee, Aisha Tyler, Smokey Robinson, and Alfre Woodard. She has also made appearances on CNN; C-SPAN; National Geographic Explorer and NPR. In 2016, she served at a historical consultant and technical advisor for the remake of ROOTS by Alex Haley (HISTORY/ A+E) where she worked with the writers on the script and advised on set by supporting the directors and actors during filming. She currently serves as a consultant for museums and historical societies throughout the United States.

Dr. Daina Ramey Berry (front left) photographed with Dr. Ann Twinam and 2019 doctoral graduates: Dr. John Lisle, Dr. William Kramer, Dr. Nakia Parker, Dr. Christopher Rose, Dr. Elizabeth O’Brien, and Dr. Eyal Weinberg

In 2018 Berry produced several online essays during Black History Month for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in collaboration with Biography and History.com, and edited the text for the award winning “People Not Property” website on slavery in the North. She is also the co-producer with Adriane Hopper Williams (EnLight Productions) on a multi-media series on women’s contributions to United States History called Making History Hers.

Dr. Berry has received prestigious fellowships for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the American Council of Learned Societies; the American Association of University Women and the Ford Foundation. She is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. Her work has been, featured in the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, and Huffington Post. She has also received grants from the Spencer Foundation and Humanities Texas to work with colleagues Drs. Keffrelyn and Anthony Brown (College of Education) serving K-12 educators on teaching the history of race and slavery to American youth.

Professor Berry is the associate editor for The Journal of African American History and is currently revising an 8th Grade U.S. History textbook for a major publisher.  In February 2020 she released, A Black Women’s History of the United States (Beacon Press), co-authored with Professor Kali Nicole Gross of Rutgers University which has received high praises in several media outlets including Ms. Magazine, Glamour Magazine, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and The Washington Post. Finally, Dr. Berry is busy working on her next book tentatively entitled The Myths of Slavery which will be published by Beacon Press.

Publications on Not Even Past

Articles

LEARNING FROM U.S. HISTORY - A fifth grade social studies curriculum

From the editors: Learning from US History: A Fifth Grade Social Studies Curriculum was designed and developed by two UT Professors, Dr. Daina Ramey Berry and Dr. Jennifer Keys Adair, and a doctoral student: Erin Green, MA.

This fifth grade U.S. history curriculum is built upon primary sources and is an alternative to textbooks that are often one-sided or politicized. This curriculum is one example of how historians and educators can work together to de-center a singular perspective and to offer elementary social studies with greater historical accuracy. This is a work-in-progress curriculum that will change as new primary sources emerge and historical interpretations shift.

Read the article here.

Black Women’s History in the US: Past & Present

A few years ago, we were approached by Beacon Press to write a history of Black women in the United States. We felt both honored and overwhelmed by the task.  Before we began, we needed to first take a survey of the field and understand our place in it.

The field of Black women’s history has generated a plethora of scholarship for more than a century.  Anna Julia Cooper, the first African American woman to receive her PhD in History and Romance Languages (University of Paris, the Sorbonne, 1925) was part of a small group of early historians. Cooper is widely regarded as one of the first writers of Black feminist thought. In the 1940s several Black women received their PhDs in History including Marion Thompson Wright who was the first to earn a PhD in the United States (Columbia University). Over the last fifty years, female scholars have published numerous works on Black women including anthologies, encyclopedias, primary document readers, biographies, and thematic studies of women in the diaspora.

Read the article here.

The Price for their Pound of Flesh

The Price for their Pound of Flesh is the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved men, women, and children in the American domestic slave trade, from before they were born until after their death, in both public and private market transactions and appraisals. How was a slave’s price determined? How did planters and traders establish values for enslaved people with specific ages, specific skills, or specific health conditions? Studies of the domestic slave trade rarely discuss the economic meaning and social significance of the market values and appraisals assigned to enslaved people. When they do discuss slave prices, the focus has mostly been on prime male slaves. This study examines slave prices of women, men, and children during their entire “lifecycle,” including preconception, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, the senior years, and postmortem.

Read the article here.

#Blacklivesmatter Till They Don't: Slavery's Lasting Legacy

In less than a month, our nation will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. This should be a time of celebratory reflection, yet Wednesday night, after another grand jury failed to see the value of African-American life, protesters took to the streets chanting, “Black lives matter!”

As scholars of slavery writing books on the historical value(s) of black life, we are concerned with the long history of how black people are commodified by the state. Although we are saddened by the unprosecuted deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and countless others, we are not surprised. We live a nation that has yet to grapple with the history of slavery and its afterlife. In 1669, the Virginia colony enacted legislation that gave white slaveholders the authority to murder their slaves without fear of prosecution. This act, concerning “… the Casual Killing of Slaves,” seems all too familiar today.

