Texas Archives - Page 3 of 5

Film Review – Dazed and Confused (Dir: Linklater, 1993)

Borrowing its title from Led Zeppelin’s first album, Richard Linklater’s classic film Dazed and Confused continues to resonate with filmgoers and critics decades after its release. This September marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Linklater’s cult hit and the overwhelming surge of Dazed and Confused viewing parties along with its re-release in theaters reveals the staying power of this small budget high school comedy. Linklater’s film is difficult to describe to those who have never seen it. In fact, the plot can seem quite uneventful. It lacks the drama, heartbreak, and seemingly high stakes of conventional high school stories and instead takes its viewers on a journey into the everyday banalities that make our lives what they are. Linklater’s film shows us how many of our life defining moments occur in the daily minutiae we experience.

The film takes place within a twenty-four-hour period on the last day of high school in Austin, Texas. Freshmen are hazed, the teens party under one of Austin’s legendary moontowers, and the story ends with a trek to purchase some killer Aerosmith tickets. The film perfectly encapsulates both the silly and startling aspects of high school. Whether you’re the anxious senior grappling with questions of the post-graduation unknown or the vulnerable freshman dazed by a new high school student hierarchy that feeds off freshman fear, the film captures the ethos of the high school experience. However, it would be easy to simply brush the film off as a lighthearted comedy that oozes nostalgia and brings its viewers back to the glory days of kegs, cruising, and classic rock. Linklater’s film exposes a new type of youth culture and lifestyle movement, referred to as slacker culture, born out of the failures and successes of radical domestic political and cultural movements collectively referred to as the American counterculture.

From left to right: Don (Sasha Jenson), Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey), Pink (Jason London), and Mitch (Wiley Wiggins) outside the bowling alley (via IMBd)

This new slacker culture emerged in the 1970s and consisted of a new type of cultural persona that fused the hippie with the dispirited misfit. The slacker embraced aspects of hippie culture that reinforced the right to be whatever type of individual you felt like being, but abandoned hippie political projects and radical ideologies. Slackers embodied an optimistic aimlessness while their politics celebrated choice and championed individual liberty. Slacker politics valued personal autonomy but rejected ideology and overarching political programs. Slackers were the non-participating participants. People with a point of view who lacked a cause.

The most vivid example of this slacker politics is represented in the storyline of the film’s most prominent character, Randall “Pink” Floyd. At the beginning of the film, Pink’s coach asks him to sign a sobriety pledge. The coach is concerned with winning a championship and does not want any of his players jeopardizing their chances of a winning season. Pink’s ambivalence toward the request lasts throughout the film as he grapples with options that include refusing to sign the pledge, quitting the football team altogether, or submitting to his coach’s authority. He ultimately refuses to sign the coach’s pledge but states that he will continue to play football regardless. Pink cites his right to privacy and above all else his independence when he refuses to sign the pledge. His refusal is more than teenage disobedience or protest for the sake of protest, yet the refusal is not an attempt to change the coach’s views on drug and alcohol use or pressure the coach into dropping the pledge requirement in its entirety. His protest is a statement about individual autonomy and the right to choose how to engage with the world on your own terms. The pledge is not portrayed as a collective issue that can be challenged by the gripes of the student body, but one that each football player must come to terms with on their own. If Linklater’s film was set in the sixties one cannot help but imagine the hippie version of Pink’s character staging an all-night sit-in or demonstration to protest the pledge with his fellow classmates.

Michelle (Milla Jovovich) in Dazed and Confused (via IMDb)

Pink’s decision at the end of the film embodies a slacker culture equipped with its own set of new cultural attitudes and political understandings. Slackers were indebted to a countercultural revolution that altered societal norms and changed the way America’s youth engaged with sex, drugs, and of course rock ‘n’ roll. However, these seventies slackers were left to face the fallout of a post-hippie and post-countercultural society where a new generation of young Americans lacked a cause or revolutionary project. By the late 1970s, the radical political movements that emboldened America’s youth for over a decade faded away and a new personal politics that emphasized individual choice and personal growth emerged. The high school slackers portrayed in Dazed and Confused embody this new personal politics and illustrate the evolution of youth culture following the death of the counterculture.

Linklater’s teenage characters can easily seem apolitical, inward thinking, or even lazy. One could view the characters’ priorities of getting high and hanging out as humorously pathetic, or a symptom of a group of teens with little professional and academic drive and nothing better to do. However, it would be a mistake to think that the film simply portrays a group of idle and self-centered teens looking for a good time. The film is punctuated with moments of self-reflection when its characters expose the depths of a new political attitude. Throughout the film, characters contemplate inherently political questions such as how to live a happy life, how to be true to yourself, and what it means to be free.

Director Richard Linklater (via Flickr)

While cruising the boulevard on the way to the moontower party, nerdy student Mike Newhouse reveals to his friends that he has decided not to go to law school. His dream to become an ACLU lawyer and “help the people that are getting fucked up and all that” has vanished. It only took a disastrous trip to the local post office where he witnessed a room full of pathetic people drooling in line to realize he is a misanthrope. When his friend asks him what he plans to do instead of going to law school he simply replies that he wants to dance. Linklater’s film is littered with these short but insightful moments that expose the ins and outs of slacker culture. Mike’s statements are laughable, yet they represent a decision to reject conventionalities and embrace an honest life. Mike believes it would be a lie to become a lawyer, even though he would be helping people in need. Linklater’s collection of stoners, slackers, and dreamers believe in staying true to themselves and being honest about who they are even if that means withdrawing from the world. Slacker politics is based in the banalities of everyday life and encourages individuals to follow the whims of their own hearts.

As the twenty-fifth anniversary of Dazed and Confused approaches, it is worth recognizing the indisputable contribution Richard Linklater has made through his reflective storytelling. In Dazed and Confused, Linklater offers us more than a stoner cult classic or sentimental high school comedy. The film not only captures the zeitgeist of the slacker movement but also provides insight into a cultural moment in American history. Dazed and Confused showcases a young generation’s struggles, dissatisfactions, pleasures, and truths. It navigates the rocky terrain of adolescence as young misfits, dreamers, and stoners discover who they are and how they want to live their lives.

Also by Ashley Garcia:

A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar American by Grace Elizabeth Hale (2011)

You may also like:

Demystifying “Cool:” A Brief History by Kate Grover

Popular Culture in the Classroom by Nakia Parker

The Public Archive: Texas Czech Culinary Traditions

Kolaches (Credit: Whitney, via Flickr)

Millions of tweets and millions of state documents. Intimate oral histories and international radio addresses. Ancient pottery and yesterday’s memes. Historians have access to this immense store of online material for doing research, but what else can we do with it? In Spring 2018, graduate students in the Public and Digital History Seminar at UT Austin experimented with ways to make interesting archival materials available and useful to the public; to anyone with access to a computer. Over the Summer, Not Even Past will feature each of these individual projects.

Tracy Heim’s digital project, titled “Food Migrations: Texas Czech Culinary Traditions”, explores the experience of migration through the lens of food. Using the online publishing platform Scalar, “Food Migrations” not only offers a taste of Texan-Czech culinary culture through recipe books, photographs, and maps, but also considers the ways immigrant cultures are preserved – and changed – through food.

