Stacy Vlasits, Author at Not Even Past

Everyday Crimes: The Shop on Main Street (1965)

“They did it. Not us!” According to historian Tony Judt, this was the way Europeans tried coming to terms with the fate suffered by their Jewish neighbors during the Second World War. Pointing their fingers at the Germans, other Europeans chose to repress the memory of widespread participation or acquiescence in the persecution of Europe’s Jews. The role of ordinary people in betraying their Jewish neighbors, often in the hope of material rewards, appears in survivor testimonies and was remembered by families and communities as the war came to an end. Nevertheless, this knowledge was suppressed in the name of reconstruction, a process of social, political, and moral reconstitution after years of occupation and war. It took a generation before historians, writers, filmmakers, and other voices began questioning this public memory of the Second World War. In Germany, the Auschwitz Trial (1963-1965) confronted Germans with the Nazi past, and in France, the documentary The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) created a storm of controversy and helped break the taboo surrounding collaboration with Nazi rule. In communist Eastern Europe, the 1960s witnessed similar challenges to popular memories by writers, artists, and other activists.

The Academy Award-winning, The Shop on Main Street was one of a series of Czechoslovakian films that looked critically at the participation of regular people in the Holocaust. Set in a small town in Slovakia, at the time a Nazi puppet state, the film suggests that ordinary men and women were deeply involved in the destruction of Jewish lives. In difficult conditions, good people do bad things; this is the tragic story of just such a person.

In 1942, Tono Brtko, an underemployed carpenter, embarks on his ‘career’ as an Aryanizer, the non-Jewish manager of a store belonging to the elderly, Jewish widow Rozalie Lautmann, played by the famous Yiddish actress Idá Kaminská. Driven by an ambitious, domineering wife and his own desire for greater status, Tono becomes a mild-mannered oppressor, but his affection for Mrs Lautmann grows. Unable to comprehend the new moral order and hence Tono’s real business in her shop, she embraces what she believes to be a new, helpful assistant as a long-gone son. Kaminská and Josef Kroner as Tono give us complex, powerful, and deeply touching performances. The film brilliantly investigates the ways people became morally and materially invested in the removal of Jews, the blurred boundary between bystander and perpetrator in moments of persecution, and the fragility of love and courage in times of fear. Although the filmmakers invited audiences to reflect on the limits of personal responsibility in Communist Czechoslovakia, The Shop on Main Street raised questions that we continue to ask ourselves today: Why do ordinary people become participants in the persecution and murder of their neighbors?

George on the Lege, Part 6 – Betting on Gam(bl)ing

By George Christian

As the Texas Legislature battles an unprecedented budget gap this spring, advocates of various types of gaming are promising billions of dollars for education and other state programs if Texas voters are allowed to approve a constitutional amendment expanding gaming in the Lone Star State. Gaming involves more than just Las Vegas-style casino gambling: it includes everything from the bingo parlor at the volunteer fire department to the horse track at the county fair to “eight-liner” terminals in truck stops. Given the historically persistent opposition of religious and other groups that has stifled the expansion of gaming, it is interesting to note that Texas has periodically expanded its scope in times of economic duress, as we face today.

When Texas joined the Union in 1845, its initial state constitution prohibited Texas residents from buying or selling lottery tickets in the state (a state-operated lottery was likewise prohibited). The 1861 secession constitution, as well as the 1866 and 1869 reconstruction constitutions, continued this prohibition. In 1873, however, the Legislature attempted to circumvent the constitutional provision by granting licenses to so-called “gift enterprises,” involving the distribution of tickets and drawing of winners (that is, raffles of cash or other items of value). Fearing the exploitative effects of gift enterprises on the poor, the drafters of the 1876 Texas Constitution inserted Article 3, §47, which not only continued to bar lotteries and gift enterprises, whether operated by the state or private parties, but mandated that the Legislature enact statutes expressly prohibiting them as well. In this respect as in others, the 1876 framers and a heavily populist electorate expressed their deep skepticism that the Legislature could be relied on to do the right thing on its own.

Since 1876, Texas courts and the Attorney General have repeatedly interpreted Article 3, §47 to prohibit games of chance in which a participant is required to make a direct or indirect payment for the privilege of playing. Thus, it is unconstitutional for either the state or a private party to operate slot machines or other devices, such as “eight-liners,” video lottery terminals, or casino gaming, that award cash or prizes solely on the basis of chance and without regard to the skill, judgment, or knowledge of any player. Op.Atty.Gen. 1994, No. DM-102; Op.Atty.Gen.2005, No. GA-0358. In 1980, however, the Legislature adopted and the voters approved an amendment to Art. 3, §47, that allows certain charitable organizations (e.g., churches, synagogues, religious societies, volunteer fire departments, veteran’s organizations) to conduct bingo games if local voters approve. This provision was expanded by another constitutional amendment in 1989 to permit certain religious organizations to hold raffles. These constitutional changes enabled the charitable bingo industry to grow exponentially, with more than 17.7 million players and $526 million in prize money in 2010 (about $34 million goes to qualified charities).

Voters again amended Art. 3, §47, in 1991 to allow the state to operate a lottery, despite fierce opposition from religious and other groups concerned about the potential adverse effects of the lottery on the poor (not to mention the possible drain on proceeds of charitable bingo games). Governor Ann Richards, who had campaigned in favor of the lottery in her 1990 gubernatorial election victory over Republican Clayton Williams, convinced a conservative but cash-strapped legislature to go along with the idea as an alternative to raising taxes (in the event some taxes still had to be increased). Moreover, the estimated $1 billion in annual revenue from the lottery was desperately needed to resolve a funding crisis in public education (although the cash was never actually dedicated to public education but simply displaced other general revenue funding). The State of Texas, in the name of public education, officially entered the gaming business.

