The Scourge of Whiteness

Foley, Neil. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997).

Holding degrees in American Culture, English and American Literature, and English, Neil Foley specializes in the evolving components of race and social identity located in what he calls the Borderlands: Mexico and the American West. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture bridges the gap between the narratives of two Borderlands histories, that of African-Americans and southern history, and that of Mexican-Americans and southwestern history. Looking at Texas, and specifically the area from Dallas in the north, Corpus Christi in the south, San Antonio in the west, and Houston in the east, Foley analyzes how Mexicans, blacks, and poor whites maneuvered and coped with the racial space in this Borderlands province of cotton culture during the first half of the twentieth century. 

To Foley, this area of central Texas provides an exceptional example of Borderlands interactions because of the nature of cotton culture there as compared to plantation farming in other parts of the South. Cotton farming in central Texas relied on mostly white share tenants, and mostly black or Mexican sharecroppers. Migrant Mexican labor was also used to harvest crops. These three standards produced complex configurations as Mexicans began competing with blacks for more work and both of those races competed with whites for tenancy.

Although a southern state, Foley considers Texas “the west” of “the south.” Exposed to relationships between blacks and whites, The White Scourge begins with identifying how Mexicans created a division in the black/white dichotomy of southern race relations. The foundation of the tripartite race relation began with the Texas Revolution and War with Mexico. Whites held their positions of power and supremacy, blacks maintained their dominion with none of the same constitutional protections given to whites, and Mexicans existed in a brown area known as nonwhite. Owing to the implementation of barbed wire fences and railroads, the rise of the cotton culture in central Texas created a unique convergence of the three races.

The difference of the racial classes created a problem with poor whites. Foley calls the poorest whites “the white scourge.” These white sharecroppers competed with blacks and Mexicans economically and were marked as substandard whites whose reproductive fertility threatened Nordic whiteness. Black sharecroppers were viewed generally the same as when they were enslaved: racially inferior and firmly situated in their natural economic condition. Mexicans, in their non-whiteness, were thought to make ideal seasonal laborers because of their supposed docility and nomadic nature. Foley reasons that Mexicans walking the color line in Texas society probably preferred sharecropping and tenant farming to the economic conditions in Mexico. 

After 1910 brown became the new color menace in Texas. Driven deeper into Texas by railroad work, white farmers increasingly relied on Mexican labor. Labor needs prevented immigration restrictions because the dependence on Mexican labor outweighed white worries of Mexican radicalization and mongrelization in the southwest. 

Foley next examines the complex land-tenure arrangements that shaped race, class, and gender identities of owners, renters, sharecroppers, and wage hands. The scourge of whiteness were to remain firmly entrenched at the bottom of the racial and economic hierarchy. Farm ownership and land tenure, which proved to be essentially out of reach for the majority of poor whites, defined the boundaries of yeoman-hood and served as the blueprint for a prosperous white family. However, Foley points to other significant problems for poor whites: “extortionate credit merchants, bankers, landlords, boll-weevil infestations, soil depletion, low cotton prices, flood, and droughts.” These issues ensured that poor whites would remain tenants, barely superior to blacks and Mexicans. 

The narrative of Texas cotton culture would not be complete without mentioning the Socialist Party in Texas and Tom Hickey. Foley discusses the efforts of the Socialist party to organize Anglo and Mexican tenant farmers. Landless tenants and Texas Socialists demanded occupancy and use of tillable land held by absentee landlords. In order to force the sale of land not being tilled but owned by the absentee landlords, Socialists proposed a land tax that would in effect force the landowners to sell their tillable land. The underlying theme of the Socialists, however, was white supremacy and a positive endorsement of the color line. For his part, Hickey tried to incorporate Lost Cause and Old South ideology into Socialist thought.