Read the article here.

Slavery in America: Back in the Headlines

People think they know everything about slavery in the United States, but they don’t. They think the majority of African slaves came to the American colonies, but they didn’t. They talk about 400 hundred years of slavery, but it wasn’t. They claim all Southerners owned slaves, but they didn’t. Some argue it was a long time ago, but it wasn’t.

Slavery has been in the news a lot lately. Perhaps it’s because of the increase in human trafficking on American soil or the headlines about income inequality, the mass incarceration of African Americans or discussions about reparations to the descendants of slaves. Several publications have fueled these conversations: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Case for Reparations in The Atlantic Monthly, French economist Thomas Picketty’s Capital in the Twenty First Century, historian Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and The Making of American Capitalism, and law professor Bryan A. Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.

Read the article here.

Slavery and Freedom in Savannah

Slavery and Freedom in Savannah puts African Americans and slavery at the center of the history of a popular tourist destination. The Telfair Museum’s Owens-Thomas House is the most-visited house museum in Savannah. We worked with the museum staff to bring together the latest historical research on the role of African Americans in Savannah and the importance of slavery to the life of the city.

Telfair Museums plans to build on this research by incorporating the history of slavery more fully into its interpretation of the history of the Owens-Thomas house and the people who lived and worked there. This project builds upon some twenty-plus years of collaboration among museum professionals, academic historians, and historical archeologists, enabling major landmarks and historic sites in this nation to begin to tell more fully the history of non-whites and non-elites.

Read the article here.

Slavery, Work and Sexuality

American slavery was a dynamic institution. And though slavery was mainly a system of labor, those who toiled in the fields and catered to the most private needs and desires of slaveholders were more than just workers.  Although utterly obvious, it must be reiterated that the enslaved were indeed people.  In fact, the nature and diversity of the institution of slavery ensured that bondpeople would experience enslavement quite differently. Aiming to highlight the variety of conditions that affected a bondperson’s life as a laborer, Swing the Sickle examines the workaday and interior lives of the enslaved in two plantation communities in Georgia—Glynn County in the lowcountry and Wilkes in the piedmont east of Athens.

Read the article here.

Let the Enslaved Testify

For nearly 30 years, historians have debated about the use of former slave narratives as a “valid” historical source.  Scholars question the authenticity of interviews collected in the 1930s, often by white Works Progress Administration (WPA) field workers. Were the interviews honest depictions of the past or blurred historical memories?  Did the former slaves feel comfortable answering questions about enslavement?  How old were they during slavery?  How much were these stories edited? Any study of the recordings must begin by understanding the editors.  Their background, beliefs, and views of slavery all influenced the  ways they recorded the former slaves’ stories. Fortunately, we have detailed biographical information about the WPA field workers in addition to their notes, instructions, and editorial process.  With all this evidence, we can examine slave narratives in a multi-dimensional manner. Comparing drafts of the narratives with field notes and final edited copies, opens a window onto the writing process that one rarely witnesses. Such detailed examination makes it possible to use slave autobiographies as we use plantation records and other sources without privileging one over the other.

Read the article here.

Book and Film Recommendations

Review of Django Unchained

Today marks the 150-year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. While I’m delighted that a national discussion on slavery is taking place, it appears that Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, Django Unchained, is overshadowing church “watch night” services all over the United States and events hosted by the National Archives, including a rare public viewing of the original Proclamation.  To many, the connection between a contemporary spaghetti-western film and the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation is offensive, inappropriate, oxymoronic, and just down right wrong. Perhaps understanding the significance of this legislation in context can elevate the public dialogue and aid in our national healing.

Read the review here.

Review of Sankofa

In this 1993 film by Ethiopian-born filmmaker Haile Gerima, a modern-day,  fashion model is transported to the past to experience the traumas of American chattel slavery.  It is only through her return to the past that she can move forward, hence the name of the film, Sankofa, an Akan word meaning “go back and take” or  “go back to move forward.”  The film opens with a photo shoot on the coast of Ghana on the grounds of a fortification (read castle/dungeon) used to house African captives prior to being forcibly transported to new world plantations. Zola, the main character, is forced back in time to an isolated sugar plantation. There she learns the power of family, community, and even rebellion as she and other members of the enslaved community seek their freedom through solidarity and decisive action.  This is the closest film rendition of slavery since the 1977 television mini-series Roots. Gerima, a Howard University professor, did much to ensure that his portrayal of the institution of slavery and the presentation of African cultural traditions were as close to reality as possible.

Read the review here.