While the Texas Constitution still prohibits most gaming, it does not broadly proscribe gambling. Texas criminal laws, however, do. Since at least the adoption of the revised Penal Code in 1879, it has been illegal to play or bet for money (in a public place) on the outcome of a game or contest, in a political nomination, appointment, or election, or at any game played with cards, dice, balls, or other gambling device. Tex.Pen.Code, §47.02. As one court of appeals held in 1886 on the appeal of the prosecution of a church raffle under this provision, “[I]t was immaterial whether the raffle be for religious, benevolent, or profane purposes.” Long v. State, 2 S.W. 541 (Tex.Ct.App. 1886) At least according to Texas law, the road to hell really might be paved with good intentions. Nevertheless, in 1986, proponents of pari-mutuel wagering at horse and dog tracks finally broke through decades of protecting the anti-gambling laws in Texas. In a statewide referendum, voters authorized local option pari-mutuel racing, and the Legislature established the Texas Racing Commission to license regulate horse and dog (greyhound) tracks.

The loosening of anti-gaming laws in the 1980s and early 1990s motivated the economically disadvantaged Tigua and Alabama-Coushatta tribes to open potentially lucrative casinos on their reservations. In 1993, the Tiguas opened a casino near El Paso that offered bingo and later poker, blackjack, and slot machines. Texas Attorney General (now U.S. Senator) John Cornyn filed suit against the tribe in 1999, alleging that it violated Texas’ constitutional prohibition and criminal statutes. The Tiguas attempted to override the suit by persuading the 1999 Legislature to legalize casino gambling on an Indian reservation. The bill passed the House but died in the Senate. A federal judge subsequently agreed with the Attorney General, the Tiguas lost on appeal to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the casino shut down in February, 2002. Hoping to reverse that decision, the Alabama-Coushatta launched a casino operation in late 2001, simultaneously filing suit against the State of Texas claiming that the tribe was a sovereign nation under federal jurisdiction and that Texas law did not apply. Like the Tiguas, the Alabama-Coushatta lost in federal court and shuttered the casino in 2002. The tribes made a subsequent sally in the 2003 legislature, but the bill died on the House Calendar when 51 Democrats relocated to Ardmore, Oklahoma to kill a GOP redistricting plan.

Will Texans get a chance to vote on a casino gaming bill this year? The prognosis is cloudy at best. A constitutional amendment currently under consideration in House committee (H.J.R. 147) would authorize the Legislature to permit slot machines and other games of chance in destination casinos, currently licensed dog and horse racing venues, and federally recognized tribal lands. Even if the proposal could reach the House floor for debate, it requires 100 votes (two-thirds of the 150-member House) to send it to the Senate—where the chair of the Senate committee has already indicated that it does not have sufficient support to advance. In the House, with 101 GOP members, including some dozens of self-identified religious conservatives, it is difficult to forecast success for pro-gaming forces. It is also important to note that religious conservatives aren’t the only opponents of broad gaming authority: casino operators in Louisiana and Oklahoma, segments of the existing racing industry, and others with vested economic interests in the current system have problems with it as well. Still, the desperate need for more state revenue to reduce the impact of draconian cuts to education, health care, and other programs will not go away any time soon. Gaming advocates are counting on fiscal duress to deliver where policy arguments have failed.

Sources:

Vernon’s Constitution of the State of Texas Annotated (West Publishing, 2007)

Vernon’s Texas Codes Annotated, Texas Penal Code (West Publishing, 2003)

Texas Lottery Commission, http://www.txlottery.org/export/sites/bingo/index.html

Texas Racing Commission, http://www.txrc.state.tx.us/

Tracy A. Skopek and Kenneth Hansen, “Reservation Gaming, Tribal Sovereignty, and the State of Texas: Gaining Ground in the Political Arena?” Politics & Policy (34:1) pp. 110-133 (2006); (accessed April 14, 2011)

Previous installments of George on the Lege:
Part 5:2 School Finance, 1991-the present
Part 5:1 School Finance, 1949-1991
Part 4: Concealed Weapons
Part 3: Redistricting
Part 2: Cutting Spending
Part 1: Budget Crises, Today and Yesterday

Photo: Wing-Chi Poon [CC-BY-SA-2.5] via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Dividing by Nothing

by Alberto Martinez

It is well known that you cannot divide a number by zero. Math teachers write, for example, 24 ÷ 0 = undefined. They use analogies to convince students that it is impossible and meaningless, that “you cannot divide something by nothing.” Yet we also learn that we can multiply by zero, add zero, and subtract zero. And some teachers explain that zero is not really nothing, that it is just a number with definite and distinct properties. So, why not divide by zero? In the past, many mathematicians did.

In 628 CE, the Indian mathematician and astronomer Brahmagupta claimed that “zero divided by a zero is zero.” At around 850 CE, another Indian mathematician, Mahavira, more explicitly argued that any number divided by zero leaves that number unchanged, so then, for example, 24 ÷ 0 = 24. Later, around 1150, the mathematician Bhaskara gave yet another result for such operations. He argued that a quantity divided by zero becomes an infinite quantity. This idea persisted for centuries, for example, in 1656, the English mathematician John Wallis likewise argued that 24 ÷ 0 = ∞, introducing this curvy symbol for infinity. Wallis wrote that for ever smaller values of n, the quotient 24 ÷ n becomes increasingly larger (e.g., 24 ÷ .001 = 24,000), and therefore he argued that it becomes infinity when we divide by zero.

