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Black Women in Texas History Though often consigned to the footnotes of history, African American women are a significant part of the rich, multiethnic heritage of Texas and the United States. Until now, though, their story has frequently been fragmented and underappreciated. Black Women in Texas History draws together a multi-author narrative of the experiences and impact of black American women from the time of slavery until the recent past. Each chapter, written by an expert on the era, provides a readable survey and overview of the lives and roles of black Texas women during that period. Each provides careful documentation, which, along with the thorough bibliography compiled by the volume editors, will provide a starting point for others wanting to build on this important topic. The authors address significant questions about population demographics, employment patterns, family and social dimensions, legal and political rights, and individual accomplishments. They look not only at how African American women have been shaped by the larger culture but also at how these women have, in turn, affected the culture and history of Texas. This work situates African American women within the context of their times and offers a due appreciation and analysis of their lives and accomplishments. Black Women in Texas History is an important addition to history and sociology curriculums as well as black studies and women’s studies programs. It will provide for interested students, scholars, and general readers a comprehensive survey of the crucial role these women played in shaping the history of the Lone Star State.
Hands to the Spindle : Texas Women and Home Textile Production, 1822-1880 It is said one piece of fabric can tell of the hardships, blessings, and realities of a woman's life, as well as her community's life. In nineteenth-century Texas women's hands created most of the clothes their families wore, the blankets used to cover their tired bodies, and the textiles that furnished their homes. Spinning, weaving, dyeing, and knitting of clothing and linens gave them the [palette] to display their abilities and their dreams of a better future. These day-to-day activities of Texas women spinners and weavers come to life in the award-winning author Paula Mitchell Marks' Hands to the Spindle. The hum of the spinning wheel and the clatter of the loom provided regular accompaniment to the lives of many Texas women and their families. Producing much-needed garments and cloth also provided an escape from the worries and isolation of frontier life. One charming early chronicler, Mary Crownover Rabb, kept her spinning wheel whistling all day and most of the night because the spinning kept her "from hearing the Indians walking around hunting mischief." Through the stories of real women and an overview of their textile crafts, Paula Mitchell Marks introduces readers to a functional art rarely practiced in our more hurried times. Photographs of some of their actual handiwork and evocative pen sketches of women at work and the tools and dye plants they used, skillfully drawn by artist Walle Conoly, bring the words to life. Written in an interesting and informative style, this study, the will be valuable for western history buffs, specialists in the field of spinning and weaving, and readers interested in adding another dimension to their knowledge of women's studies.
In Struggle Against Jim Crow : Lulu B. White and the NAACP, 1900-1957 African American women have played significant roles in the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality, but relatively little is known about many of these leaders and activists. Most accounts of the civil rights movement focus on male leaders and the organizations they led, leaving a dearth of information about the countless black women who were the backbone of the struggle in local communities across the country. At the local level women helped mold and shape the direction the movement would take. Lulu B. White was one of those women in the civil rights movement in Texas. Executive secretary of the Houston branch of the NAACP and state director of branches, White was a significant force in the struggle against Jim Crow during the 1940s and 1950s. She was at the helm of the Houston chapter when the Supreme Court struck down the white primary in Smith v. Allbright, and she led the fight to get more blacks elected to public office, to gain economic parity for African Americans, and to integrate the University of Texas. Author Merline Pitre places White in her proper perspective in Texas, Southern, African American, women's, and general American history; points to White's successes and achievements, as well as the problems and conflicts she faced in efforts to eradicate segregation; and looks at the strategies and techniques White used in her leadership roles. Pitre effectively places White within the context of twentieth-century Houston and the civil rights movement that was gripping the state. In Struggle Against Jim Crow is pertinent to the understanding of race, gender, interest group politics, and social reform during this turbulent era.