Review of Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property

This film tells the story of Nat Turner’s 1831 Virginia slave revolt. For years, historians have grappled with the details of the affair and debated about the ways Nat Turner should be remembered. For some, he was a revolutionary hero; for others, Turner was nothing more than a deranged, blood-hungry killer. After all, it was Turner’s rebellion that sent the South into a frenzy forcing southern legislatures and planters to harden their stances (and laws) on slavery. This PBS movie blends documentary narrative, historical re-enactment, and scholarly reflection to examine the various renditions of the revolt and to uncover the many faces of Nat Turner and slave resistance in general.  Directed by Charles Burnett, this is a film worth watching for those interested in slavery, public history, and the history memory. As part of the Independent Lens series, the PBS website provides a wealth of historical material on Nat Turner, slave rebellion, and historical treatments.

Read the review here.

Great Books on Enslaved Life and Labor in the US

Dr. Berry’s recommendations include classic studies, the newest works, and a few novels on labor and gender and the institutions of slavery in the United States.

Read her recommendations here.

Review of the Help

Historical films and books always distort the historical record for dramatic purposes. Sometimes that doesn’t matter and sometimes it does. The Help, a best-selling book and now a film playing nationwide, elicited this statement from the Association of Black Women Historians.

On behalf of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), this statement provides historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel version of The Help. The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie will ensure its success at the box office. Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.

Read the review here.

Podcasts

This is Democracy – Black Resistance to Slavery in Early America and its Legacies

Hosts Jeremi and Zachary turn to expert Dr. Daina Ramey Berry to discuss the history and legacy of slave revolts and maroon societies in the United States, and lack of education on these subjects today.

Listen here.

15 Minute History Episode 54: Urban Slavery in the Antebellum United States

When most people think about slavery in the United States, they think of large agricultural plantations and picture slaves working in the fields harvesting crops. But for a significant number of slaves, their experience involved working in houses, factories, and on the docks of the South’s booming cities. Urban slavery, as it has come to be known, is often overlooked in the annals of slave experience.

This week’s guests Daina Ramey Berry, from UT’s Department of History, and Leslie Harris, from Emory University, have spent the past year collaborating on a new study aimed at re-discovering this forgotten aspect of slave experience in the United States.

Listen here.

15 Minute History Episode 42: The Senses of Slavery

Slavery marks an important era in the history of the United States, one that is often discussed in terms of numbers and dates, human rights abuses, and its lasting impact on society. To be sure, these are all important aspects to understand, but one thing that is often given relatively short shrift is what it was like to actually be a slave. What were the sensory experiences of slaves on a daily basis? How can we dig deeper into understanding the lives of slaves and understand the institution as a whole?

Guest Daina Ramey Berry has given this question serious thought. In this episode, she discusses teaching the “senses of slavery,” a teaching tool that taps into the senses in order to connect to one of the most important eras in US history and bring it to the present.

Listen here.

Resources for Understanding and Celebrating Juneteenth

Resources for Understanding and Celebrating Juneteenth

Sunday June 19th marks Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, which celebrates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States. More than two years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Union soldiers entering Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865 informed African American enslaved people that they were free. Juneteenth became an official federal holiday in 2021. In honor of Juneteenth, Not Even Past has collected a series of event announcements and resources involving UT faculty.

Events and Celebrations

On Campus

Juneteenth Freedom Summit
What: The LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy are hosting the second annual Juneteenth Freedom Summit featuring a lineup of speakers who will discuss issues of race, equity and citizenship around the theme “Reflections on Freedom.”
When: Sunday, June 19, 5:30 p.m.
Where: Online
Please register here.

Juneteenth Celebration and Student Showcase
What: Hosted by the College of Liberal Arts, this event will feature a lineup of speakers and a student showcase of art and scholarly work. Dr. Daina Ramey Berry, Professor and Chair of the Department of History, will serve as the keynote speaker.
When: Thursday, June 16, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Where: The Glickman Center, Patton Hall
Please RSVP here.

African-American band at Emancipation Day celebration, June 19, 1900, held in "East Woods" on East 24th Street in Austin

African-American band at Emancipation Day celebration, June 19, 1900, held in “East Woods” on East 24th Street in Austin. Source: Austin History Center

In Austin

Peace to the Queen Exhibit
What: During the month of Juneteenth, celebrate Black history and culture at the Carver Museum, where you will find the “Peace to the Queen” exhibit featuring decades of work by photographer Jamel Shabazz. The exhibit is co-sponsored by the DDCE and curated by College of Liberal Arts doctoral student Ja’nell Ajani.
When: Now through August 22
Where: George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, 1165 Angelina St, Austin
Go to this website for more information.

Central Texas Juneteenth Celebration
What: A family-friendly parade and festival honoring Juneteenth.
When: Saturday, June 18, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Where: Rosewood and Boggy Creek Park, 2300 Rosewood Ave., Austin
Go to this website for more information.