The **infinity** symbol in different typefaces (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

The common attitude toward such old notions is that past mathematicians were plainly wrong, confused or “struggling” with division by zero. But that attitude disregards the extent to which even formidably skilled mathematicians thoughtfully held such notions. In particular, the Swiss mathematician, Leonhard Euler, is widely admired as one of the greatest mathematicians in history, having made extraordinary contributions to many branches of mathematics, physics, and astronomy in hundreds of masterful papers written even during his years of blindness. Euler’s Complete Introduction to Algebra (published in German in 1770) has been praised as the most widely published book in the history of algebra. We here include the pages, in German and from an English translation, in which Euler discussed division by zero. He argued that it gives infinity.

Euler_German — Title page of Leonhard Euler, Vollständige Anleitung zur Algebra, Vol. 1 (edition of 1771, first published in 1770), and p. 34 from Article 83, where Euler explains why a number divided by zero gives infinity.

A common and reasonable view is that despite his fame, Euler was clearly wrong because if any number divided by zero gives infinity, then all numbers are equal, which is ridiculous. For example:

if 3 ÷ 0 = ∞, and 4 ÷ 0 = ∞,

then ∞ x 0 = 3, and ∞ x 0 = 4.

Here, a single operation, ∞ x 0, has multiple solutions, such that apparently 3 = 4. This is absurd, so one might imagine that there was something “pre-modern” in Euler’s Algebra, that the history of mathematics includes prolonged periods in which mathematicians had not yet found the right answer to certain problems. However, Euler had fair reasons for his arguments. Multiple solutions to one equation did not seem impossible. Euler argued, for one, that the operation of extracting roots yields multiple results. For example, the number 1 has three cube roots, any of which, multiplied by itself three times, produces 1. Today all mathematicians agree that root extraction can yield multiple results.

Euler_Algebra_1810 — Title page of an English edition of Euler’s Algebra, published in 1810 (translated from a French translation of the German original), and Article 83, p. 34, with footnote additions.

So why not also admit multiple results when multiplying zero by infinity?

An alternate way to understand the historical disagreements over division by zero is to say that certain mathematical operations evolve over time. In antiquity, mathematicians did not divide by zero. Later, some mathematicians divided by zero, obtaining either zero or the dividend (e.g., that 24 ÷ 0 = 24). Next, other mathematicians argued, for centuries, that the correct quotient is actually infinity. And nowadays again, mathematicians teach that division by zero is impossible, that it is “undefined.” But ever since the mid-1800s, algebraists realized that certain aspects of mathematics are established by convention, by definitions that are established at will and occasionally refined, or redefined. If so, might the result of division by zero change yet again?

In 2005, I showed students at UT how the computer in our classroom, an Apple iMac, carried out division. I typed 24 ÷ 0, then the enter key. The computer replied “infinity!” Strange that it included an exclamation mark. Some students complained that the computer was an Apple instead of a Windows PC. The following year, a similar Apple computer, a newer model, also answered “infinity,” but without the exclamation mark. In 2010, the same operation on a newer computer in the classroom replied: “DIV BY ZERO.” Yet that same computer has an additional calculator, a so-called scientific calculator, and the same operation on this more sophisticated calculator gave “infinity.”

Students’ calculators, such as in their cell phones, gave other results: “error,” or “undefined.” One student’s calculator, a Droid cell phone, answered: “infinity.” None of these answers is an accident, each has been thoughtfully programmed into each calculator by mathematically trained programmers and engineers. Computer scientists confront the basic and old algebraic problem: using variables and arithmetical operations, occasionally computers encounter a division in which the divisor has a value of zero—what should computers do then? Stop, break down?

On 21 September 1997, the USS Yorktown battleship was testing “Smart Ship” technologies on the coast of Cape Charles, Virginia. At one point, a crew member entered a set of data that mistakenly included a zero in one field, causing a Windows NT computer program to divide by zero. This generated an error that crashed the computer network, causing failure of the ship’s propulsion system, paralyzing the cruiser for more than a day.

These issues show that we are unjustified in assuming that we are lucky enough to live in an age when all the basic operations of mathematics have been settled, when the result of division by zero in particular cannot change again. Instead, when we look at pages from old math books, such as Euler’s Algebra, we should be reminded that some parts of mathematics include operations and concepts involving ambiguities that admit reasonable disagreements. These are not merely mistakes, but instead, plausible alternative directions that mathematics has previously taken and still might take. After all, other operations that seemed impossible for centuries, such as subtracting a greater number from a lesser, or taking roots of negative numbers, are now common. In mathematics, sometimes the impossible becomes possible, often with good reason.

Want to know more about negative numbers?

Alberto A. Martinez, Negative Math: How Mathematical Rules Can Be Positively Bent

Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in the Americas, 1492-1830 by J.H. Elliott (2007)

by Renata Keller

Empires of the Atlantic World is an engaging comparative history of the processes of conquest, colonization, and independence in the British and Spanish American empires. Elliot compares such factors as luck, race relations, and religion in the ways the two systems of colonization—and de-colonization—occurred in the Americas.

Elliot argues that luck, or timing, was one of the most important forces determining the fates of the Spanish and British empires. He claims that Spain’s role as pioneer in the colonization of the Americas was a mixed blessing. Spain had prime access to lands with mineral wealth and cheap labor, but it had to expend a massive amount of effort to consolidate its power over vast reaches of territory, with no useful models of empire to follow. Britain, meanwhile, had to settle for a relatively tiny chunk of land by the time it joined the imperial game nearly a century later, yet had the advantage of the lessons of the Spanish experience. Elliot also emphasizes the importance of timing in the two independence movements. The outbreak of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars helped the new United States expand its trade and solidify its political autonomy, while the Spanish American republics found themselves with few export options to rebuild their war-ravaged economies, thanks to the concurrent peace in Europe.