More on Heim’s project and The Public Archive here.

You may also like:

Domesticating Ethnic Foods and Becoming American by Madeline Hsu
Feeding of the Body and Feeding of the Soul: Colonial Latin America Through Objects (No. 5)
Great Books on Urban Foodways

Paying for Peace: Reflections on the “Lasting Peace” Monument

Fredericksburg, TX in 1896. The photograph shows the 50th Anniversary parade celebrating the 1846 founding of the town, with the Vereinskirche in the background (via Wikimedia)

By Jesse Ritner

Fredericksburg is a small town in central Texas. Known for its wineries, beer halls, and its World War II museum, it is now often overshadowed by the urban hubs of San Antonio and Austin, both within a two-hour drive of town. Yet, in 1847 Fredericksburg was a point of serious contention for Texans, Germans, Americans, and the Comanche, marking the edge of many clashing frontiers. Fredericksburg was situated precariously on the border of the Comanche Nation, the Mexican-American War was in full swing, and the Comanche were the most powerful military force on the plains. The German Emigration Company (the founders of Fredericksburg) owned rights promised by the former Republic of Texas to lands starting on the north bank of the Llano river. At the same time, unfortunately, the United States guaranteed the Comanche that they would not spread north of the same river. As a result, come the beginning of 1847, the small town of Fredericksburg found itself at the center of an international crisis. German immigrants and businessmen, the Comanche, U.S. Indian agents, and Delaware Indian guides all walked a delicate line, trying to gain from the Comanche-German conflict while avoiding a Comanche-American conflict that risked pushing the Comanche into an alliance with Mexico. Simply put, the stakes were high. A Comanche-Mexican alliance could have ended U.S. dreams of a coast to coast empire.

In the end, the potential conflict was avoided. The Penateka Comanche and the German Emigration Company signed the Comanche-Meusebach Treaty in May of 1847. The moment is immortalized in Fredericksburg with the “Lasting Peace” monument, whose plaque claims that it “is the only known peace treaty with Native Americans thought never to have been broken.” The monument’s hero, John O. Meusebach, was an essential figure in the founding of Fredericksburg and in early Texas history, but his grandeur fails to disguise the intuitively outlandish claim that a peace treaty with the Comanche, who are now confined to a reservation over 340 miles away, remains unbroken.

The monument is far from alone in its celebration of Meusebach’s success. Historians, such as T.R. Fehrenbach, in his famous Lone Star: A History of Texas and Texans, have celebrated Meusebach ever since naturalist Ferdinand von Roemer published an account of the treaty in 1848. As a rule, we should no longer be shocked by misleading histories and outrageous claims that seek to distance American expansion from theft of lands already controlled by indigenous peoples. Yet, the irony of the plaque is that on further exploration the claim of a lasting peace is, in a sense, true. The treaty, as it is written, was never broken.

“Lasting Peace” - Statue at Peace Garden, commemorating the peace treaty between settler John Meusebach and Chief Santa Anna of the Comanche Indians (via City-Data) — “Lasting Peace” – Statue at Peace Garden, commemorating the peace treaty between settler John Meusebach and Chief Santa Anna of the Comanche Indians (via City-Data)

In the monument, Chief Santa Anna sits cross-legged, receiving a peace pipe from John O. Meusebach who kneels on one knee before him. The peace pipe represents the Treaty, which Meusebach and Santa Anna (along with others) negotiated throughout the spring of 1847. The implications of Meusebach’s motion offering Santa Anna the pipe is essential to understanding how the monument misleads. Meusebach’s movement suggests power through action, while Santa Anna, seated, passively receives the gift of peace from the heroic German settler. A pre-conceived power dynamic in which Europeans dominated cross-cultural and geopolitical interactions is reinforced by the motion. Yet, we now know such power dynamics misrepresent Comanche-European relations. The Comanche held it within their power to offer peace. Bluntly put, the Germans could not mount a meaningful attack on the Comanche while the U.S. government’s fear of conflict and thinly spread army meant American forces were ill-prepared to go to war over Fredericksburg. Meusebach did not bestow peace on the Comanche. Rather, he bought it.

Meusebach’s treaty promised the Comanche $3,000 in gifts along with freedom to camp and trade in Fredericksburg in exchange for the safe passage of Germans to speculate and settle the land from the Llano river north to the San Saba river [1]. As a result, since the Germans lacked the means to force the Comanche out of Fredericksburg in the first place, the peace was kept, because the Comanche, not the Germans, maintained it. Nevertheless, the treaty is puzzling. Only one year before, in a treaty between the Comanche and the United States, the Comanche were promised all land north of the Llano River. They understood that the U.S. government feared their involvement in the war. Meusebach needed Comanche permission to settle the land. How the Comanche understood the treaty is less clear.

In order to tackle why this treaty was signed, we must reimagine the thought processes by which Comanche engaged in treaties and explore their potential motivations. First, the Comanche understood geopolitics in the region. Similarly, the Comanche, along with their Anglo-European counterparts, were sensitive to the specificity of language in treaties. Historians Vine Deloris Jr., Raymond J. DaMallie, and Pekka Hämäläinen remind us that not all treaties represent United States government taking advantage of Indian Nations, and the Comanche were rational, intelligent, and keen political actors who put great value in both real and fictive kinship. Texans at the time were acutely aware of Comanche power and of their political culture. The presence of Delaware Chiefs, a group know continentally as a wise, rational, and trustworthy people were thought of as distant kin by the Comanche. Their advice would have been well received by Comanches of the time. Similarly, the presence of R.S. Neighbors who was famously friends to the Comanche, suggests that the governor of Texas was aware of how the Comanche understood diplomacy, and that they actively catered to it [2].

Treaty of Peace by John O. Meusebach and Colonist with the Comanche Indians, March 2, 1847. Copied from original painting by Mrs. Ernest Marschull, daughter of John O. Meusebach (via Texas State Library and Archive Commission)

Importantly, the Comanche did not forfeit land rights in the treaty. The agreement is not a peace treaty at all. Rather, the Germans agreed to pay tribute to the Comanche for safe usage of Comanche land. Such an arrangement was familiar to the Comanche who often made similar arrangements with other Native Americans, allowing them to hunt in Comancheria in exchange for gifts and trade. There is little reason to think that Comanche approached this scenario in a radically different manner. The treaty is not an example of heroism and bravado on the part of Meusebach, as the monument would have us believe. It is an implicit acceptance of Comanche domination and power. The lack of violence following the treaty, which Fehrenbach correctly determined was proof of an unbroken treaty, was not due to the benevolence of Meusebach, who frankly lacked the military means to break it. Instead, it was a result of Santa Anna’s and the other Comanche war chiefs’ willingness to stick to their word.