The White Scourge provides a recounting of scientific management of farm workers in the twentieth century. Large-scale cotton ranches became the intersection between race and agricultural technology. Foley highlights the 200,000-acre Taft Ranch as an example of scientific management. Operated as a corporation by farm managers, in addition to oversight and management of the agricultural decisions, Taft Ranch managers controlled many aspects of workers’ lives; housing, stores, children’s schools, churches, and electoral votes. Workers were often organized according to scientific principles that would increase profits and proficiency. Scientific management revolutionized the employment and management of the multiracial agricultural workforce in central Texas. Another excellent book on corporate communities similar to Taft Ranch is Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community by Monica Perales. Instead of a corporate-owned farm community, Smeltertown tells the story of a corporate-owned smelter town near El Paso, Texas, where citizens also struggled with company-owned churches and stores and a lack of upward mobility. 

The scourge of whiteness simply could not compete with corporate ranches and scientific management. Foley says, “The growth of corporate cotton ranches in Texas had rendered obsolete the notion of rising up from farm laborer to farm owner.”

As these scientific changes took place, white families became tenants and sharecroppers. Women on farms experienced manually challenging and difficult lives. Many, as a result of their position in the social hierarchy, worked in the field alongside men more and more, even though the domestic duties usually accorded to women never lessened. Men began working with new technological farm implements, while women continued to use the most rudimentary tools associated with domestic work. Foley also examines the changes on the horizon for women as the automobile became more affordable for lower-class citizens. For women, their social geography could be briefly changed because the automobile was now able to carry them away from their farms and duties. Often relying on legal testimony of disgruntled tenants and sharecroppers, Foley paints a shockingly laborious existence of the daily lives of sharecroppers and tenants. 

Foley points to New Deal acreage-reduction programs as the reason behind the displacement of tenant families throughout the South. As well, the advancements in farm equipment technology drove others out of the South. Unlike what many consider to be the reason behind the flight of “Dust Bowlers” for California, Foley does not put as much blame on dust and soil depletion. Instead, Foley contends that mechanization had already begun the process, with drought, windstorms, and grasshoppers compounding the problem. Together, New Deal plans and mechanization created a surplus of tenants and croppers. There were too many jobless and too few jobs in the South. 

The first half of the twentieth century saw the immigration of Mexicans into the black-and-white cotton economy of central Texas. The established cotton culture was upended along racial and class lines. Slowly, white skin color did not carry the same economic power as it had following the Civil War and Reconstruction. With a triumvirate of races, the farm order of the South and Southwest would never be the same. The White Scourge is essential reading for anyone attempting to understand the racial and economic history of central Texas.

As the great-granddaughter of Texas sharecroppers, The White Scourge was at its most interesting when documenting the lives of poor white, black, and Mexican women. Foley’s parallel of men’s farming equipment upgrades compared to the lack of advancement of women’s comparative tools of the trade was appalling. “While men traded in their hoes for expensive steel plows, farm women continued to haul water from the wells in pails.” Particularly touching was the correspondence from Mrs. M. M. Clayton to President Herbert Hoover of her despair of having little to show after thirty-nine years of marriage and farming. 

Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community, by Monica Perales

Smeltertown existed as a smelting industry company-community and border town in El Paso, Texas. Through her own familial connection to Smeltertown, Monica Perales “traces the formation, evolution, demise, and collective memory of one of the largest single-industry Mexican-American communities on Mexican-US side of the border.” Smeltertown, as a community, was was made up of several real and imagined social worlds that were constantly shaped by ASARCO. The community that was forged in Smeltertown served as a way of survival for its residents, allowing the influence from ASARCO to be lessened. Smeltertown tells the story of how its residents ordered their immediate socials. 

Perales begins Smeltertown by tracing the development of El Paso as a 

center of international commerce and immigration. Given its location, Perales asserts that El Paso almost had to serve as the location of a transnational mining and smelting company such as ASARCO. Copper and capital had transformed El Paso into an international center for railroad, mining, and smelting by the early 1900s. Political and business power brokers paved the way for the political economy of the city to foster ASARCO’s growth that would eventually establish a social and racial hierarchy within Smeltertown.