Juneteenth Freedom Fest
What: A festive celebration featuring a BBQ “Best in Show” competition, a sling-shot showcase, children’s activities, live music and more.
When: Saturday, June 18, 1-4 p.m.
Where: Colony Park, 7201 Colony Loop Dr., Austin
Go to this website for more information.

Juneteenth Market
What: A community market featuring music, food, live music, and 30-plus Black businesses and creatives.
When: Saturday, June 18, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Where: George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, 1165 Angelina St., Austin
Go to this website for more information.

Six Black women and men pose for a photograph outdoors. A woman on the far left wears a floor length white dress and large sunhat, beside her is a woman in a dark dress. The four men wear suits and hats. All look forward toward the camera.
Emancipation Day celebration, June 19, 1900 held in “East Woods” on East 24th Street in Austin. Source: Austin History Center

Resources

Podcasts

Life Examined – Recognizing Juneteenth as a national holiday honors generations of enslaved African Americans, featuring Dr. Peniel Joseph Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Department of History of history at the University of Austin and founding director of the LBJ School’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy (CSRD) at the University of Texas at Austin

New York Times The Daily – The History and Meaning of Juneteenth, featuring Dr. Daina Ramey Berry Professor and Chair of the University of Texas History Department

For me, when I think about Juneteenth as Emancipation Day, and I think about this moment, I feel like we still need to be emancipated. There are still more freedoms that need to be protected. There’s still more laws that need to be revised. There’s still more inclusion that needs to happen. There’s still more achievement to be had. There’s still more space for change and growth.

Dr. Daina Ramey Berry

NPR Morning Edition – What Is Juneteenth? Historians Explain The Holiday’s Importance, featuring Dr. Daina Ramey Berry Professor and Chair of the University of Texas History Department

NPR On Second Thought – Juneteenth: A Celebration Of Freedom, featuring Dr. Daina Ramey Berry Professor and Chair of the University of Texas History Department

Texas Standard – Commentary: Now All Americans Can Learn What Emancipation Day Has Always Meant To Black Texans, featuring Dr. Peniel Joseph Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Department of History of history at the University of Austin and founding director of the LBJ School’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy (CSRD) at the University of Texas at Austin

Further Reading

Life & Letters Magazine – “What is Juneteenth?” by Rachel Winston, Black Diaspora Archivist at the University of Texas Libraries, Dr. Daina Ramey Berry, professor and chair of the Department of History at The University of Texas at Austin; Dr. Kevin Cokley, professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, and director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at The University of Texas at Austin

I will use the words of the historian Mitch Kachun, who says that celebrations of the end of slavery should have three goals: to celebrate, to educate, and to agitate. Given the centrality of food to African American culture, celebrations usually feature food (e.g., cookouts, family reunions, outdoor parties, picnics, fairs). Additionally, there are typically lectures, presentations and exhibitions that showcase African American culture. Readings from prominent African Americans are also often featured.

Dr. Kevin Cokley

CNN Opinion – Having Juneteenth as a national holiday offers possibilities Americans can’t ignore by Dr. Peniel Joseph, professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Department of History, founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at The University of Texas at Austin

The Fight for Freedom and Justice: A Forum with Formerly Incarcerated Black Women Leading the Movement

The Fight for Freedom and Justice: A Forum with Formerly Incarcerated Black Women Leading the Movement

This event featured a panel of formerly incarcerated Black women who are leading the fight for justice. The speakers discussed their work to empower justice-involved women and their efforts to build a more equitable future for those impacted by the system of mass incarceration. This event was hosted by Dr. Talitha LeFlouria and students from her Black Women and Mass Incarceration undergraduate seminar at The University of Texas at Austin.

Welcome and Introductions
Dr. Talitha LeFlouria
Associate Professor and Fellow of the Mastin Gentry White Professorship in Southern History,
Department of History, The University of Texas at Austin
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/history/faculty/tll2367

Featured distinguished panelists:
– Susan Burton | Founder, A New Way of Life Reentry Project
– Robyn Hasan | Executive Director, Women on the Rise GA
– Qiana Johnson | Founder and Executive Director, Life After Release
– Vera Moore | Founder and Executive Director, True Beginnings
– Marilynn Winn | Senior Fellow and Co-Founder, Women on the Rise GA

Organized and Moderated by “Black Women and Mass Incarceration” Students including:
– Eddie Bankston
– Charlotte Cowan-Ruth
– Safa Michigan
– Chloe Moore
– Skyler Williams

Co-sponsored by the Department of History and The Graduate School at The University of Texas at Austin

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Year in Review – Academic year 2021-2022