Re-examining the treaty shows us how well told stories are sometimes in need of revision. Interpretations of the Meusebach-Comanche Treaty were not inherently incorrect, but they were limited in perspective. Upon seeing the monument, we presume that the Comanche were swindled out of land and that Meusebach bestowed the peace upon the Comanche. The sleepy town in central Texas that we see in 2018 was the center of conflict in 1847. Re-examination reveals the contingent nature of westward expansion and the Mexican-American War, while reinforcing the essential role that indigenous attempts to prosper and thrive played in Anglo-European expansionist policy.

[1] “Meusebach-Comanche Treaty, 1847”, Box 3S191, John O. Meusebach Papers, [ca. 1847-1889], Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

[2] “Assassination of R.S. Neighbors”, September 28, 1859, Box 2E422, Folder 3, Misc., Robert Simpson Neighbors Papers, 1838-1935, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

Additional Reading:

Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (2008)

Vine Deloria, Jr. and Raymond J. DaMallie, Documents of American Indian Diplomacy: Treaties, Agreements, and Conventions, 1775-1979 vol. 1 (1999)

John P. Bowes, Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal (2016)

Also by Jesse Ritner on Not Even Past:

The Curious History of Lincoln’s Birth Cabin

You may also like:

Justin Heath reviews Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands by Juliana Barr
The Curious Life of General Jackson’s Horses Hair by Josh Urich
“The Die is Cast”: Early Texans face the Comanches

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.

Peace Came in the Form of a Woman by Juliana Barr (2007)

by Justin Heath

“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners…all howl(ed) in a barbarous tongue…riding down upon (the posse) like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning…”: So begins the longest, most vivid sentence in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West.

As a young reader of gothic fiction, I always believed that Cormac McCarthy had an unrivaled sense for the macabre. More so than any other contemporary writer, he painted violent and terrible scenes that not only rattled my sense of poetic justice, but also delighted my curiosity about the darker recesses of the imagination. More so than I knew at the time, this mix of impressions also affected McCarthy’s more sophisticated readers. Even as he praised the book as the ultimate realization of the old western as a genre, the literary critic Harold Bloom evidently found it difficult to finish the novel. “The first time I read Blood Meridian,” Bloom confessed, “I was so appalled that while I was held, I gave up after about 60 pages.”

As an aspiring historian, what now catches my attention is not these sensational popular depictions of the Southern Plains tribes, or the “Wild West” in general, but the resonance of these otherwise careworn images in the scholarship of Borderlands Studies. Put simply, most books and articles within this academic sub-discipline still uncritically focus on a narrow range of topics — all replete the familiar scenes of violence, horror, and death.

Juliana Barr’s Peace Came in the Form of a Woman, a study of inter-ethnic diplomacy in the borderlands of Texas, marks an exception to this general trend. In this award-winning book, Barr investigates Hispano-Indian relations in the distinctive setting of the Texas borderlands, where nomadic societies, such as the Comanches and the Apaches, dictated the practices of peace-keeping to their allegedly more powerful Spanish neighbors to the south.

At the northern edge of colonial Mexico in the eighteenth century, a consortium of soldiers, ranchers, and mission Indians were in no position to dictate the terms of peace in the distant lands of “the Far North.” Left without the means to impose their will, the outposts of Texas, such as Bexar de San Antonio, had little choice but to adapt to the local culture of peacekeeping as practiced by their more resourceful indigenous neighbors. This multicultural landscape that Barr illustrates was held together not by signed treaties, maps, or anything of the Spaniards’ diplomatic reckoning, but by the extensions of honorary kinship that transcended “racial” differences between culturally unrelated groups. Within this essentially familial understanding of inter-group networking, Barr argues that it was women – as opposed to men — who served the central role as mediators.

When the Spanish decided to settle the lands of “Los Tejas” in the 1690s, the administrators in Mexico City hoped to install a buffer territory of Catholic missions and Spanish forts along the northern periphery, so as to forestall the advancement of unconquered peoples of “El Norte.” Without any such buffer, continued raids on the more prosperous regions of present-day Mexico threatened to obstruct the extraction of natural resources in one of the world’s first prominent export-oriented economies. Such a view of the geopolitical landscape seems to have guaranteed ineffectual half-measures to contain raiding activities.

A replica of the Mission San Francisco de los Tejas, the first Catholic mission established in East Texas in 1690 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Barr’s study illustrates radical changes in the conduct of borderland diplomacy. In their earliest encounters with nomadic groups like the Caddos, the Spanish often entered into indigenous camps in full regalia, bearing the sacred image of Our Lady of Guadeloupe, who assumed a central place in these processions. Noticing that the Spanish brought no women with them, the Caddos recognized the image not as innately holy figure, but as a proxy for an otherwise absent feminine presence that customarily attended peaceful negotiations between indigenous groups. The men who greeted the Spanish envoys paid homage to the female image by kissing the icon of Santa Maria. The colonists, for their part, interpreted this gesture as auspicious, signaling the Caddos’ eagerness to convert to the Catholic faith. This inference was tragically mistaken, Barr observes, since missionaries would be the choice targets in future raids. Resistance to Catholic missionaries during the first half of the 18th century would also spark decades of violence between the natives of Texas and these recent Spanish arrivals. Although the Spanish always had the ambition to occupy the region, they always lacked the means to locate, much less subjugate, these equestrian peoples.

By the end of the 18th century, after decades of countless defeats, the Spanish townspeople became increasingly sensitive to the significance of women in these diplomatic visits. When the Comanches visited San Antonio in 1772, for instance, the governor of Texas was eager to point out that a woman came at the forefront of the convoy. The implications of such cultural adaptations and what they entailed for colonial-indigenous relations serves as the primary focus of Barr’s inquiry.

Barr’s study occasions some truly thought-provoking discoveries. By her estimation, peaceful coexistence in Texas had little to do with overcoming perceptions of “racial differences,” since the category of “race” was essentially a European concept that carried little weight in the borderlands. Rather, the complex web of kinship relations focused on the movement of wives, mothers, and daughters – whether voluntary or coerced — to locations that arranged for their safe keeping. As Barr emphasizes, it was the extension of a feminized domestic space across tribal boundaries that brokered trust between men. For this reason, the presidio forts, originally designed to carry out the military occupation of Texas, served as the primary meeting grounds of what Barr terms inter-group “hospitality” networks. In these presidios, the annual distribution of gifts between families and tribal bands cemented peaceful ties between culturally unrelated peoples who often did not speak the same language.

Treaty of Peace by John O. Meusebach showing Colonists with the Comanches in 1847 (via Prints and Photographs Collection, Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

Like most innovative studies, Barr’s impressive work also has its shortcomings. For starters, whenever peaceful relations did break down, Barr is perhaps too eager to blame Spanish diplomatic clumsiness or cultural cynicism. The accuracy of these accusations aside, there is more to the picture than a question of mere prejudicial attitudes. By all accounts, the financial strain of “hospitality” was more considerable than Barr lets on. Many of the Comanches’ demands included items that were not locally produced in Texas. To obtain these gifts in a timely fashion, the treasurers and governors had to maintain a tight logistical operation that connected distant suppliers from Louisiana, Coahuila, and many other places. All of this put a strain on the coffers of the local outpost town, where money was almost always in short supply.