Smeltertown examines life in the barrio and the multilayered worlds created by the company and the residents against a backdrop of industrial capitalism and racial segregation. Perales “charts the contours of the web of overlapping and interwoven communities that existed in Smeltertown.” The author notes a great chasm that existed between the living conditions of the white managerial families and the families of the Mexican laborers. Also, Perales explains that the separateness extended to social places as well. The ice skating rink on the company cooling pond and the company-owned bowling alley were only used by whites living in Smeltertown. In reality, there were two company towns, one Anglo and one Mexican. 

Through jobs at the smelter Mexican men began to define themselves as a permanent class of employees. Becoming a smelter man usually began with living within the community of Smeltertown with various family members. These non-transient men would eventually gain stability through seniority. Ties to family and previous generations bound smelter men to Smeltertown and ASARCO, which Perales aptly demonstrates with her own familial and generational ties to the smelter. Hard work amid dangerous working conditions also defined life as a smelter man. Smeltertown probes these two intertwining historical processes, the creation of the Mexican-worker stereotype and the proletarianization of Mexican workers, and defines life as a smelter man.

If living on the U.S. side of a border town made Smeltertown residents American, Perales looks at how they also never left their Mexican culture and customs behind. The San Jose’ de Cristo Rey Catholic parish served as a place for Esmeltianos to reimagine what it meant to be racially and culturally Mexican in an American border town. The Catholic chapel on the hill became the locus of what it meant to Mexican in a border town. Through their sense of community and the Catholic parish, Esmeltianos retained many aspects of their Mexican culture: Spanish language, Mexican patriotism, Catholicism. “Blending elements of national and ethnic pride, shared language, and a common experience with Catholicism provided a foundation on which Esmeltianos reconfigured what it meant to be Mexican in a U.S. city.”

Thanks to the company-owned education system, Smeltertown residents were provided a space for students to become involved in an American world. Perales argues that young women blended an identity combining elements from both worlds, Mexican and American. The school offered young women social, cultural, and political spaces that permitted them to challenge gendered boundaries set by their immigrant parents.

Perales also traces the demise of Smeltertown beginning with El Paso resident’s growing concern over the smelter’s emissions and their effect on the border city. Combined with those concerns and deadly lead exposure, El Paso and ASARCO decided to raze Smeltertown and relocate inhabitants to other parts of the city. “The very industrial processes that had brought it life had destroyed Smeltertown.” 

Even as the image of Smeltertown changed from a source of city pride to a source of major embarrassment, Smeltertown residents defended ASARCO until the bitter end. The community that had bound so many residents together through generations, families, and friendships would be no more. However, Smeltertown’s memory lives on in the minds of its people and the Smeltertown and ASARCO reunions that are still held in El Paso. 

Texas Tough - book review

Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire. By Robert Perkinson. (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010. Pp. 496. Illustrations, notes, index. ISBN 9780805080698, $35.00 cloth.)


“Every human being is a potential criminal and every criminal is a potentially honest man” (161). This quote, attributed to a progressive-leaning administrator on Texas’s Board of Prison Commissioners, lies in the minority when it comes to Texas prison mottos. With its renegade persona, the Texas penal system has historically set a tough standard for American prisons. Using Texas as the backdrop, Robert Perkinson’s Texas Tough analyzes the life and times of America’s harshest and largest penal system. Perkinson claims to propose fresh ways of thinking about imprisonment and society while piecing together a more complete genealogy of the modern prison. The author is a professor of American Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and Texas Tough is his first published book. 

The author’s chief argument centers on how the prison system developed as a lingering effect of slavery. Perkinson documents nineteenth century prison arrangements that originated as convict leasing. Drawing parallels between slavery and convict leasing, he points to the horrific working conditions, the use of force and punishment that usually took the form of the whip, and the meager food allowances as indicators of how slavery and prisoners were treated similarly. Then the author skillfully describes how today’s Imperial Sugar Company was founded with slave capital and built by the convict leasing system. 

In the twentieth century Texas began moving away from convict leasing to the more profitable plantation prison system. Perkinson explains how the plantation prison system was built and thrived, again as an aftereffect of slavery. Politicians intended prisons to be self-sufficient and turn a profit without regard to convict welfare. Contemporary sources used in Texas Tough, usually in the form of jailhouse memoirs or letters, all indicate that crop yield was the most important factor evaluated by prison farm managers. 