Texas Through Women's Eyes : The Twentieth-Century Experience Winner, Liz Carpenter Award For Research in the History of Women, Texas State Historical Association, 2010 Texas women broke barriers throughout the twentieth century, winning the right to vote, expanding their access to higher education, entering new professions, participating fully in civic and political life, and planning their families. Yet these major achievements have hardly been recognized in histories of twentieth-century Texas. By contrast, Texas Through Women's Eyes offers a fascinating overview of women's experiences and achievements in the twentieth century, with an inclusive focus on rural women, working-class women, and women of color. McArthur and Smith trace the history of Texas women through four eras. They discuss how women entered the public sphere to work for social reforms and the right to vote during the Progressive era (1900-1920); how they continued working for reform and social justice and for greater opportunities in education and the workforce during the Great Depression and World War II (1920-1945); how African American and Mexican American women fought for labor and civil rights while Anglo women laid the foundation for two-party politics during the postwar years (1945-1965); and how second-wave feminists (1965-2000) promoted diverse and sometimes competing goals, including passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, reproductive freedom, gender equity in sports, and the rise of the New Right and the Republican party.
True Women and Westward Expansion Expansion was the fever of the early nineteenth century, and women burned with it as surely as men, although in a different way. Subscribing to the "cult of true womanhood," which valued domesticity, piety, and similar "feminine" virtues, women championed expansion for the cause of civilization, even while largely avoiding the masculine world of politics. Adrienne Caughfield mines the diaries and letters of some ninety Texas women to uncover the ideas and enthusiasms they brought to the Western frontier. Although there were a few notable exceptions, most of them drew on their domestic skills and values to establish not only "civilization," but their own security. Caughfield sheds light on women's activism (the flip side of domesticity), attitudes toward race and "civilization," the tie between a vision of a unified continent and a cultivated wilderness, and republican values. She offers a new understanding of not only gender roles in the West but also the impulse for expansionism itself. In Texas, Caughfield demonstrates, "women never stopped arriving with more fuel for the flames [of expansionism] as their families tried to find a place to settle down, some place with a little more room, where national destiny and personal dreams merged into a glorious whole." In doing so, Texas women expanded not only American borders, but their own as well.
Undaunted : A Norwegian Woman in Frontier Texas Elise Waerenskjold is known to fans of Texas women writers as "the lady with the pen," from the title of a book of her writings. A forward-looking journalist, she sent letters and articles back to Norway that encouraged others to follow her footsteps to Texas, where a small colony of Norwegian settlers were making a new life alongside—but distinct from—other European immigrants.
We Won't Back Down : Severita Lara's Rise From Student Leader to Mayor New York Times bestselling author John Feinstein goes behind closed doors at the US Open . . . When teen sportswriters Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson score press passes to the U.S. Open they expect drama. They expect blistering serves, smashed returns and fierce competition. What they don't expect is kidnapping. Russian tennis phenom Nadia Symanova was supposed to win it all, but she never even made it onto the court. Now the whole stadium is in an uproar trying to find her. Can Stevie and Susan Carol get to Nadia before it's too late? "Feinstein expertly combines tennis action, life in the Big Apple, media coverage, and a realistic plot to explore the fierce competition of tennis." --Chicago Sun-Times From the Trade Paperback edition.
Women, Culture, and Community In this work, Elizabeth Turner addresses a central question in post-Reconstruction social history: why did middle-class women expand their activities from the private to the public sphere and begin, in the years just before World War I, an unprecedented activism? Using Galveston as a casestudy, Turner examines how a generally conservative, traditional environment could produce important women's organizations for Progressive reform. She concludes that the women of Galveston, though slow to respond to national movements, were stirred to action on behalf of their local community. Localorganizations, particularly Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, and traditional everyday social activities provided a nurturing environment for budding reformers, and a foundation for activist organizations and programs such as poor relief and progressive reform. Ultimately, women becamepoliticized even as they continued their roles as guardians of traditional domestic values.Women, Culture, and Community will appeal to scholars and students of the post-Reconstruction South, women's history, activist history, and religious history.