A second problem is Barr’s use of kinship terms. What do words like “brother” mean between former combatants in the 18^th-century Southwest? By focusing on the indigenous outlook on peacekeeping, the Spanish experience seems underappreciated, especially when one’s honorary sibling appears more like an extortionist than a guest? On the other hand, by sidelining the idiom of cultural groups, we risk injecting Eurocentric categories into our analysis of events where Europeans were merely one of several groups involved? This problem has a renewed urgency among scholars of Borderlands. With specialists such as Pekka Hämäläinen entertaining notions of a “Comanche Empire,” perhaps it is time that historians turn to the political nuances of South Plains’ speech for much needed clarification.

In spite of these problems, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman is a compelling read. By examining the Spaniards’ adaptation to new cultural surroundings, Barr undercuts the assumption that the peripheries of the Empire were essentially static, underdeveloped communities that awaited their inevitable incorporation into more culturally “advanced” or “rationalized” societies. By focusing on the practice of peacekeeping, Barr shows that Europeans and their descendants held an illusory monopoly over concerns for regional stability, long-distance trade, or extensive social networking. Other groups actively sought to arrange for amicable relations, even if they sought these ends through alternative means.

Also by Justin Heath on Not Even Past:

Review: Global Indios: The Indigenous Struggle for Justice in Sixteenth-Century Spain by Nancy van Deusen (2015)

You may also like:

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra reviews Seeds of Empire by Andrew Torget (2015)
Susan Zakaib reviews Patrons, Partisans, and Palace Intrigues: The Court Society of Colonial Mexico 1702-1710 by Christoph Rosenmüller (2008)
On 15 Minute History: The Pueblo Revolt of 1680

Hatton Sumners and the Retirement of Supreme Court Justices

We are especially pleased to post this essay by a long-time supporter of the UT Austin Department of History. Josiah M. Daniel III, of counsel at the international law firm Vinson & Elkins, LLP, received his J.D. from The University of Texas School of Law in 1978 and his master’s degree in History from UT in 1986. In 2011, Mr. Daniel was elected to membership in the prestigious American Law Institute. He is an inaugural member and former Chair of the UT History Department Visiting Committee.

By Josiah M. Daniel, III

Working this month in historical archives and observing the news of the April 10, 2017 appointment of Neil Gorsuch to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, have reconfirmed for me that history (if known) can illuminate current events.

Appointments of Justices of the Supreme Court are matters of high public interest. Presidents appoint individuals for that office, with “advice and consent” of the Senate, because their nominees share the president’s views on key public issues. After all, the final word on constitutionality and interpretation of legislation and executive actions resides with the Court as part of the Constitution’s checks and balances. And, as mandated by Article III, Supreme Court justices, and all federal judges, serve lifetime appointments “during good Behaviour” with “compensation . . . not [to] be diminished during their continuance in office.”

The Supreme Court Building (via Wikimedia Commons).

Presidents are attuned to the age and health of each serving justice in anticipation of vacancy, whether by death, resignation, or retirement. On the other side, the decision of any justice of advancing years to leave office, rather than to serve until death, has often been a difficult personal choice. For the past 80 years, that decision of aging justices has been eased by an enactment sponsored by a Dallas congressman, Hatton W. Sumners (1875-1962).

Sumners’ statute, the 1937 Retirement Act, guarantees undiminished lifetime salaries to retiring justices and it authorizes them to continue in the adjudication of federal cases in the lower courts, if desired. Sumners had been appalled when, early in the Great Depression, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, aged 90, resigned after thirty years’ service and had his pension immediately halved in a penny-pinching measure. The Retirement Act prevented that situation but is also noteworthy because of its role in the “court-packing crisis” of 1937.

Sumners’ definitive biography remains unwritten, but he was a significant Congressman over four decades of the 20th century. In 1894 Sumners moved from Tennessee to Texas and quickly became a lawyer. In 1912 he won the at-large seat for the U.S. House of Representatives and two years later he won a seat in Dallas’ Fifth Congressional District, which he held until 1946. His papers reside in the archive of the Dallas Historical Society, where I have been reviewing them.

Congressman Hatton W. Sumners in 1938 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Sumners was devoted to his work and old fashioned in dress and speech. One woman who lobbied him in the late 1930s described him as “the epitome of the Southern conservative [who] even wore a frock coat. . . . a relic of the past.” From 1932 until he left office, Sumners chaired the House’s Judiciary Committee, a position he used, among other things, to block anti-lynching legislation based on his spurious and degrading view of African Americans. This did not prevent President William Howard Taft from calling him “the best lawyer in Congress,” or a 1939 LIFE magazine poll rating him most highly for integrity among all Congressmen (a video clip of Sumners speaking in 1937 can be found here).

Roosevelt’s first term, from 1933 to 1937, generated a surge of innovative legislation, commonly known as the “New Deal,” that tackled the deep economic and social problems of the Great Depression with innovations such as Social Security, relief for the poor and unemployed, reform of the financial system, and economic recovery.

A scene of destitution during the Great Depression (via Wikimedia Commons).

But virtually all of those new federal laws were challenged in the federal courts on constitutional grounds including the argument that the legislation violated “substantive due process,” the predominant constitutional theory typified by the famous Lochner v. New York decision of 1905 that generally vindicated private-property rights over other interests and policies.

On the Supreme Court, the “Four Horsemen,” Justices Willis Van Devanter, Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds, and George Sutherland, were committed to that doctrine; and, at the start of the series of overturnings of New Deal enactments in 1935 and 1936, their ages ranged from 69 to 76 (at the time, male life expectancy was 60). The newest justice, Owen Roberts, appointed by President Herbert Hoover in his final year in office, joined them frequently for the 5-4 majority in those cases. FDR was outraged and after winning reelection by a landslide in November 1936, the President announced his so-called “court-packing plan” to overcome this roadblock to his legislative agenda by increasing the Supreme Court’s membership from nine to a maximum of fifteen if justices reaching the age of 70 declined to retire.

Sumners had joined the New Deal legislative team when Roosevelt took office in 1933, but he was more conservative than the President, often seeking to steer a middle-of-the-road course on the various issues of FDR’s legislative program.

‎President Roosevelt signing New Deal legislation, 1933 (via Wikimedia Commons).

After a preview of the court-packing plan at the White House on February 5, 1937, Sumners made a pithy comment that was misquoted, then and subsequently, as “Boys, here’s where I cash in my chips,” interpreted to mean he was departing the FDR team because he disagreed with its tactics.

But as a letter in the Dallas Historical Society’s archive shows, Sumners had not spoken the last two words, “my chips,” and what he meant was “to go in and to do what I could to help straighten things out.” Sumners helped defeat FDR’s plan to pack the Court with more progressive justices; but in the same letter, written after the defeat of the plan, he added that in the future “it will be generally agreed that I have been able in this matter to render a service of value to the President, the party, and the country, especially when considered in connection with the other legislation which I sponsored.”

That last reference was to Sumners’ efforts, prior to Roosevelt’s unveiling of the court packing plan, to accomplish the President’s desired result—the addition of new, more progressive members to the Supreme Court—by other paths. On one hand, he was close to and in communication with Van Devanter and the Chief Justice, Charles Evan Hughes, urging calm and patience about the court-packing plan.