By the 1970s Texas prisons were in no better shape than in the days of convict leasing and plantation labor. A revolution was on the way in the form of a writ writer named David Ruiz and his landmark legal case, Ruiz v. Estelle. Citing jailhouse interviews and exchanges of letters and artwork, Perkinson and Ruiz corresponded in heavy discourse on the injustices Texas inmates were suffering at the hands of the Texas prison system, building tenders, guards, and other inmates. With little other support needed, the author points to this one legal case as changing the face of not only Texas’s penal system, but of those across the United States as well. While Ruiz v. Estelle was the first and most prominent prisoner-initiated legal case over inhumane treatment of inmates, there were many other writ writers and several who influenced Ruiz while he served his prison sentences. In addition, several northern states had made sporadic attempts at prison reform for many years. Therefore, reformation of the American prison system cannot be completely attributed to Ruiz v. Estelle. 

Finally, Perkinson concludes Texas Tough with a comparison of George W. Bush’s tactics on interrogation methods of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay with the Texan theory of punishment. The author postulates that Bush’s hard-line stance, including water-boarding and sleep and food deprivation, on suspected terrorists resulted from being brought up in Texas and exposed to the Texas justice and prison system as a citizen and then as governor. This is a broad claim, especially considering the level and type of crimes of international terrorists compared to the common Texas offender. Perkinson describes the common Texas offender as a black male in his early twenties with no job. This description gives an entirely different profile to that of an international terrorist. 

Despite his sometimes overlong critical assessment of the Texas prison system, Perkinson allows three reformative approaches to the current penal system: stay the retributive course, attempt better criminal rehabilitation, and the author’s own declaration of a War on Poverty. Texas Tough provides overwhelming evidence that the retributive incarceration method is costly and generally does not reform offenders. Criminal rehabilitation has been experimented with, namely in California, but leaves marginal hope of rehabilitating the majority of inmates. Lastly, Perkinson’s War on Poverty alternative provides the one solution to the American prison problem that involves preventative measures instead of imprisonment or retribution. 

Texas Tough goes beyond mere parochialism to explore America’s history of the penal system. No history of that system would be complete without Texas serving as the guiding light. Texas Tough is accessible to readers across the board, especially for those seeking to understand Texas’s infatuation with incarceration.


Jaycie Smith

Tomlinson Hill - book review

Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families Who Share the Tomlinson Name - One White, One Black. By Chris Tomlinson. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2014. Pictures, foreword, introduction, endnotes, index. $26.99 hard back). 

How does a suburban middle-class white boy have a familial connection with an at-risk black kid? Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families Who Share the Tomlinson Name - One White, One Black is Associated Press journalist Chris Tomlinson’s personal journey of discovering his white family’s slaveholding past while also uncovering NFL running back LaDainian Tomlinson’s lineage as a descendant of one of those slaves. Chris Tomlinson aims “to examine America’s history of race and bigotry through the paternal lines of” the two Tomlinson families. 

Tomlinson Hill begins with an introduction into the white Tomlinson family. The author clearly shows an enthusiasm for his Tomlinson ancestry. However, as the author delves into the story of his Tomlinson family, a crucial piece of information comes to light: Chris Tomlinson’s father was adopted into the Tomlinson pedigree. Other than stating this fact, Chris Tomlinson does not explore his true paternal lineage or mention the adoption again. An obvious first step into exploring this lost parentage would be a DNA test, something Chris Tomlinson never seems to consider, but something that would have added an extra dimension to his genealogy. 

Given the lack of written documentation of slaves and former slaves, Chris Tomlinson does an excellent job of piecing together the black Tomlinson family. While the black Tomlinson family from The Hill on is not as large as the corresponding white family, their backgrounds and stories are organized in a clear manner. The author creates a perfect blend between stories passed down by the family and the actual memories of those still living. 