Another theme that Elliot frequently examines is that of race and its relationship to empire, characterizing the Spanish empire as racially inclusive and the British one as exclusive. The indigenous peoples of Spanish America composed a central part of society, initially as a justification for colonization, then as a source of labor, and finally as an impediment to independence. The British, on the other hand, consistently viewed the native peoples of North America as “others”—competitors for land and a threat to the moral and physical safety of the colonists. Elliot claims that the independence process was later, more prolonged, and more violent in Spanish America in part because the creoles there had more to fear and more to lose from upsetting the status quo with the indigenous population.

Another recurring theme in Elliot’s work is that of religion. He claims that the monopoly of the Catholic Church in Spanish America helped provide structure, stability, and economic investment, but also encouraged intellectual and cultural stagnation. Ironically, when Spain tried to centralize power over its colonies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it pushed church leaders like Miguel Hidalgo into the forefront of the independence movement. Elliot credits the Protestant tradition and the religious pluralism in the British colonies, on the other hand, with promoting independent thinking, vitality, and a degree of toleration.

Empires of the Atlantic World is an engaging, informative read for anyone interested in Latin American, European, and U.S. history. Scholars and the general public alike will enjoy Elliot’s latest contribution to the study of the empires of the Americas.

George on the Lege, Part 5 (continued) – School Finance

By George Christian

From 1949 to 1991, poor school districts had largely driven the debate over reform of the Texas school finance system. They had provided the initial impulse for Gilmer-Aiken, unsuccessfully sued the state in federal court, and ultimately triumphed at the Texas Supreme Court. Successive legislatures had responded to litigation and public campaigns by increasing total funding to public education and distributing that funding in a more equitable manner. Since 1991, however, the worm has turned. Stung by a succession of school plans that progressively eroded their independence to tax and spend as they pleased, wealthy districts took a page from their less fortunate compatriots’ book. They began to use the court system themselves.

Following legislative enactment of the 1991 share-the-wealth plan, wealthy districts, seeking to kill “Robin Hood” once and for all, beat a path to the courthouse and argued that the new system imposed an unconstitutional state property tax. Travis County District Judge Scott McCown disagreed and upheld the CEDs (county educational districts). Unfortunately for the Governor and Legislature, however, the Texas Supreme Court concurred with the districts. The CED tax, the court determined in the Edgewood III opinion, constituted a state property tax in violation of the Texas Constitution, which prohibits the imposition of a state property tax. The Legislature responded during the 1993 session by sending a constitutional amendment to the voters validating the CED system. On May 1, 1993, Texas voters went to the polls and, despite a desperate campaign by Governor Richards, rejected the constitutional amendment.

Forced back to the drawing board, the Governor and Legislature devised the so-called “Local Option” plan, allowing school districts to choose among various options for sharing their property tax wealth with poor districts. Although both poor and wealthy districts challenged the plan in court, this time the state won (although Governor Richards had in the interim gone down to electoral defeat at the hands of George W. Bush). On January 30, 1995, the Texas Supreme Court issued the fourth—and last—Edgewood opinion, holding that the system met the state’s constitutional obligation to provide an efficient system. For a brief moment, and after two decades of unremitting controversy, litigation, legislation, and political wrangling, Texas’ school finance system met constitutional muster.

But that didn’t last long. Texas law has long capped school district maintenance and operation tax rates at $1.50 per $100 assessed property value. For more than a century, most school districts had taxed well under the cap, so it never became a constitutional issue. But in April, 2001, four rich school districts decided that it had. They filed suit in Travis County district court, alleging that the school finance system was unconstitutional because, similar to the CED plan before it, imposed a state property tax because so many districts now taxed at the $1.50 cap that it became a de facto state tax. The district court and court of appeals dismissed the appeal, but the Texas Supreme Court took the case and reversed the lower courts. In West Orange Cove C.I.S.D. v. Neeley (November, 2005), the court threw out the system devised in 1995 on the basis that the state gave school districts no “meaningful discretion” in the setting their own tax rates.

Governor Rick Perry called the Legislature back into session in the spring of 2006 to deal with the West Orange Cove ruling. With the Governor’s backing, the Legislature enacted a complex system of revenue targets for each school district (based on 2005-2006 funding levels) and tax compression, whereby school tax rates were reduced by one-third (i.e., a district at the $1.50 cap had to reduce its rate to $1.00). School districts were given the option of imposing an additional 4 cents of local enrichment taxes, with the option to impose up to 13 additional cents with voter approval (equalling a cap of $1.17 per $100 assessed property value). The tax rate compression was paid for by a new business tax, other additional taxes and fees, and surplus state revenue. The entire package resulted in a net tax cut, though most taxpayers did not see a major difference in their property tax bills as a result of rapidly increasing property values in tax years 2006-2008.

This system is still in operation today, though it is showing signs of considerable strain, exacerbated by the general revenue shortfall that threatens school districts with a multi-billion reduction in state funding. Because of the revenue target system that holds wealth districts harmless at high funding levels, many poor districts believe that the current system is nearly as inequitable as the one the first Edgewood court rejected in 1989. Moreover, as more districts approach the current $1.17 tax rate cap, the argument that the cap is a state property tax is likely to recur. And many wealthy districts have never liked the “Robin Hood” aspects of the share-the-wealth system to begin with. Many legislators agree with one or all of these criticisms and have filed various reform plans. One legislator has even proposed doing away with Supreme Court oversight of the system altogether, leaving the legislature free to devise whatever system it deems fit. One thing seems certain: the future of Texas school finance will be decided in the courts as well as in the political arena.