Sumners to Charles Evans Hughes, March 22, 1937 (Sumners Papers, Dallas Historical Society, via author).

On the other hand, the congressman sponsored a bill to incentivize the older justices to retire by assuring the continuity of their salary if they were to do so. On January 11, 1937, he had introduced H.R. 2518:

Justices of the Supreme Court are hereby granted the same rights and privileges with regard to retiring, instead of resigning, granted to [all other federal] judges . . ., and the President shall be authorized to appoint a successor to any such Justice of the Supreme Court so retiring from regular active service on the bench, but such Justice . . . so retired may nevertheless be . . . authorized to perform such judicial duties, in any judicial circuit . . . as such retired Justice may be willing to undertake.

Sumners’ bill sailed through Congress, and on March 1, 1937, the President signed it into law.

H.R. 2518, enacted as Public Law No. 10, codified at 28 U.S.C. § 375 (via Legisworks).

The court-packing plan was defeated in the Senate, 70-20, on July 22. Most historians credit the defeat, not to Sumners’ Retirement Act, but to the “Switch in Time that Saved Nine.” That is, the youngest justice on the court, Owen Roberts, who had been voting with the Four Horsemen in those 5-4 reversals of first-term New Deal programs, suddenly voted to sustain the constitutionality of the minimum wage law in a decision issued by the Court on March 29, 1937. Commentators have noted, for instance, that Roberts cast his vote in that case before the advent of the court-packing plan, and some have perceived a jurisprudential shift already underway.

But the most recent scholarship substantially credits Sumners, who obtained an initial draft of the Retirement Act from FDR’s team, for pushing it through quickly, which did in fact induce several rather quick retirements. These retirements gave Roosevelt vacancies to fill, assuring the survival of New Deal legislation and enabling FDR to shape the Court for a long time.

Justice Van Devanter on his last day before retirement, with Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes (via Wikimedia Commons).

First, Justice Van Devanter took advantage of Sumners’ enactment and retired on June 2, 1937 at age 78, which vacancy FDR filled with one of most consequential justices of the twentieth century, Justice Hugo Black. Then Justice Sutherland retired on January 17 the next year, replaced by Justice Stanley Reed.

In the decades since, only five justices have resigned, most recently Abe Fortas in 1969, but 24 have retired with the benefits of the Retirement Act. Some retired justices have elected to continue to adjudicate cases. Justice Tom Clark sat, after his 1967 retirement, in the lower courts for ten years, and more recently Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired in 2006, has joined judicial panels deciding scores of cases in the Courts of Appeal in almost all federal circuits.

Today, two sitting justices are in their 80s, and one is 78. Will the Retirement Act encourage any of them to retire and provide an additional appointment opportunity for the current administration?

Sources:Hatton W. Sumners Papers, Dallas Historical Society.Elmore Whitehurst, “Hatton W. Sumners: His Life and Public Service: An Extended Biographical Sketch,” n.d., Web

William E. Leuchtenburg, The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt (1995)

Marian McKenna, Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Constitutional War: The Court-Packing Crisis of 1937 (2002)

Burt Solomon, FDR v. the Constitution: The Court-Packing Fight and the Triumph of Democracy (2009)

Judge Earl Glock, “Unpacking the Supreme Court: Judicial Retirement and the Road to the 1937 Court Battle,” Mar. 2017, Web

You may also like:

History Calling: LBJ and Thurgood Marshall on the Telephone, by Augusta Dell’Omo.
Could a Supreme Court Justice be President?, by Lewis Gould.
George on the Lege, a nine-part series on the Texas legislature, by George S. Christian.

Seeds of Empire, By Andrew Torget (2015)

By Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra

Andrew Torget’s Seeds of Empire places the early history of nineteenth-century Texas squarely within the political economy of slavery, cotton, and geopolitics. Torget shows that Spanish Texas had become an utterly dysfunctional polity. A royalist bloody response to the creation of autonomous creole juntas almost led to the annihilation of the Tejano population. Tejas found itself unable to pay the Comanche tribute precisely at the time that the Mississippi River cotton boom required large imports of horses. Comanches raided the already weakened Tejanos.

Tejanos found in Anglo entrepreneurs like the Austin family a viable escape from a decades long crisis. The Austins brought Anglo, land-hungry colonists across the Sabine River into Eastern Texas in the early 1820s by offering legalized slavery. There were many Anglo land speculators around but none delivered what the Austin did, namely, cunning diplomatic work to keep republican, antislavery, federalist Mexicans and pro-slavery Anglo colonists moderately satisfied.

Stephen F. Austin (via Good Free Photos).

Torget describes the spatial partition of Texas that ensued. In the west, there were thin communities of Tejanos working as pro-slavery lobbyists in Coahuila and as importers of Anglo goods to satisfy the demands of La Bahia, Goliath, and San Antonio. In the east, there were swelling communities of Anglo settlers setting up plantations along the banks of the Colorado, Brazos, and Trinity, while churning out bales of cotton for New Orleans markets. Torget never explains why Tejanos did not themselves become cotton planters. There were Tejanos in Nacogdoches who monopolized the Comanche trade of horses and there were many well-off Tejano war-of-independence-refugees in New Orleans. Both could have used their political and commercial advantages to push Anglos out of the business of producing cotton with slaves, for Tejanos were not squeamish about slavery. For centuries Tejanos incorporated Apache criados (servants) into their household and drove thousands of Chichimeca captives into the silver mines of Parral and Zacatecas and into the cattle ranches of Nuevo Leon. Tejanos did not hesitate to feed the Caribbean royal galleys and fortifications with slaves. Be that as it may, a deep ethnic chasm did open between east and west Texas. This spatial and political balance, however, unraveled the moment the elites of Mexico City decided that they were losing control over the northern frontiers. Mexican conservatives, therefore, abolished slavery, terminated land contracts, and sent the army to remove the Anglo settlers.

Torget demonstrates that it was a small, fleeting tactical decision by Santa Ana that sealed the faith of Texas in 1835, as thousands of Anglo colonists were in fully disorganized retreat to the safety of the Louisiana border. At the Brazos, however, Santa Ana split his army into two fronts to block the retreating forces of Sam Houston from crossing the Sabine. Houston stopped fleeing and turned around to engage Santa Ana’s forces. This was the moment Texas became an independent republic nobody wanted, including the Anglo colonists. Tejanos were the ones who lost the most as useless lobbyists. They had to give up lands and the rights of citizenship.

William Henry Huddle’s painting, Surrender of Santa Anna, shows the Mexican general surrendering to a wounded Sam Houston after the battle of San Jacinto in 1836 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Torget shows that the Lone Star State remained an utterly nonviable state for a full decade (1835-45), trapped in the logic of much larger geopolitical balances that pitted Great Britain, the USA, and Mexico against one another. Five of these ten years, however, witnessed an unprecedented cotton boom in the Mississippi Cotton Kingdom. It brought tens of thousands of additional colonists and black slaves to the riverine banks of Eastern Texas and new merchant warehouses to the Galveston Bay. But the boom did not bring any changes in riverine infrastructure, a sovereign port, or a national merchant marine. There was no functioning state, no mechanism to collect taxes, and no diplomatic working corps.

