Invisible Texans

This anthology about women and minorities in Texas collects eighteen essays by highly respected scholars, examining the latest multicultural interpretations of the Lone Star state and placing them in a historical perspective. The distinctive and diverse nature of Texas history comes alive through the book’s focus on topics that have been under-represented in Texas history literature.

ARMANDO ALONZO is an Associate Professor of History at Texas A&M University. He researches and publishes in Texas colonial borderlands history. His major works include Social History Reconsidered: The Tejano Experience in South Texas, 1848-1900 (1992) and Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734-1900 (1998).
ALWYN BARR, former president of the Texas State Historical Association, served as an editor on African American history for the New Handbook of Texas. He is a professor of history at Texas Tech University. He co-edited with Robert Calvert Black Leaders: Texans for their Times (1981). His books include Texans in Revolt: The Battle For San Antonio, 1835 (1990), Reconstruction to Reform: Texas Politics, 1876-1906 (1971), Black Texans: A History of African Americans in Texas, 1528-1995 (1996) Black Cowboys of Texas (2000) and The African Texans (2004).
RANDOLPH “MIKE” CAMPBELL, former president of the Texas State Historical Association, and a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association, is a Regents Professor of History at the University of North Texas. He has written extensively about American slavery and the nineteenth century in Texas. His books include Wealth and Power in Antebellum Texas (1977) Planters and Plain Folk: Agriculture in Antebellum Texas (1987), An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821-1865 (1989), Grass-Roots Reconstruction in Texas, 1865-1880 (1998), Sam Houston and the American Southwest (1993), and Gone To Texas: A History of the Lone Star State (2003).
JOHN L. DAVIS is the Social Science and Humanities Researcher for the Institute of Texan Cultures, at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His research and publishing interest include Texas history and folklore. His major publications include The Texas Rangers, Their First 150 years (1975), Houston: A Historical Portrait (1983), Treasure, People, Ships and Dreams: A Spanish Shipwreck on the Texas Coast (1977) and Exploration in Texas: Ancient and Otherwise, with Thoughts on the Nature of Evidence (1984).
RONALD L. DAVIS, a retired professor of history at Southern Methodist University, directed the university’s oral history program that focuses on Hollywood’s Golden Age. He conducted hundreds of interviews and published A History of Music in American Life (1980-1982), Van Johnson: MGM’s Golden Boy (2001), William S. Hart: Projecting the American West (2003), Duke: The Life and Image of John Wayne (1998), John Ford: Hollywood’s Old Master (1995), Celluloid Mirrors: Hollywood and American Society Since 1945 (1997), The Glamour Factory: Inside Hollywood’s Big Studio System (1993) and Hollywood Beauty: Linda Darnell and the American Dream (1991).
ARNOLDO DE LEON holds the C. J. “Red” Davidson endowed chair of History at San Angelo State University. He researches and publishes in Mexican American and ethnic history. His major works include Not Enough Room: Mexicans, Anglo, and Socio-Economic Change in Texas, 1850-1900 (1993), Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: A History of Mexican-Americans in Houston (1989), Mexican Americans in Texas: A Brief History (1993), North to Aztlán: A History of Mexican Americans in the United States (1996), They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes Toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821-1900 (1983), The Tejano Community, 1836-1900 (1982) and Racial Frontiers: Africans, Chinese, and Mexicans in Western America, 1848-1890. (2002).
EARL ELAM is the former director of the Center for Big Bend Studies and Professor Emeritus at Sul Ross State University. His areas of research and publications include American Indians of the Southwest and rural Texas history. His major works include The Habitat of the Wichita Indians, 1541-1859 (1972), A History of Zuni Land Utilization of Arizona and New Mexico 1539 to the Present (1980) and The Sanderson Flood of 1965; Crisis in a Rural Texas Community (1995).
DAN FLORES, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association, is the A. B. Hammond Professor of Western History at the University of Montana-Missoula. He researches and publishes in the history of the American West, American Environmental History, Native American History, and Art and the American West. His major works include Jefferson and Southwestern Exploration: The Freeman and Custis Accounts of the Red River Expedition of 1806 (1984), Southern Counterpart to Lewis & Clark: The Freeman & Custis Expedition of 1806 (2002), Journal of an Indian Trader: Anthony Glass and the Texas Trading Frontier, 1790-1810 (1985), The Mississippi Kite: Portrait of a Southern Hawk (1993), Caprock Canyonlands: Journeys Into the Heart of the Southern Plains (1990), Horizontal Yellow: Nature and History in the Near Southwest (1999) and The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (2001).