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Citizens at Last : The Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas "There is so much to be learned from the documents collected here. . . . Where better than in this record to find the inspiration to achieve another high point of women's political history?"--from the foreword by Anne Firor Scott Citizens at Last is an essential resource for anyone interested in the history of the suffrage movement in Texas. Richly illustrated and featuring over thirty primary documents, it reveals what it took to win the vote.
Invisible Texans : Women and Minorities in Texas History 1: Coastal People of Texas: The Karankawas Earl H. Elam 2: Faint Voices: The Rhetoric of Exploration John L. Davis 3: French Texas: The Age of La Salle Robert S. Weddle 4: A Brief History of Tejano Rancheros in South Texas, 1730-1900 Armando Alonzo 5: Slavery and the Texas Revolution: A Comparison with the American Civil War Paul Lack 6: Trials, Tribulations, and Good Times: Westering Women in Frontier Texas, 1821-1870 Paula Mitchell Marks 7: Black Texans during the Civil War Alwyn Barr 8: The First African-American Public Officials in Texas: Voter Registrars in 1867 Randolph "Mike" Campbell 9: A Prairie Story: How the Plains Indians Lost Their Empire (and Their Homes) in Texas Dan Flores 10: Tomás González of Mexico: A Forgotten Founder of Texas’s Cotton Industry and Hero of the Battle of Galveston Edward Simmen 11: A Texan Who Made a Difference: Dorothy Scarborough–Teacher, Novelist, Folklorist Sylvia Grider 12: Women and Work during the Great Depression in Texas Rebecca Sharpless 13: When the Afrika Korp Came to Texas Arnold Krammer 14: The Hollywood Dream for Texas: Linda Darnell Ronald L. Davis 15: Lulu B. White and the Civil Rights Movement in Houston, Texas: 1939-1957 Merline Pitre 16: Dr. Hector P. García: Twentieth Century Mexican-American Leader Thomas H. Kreneck 17: Racial Integration of College Football in Texas Richard Pennington 18: María Cárdenas: San Angelo Chicano-Era Activist Arnoldo De Leon
Peace Came in the Form of a Woman : Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands Revising the standard narrative of European-Indian relations in America, Juliana Barr reconstructs a world in which Indians were the dominant power and Europeans were the ones forced to accommodate, resist, and persevere. She demonstrates that between the 1690s and 1780s, Indian peoples including Caddos, Apaches, Payayas, Karankawas, Wichitas, and Comanches formed relationships with Spaniards in Texas that refuted European claims of imperial control. Barr argues that Indians not only retained control over their territories but also imposed control over Spaniards. Instead of being defined in racial terms, as was often the case with European constructions of power, diplomatic relations between the Indians and Spaniards in the region were dictated by Indian expressions of power, grounded in gendered terms of kinship. By examining six realms of encounter--first contact, settlement and intermarriage, mission life, warfare, diplomacy, and captivity--Barr shows that native categories of gender provided the political structure of Indian-Spanish relations by defining people's identity, status, and obligations vis-a-vis others. Because native systems of kin-based social and political order predominated, argues Barr, Indian concepts of gender cut across European perceptions of racial difference.