Sources:

State Library and Archives Commission (accessed March 14, 2011)
Cynthia E. Orozco, Rodriguez v. San Antonio ISD, Texas State Historical Association (accessed March 14, 2011)
Sheryl Pace, An Introduction to School Finance in Texas, Texas Taxpayers and Research Association Research Foundation, May, 2010

For More on state financing of education, you can read:
The Texas Legislature: Online
Current Events in Texas Public Education at The Texas Tribune
Gene B. Preuss, To Get a Better School System: One Hundred Years of Education Reform in Texas (2009)
Larry Cuban, As Good As It Gets: What School Reform Brought to Austin (2010)

Previous installments of George on the Lege:

Part 5:1 School Finance, 1949-1991
Part 4: Concealed Weapons
Part 3: Redistricting
Part 2: Cutting Spending
Part 1: Budget Crises, Today and Yesterday

The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman (2009)

by Jonathan Hunt

On September 26, 1983, satellites notified a Soviet watch station south of Moscow of inbound U.S. missiles. Stanislav Petrov, the officer on duty, had ten minutes to determine whether to launch a counterattack. Mercifully, he chose to report the incident as a false alarm. His conscious disregard for standing protocol likely saved tens of millions of lives.

The Dead Hand, David Hoffman’s gripping history of the Cold War’s final years, teems with such hair-raising details. He uses eyewitness interviews and newly declassified papers to recapture the context in which Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan tried to halt the runaway U.S.-Soviet arms race. His exposure of the dark underbelly of the Soviet military-industrial complex is especially disturbing. The book’s title comes from a computer network, “a real-world doomsday machine,” built in the 1980s to retaliate in the event the Soviet leadership was killed by a U.S. preemptive strike. Meanwhile, secret facilities in the vast Soviet hinterlands churned out vats of such lethal bacteria and viruses as anthrax, Ebola, West Nile virus, smallpox, and plague. Soviet geneticists even tried to formulate a strain of super-plague fully resistant to antibiotics.

The focus of the book, however, is the evolving relationship between Gorbachev and Reagan. Despite their differences, these men shared an abhorrence of nuclear weapons. At the momentous 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, they conducted impromptu face-to-face negotiations to hammer out an agreement abolishing all nuclear weapons by 2000. Only Reagan’s commitment to building an anti-ballistic missile system blocked the agreement. Critics dismissively dubbed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) “Star Wars” because it resembled science fiction more than scientific fact. They warned that even if feasible, SDI threatened to amplify the arms race. Ironically, though, Reagan’s dedication to SDI and his administration’s negotiation of a treaty eliminating all intermediate-range ballistic missiles stemmed from the same root—Reagan’s dream of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

Ronald Reagan speaks to Mikhail Gorbachev — *U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev bid one another farewell at the close of the 1986 Reykjavik summit. (Source: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)*

Ultimately, Reagan and Gorbachev’s efforts to transcend the Cold War were overtaken by events in Eastern Europe. Hoffman presents the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl as the turning point. After the environmental disaster, Gorbachev made glasnost, a push for government transparency, a cornerstone of his domestic agenda along with perestroika, the restructuring of the Soviet economic and political system. The states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were too moribund, however, to cope with the rising expectations set off by Gorbachev’s reforms. By 1991, communist Europe had disintegrated. The U.S. had the foresight to help post-Soviet societies eliminate their nuclear inheritance. More than twenty years after the Berlin Wall’s fall, however, the foul inventions of Soviet germ warriors are still hidden and the U.S. and Russia still account for 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. Without continued efforts at disarmament and disclosure, Hoffman suggests these genocidal weapons will remain the Cold War’s deadly legacy.

Further reading:

The Reykjavik File: Previously Secret Documents from U.S. and Soviet Archives on the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev Summit (via the National Security Archive of George Washington University).

The Cold War International History Project

The Cold War Museum: 1980s

African Americans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era by Kevin K. Gaines (2007)

by Joseph Parrott

In his response to the recent resignation of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, President Barack Obama situated the event within a longer history of popular freedom struggles. His references to Gandhi and the fall of the Berlin Wall evoked powerful images for most Americans, but Obama’s allusion to the small West African nation of Ghana may be less familiar. Yet in 1957, Ghana’s peaceful transition to independence heralded the end of European colonialism and served as an inspiration to oppressed peoples throughout the world. Kevin Gaines’ American Africans in Ghana recovers the symbolic role that the young nation played in the African American freedom struggle, and the reasons why it stirred Martin Luther King to proclaim “There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.”

Gaines (who taught in the History Department at UT Austin, 1997-99) argues that postcolonial Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah offered a unique instance in the history of black identity. The country acted as a symbol of pride and a haven for critics of Western racial hierarchies. The author follows the lives and writings of a number of black intellectuals who left the Americas to take up residence in or visit Ghana, including George Padmore, Julian Mayfield, and Malcolm X. The socialist, Pan-African thought advanced by Nkrumah helped mobilize global activists and inspire stringent social and economic critiques of segregated societies in the western hemisphere. In Ghana, the expatriates discovered a new sense of racial pride, which they applied to their own struggles for equality at home: “the legitimacy and salience of black and African heritage” became “the basis for their full participation in American life.” These men and women asserted their identity as citizens of a global society.

Yet Gaines also recognizes that the realities of postcolonial governing challenged this idealism, leading some black intellectuals to cling to their American associations. Author Richard Wright and civil rights campaigner Pauli Murray viewed Nkrumah’s traditionally influenced autocratic leadership with trepidation, advocating for modern secularism and an American-style system of jurisprudence, respectively. Both rejected a sense of “natural” racial solidarity with the people of Ghana, and Murray specifically adhered to an idealized vision of color-blind American liberalism. The tensions between Nkrumah’s autocratic socialism and opposing visions of the postcolonial state eventually led to his ouster, but Gaines believes that Ghana remained a symbol of hope for oppressed peoples. Nkrumah’s idealism lived on in sympathetic African Americans, who continued to articulate a “vision of an expansive, interconnected black world… and their conception of being in the world as peoples of African descent.”