SYLVIA GRIDER is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University. Her work focuses on Texas folklore and Texas women authors. With Nancy Nusz she wrote Children’s Folklore: A Manual for Teachers (1988). With Lou Halsell Rodenberger, she edited Texas Women Writers: A Tradition of Their Own (1997) and Let’s Hear It: Stories by Texas Women Writers (2003).
ARNOLD KRAMMER is a professor of history at Texas A&M University. He researches and publishes on World War II and Jewish history. His major works include: The Forgotten Friendship: Israel and the Soviet Bloc, 1947-1953, (1974), Nazi Prisoner of War in America (1979), Undue Process: The Untold Story of America’s German Alien Internees (1997), and Hitler’s Last Soldier in America (1985).
THOMAS H. KRENECK is the head of Special Collection at the Mary and Jeff Bell Library at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and is the conservator of the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Papers at the Bell Library. He researches in Mexican American and Texas history. His major works include Mexican American Odyssey: Felix Tijerina, Entrepreneur and Civic Leader, 1905-1965 (2001), Stolen Heritage: A Mexican-American’s Rediscovery of His Family’s Lost Land Grant (1986), Houston, Back Where We Started (1979) and Mexican Americans in Houston (1981).
PAUL LACK, a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association, is the Vice President for Academic Affairs at Villa Julie College. He has published extensively about American Slavery and the era of the Texas Revolution. His books include The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History, 1835-1836 (1992), The Diary of William Fairfax Gray: From Virginia to Texas, 1835-1837 (1997), and Urban Slavery in the Southwest (1973).
PAULA MITCHELL MARKS, a past book review editor for the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and a fellow of the Texas State Historical Association, is the Associate Dean of the New College at St. Edwards University. Her areas of research and publication include Western history and Texas women’s history. Her books include Precious Dust: The American Gold Rush Era, 1846-1900 (1994), And Die in the West: The Story of the O K Corral Gunfight (1989), In a Barren Land: American Indian Dispossession and Survival (1998), Hands to the Spindle: Texas Women and Home Textile Production, 1822-1880 (1996), Turn Your Eyes Toward Texas: Pioneers Sam and Mary Maverick (1989), and Surviving on the Texas Frontier The Journal of an Orphan Girl in San Saba County (1996).
RICHARD PENNINGTON is an independent writer who specializes in sports history. His major publications include Breaking the Ice: The Racial Integration of Southwest Conference Football (1987), “For Texas I Will”: The History of Memorial Stadium (1992), Longhorn Hoops: The History of Texas Basketball (1998), and Home Field: An Illustrated History of 120 College Football Stadiums (2003).
MERLINE PITRE is a professor of history and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Behavioral Sciences at Texas Southern University. She has researched and published in United States Reconstruction and African American history, particularly in Texas. Her major works include Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares: The Black Leadership of Texas, 1868-1900 (1985), In Struggles Against Jim Crow: Lulu B. White and the NAACP, 1900-1957 (1999), and Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the White Primary in Texas (2003).
REBECCA SHARPLESS is the director of the Baylor University Oral History Program. She has published numerous articles on oral history, and agricultural and women’s history in Texas. Her books include Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women Texas Cotton Farms, 1900-1940 (1999), The Past Meets the Present: Essays on Oral History (1988), The Texas Blackland Prairie: Land, History and Culture (1993) and Rock Beneath the Sand: Country Churches in Texas (2003).
EDWARD SIMMEN is a Professor Emeritus at the Universidad de Las Americas in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico. He researches and publishes in Mexican American literature and Texas history. His major publications include The Chicano: From Caricature to Self-Portrait (1971), Pain and Promise: The Chicano Today (1972), North of the Rio Grande: The Mexican-American Experience in Short Fiction (1992), Gringos in Mexico: An Anthology (1988), and With Bold Strokes: Boyer Gonzales, 1864-1934 (1997).
ROBERT WEDDLE, a rancher and independent historian, is a fellow of the Texas State Historical Association and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. He has published extensively about Spanish and French colonial history of the Gulf Coast. His books include La Salle, The Mississippi, and the Gulf: Three Primary Documents, (1987), Wilderness Manhunt: The Spanish Search for La Salle (1973), Spanish Sea: The Gulf of Mexico in North American Discovery, 1500-1685 (1985), San Juan Bautista: Gateway to Spanish Texas (1968), The San Saba Mission: Spanish Pivot in Texas (1964), The French Thorn: Rival Explorers in the Spanish Sea, 1682-1762 (1991) Changing Tides: Twilight and Dawn in the Spanish Sea, 1763-1803 (1995) and The Wreck of the Belle, The Ruin of La Salle (2001).