Year in Review - Fall 2021/Spring 2022

It’s been another busy year for Not Even Past with more than 130 articles published across the academic year. To celebrate all this incredible academic content we have compiled everything in one page below. Not Even Past‘s reach also continues to grow, and we just broke a million page views over the past 12 months, making the magazine an important resource not just for the University of Texas community but for Public History online. As we conclude the academic year, Not Even Past would like to thank Gabrielle Esparza our amazing Associate Editor whose energy, creativity and brilliance as an editor has been a key part of the magazine’s success this year. We would also like to recognize Dr Joan Neuberger, our Founding Editor who will be retiring from UT over the summer. Not Even Past is unimaginable without Joan’s tireless work and we have published a brief tribute to her remarkable achievements here. Finally we would like to thank all our contributors and partners across the past academic year and of course our readers.

To view specific sections, use the links below:

Features

Features

My life’s story has come to be entwined with the history of the Relaciones. My intellectual place of origin, Bogotá, Colombia, facilitated my first encounter with them. My continued engagement with these sources from Latin American classrooms and special collections to Spanish archives has culminated in my current dissertation project at the University of Texas at Austin – the principal observatory and repository of these documents in the Americas. My life and research paths have allowed me to explore this neglected historical terrain. I argue that by drawing together the Relaciones Geográficas and Topográficas as a genre of documents, we can better envision how people from diverse ethnic compositions on both sides of the Atlantic produced a massive number of descriptions of local nature and societies around the same period. This perspective may allow us to see and understand the complex knowledge networks of Atlantic towns that the Spanish Crown wove together. Consider, for instance, how the Relaciones go beyond the famous Mexican indigenous charts as revealed by Map 2, the Relación of Valledupar, a township located in what is now Colombia.

Rafael Nieto-Bello

Robert Runyon was an astoundingly prolific photographer of the Texas-México borderlands at the turn of the twentieth century. The University of Texas at Austin hosts over 14,000 photographs donated by the Runyon family, along with related manuscript materials. Much of the collection is available digitally, and the Briscoe Center for American History also houses Runyon’s glass negatives, lantern slides, nitrate negatives, prints, postcards, panoramas, correspondence, and business records. The sheer scope of his work, which ranges from botanicals to portraiture to quotidian scenes of daily life, has rendered his imagery—in regard to Texas and the U.S.-México border—ubiquitous.

Annette M. Rodríguez

The largest green space in downtown Austin, Waterloo Park takes its name from the Waterloo hamlet, a frontier settlement that Austin replaced. It sits in a basin along Waller Creek, encompassing a particularly flood-prone stretch of Austin’s most central, urbanized stream. Though the park was built in 1975 as part of the Brackenridge Urban Renewal Project, its history dates to the end of the US Civil War, when formerly enslaved people began migrating to southern cities in search of work, education, lost family members, and haven from anti-Black violence. Many migrants were skilled farmers and craftsmen and had saved money to purchase land. As a rule, white landowners sold Black people only their “poorest” properties, relegating most Black communities to low-lying and otherwise hazardous spaces.

Katherine Leah Pace
books

Books

I remember the stink of the fishmeal plants in Iquique. During the austral winter of 1983, the vapors that turned tons of whole anchoveta into high protein fish flour lingered over the beach with the coastal fog until the customary afternoon breeze came and carried it away. Local residents called it “the smell of money.” Domestically produced fish flour had become the primary source for fish food in the new salmon farms that had begun to scar the pristine beauty of the lakes and fiords in the Chilean south. It would also become dog food, and the “high protein cookies” on school lunch menus for the undernourished children that General Pinochet’s second recession in ten years had pushed dangerously down the path of deficiency disease. But the smelly fishmeal extracted from the seemingly infinite Pacific coast of northern Chile had already become a vital element in an increasingly global ecosystem of profit-driven food production. Economists and technocrats called it a “non-traditional export.” Along with the farmed salmon, the fresh fruit out of season and the world’s finest red wines for a little less money, Chilean fishmeal would help reduce the local economy’s absolute dependence on the roller coaster of international copper prices. It would fatten pigs in Germany and chickens in California to satisfy the voracious appetites of a competing species now referred to simply as “the consumer.”

Nathan Stone

Megan Kate Nelson has written a captivating history of the southwestern theater of the American Civil War. There more than one war took place as different groups of people envisioned futures dependent on control of the region. The balance of perspectives makes it clear the Civil War was not just a battle for the preservation of the Union, or for those states that had seceded, but rather a multicultural war for control of much of the North American continent. The Union, the Confederacy, Mexico, the Apache, and Navajo (Diné) all fought for control of land, water, resources, and trade. Skirmishes in the West were layered contests among several parties. While historians often acknowledge the importance of the West in determining the fate of slavery in an expanding nineteenth-century United States, few have tackled the southwestern theater as Nelson has in The Three Cornered War.