Britain sought to convince Texans to gain diplomatic recognition by becoming a free-labor cotton republic. Texans responded by creating a constitution that banned any black person who had been manumitted from residing within the new nation. The United States had no interest in annexing Texas because it would upset the balance between northern and southern states.

Map of the United States, 1845 (via Wikimedia Commons).

The plight of Texas worsened as the cotton boom went bust in late 1839. The only thing that Texas did well was to organize militias to bleed the raiding Comanche. Torget explains how the geopolitical logjam was broken the moment France finally recognized Texas in 1844. To secure one of the most important sources of cotton for its economy, Britain had no choice but to also recognize Texas. It was only then that Anglo Texans got what they had always wanted: annexation into the United States. Incorporation delivered a functioning government, protection against international anti-slavery forces and Mexican invasions, and a windfall for land speculators as land prices rose to the equivalent of those in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Cotton, Slavery, and Empire are categories that explain rather well the origins of Texas as a white supremacist state, utterly dependent on the federal government from its very inception.

Andrew J. Torget. Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850. Charlotte: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

More by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra on Not Even Past:
Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States, by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (2014).
Re-Reading John Winthrop’s “City upon the Hill.”
Magical Realism on Drugs: Colombian History in Netflix’s Narcos.
Prof. Cañizares-Esguerra discusses his own book, Puritan Conquistadors.

The Blemished Archive: How Documents Get Saved

By Chris Babits

In a May 2016 podcast for the Journal of American History, Yael A. Sternhell said, “For the great majority of [historians], when we walk into an archive, we have this illusion that this is where historical knowledge lies. Raw primary sources. Untainted. Unblemished. Just waiting for us to pick them up and create [a] narrative that will adhere to the history of the topics we’re looking at.” She believes that this is not how we should look at archives. Sternhell challenges historians to think about how papers got to their respective archives, who arranged them, and whether the arrangement of items in special collections and archives affect the stories that historians construct.

university_of_north_texas_september_2015_11_hurley_administration_building-1

The University of North Texas (via Wikimedia Commons).

Sternhell’s words resonated with me recently when I went through the collections at the University of North Texas. The first collection was the Resource Center LGBT Collection, which contains 636 boxes of materials about the LGBT movement in Texas. Phil Johnson, the founder of the Dallas Gay Historic Archives, donated many of the materials in this collection. During my two weeks at the University of North Texas, I had come across numerous documents outlining Johnson’s hostility toward organized religion. Johnson blamed religious figures, like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, for creating a hateful social and political environment for the LGBT community. That is why I thought little (at least at first) of coming across a box with a section labeled “Bigots.” This section was right before another titled “Religions.” It seemed likely that Johnson would have made these tags and grouped “Bigots” and “Religions” together.

The box in UNT’s archive (via the author).

After talking to Courtney Jacobs, the special collections librarian, I found out that I was wrong. Johnson was not the person who created these section dividers. Instead, Jacobs recognized the handwriting as that of the archivist who had organized and arranged the materials when the collection was being processed. The different handwriting on some of the folders, especially the ones that looked older and as if they had been stored away for some time, should have given this away. But, after talking to Courtney for ten minutes about this particular box, it was clear that someone at the University of North Texas had labeled a group of individuals as “Bigots.” On top of this, they separated these individuals from “Religions,” even though the religious groups or individuals in this section said some of the same things that the “Bigots” said about LGBT persons.

This experience in the archives gets to the heart of Sternhell’s last point: how does the arrangement of items in collections, and the labels they are given, influence the historian’s engagement with those items? Right now, I don’t how much these sectional dividers impacted how I interpreted the materials inside the folders. What I do know is this: sometimes historians are far too eager to get to what’s inside a folder to take the time to notice other clues (like different handwriting). I know I’ve learned some important lessons: slow down; never assume; and ask special collections librarians lots of questions.

More by Chris Babits on Not Even Past:
The Rise of Liberal Religion, by Matthew Hedstrom (2013)
Encountering America: Humanistic Psychology, Sixties Culture, and the Shaping of the Modern Self, by Jessica Grogan (2012)
Age of Fracture, by Daniel T. Rodgers (2011)

History Revealed in a Very Small Place

Editor’s Note: This is the first article we posted about Texas on Not Even Past. Historian, photographer, and Professor Bob Abzug takes us on a short tour of the intersection of Jewish and African American History in one small town in Texas.

by Robert Abzug

Our family knew Luling as a town one passed through quickly on trips from Austin to the Gulf coast, noticing only banners for the next “watermelon thump” and gaily decorated oil pump jacks. Recently it became my unlikely entry point into a visual appreciation of Texas Jewish history and more. I have taken photographs for about fifty years and, for the past twenty-five years have recorded signs of sacred life on the landscape, a project I call “religion by the side of the road.” Mostly, my writing and photography have engaged Protestantism in its myriad forms, though I myself am a Jew. However, in the spring of 2007, Dean Randy Diehl of the College of Liberal Arts asked me to become founding director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies, and the private project took on a form more integrated with my new task. I decided to learn more about Texas Jews.

Jews in Luling? It is hardly Vilna on the San Marcos–there is no synagogue and perhaps no longer any Jews among its 5500 inhabitants. Yet, an online listing of a small Jewish Cemetery (80 graves) in the town piqued my curiosity. My wife and I set out one weekend morning in search of the site and found ourselves amid an old, modest, almost rural African-American neighborhood. Some of the small houses looked as if they had been built in the late nineteenth century. We couldn’t find the cemetery and searched an open lot, thinking–a romantic notion–that its graves had crumbled from neglect, lost under the leaves and dirt.

Instead of Jewish headstones, however, I found a concrete marker commemorating what was once the location of the community’s Bethel A.M.E. Church. At about the same time, a large man in his 50s and his aged mother noticed us and came by. We told them what we were looking for, shared the discovery of the plaque, and learned a bit about the history of the black community. It turns out Jews and African-Americans came to Luling in the 1880s, soon after the town was founded (1874) as a railroad junction for cotton growers. The mother was part of one of the founding families, as were many who still lived there. The Jewish families had since moved to San Antonio, Houston, and other big cities, following a well-worn pattern across the state. We asked after the Jewish Cemetery, and the man noted that just down the street there was a “white graveyard.” I thanked them, and asked them if I could take their picture at the site of the church. We warmly said our goodbyes and walked down the road. (Illustration 1)

Photograph of an African American couple standing next to a marker showing where the Bethel A.M.E. church used to be

We found a small, well-tended cemetery filled with stones from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, all bearing the signs of tradition–Hebrew texts and Jewish names–and of acculturation. (Illustration 2)

Grave stones from a "white" graveyard in Luling, Texas

Places of origin varied from Germany to Poland to Russia, as well as some noting Texas birthplaces (sadly, numerous infant deaths were marked as well). Anglicized names abounded as well, and one was quite striking in its noting the departed as a member of Woodmen of the World fraternal organization. My favorite stone was that of Harris Rednick, just one letter shy of redneck, whose stone featured what almost certainly was a Texas Star. (Illustration 3)

Gravestone of Harris Rednick from a graveyard in Luling, Texas

We hoped to top off the day with BBQ at the City Market, but alas they had unexpectedly sold out all their brisket and ribs to a passing tour bus! Still, this half-day in Luling became a short course in Texas, Jewish, and African-American history in one place.