Chris Tomlinson included family pictures of the two Tomlinson families who originated from Tomlinson Hill. Along with these pictures are the direct family trees of Chris Tomlinson and LaDainian Tomlinson. As helpful as these family trees are, more complete and detailed family trees would aid readers in keeping track of the many Tomlinsons. For each Tomlinson family, there are cousins, aunts, uncles, and in-laws that become muddled with the sheer size of the families of Tomlinson Hill. In fact, while reading several of the chapters it is nearly impossible to keep track of who is a cousin and who is a cousin’s cousin. It may be appropriate to note that even the author at times displays trouble in keeping the names straight.

Not many people living today can claim rich plantation owners as their ancestors. The white Tomlinson family of Tomlinson Hill were not only rich, but they left vast documentation of their antebellum lives. Chris Tomlinson wisely lets the Tomlinson family speak for themselves in the form of letters and plantation paperwork. The author organizes this information in a cogent and captivating way. Also, rather than defending his white Tomlinson family’s racist lifestyle, Chris Tomlinson condemns it. He is especially critical of his great-grandfather’s probable association in the Ku Klux Klan. It is admirable that the author is able to separate himself from his history and see the bigger race picture.

After detailing both white and black Tomlinson families and their individual family histories, Chris Tomlinson delves into a parallel look at the two Tomlinson families as he examines America’s history of race and bigotry. This split from a detailed genealogy brings up several questions: Is Chris Tomlinson writing about family history? Or about racism in Texas? Racial discrimination? Without a clear focus on family history or racism, Tomlinson Hill leaves genealogists and those interested in black/white racism expecting more. Furthermore, Chris Tomlinson sheds no new light on slavery in Texas or Texan racism, but merely regurgitates information researched and compiled by others. Many people, some Texans included, are not aware of the Lone Star state’s role as a slave state. Chris Tomlinson is able to bring this this information together, and he does so with unflinching honesty, even when his Tomlinson family members were the slave holders.

Tomlinson Hill is not just a biography of a nonpareil antebellum family. Chris Tomlinson weaves together his white slave holding family with that of their slaves. The ironic twist with these Tomlinsons is that a black son went on to earn the greatest success, upending the social strata of the Tomlinsons in the nineteenth century. Tomlinson Hill challenges the parallel histories of two families who could not have begun more differently, but whose lineages diverged during Emancipation, Reconstruction and segregation, only to reemerge with a sincere bond between Chris Tomlinson and LaDainian Tomlinson. 

Book Review: Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias by Susan Cayleff

Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias. By Susan E. Cayleff. Women in

American History. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, c. 1995. Pp. xiv, 327. $29.95, ISBN 0.252.01793-5.) 

She was arguably the greatest female athlete of the twentieth century. Babe

Didrikson Zaharias was also the media’s favorite target, in good times and bad. In Babe:

The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Susan E. Cayleff attempts to illuminate the carefully constructed private life and the flamboyant public life of one of America’s greatest female athletes of all time. Babe Didrikson was born in East Texas to working-class Norwegian immigrants. A gifted natural athlete, Babe dominated women’s track and field events at the 1932 Olympic Games. Battling gender norms of the 1920s and 1930s, Babe retired from track and field and soon began to dominate another sport: golf. Babe was known throughout her career for her self-promotion and flamboyant personality. Her marriage to wrestler George Zaharias seemed to quiet speculation of her lack of feminism, but then a close relationship with fellow golfer Betty Dodd cast doubts on Babe’s deliberate attempts to prove her womanliness. Cayleff compares the life Babe actually lived to the life Babe tried to invent through the media. Cayleff leaves readers with her interpretation of the two drastically different lives. 

Perhaps Cayleff’s greatest accomplishment in Babe is her portrayal of Babe through the years she desperately tried to create and manage her feminine character. Cayleff argues that one of the main reasons Babe took up golf was because of the sport’s notoriety as a ladylike sport. Prior to her transition into golf, Babe was repeatedly put on display by the media as a tom-boy, muscle moll, as being of a third sex, and as dressing and acting like a man. As her marriage to George Zaharias and career in golf coincided, Babe intended to show everyone that she was a lady who could compete at the highest level, but at the same time was the epitome of a womanly wife. “All the while I was enjoying being Mrs. George Zaharias. That’s what I’ve been ever since we were married, whether I was keeping house or playing in a golf tournament.” Babe proved she could play both characters. 