Gwendolyn Lockman

Pulp Empire is filled with fascinating anecdotes and incisive analysis of the ephemera of US empire. This book offers something for an array of audiences from fervent comic book fans to historians of American foreign policy. Hirsch deftly deals with several dimensions of comics’ hidden history from their perpetuation of racist and sexist tropes to their use as a unique tool of soft-power popular abroad across class lines. Finally, Hirsch’s analysis of the debates over the atomic age played out in comic book pages proves both entertaining and enlightening. Pulp Empire effectively interrogates the intersection between politics and popular culture and profiles how superheroes have been deployed to serve American expansionist goals.

Jon Buchleiter
Teaching

Teaching

In Spring 2021, my course, “Preserving Austin’s Queer History,” trained undergraduate students to conduct oral history interviews with LGBTQ community members past and present. Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the February 2021 weather disaster, the fifteen students in this class conducted oral history interviews with nineteen people. These oral history narrators range in age from thirty-four to eighty-four years old. They include gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, trans and non-binary people, as well as artists and performers, grassroots activists, and small business owners. They are white, Black, Latinx, Asian American, and multi-racial. And they have contributed to Austin’s LGBTQ history and to local struggles against injustice in a variety of ways. 

Lauren Gutterman
Digital and Film

Digital and Film

In one of the final scenes of Jeymes Samuel’s gripping 2021 Black Western The Harder They Fall, androgynous outlaw Cuffee (played by Danielle Deadwyler) says a teary goodbye to her comrade “Stagecoach” Mary Fields (Zazie Beetz). The two share a long, not-quite-chaste kiss goodbye as Nat Love, Mary’s main romantic interest in the film, shifts uncomfortably in his saddle. Mary responds with a coy “What you looking at?” before mounting her horse a final time and literally riding off into the sunset with Love, leaving Cuffee behind. The film, which follows Nat Love and his gang of outlaws on an epic revenge quest across the American southwest, encompasses a litany of historical elisions and inaccuracies, culminating in this moment between Mary and Cuffee. It cements the movie’s final and most glaring lapse: while The Harder They Fall’s vision of the Old West is brazen, bold, and Black, its queer notes amount to little more than whispers. Not only was the real “Stagecoach” Mary Fields (as several writers have noted) much taller, darker, and heavier than she is depicted in the film, she was probably much queerer as well.

Candice Lyons

A key thread running through Dr. Brook Danielle Lillehaugen’s career is access—to language, to history, and to education. She recognizes that linguistic research on Indigenous languages is insufficient if members of Indigenous communities cannot access it. Therefore, throughout her career she has sought to remove barriers to such access via creative, collaborative research that goes beyond traditional academic practice.

May Helena Plumb

Throughout the last two years of the global pandemic, digital research has surged among graduate students and faculty alike. Travel restrictions prevented scholars from accessing important sources. Project Arte Colonial and the continuing efforts of Jaime H. Borja Gómez have provided invaluable access to colonial Spanish resources to individuals across the world who are unable to conduct research in-person. The digital humanities have become critical components to fields across the social sciences. ARCA works to create an easily accessible gateway that simultaneously serves veterans and newcomers of remote research. Historians must adopt new and diverse ways to engage with the public and other scholars through the medium of technology.

Haley Schroer
Blog

Blog

My Guatemalan father was born in the middle of a civil war. His childhood house was built from corrugated metal and adobe brick. He grew up clinging to my abuela’s back wrapped in a blanket as she weaved to sustain the family. He did not have shoes until he was 8 years old. He dropped out of school after the second grade. Before he reached my age, he was nearly murdered by the army three times. He worked as a trench digger and then as a laborer before fleeing his home in Huehuetenango. 

Ilan Palacios Avineri

In New York City, buildings are like wallpaper. If you peeled back the facades and peeked into their histories, you’d find something different, something out of style. The buildings’ old identities wouldn’t match the modern character of the neighborhood. On the Lower East Side, if you peel back the layers of luxury apartments, churches, and fusion restaurants, you’d notice a trend. Many buildings that now house fashionable venues used to be synagogues.