All photographs by Robert Abzug.

Sanctuary Austin: 1980s and Today

By Edward Shore

Civil war and unrest have triggered a global humanitarian disaster without parallel in recent history. In June 2015, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees reported that the number of refugees and internally displaced people had reached its highest point since the Second World War. Violence in countries like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sudan has forced more than 60 million men, women, and children from their homes. One in every 122 people worldwide is a refugee or an internally displaced person (IDP). More than 9.5 million Syrians, roughly 43% of the Syrian population, have been displaced since 2012. The majority of asylum seekers have re-settled in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. Yet a rising tide of virulent xenophobia has inflamed much of Europe and the United States.

Texas has opposed President Obama’s plan to grant asylum to 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016. Nearly half of all Texans support banning non-U.S. Muslims from entering the country and more than half support the immediate deportation of all undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S. Last December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit against the Obama administration to block the relocation of refugees from Syria to Texas. Governor Greg Abbott has vowed to use next year’s legislative session to punish “sanctuary cities,” a loose term describing municipalities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. One Austin-based non-profit organization is leading the charge to defend Texas’ refugees.

Image of the front facade of Casa Marianella in Austin, Texas — Casa Marianella in Austin, Texas. Courtesy of Casa Marianella.

Casa Marianella is a transitional shelter for refugees and asylum seekers in East Austin. It emerged during the Sanctuary Movement, a religious and political campaign that provided safe-haven to refugees fleeing civil wars in Central America during the early 1980s. At its height, the Sanctuary Movement comprised a network of 500 religious congregations that provided shelter and legal counsel to Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees. Advocates acted in open defiance of U.S. immigration law. Over half a million Guatemalans and Salvadorans arrived to the United States during the 1980s. The vast majority were civilians fleeing atrocities perpetrated by anti-communist paramilitaries. Yet the Reagan administration, which supported right wing military juntas in their crusade against leftist insurgencies in El Salvador and Guatemala, accepted less than three percent of all asylum applications from those countries. The U.S. government argued that Guatemalans and Salvadorans were “economic migrants” fleeing poverty, not governmental repression. In 1983, the United States granted political asylum to one Guatemalan.

Press conference launching the Sanctuary Movement at University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley, California. March 29, 1982. Photo courtesy of share-elsalvador.org. — Press conference launching the Sanctuary Movement at University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley, California. March 29, 1982. Courtesy of share-elsalvador.org.

Activists Ed Wendler, Mercedes Peña, and Jennifer Long were members of the Austin Interfaith Task Force for Central America, an ecumenical peace coalition that opposed U.S. military aid to Central America. In the fall of 1985, they lobbied Mayor Frank Cooksey to declare Austin a “sanctuary city.” The city council, under intense pressure from anti-immigration groups, rejected the proposal. Unfazed, the Austin Interfaith Task Force for Central America established a residential space to serve the needs of refugees in East Austin’s Govalle neighborhood. Casa Marianella opened its doors to dozens of Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum seekers on January 6, 1986. Casa’s namesake honors the memory of Marianella García Villas, a Salvadoran human rights lawyer who was assassinated by paramilitaries in March 1983. She was a close associate of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in San Salvador by state security forces while celebrating mass on March 24, 1980.

A mural honors the memory of Marianella García Villas. Photo courtesy of Casa Marianella. — A mural honors the memory of Marianella García Villas. Courtesy of Casa Marianella.

Today, Casa Marianella provides shelter and social services to asylum seekers from 28 different countries, including Colombia, Nepal, India, Angola, and Nigeria. The shifting demographics correspond to recent changes in U.S. immigration policy. “It’s much harder to cross the U.S. border from Mexico today than it was thirty years ago,” explained Jennifer Long, current executive director of Casa Marianella.

In 2005, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice launched Operation Streamline, a “zero-tolerance” approach to unauthorized border crossing. Those caught at the U.S. border in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas may be subject to criminal prosecution for misdemeanor illegal entry, an offense that carries a six-month maximum sentence. Any migrant who has been deported in the past and attempts to re-enter without authorization can be charged with felony re-entry, an offense that carries a two year maximum sentence. Ninety-nine percent of detainees prosecuted under Operation Streamline plead guilty. Detainees from Mexico and Central America are often placed in removal proceedings.

Immigration activists protest Operation Streamline at Sen. John McCain's office in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo courtesy AFSC Arizona. — Immigration activists protest Operation Streamline at Sen. John McCain’s office in Phoenix, Arizona. Courtesy of AFSC Arizona.

By contrast, refugees from the Horn of Africa are jailed at ICE detention centers pending the outcome of their asylum cases. This is because the U.S. government cannot deport people to states without recognizable governments. Detainees seeking asylum that ICE determines not to be flight risks or threats to national security can secure release after posting bond. This is how most refugees arrive at Casa Marianella. In 2015, the majority of Casa’s residents came from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Several must still wear ankle monitors, including a father and his young daughter, while they await the court’s decision on their asylum requests.

As one of the last remaining shelters for asylum seekers in the United States, Casa Marianella labors to meet the needs of the country’s swelling refugee population. Last Friday, a deluge of collect calls poured into Casa Marianella from ICE detention facilities in Port Isabel, Pearsall, Hutto, Taylor, and Karnes, Texas. Others called from Krome, Florida, where a federal judge boasts a 95% denial rate for asylum seekers. Casa Marianella reserves space for 38 residents but currently shelters 51. Although overcrowded, the organization still manages to assist the majority of its residents and the refugee community at large to secure legal counsel, work, medical care, English classes, and a place to call home. Of the 188 refugees who entered Casa’s adult shelter last year, 92% successfully exited. Casa’s triumph is a testament to the compassion, dedication, and courage of its staff, volunteers, and residents.

Casa Marianella staff, residents, and volunteers gather for Convivio, a monthly celebration of food, live music, and community. Photo courtesy of Casa Marianella. — Casa Marianella staff, residents, and volunteers gather for Convivio, a monthly celebration of food, live music, and community. Courtesy of Casa Marianella.

Mattias is an asylum seeker from Eritrea. He visited Casa’s office last Friday when I interviewed Jennifer Long. Mattias arrived at Casa last year and has since found a stable job and lives with his family in an apartment in East Austin. “What’s the secret for your success, Mattias?” I asked. “Oh, just walking here,” he replied. “That’s it. Nothing else.”

Now, more than ever, Casa Marianella needs volunteers. Students and faculty with language skills can get involved by interpreting for pro bono attorneys who are working on residents’ asylum cases. For instance, I recently interpreted for an Angolan refugee fleeing sectional violence in Luanda. I also officiated a wedding in Portuguese for an Angolan couple at Casa. Posada Esperanza, Casa’s women and children’s shelter, needs volunteers to assist students with their homework. Others are needed to help prepare and clean up after meals. Finally, join Casa residents and staff from 6-8 pm every last Sunday of the month for “Convivio,” a celebration of community with live music, dancing, and ethnic cuisine.