Cayleff makes plain the fact that Babe was a bully and mean-spirited towards most women she competed against, but what legacy did she leave competitive female athletes after her untimely death? Certainly Babe paved the way for many female athletes, especially in the realm of self-promotion, but Cayleff provides little evidence of this. Even though Babe had a significant hand in creating the Ladies Professional Golf Association, it was not created because Babe wanted to leave any kind of lasting female golf legacy. Babe helped create the LPGA because she was looking for other opportunities for competition. More exploration into what Babe accomplished for female athletes in general would have added to this work. 

Given the better acceptance of homosexuality today’s society, contemporary readers want an answer to the question: Did Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Betty Dodd have a sexual relationship? Although Cayleff alludes to such, no explicit answer is given. Cayleff should not bear the fault given Babe’s not-so-subtle measures to hide any evidence of a sexual relationship existing. The truth is that there was no answer for Cayleff to uncover. Twenty-first century readers would, however, demand an answer and find Babe lacking in this regard. 

Cayleff suggests that Babe’s intentional cover-up of her sexual life led to a generation of lesbians losing a self-proclaimed lesbian hero. Given the male/female cultural norms and Babe’s desire to appear normal, it is no surprise that she hid her private life and never gave explicit answers regarding her relationship with Betty Dodd. Cayleff rightly states that Babe was too busy shouldering other, mostly athletic, burdens. Even with all of her charisma, trophies, and championships, Babe realized society’s prejudices towards lesbians was an opponent she could not defeat. 

Babe Didrikson Zaharias left Texas with a lasting sports legacy. Indeed, her hometown proudly hosts the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Museum Foundation, an annual golf tournament in her name, and numerous scholarships in her name. Interestingly, in keeping with Babe’s determination to hide her sexual relationship with Betty Dodd, the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Museum website never mentions Betty Dodd’s name, and while not proclaiming an undying love between Babe and George, George’s name is mentioned in several places. 

Jaycie Smith

The Raven, by Marquis James

The Raven. By Marquis James with an Introduction by Henry Steele Commager. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1929. Illustrations, introduction, notes, recapitulation, index. $16.64 paperback). 

In his 1929 Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Sam Houston, Marquis James sets out to provide history with an encompassing account of the life of Sam Houston. James’s Houston was a man of many titles: governor of Tennessee, brother to the Indians, Commander of the Texan Army, President of the Republic of Texas, United States Congressman and Senator, Texan trailblazer, husband and loving father. Given the year of first publication of The Raven, it is not surprising that James writes in true traditionalist form with clear biases. The Raven succeeds in giving modern readers a murky vision of the true Sam Houston. 

One of the most compelling aspects of Houston’s life is his tangled relationship with Eliza Allen. James plays the relationship out similar to a Greek tragedy. He builds up the eleven-week marriage between Houston and Allen on a swell of true love, and then lets the sudden separation crash down in secrecy. James is only able to speculate on the cause of the separation, in part because of Houston’s undying honor. However, James’s inability to ascertain more reasoning behind the failed marriage leaves a void in the biography. In addition, James’s speculation that Houston was able to visit Allen while in disguise and without her being able to recognize him on two different occasions is comical, at best.

James claims Eliza Allen changed the face of American history more than any other woman. Sam Houston did retreat into a self-imposed exile with Native American Indians after his separation from Allen. Years later Houston did leave the Indians for Texas. But, James makes a bold proclamation that the unsuccessful marriage with Allen spurred Houston’s claim on Texas. Houston had spent much time with the Indians before, and it is likely he would have again during his lifetime. Houston’s first thought was to settle in Mississippi, not Texas. No one can say what Houston might have done had the marriage lasted longer.