Amy Shreeve

Mauricio Tenorio thinks with his feet. As his soles touch the asphalt, he feels a piece of one of his dearest obsessions: the city. Not Mexico City specifically, although it might be the one he feels closest to, but the idea of the city. Cities have so much to say. A street in Barcelona, an old building in Chicago, an awkward monument in Washington. D.C., a park in Berlin: they all have stories and a history. And Tenorio, a Professor of History at the University of Chicago and Profesor Asociado at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico City, tells these stories through his work. I like to repeat one about a hidden monument in Mexico City. Inside the column of the Independence monument, the capital’s famous postcard-ready landmark with angel’s wings, the white statue of an obscure figure guards the ashes of Mexico’s founding fathers—a monument of a seventeenth-century Irishman. Tenorio tells the story of Guillerme de Lampart, the “Irish Zorro” who plotted an independence movement with religious undertones in the 1640s—a peculiar reading of the Bible led him to believe that Spain did not have sovereign rights over the Americas. He became a controversial figure in Mexican history. The Inquisition burnt Lampart in 1650, making him a martyr for anti-Church Porfirian liberals. Placing his monument publicly would have surely triggered heated historiographical and political debates, weakening the process of national reconciliation. Thus, Lampart made his way into one of the nation’s central monuments: discretely.[1] Yet Tenorio’s driving curiosity lies elsewhere: it is not so much about what cities have to say, but how they say it. The location and concealment of Lampart’s monument suggest broader discussions on religion and independence, heroes and martyrs, history and the city. Tenorio explores how cities dictate these stories.

Rodrigo Salido Moulinié

For the plebiscite of ‘88, Chile had its first political campaign in fifteen years. La Campaña del NO tried to make it fun. We all had many dark tales to tell, and maybe a moral obligation to tell them, but sad stories don’t get votes. Moreover, a very fine line, invisible to carabineros, divided protesting and campaigning. Opposition supporters had to resort to clever strategies. We would drive around with their windshield wipers on, on a dry day. Like saying “no” by moving your index finger from left to right. The cops couldn’t exactly arrest you for using your windshield wiper.

Nathan Stone
IHS & Public History

IHS and Public History

Hungry for Revolution (2021) is an ambitious book that, through the social history of food production, distribution and consumption and through a cultural history of the knowledge and science of nutrition, agriculture, and political economy of rural landholdings, offers a radical new chronology of the political history of 20th century Chile.  Hungry for Revolution masterfully goes over the nitrate export boom in the fin-de-siècle mining towns of northern Chile and the creation of the new-deal welfare state of Alessandri and the Frente Popular in the 1930s and 1940s to offer a striking new genealogy of Allende’s Socialist Revolution.

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra

For most individuals, the Counter Reformation sought to quash new forms of democratic spiritual participation in the form of Lutheranism and Calvinism. The so-called Galileo affair epitomizes this narrative of the Counter Reformation as retrograde and even villainous. In the popular imagination, Galileo stands as the victim of the Counter Reformation’s stifling prosecution of skepticism, experimentation, and modernity. Yet Dr. Madeline McMahon begs to differ. In her manuscript the Catholic Creation of Early Modern Knowledge, McMahon argues that by creating the institution of the resident (non-absentee) bishop, the Counter Reformation became the lynchpin to the new confessional, interventionist, technocratic early-modern state.

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
Texas

Texas

In our exhibit Black Cowboys: An American Story, visitors from Texas, and beyond will be introduced to a diverse group of African American cowhands, from Johana July, a free Black Seminole born in 1860 to Myrtis Dightman, called “The Jackie Robinson of Rodeo” who broke the color line at professional rodeos in the late 1960s. In addition to presenting the public with depictions of numerous Black cowboys, enslaved and free, the Witte Museum introduces the audience to the legacy of Black ranches and freedom colonies throughout Texas. The audience learns about several Black owned ranches that have stood the test of time, outlasting white supremacy and Jim Crow. These ranching families, who continue to ranch the land purchased and maintained by their ancestors in the nineteenth-century, display a tenacity of will and a commitment to their family traditions. They often withstood destruction of their family legacy by organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan while also weathering continual threats of encroachment from neighbors and state governments.

Ronald Davis
Author spotlights

Author Spotlights

NEP Author Spotlight – Gabrielle Esparza

NEP Author Spotlight – Gabrielle Esparza

The success of Not Even Past is made possible by a remarkable group of faculty and graduate student writers. Not Even Past Author Spotlights are designed to celebrate our most prolific authors by bringing together all of their published content across the site together on a single page. The focus is especially on work published by UT graduate students. In this article, we highlight the many significant contributions to the magazine made by Gabrielle Esparza, who was also Associate Editor and Communications Director of Not Even Past from 2021-2022. In addition to celebrating her publications, Not Even Past would like to thank Gabrielle for her indefatigable work on the magazine, her countless insights and her remarkable energy. The magazine has been hugely enriched by Gabrielle’s dedication and commitment.