Gaines offers a densely nuanced intellectual history that returns Ghana to its position as both innovator and inspiration within the larger discussion of transnational civil rights. Those willing to engage his ambitious argument will find a thought-provoking investigation of African American identity and the global ideals of equality and freedom that continue to shape contemporary events.

“What Would Jesus Do?”

by Howard Miller

“WWJD?” A student of mine told me in the early 1990s that in her school the interrogating initials meant “Who Wants Jack Daniels?” Of course, most Americans today know that they mean “What Would Jesus Do?” The question has been ubiquitous in American popular culture for three decades. But few know that it was first asked in a novel. And even fewer know that the author’s working drafts of that novel can be seen today in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Reverend Charles M. Sheldon first asked “What would Jesus Do?” in an 1896 novel entitled In His Steps. Sheldon was an advocate for the Social Gospel, which sought to situate Jesus in his own culture and insisted that his life and teachings should guide the way Christians live their own lives in a very different culture.

The novel is set in the fictional mid-western city of Raymond. It begins with the arrival of an out of work stranger, who, after a week of unsuccessfully seeking employment among church members, interrupts the Sunday service to ask the startled members what it meant for them to follow Jesus in their daily lives. And then he collapsed and died! In the Sunday evening service, the pastor challenged his congregation to answer the stranger’s question, to pledge that for a year, before making any major decision, they would first ask, “What Would Jesus Do?”

And the Christians of Raymond begin to transform their city. An opera singer vows to sing only at church. A newspaper becomes a Christian daily and loses many customers but is then subsidized by a convenient rich woman, who also builds a tenement for the poor. A rail superintendent resigns his position to protest the corruption of the railroad industry and then begins to crusade for economic reform. A college professor runs for public office in order to reform government along Christian lines. A merchant starts profit sharing with his employees. And all finally come to focus on the area of town called the Rectangle, a crime-ridden slum dominated by saloons and the unchurched men who control them.

All of the changes are gradual and paternalistic. None challenges the status quo of Raymond’s middle class, Protestant, capitalistic society. There will be no holding of all things in common. Sheldon specifically rules out any kind of socialist thorough reconstruction of society that would challenge the rights of private property. It is enough that those who have take care of those who do not have as much as they. Sheldon also makes it clear that no one should decide that Jesus wants him or her to give all that he or she has to the poor. There will be no Saint Francis of Raymond.

All of the changes also conform to traditional Victorian expectations of gender and sex roles. All the things that the women and men in the novel do to follow Jesus are within those traditional roles. The opera singer, as she performs, appeals to the heart, as women are intended to. And her singing converts people. Under her influence, a dissipated rich young man dedicates his life to reforming the idle rich young men who had been his friends in dissipation. Only when he has found his mission in life does he become resolute, disciplined, and purposeful. And only then does the woman he loves begin to find him attractive enough to marry him.

In His Steps was an instant best seller. In the twentieth century it sold more than thirty million volumes. But as that century developed, the novel ceased to be a major element in shaping Protestant culture in America, until, that is, the seventies and eighties. In those decades the novel’s central question, if not the book itself, became a favorite of the evangelical Christianity that became increasingly powerful in American culture.

In the mid eighties “WWJD?” began to appear on the wrists and necks of young Christian girls and women. Jesus became a fashion statement! And within a decade the question was everywhere in the marketplace of American consumer culture. By 2000 advertisers had accustomed Americans to ads based upon Sheldon’s question, as in “What Would Jesus Drive?”

And then George W. Bush identified himself and the Republican Party with Christianity in general and with Jesus in particular to an extent without precedent in American politics. The Republican Party became, in the first Bush Administration, as close as we have seen to a “Christian party in politics” in American history.

Then in the second Bush administration, that identification with Jesus became a problem. First, several Republican leaders who were outspoken defenders of traditional family values were involved in scandals involving homosexual activity. As Americans became ever more critical of Republican politicians whose actions were so at variance with their stated beliefs, they also grew more critical of the President’s actions, especially in the Middle East. Because the President proclaimed that Jesus was the model and guide for his life, critics, and especially cartoonists, could not resist using Sheldon’s question to criticize Mr. Bush. Cartoon after cartoon asked, inevitably, “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”

I don’t know what Charles Sheldon would think of George W. Bush and his party. I suspect that he would appreciate a president who said that Jesus was his favorite philosopher because “he changed my life;” who said that he took his orders from his heavenly father, not his earthly father; and who gave us what he called a “faith-based administration.”

But we can see the irony in the role that In His Steps played in the downfall of the “Christian Party in Politics.” Little did the Topeka pastor know in 1896 that his arresting question would become in the American marketplace in the early twenty-first century an advertising slogan that would help bring down a president and party he would probably have wholeheartedly supported.

Sheldon followed in the steps of Henry Ward Beecher, the most popular Protestant minister of the late Victorian period, and originally wrote his novel, chapter by chapter, as sermons to be delivered on Sunday evening before being finally published as a novel. Those chapters – and the pen he used! — can be seen at the Humanities Research Center at UT here in Austin.

Liz Carpenter: Texan

Black and white image of Mary Elizabeth Sutherland Carpenter gesturing with her left hand

By Michael Gillette

At the annual meeting of the Texas State Historical Association in March 2011, the luncheon for Women in Texas History was dedicated to Liz Carpenter. Among the remarks and remembrances, Michael L. Gillette, the Executive Director of Humanities Texas, offered a wonderful tribute based on materials and photographs from the LBJ Library & Museum at UT Austin. We were so impressed by the talk that we asked Mr. Gillette if we might reprint his presentation and he graciously agreed.

Black and white image of Mary Elizabeth Sutherland Carpenter standing knee-deep in a river with mountains in the background

I met Liz in the days after President Johnson’s death in 1973, when I was detailed to work with her on a eulogy book. She was then at the zenith of her career: a savvy force in politics, a celebrated author, and a national leader of the women’s movement. But she also had the aspect of a small town Texas girl: approachable, fun-loving, quick to befriend, down-to-earth, and never taking herself too seriously.