To volunteer, please email volunteer@casamarianella.org.

Arminda married Gabriel at Casa Marianella in the presence of family and friends. February 13, 2014. Courtesy of the author.

Disclaimer: I used pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of Casa’s residents.

Another Perspective on the Texas Textbook Controversy

By Christopher Babits

Recently, the Texas State Board of Education faced a firestorm of protest, from conservatives and liberals alike, over the statewide adoption of textbooks for teaching history. On November 21, 2014, the Board approved the use of 89 social studies textbooks. This vote was the culmination of a long and contentious debate about what to include in — and exclude from — textbooks. Some conservative groups thought the books’ content was “anti-American,” contending that publishers shortchanged America’s accomplishments. Specifically, they wanted more emphasis on the beneficial economic impact of the free market and the role of Christianity among the Founding Fathers. Others thought that the textbooks already contained a deeply conservative (and flawed) interpretation of the past. These critics warned that they distorted, exaggerated, and ignored some tough truths about the American past. In her testimony before the education board, Dr. Jacqueline Jones, the Chair of the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin, said, “We do our students a disservice when we scrub history clean of unpleasant truths and when we present an inaccurate view of the past that promotes a simple-minded, ideologically driven point of view.”

A cartoon depicting three young school children one covering his mouth with a book, a girl covering her eyes with a book, and another boy covering his ears with two books

Public debate over the content of history textbooks goes back nearly 130 years, at least since the founding of the American Historical Association (AHA). In several reports in the 1890s, historians laid out a prescribed curricula for elementary and high school students. These initial reports received little criticism compared to what would come. Throughout the twentieth century, professors of history, teachers, parents, teacher educators, and other concerned citizens engaged in several high profile debates about the nature and purpose of history education in the nation’s public schools. One controversy from the 1930s about a popular textbook series created by Harold Rugg, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, provides historical context for what Texas just experienced in its debate over textbooks.

Black and white photograph of Professor Harold Rugg next to an image of his controversial book, Changing Civilizations in the Modern World

There are some similarities to the present-day — a struggling economy and calls for a more patriotic version of American history in our schools.The Great Depression and the Second World War witnessed dynamic curricular reform for history and social studies. After the stock market crashed in 1929, many Americans embraced what came to be called the social reconstructionist curriculum. Observing the consequences of capitalism run amok, Americans became more comfortable with curricula that not only critiqued economic inequality but also encouraged students to ask critical questions about the American past. Harold Rugg wrote his popular textbook series during the Depression.

Beginning in the late-1920s, Rugg began writing and publishing social studies textbooks centered on the question of “the American problem.” The textbook series was titled Man and His Changing Society, with individual titles like An Introduction to American Civilization, Changing Civilizations in the Modern World, and An Introduction to the Problems of American Culture. The textbooks focused on the economic and demographic growth of modern cultures and the development of decision-making skills. Rugg wanted junior high school texts to provide a comprehensive introduction to the modern world so that students could face the chief concerns that they would face as adults. Rugg’s textbooks opened with a dramatic historic episode, focused on key concepts, told dramatic stories, and included stimulating photos and cartoons. In addition, the textbooks raised serious questions about the nation’s social and economic institutions. This included critiques of unequal distribution of wealth and civil rights for African Americans..

The Great Depression’s horrible poverty helped Rugg’s social reconstructionist ideas gain prominence. Social reconstructionist curricula focused on the economic challenges facing the United States and the ways that schools could improve society. In 1933’s The Great Technology, Rugg called for “social engineering in the form of technological experts who would design and operate the economy in the public interest.” For Rugg, the challenge was to “design and operate a system of production and distribution which will produce the maximum amount of goods needed by the people and will distribute them in such a way that each person will be given at least the highest minimum standard of living possible.” George Counts, one of Rugg’s colleagues at Teachers College, expressed a similar view of education in 1932’s Dare the School Build a New Social Order? Counts pushed for a system of public education where teachers and students would critically examine America’s social institutions and chart solutions to the challenges that lay ahead.

As Rugg’s popular textbooks gained widespread use, a small group of influential conservatives challenged his social reconstructionist agenda. The bulk of criticism came from business journalists, retired military, and professional historians. Most of the criticism took place in New York and New Jersey. The fervor over Rugg’s textbook series led some school boards to censor the books or declare that they contained nothing subversive. As a result, Rugg’s accusers, many of whom Rugg debated face-to-face in public forums, were relatively unsuccessful at removing the textbooks from classrooms during the 1930s.

The 1940s were a different story, though. The Second World War brought a dramatic change not only in the minds of the public but also in what people wanted from history education. Instead of reading about how to improve American society, many people wanted their children to hear about what was right in American institutions. The United States was fighting a vicious two-front war against the Japanese Empire in the Pacific and Nazi Germany and its allies in Europe and North Africa. In the battle for hearts and minds against fascism, schools told students that it was honorable to give one’s life for American democracy. Social reconstructionist education was overtaken by patriotic education.

Black and white photograph of Allan Nevins in his library — Allan Nevins in his library.

In order for a patriotic education to take root, Americans needed to know more U.S. History than what schools were teaching. In 1942, Allan Nevins, a professor of American history at Columbia University, wrote an article titled “American History for Americans” for the New York Times Magazine. Nevins believed that “young people are all too ignorant of American history.” He speculated that “the majority of American children never receive the equivalent of a full year’s careful work in our national history.” Nevins blamed schools and colleges. “Our education requirements in American history and government have been and are deplorably haphazard, chaotic, and ineffective,” he wrote. In 1943, the New York Times conducted a survey of 7,000 college freshmen at 36 colleges that seemed to confirm Nevins’ opinion. The findings found a striking “ignorance of even the most elementary aspects of United States history.”

After the Second World War, social reconstructionist educators faced more powerful opponents: anti-communist crusaders. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) rounded up U.S. citizens suspected of communist ties. Professional educators feared for their jobs if they taught anything remotely critical in their American History courses. The risk of being labeled a communist was a serious threat. A few additional changes effectively killed the social reconstructionist movement. Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. This change reinforced the emerging understanding that the United States was not only a Christian nation but that it inhabited God’s chosen people. It was thus necessary to teach children that their Christianity was an asset against the godless communists in the Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere in the world. Then the U.S. economy rebounded after WWII. Consumer goods were more readily available. The average white citizen benefited from much better living conditions. Capitalism, it seemed, was proving that it offered many advantages over communism.

The early Cold War provided a climate for history education that has influenced the recent Texas history textbook controversy. U.S. citizens are still debating the role of Christianity in the nation’s history and whether elementary and high school students should learn the unpleasant truths that have been a part of America’s history. These different visions for history education will continue to divide politicians, professors of history, teachers, parents, teacher educators, students, and other concerned citizens in the years to come.

« Previous Page

Recent Posts