Gabrielle Esparza is a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American history, with a focus on twentieth-century Argentina. Her current research interests include democratization, transitional justice, and human rights. She holds a B.A. in History and Spanish from Illinois College and received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Argentina in 2017. There she taught at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Gabrielle graduated with her M.A. in History from the University of Texas at Austin in 2020. Her master’s thesis The Politics of Human Rights Prosecutions: Civil Military Relations during the Alfonsín Presidency, 1983-1989 examines the evolution of President Raúl Alfonsín’s human rights policies from his candidacy to his presidency, which followed Argentina’s most repressive dictatorship. At the University of Texas at Austin, Gabrielle has served as a graduate research assistant at the Texas State Historical Association and contributed to the organization’s Handbook of Texas. She served as co-coordinator of the Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality in 2020-2021.

The Trial of the Juntas: Reckoning with State Violence in Argentina

In April 1985, the historic trial of the military juntas that had ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1982 began in Buenos Aires. Nine members of three previous military juntas faced charges ranging from the falsification of public documents to homicide. Over the following eight months, the trial of the juntas captured national attention. Although not televised or aired by radio, the trial was open to the public and received detailed coverage in El Diario del Juicio, a weekly publication that documented the proceedings and included witness transcripts. The accessibility and publication of the facts surrounding the prosecution helped convert the trial into a national event, which served not only to punish the guilty but also to help create a shared understanding of the past.

Read the full article here.

Five Books I Recommend from Comps – Citizenship and Human Rights in Latin America

For graduate students in History, comprehensive exams (also known as orals, qualifying exams, or comps) are a crucial milestone on the way to finishing the PhD. Comps are often stressful and overwhelming, but it’s also an opportunity to read widely in your field and beyond. I completed my exams in Fall 2021. In the year leading up to my oral defense, I read 160 books and articles on Latin American history from the colonial period to the recent past. I rushed through many books, but some captivated my attention and compelled me to slow down. They represent scholarship at its best. The following five books are titles I enthusiastically recommend from my comps lists. They’re fresh and innovative and encouraged me to think about my own scholarship in new ways.

Read her recommendations here.

Five Books to Help Make Sense of the War in Ukraine

On 24 February, 2022, Russia shocked the world by dramatically escalating its longstanding war with Ukraine. Since then, numerous experts—including students, faculty, and alumni of the University of Texas at Austin—have performed a vital public service by commenting directly on the Ukraine crisis, unpacking its complicated origins and exposing its devastating impact. Inspired by their work, and hoping to enrich it further, graduate students enrolled in UT’s History PhD program have prepared the following list of recommended books by leading scholars, all of whom have analyzed historical events and processes relevant to the war in Ukraine. None of the books listed below are about the war itself. Instead, they provide readers with background information that will help illuminate the war’s broader historical contexts.

Read her recommendation, alongside those of fellow graduate students, here.

Review of Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile (2021)

More than fifty years ago, Chile began a democratic path toward socialism with the election of Salvador Allende. President Allende promised that the country’s revolution would taste of “empanadas and red wine.” These quintessentially Chilean staples represented his pledge to ensure social welfare. In Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile, historian Joshua Frens-String explores this relationship between revolutionary politics, food security, and nutrition science in twentieth-century Chile. He concludes that the Allende years signified the culmination of decades-long popular struggles to position food security as a basic right of democratic citizenship.

Read the full review here.

Review of Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil by Rebecca J. Atencio (2014)

On November 18, 2011, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff launched the National Truth Commission (Comissão Nacional da Verdade or, CNV). The CNV’s mandate included the investigation of torture, disappearances, executions, and other human rights abuses committed between 1946 and 1988. The commission’s period of inquiry covered twenty-one years of military rule, from 1964 to 1985. The National Truth Commission began more than two decades after the dictatorship’s end, and this delay makes Brazil one of the last countries in Latin America to undertake a state-sponsored investigation of human rights violations committed during the Cold War.

Read the full review here.

Review of Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Brazil (2011)

In Terms of Inclusion, Paulina Alberto traces the history of Black activism and thought in twentieth-century Brazil. She focuses on the urban centers of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador da Bahia between the early 1900s and the mid-1980s while tracing the strategies that Black intellectuals used to shape discourses about race relations and to negotiate their citizenship. Over the course of the twentieth century, Black political thought and action changed as the possibilities for equality and inclusion shifted with developments in local, national, and international politics. Alberto frames the distinct political strategies applied by Black thinkers as part of a century-long struggle to influence and contest dominant ideologies of racial harmony.

Read the full review here.

Gabrielle also compiled a number of indexes and lists as Assistant Editor of Not Even Past, including Latin American and Caribbean History: Collected Works from Not Even Past, Resources for Teaching Women’s History, and Resources For Teaching Black History.

Recent Posts

NOT EVEN PAST is produced by

The Department of History



We are supported by the College of Liberal Arts
And our Readers


Contact

All content © 2010-present NOT EVEN PAST and the authors, unless otherwise noted

Sign up to receive our MONTHLY NEWSLETTER