Women and Texas History: Selected Essays Women have long made significant contributions to Texas history. Only in recent years, however, has their part in that history begun to be told. The great strides made in Texas women's studies are reflected in this important new book of essays about women and their many roles in the history of our state. In October 1990, the Texas State Historical Association sponsored a conference, "Women and Texas History," which brought together some of the leading scholars in the field of women's studies. This highly successful conference -- attended by hundreds and awarded recognition for its excellence by the AASLH -- produced a raft of exciting presentations which demonstrated the vigorous quality and growth of women's studies in and about Texas. Women and Texas History includes thirteen of the best presentations at the conference. This "milestone" publication, notes Fane Downs in her introduction to Women and Texas History, represents "the emerging maturity of the field of Texas women's history; moreover, these essays add significantly to our knowledge of the complex and diverse history of Texas." This ground-breaking volume will be of interest to students, scholars, and general readers, and is well adapted to classroom use. Publication of this book was made possible in part by grants from the RGK Foundation of Austin and the Texas Committee for the Humanities, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  
Women and the Texas Revolution Winner of the Liz Carpenter Award for Research in the History of Women, Texas State Historical Association Historically, wars and revolutions have offered politically and socially disadvantaged people the opportunity to contribute to the nation (or cause) in exchange for future expanded rights. Although shorter than most conflicts, the Texas Revolution nonetheless profoundly affected not only the leaders and armies, but the survivors, especially women, who endured those tumultuous events and whose lives were altered by the accompanying political, social, and economic changes. While there is wide scholarship on the Texas Revolution, there is no comparable volume on the role of women during that conflict. Most of the many works on the Texas Revolution include women briefly in the narrative, such as Emily Austin, Susanna Dickinson, and Emily Morgan West (the Yellow Rose), but not as principal participants. Women and the Texas Revolution explores these women in much more depth, in addition to covering the women and children who fled Santa Anna's troops in the Runaway Scrape, and examining the roles and issues facing Native American, black, and Hispanic women of the time. Like the American Revolution, women's experiences in the Texas Revolution varied tremendously by class, religion, race, and region. While the majority of immigrants who crossed the Sabine and Red rivers into Texas in the 1820s and 1830s were men, many were women who accompanied their husbands and families or, in some instances, braved the dangers and the hardships of the frontier alone. Black and Hispanic women were also present in Mexican Texas. Most black women came as chattel property (or free blacks) and most Tejanas were already living in predominantly Spanish or Mexican communities. The Native American female population, a sizeable but declining segment of the population, was also in the region, inhabiting the prairies and plains, but rarely counted in the various censuses at the time. Whether Mexican loyalist or Texas patriot, elite planter or subsistence farm wife, slaveholder or slave, Anglo or black, women helped settle the Texas frontier and experienced the uncertainty, hardships, successes, and sorrows of the Texas Revolution. By placing women at the center of the Texas Revolution, this volume reframes the historical narrative and asks different questions: What were the social relations between the sexes at the time of the Texas Revolution? Did women participate in the war effort? Did the events of 1836 affect Anglo, black, Hispanic, and Native American women differently? What changes occurred in women's lives as a result of the revolution? Did the revolution liberate women to any degree from their traditional domestic sphere and threaten the established patriarchy? In brief, was the Texas Revolution "revolutionary" for women?
Women Pioneers in Texas Medicine Women have offered medical care as midwives and herbalists for centuries. As the authors of this book show, however, the women who have worked in the medical professions in Texas not only staked out traditional roles but also moved into new territory as science and technology developed. Women Pioneers in Texas Medicine is the first-ever book on Texas women who practice the healing arts and sciences. The pioneering figures presented here have broken new ground in fields ranging from nursing, pharmacy, public health, and dentistry to general and hospital practice, hospice care, virology, surgery, and psychiatry. Their stories reveal the special obstacles they faced and overcame as women practicing in demanding, frequently all-male fields. Their profiles also chronicle the history of medicine in the state generally since their accomplishments paralleled and in some instances led the development of medical practice and specialization. Using vignettes and biographical details garnered from literature, newspaper archives, typescripts in various libraries, and interviews, Elizabeth Silverthorne and Geneva Fulgham have created profiles of women ranging from the traditional to contemporary pioneers in fields such as genetics and nuclear medicine. The accomplichments of the women heighten our understanding of the ways in which they have defied stereotype. Through dedication to their chosen fields, often against great odds, the women profiled here contributed to an elevated status for all women in the state.
Minnie Fisher Cunningham Minnie Fisher Cunningham was Texas's most important female political activist. After directing Texas's womans suffrage campaign, she helped establish the National League of Women Voters and the Woman's National Democratic Club. After an unsuccessful attempt to gain election to the US Senate, Cunningham evolved into a left feminist, increasingly aware that women could be oppressed by class and race as well as by gender. A leader of the post-1945 Texas liberal movement, she inspired a generation of young women, including Liz Carpenter and Billie Carr. This is the first biography of the lifelong politician affectionately known as Minnie Fish.