She displayed this duality one evening at the Old Coupland Inn during one of her visits to Austin in the mid-1970s. Five couples in caravan accompanied her, but Liz herself had no escort that evening. I remember that almost as soon as we arrived, a lively Texas swing band enticed all of us onto the floor of the Old Dance Hall. And as LeAnn and I were dancing, I looked up and saw that Liz was dancing with some local cowboy. She was easy to spot, by the way, because, in this maze of denim, she was wearing a bright, rainbow-colored psychedelic tent dress.

Later, she later satisfied my curiosity by repeating her conversation with the cowboy as she herded him onto the dance floor.
“Where are you from?” she asked him.
“Elgin,” he replied. “Where are you from?”
“Salado,” she declared with the confident pride of one who had spent her entire life just up the road. She neglected to mention she hadn’t lived there since the 1920s and that she had been a Washington, DC resident for the past thirty years.

But Salado was, in a sense, her home: her birthplace, her ancestral legacy, and the coordinates that defined her sense of place. “All my life I have drawn strength” from Salado,” she wrote. There she found a singular peace, “a reverence before this altar of ancestors.”

Her great, great grandfather, Sterling Clack Robertson migrated from Tennessee to Texas to become the Empresario of Robertson’s Colony. He was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, which Liz’s great, great uncle, George Childress, drafted. Robertson’s son, Elijah Sterling Robertson, founded Salado and built the 24-room plantation house where Liz was born.

Meanwhile, Liz’s paternal forbears migrated from Alabama to form the Settlement in Jackson County. George Sutherland fought at the Battle of San Jacinto after his son William died at the Alamo.

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 this 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.”

Liz’s family moved to Austin when she was seven years old, so that she and her older siblings could ultimately attend the University of Texas. This was a transition that prepared her for the wider world. By the time she graduated from UT with a degree in journalism, she sensed that her prose and her spirit would enable her to make her mark. “Give me wide open spaces, a Model T, and a typewriter,” she wrote to her mother, “and I’ll see you in the hall of fame.”

Although Washington, DC in 1942 was hardly “the wide open spaces,” it was the perfect place for a young woman to test her potential. With men in uniform, the city opened its doors to women as never before. When Liz made a courtesy call on her congressman, she discovered that his wife was running the office while he was overseas. It was that visit that introduced Liz Carpenter to Lady Bird Johnson.
Liz secured a job with Esther Tufty, as a secretary and cub reporter. In this latter capacity, she was able to cover the press conferences of Eleanor Roosevelt, who was redefining the role of First Lady, and Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor and the first woman to hold a cabinet post. After Liz married Les, her college sweetheart, the couple formed their own news bureau, covering Capitol Hill for 26 Southwestern newspapers.

But the Carpenters’ three decades in Washington were hardly an exile from the Lone Star State. Texas was in the midst of a seismic transformation into a modern urban state. Its leaders and entrepreneurs were flocking to Washington, seeking federal help to make their dreams a reality. Liz had a ringside seat from which to observe this remarkable saga as it unfolded. While she gained an insider’s knowledge of how things work in government, politics and human nature, she also acquired a wealth of friends and associates. Within a decade she was elected president of the Women’s National Press Club.

Aiding Liz’s emergence was an almost mystical fraternity in Washington, the Texas establishment. Among Texans in the capital, there was a unique bond that no other state’s natives enjoyed. The Texas State Society was, by far, the largest and most active of the city’s state organizations. There was even a Texas investment group: the Longhorn Longshots Club, to which Liz and Les belonged. As always, Liz had just the right phrase for this establishment.

She called it “the Texas family.” It was a group that worked together, dined together, and entertained together. Their children grew up together, forming second generation friendships.

The center of the Texas family was the large, powerful, and close-knit Congressional delegation. There was Speaker Sam Rayburn, Wright Patman, George Mahon, Tiger Teague, Bob Pogue, Clark Thompson, Homer Thornberry, Joe Kilgore, and, of course, Lyndon Johnson.

Clark and Libbie Moody Thompson entertained Texans so often that their elegant home became known as the Texas Embassy. And on countless Sundays, the four Carpenters–Liz, Les, Scott, and Christy—would spend the afternoons, at the Johnson home with Speaker Rayburn, other members of Texas congressional delegation, and the Texas press and their families. The topic of discussion was always politics. What an extraordinary postgraduate education these afternoons must have been!

Then, when Liz was in Chicago covering the 1960 Republican convention, she received a phone call that changed her destiny. Lady Bird Johnson asked her to share the great adventure of their lives and travel with her in the presidential campaign.
That telephone call put Liz on a fast track to fame: a vice president’s staff; two presidential campaigns; and countless domestic and international trips that enabled her to see America and the world as few of us ever do. She wrote the new President’s words that would comfort a nation in shock after President Kennedy’s assassination. As Lady Bird Johnson’s Press Secretary and Staff Director, Liz was in the forefront of such major initiatives as Head Start, beautification, and the creation of so many national parks.

With her destiny bound to that of Lady Bird Johnson, the fame that had been a fantasy of Liz’s youth, found both women. Yet, their differences were as striking as their similarities. Both were keenly intelligent, well-informed, and profoundly curious about the world around them. Both were happiest when they were working, striving to make the world a better place. But Mrs. Johnson was judicious, disciplined, cautious and firm, but gentle. Liz, on the other hand, was bawdy, daring, feisty, creative, loud and hilarious.

I recall a single moment that highlighted their differences. Each January, Mrs. Johnson hosted a group of friends at a rented villa high above Acapulco Bay. I was interviewing her in her room one morning when a very minor earthquake caused everything around us to shake. Mrs. Johnson paused from her narrative; her eyes widened briefly and then closed, as her lips formed a placid smile. She was the epitome of serenity in the face of uncertainty. Liz’s reaction, on the other hand, measured a 7.2 on the Richter scale. Tearing out of her room, she raced up to the Secret Service agent on duty and shouted: “What is this? An earthquake?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he responded.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
Despite, or perhaps because of, their differences, these two remarkable Texas women shared a deep and enduring friendship of more than sixty years. For half of that span, both were widows who depended on the companionship and shared memories that only old friends can provide. One merely had to see them together to realize how much they cherished each other.

After leaving the White House, Liz did everything but retire. She wrote five books, crisscrossed the country on the speaker’s circuit, joined the public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton, served two other presidents, helped raise a second family, and became a national leader of the women’s movement.

“A day that changed my life,” was Liz’s description of the historic meeting at the Statler Hotel in 1971 when she and other leaders organized the National Women’s Political Caucus. Betty Freidan enlisted Liz because the movement needed her political expertise and her knowledge of the press. But remember that it was the Texas family that had nurtured and equipped her for this new role. Her ancestral family, too, had led her to this new path: “In my ancestors,” she wrote, “I keep finding me. I keep finding that their causes are my causes.”
This last great odyssey brought new friendships, new travels and challenges—and air travel for Liz was always a challenge. She used to say that “Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.” She became a role model, an advisor, and an inspiration to young women seeking to become active in civic life. By advancing the candidacies of so many Texas women, she helped change the face of power in our state.
Two years after Les’s death in 1974, Liz decided to move back to Texas. She bought a picturesque Austin home that became a nerve center for the social and political causes she espoused. An invitation from Liz was always a summons to adventure. You never knew what to expect until you were there. One could end up in her Jacuzzi with Gloria Steinem and Erma Bombeck or singing hymns with Ann Richards. Her guest house provided a haven for anyone needing shelter for a day or a year.

When Liz’s health began to decline, and she sensed her mortality, she planned her own send-off. She had already staged a dress-rehearsal at the Paramount Theater as a fund-raiser a number of years earlier. It was a hilarious roast with Lily Tomlin and Ann Richards, but all agreed that Liz, attired as an angel, stole the show.

When it was time for the real thing, almost a thousand friends and family told stories and laughed and cried, as she had ordained. Afterward, a smaller group made the final journey to that place that had always given Liz a special peace: Salado. As she had prescribed, her friends and family dutifully scattered her ashes and wildflower seeds on College Hill. Even on this sad occasion, they must have smiled when they remembered Liz’s final instructions: “If it’s a windy day, be sure to keep your mouth closed.”

Summing up her remarkable story, she once wrote that: “Life has always led me where things were happening; where people were exhilarating, where actions and laughter came quickly.” This extraordinary Texan, so worthy of the rich legacy she had inherited, schooled within a circle of greatness, nurtured by a wealth of friendships, and inspired by a spirit of adventure, wrote each chapter of her life as if it were the last. And she made every word count.

Photographs compiled by Lindsey Wall.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (2009)

by Jessica Wolcott Luther

Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian immigrant turned US citizen, owned a home repair and painting business with his wife, Kathy, in New Orleans in 2005. When Hurricane Katrina hit the city on August 29 of that year, Kathy and their three children fled the city for Baton Rouge. Zeitoun, a devoted businessman and neighbor, refused to leave his impending projects. He hunkered down, readied his canoe (just in case), and rode out the storm. When the hurricane finally passed, he set out in his canoe to assess the damage to the city, his rental properties, the homes he was repairing and painting, and the offices of his business.

In Dave Eggers’ telling of Zeitoun’s story, the focus is the aftermath of Katrina. Many of the neighbors that he comes across are elderly, disabled, and trapped in their flooded homes. More often than not, Zeitoun’s attempts at rescue are impeded rather than helped by the national and local officers and soldiers who feign assistance and then ignore his pleas. He takes on the daily task of feeding local dogs. Each day at the same time he returns to a working pay phone in one of his rental units to call Kathy and check in, a mundane ritual that keeps him connected to his family and alleviates Kathy’s worries about Zeitoun’s condition. When he traveled to his office to take stock of the damage there, he came across a gang of armed men (“criminal opportunists” he called them) stealing from a local gas station and decided to go in the opposite direction. At one point, while surveying the damage on Tulane’s campus for a professor friend of his, Abdulrahman comes across an acquaintance, Nasser Dayoob, another Syrian immigrant who had fled to the campus when his own home had been flooded. Zeitoun gave Nasser a place to stay in one his rental units where a renter, Todd Gambino, had weathered the storm.

On Tuesday, September 6, when Zeitoun went to the rental unit after making his daily rounds to feed the dogs and check on neighbors, he came across a man he had never met named Ronnie. Nasser was also there, as was Todd. Shortly after Zeitoun had finished taking a shower, Nasser yelled for him to come downstairs. A group of armed and uniformed men were bursting into the house. They put Adbulrahman, Nasser, Todd, and Ronnie in a boat and took them away.

The second half of Zeitoun’s post-Katrina story, the one that begins with his disappearance at the hands of these men, is riveting. You follow Kathy as she struggles for weeks to locate him without knowing if he is alive. She tries to hide her worry from her children while she physically and emotionally unravels at the seams. It eventually takes a brave act by a person that she does not know for her to find Zeitoun. Where he is and what has happened to him is both shocking and obvious.

Zeitoun was a man at the intersection of multiple tragedies: the destruction by the hurricane, the chaos of the aftermath, the post-9/11 fears about Muslim Americans, and the pervasiveness of the “war on terror” into our own cities, homes, and lives. Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun leaves you understanding that no matter what mother Earth can do to us, we can always do worse to each other.

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