The Raven  is concerned more with the political climate surrounding Houston than with many aspects of Houston’s personal life. James delves into critical points when recounting in sweeping detail both the loyalties and the treacherous relationships of men involved in the United States government and in the founding of Texas. James devotes an enormous amount of space to Houston’s dalliance with Anna Raguet, but put little effort into the courtship of Margaret Lea, his future wife. Not to mention, very little is disclosed of Houston’s second wife, Talina. 

More than anything, James’s biography of Houston emanates traditionalist history. The white male, Houston, is portrayed. Events are described only from Houston’s point of view as the main character. Women play minor roles and most minorities seem non-existent. Much of The Raven centers on Houston’s Texas exploits, and gives very little consideration of his governance of Tennessee or the details of his life spent with the Indians. Slavery from the perspective of a Houston slave is non-existent. Indeed, James does not even refer to Houston’s slaves as such, but instead calls them either a driver or “a surplus negro.” This biography could be read without explicit understanding that Houston owned a single slave. 

James relies heavily on Houston’s own autobiography, Authentic Memoir, for much of The Raven. James readily admits that Houston changed or omitted facts in his Authentic Memoir. It is also common for James to cite as sources second-hand retellings of events years after they actually occurred. Houston’s daughter, Nettie Houston Bringhurst, seems to have been a wealth of information to James, despite the fact that she was a child when Sam Houston died. Other sources originate from elderly people fifty years after events took place. This type of information can not be depended upon for an accurate, balanced account of Houston’s life. A line from the introduction by Henry Steele Commager sums things up nicely: “He (James) has taken folklore and unwritten legends and transformed them into history.”

The Raven comes to an abrupt end with the death of Sam Houston. James draws no conclusions on the life Houston lived, nor the legacy he left to Texas. Where did Houston get his devotion to Texas? What was the significance of Houston’s marriage to Talina? What were the effects of Houston keeping his military plans secret? Readers desiring a better understanding of Houston’s eccentric life would be better served by reading Sam Houston, by James L. Haley. 

List of Books Read for SHSU - Master of Arts in History

History 5097 - African-American Slavery - Spring 2014

The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870, by Hugh Thomas

The White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States, by Winthrop D. Jordan

From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans by John Hope Franklin and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham

In Human Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World, by David Brion Davis

12 Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs

The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, by William L. Andrews

History 5373 - Civil War and Reconstruction - Summer I 2014

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, by David W. Blight

James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery, by Drew Gilpin Faust

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust

The Fiery Trial, by Eric Foner

History 5384 - Texas History - Fall 2014

Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, by Susan E. Cayleff

The Raven, by Marquis James

Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families Who Share the Tomlinson Name - One White, One Black, by Chris Tomlinson

Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire, by Robert Perkinson

History 5372 - Early National America - Spring 2015

Forced Founders, by Woody Holton

Affairs of Honor, by Joanne Freeman

The Hemingses of Monticello, by Annette Gordon-Freeman

Parlor Politics, by Catherine Allgor

American Lion, by Jon Meacham

God's Strange Work, by David L. Rowe

Trail of Tears, by John Ehle

Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, by Walter Johnson

History 5374 - Seminar in the History of the American South - Summer I 2015

The Mind of the South, by W. J. Cash

The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Vann Woodward

American Slavery, American Freedom, by Edmund S. Morgan

A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, by David L. Chappell

History 5384 - Early Modern Europe - Summer II 2015

Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932), pp. 1-31
Paul Hazard, The European Mind [1680-1715] (orig. 1935), pp. xv-xx, 3-79.

History 5336 - Topics in History of Pre-Modern Europe Fall 2015

Mohammed and Charlemagne, by Henri Perinne

The Making of Europe: An Introduction to the history of European unity, by Christopher Dawson

Medieval Technology and Social Change, by Lynn White, Jr.

Plague and the End of Antiquity, edited by Lester K. Little

Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages, by Patrick J. Geary

Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity, by Rosamond McKitterick

The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000, by Chris Wickham

The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, by Peter Brown

History 5097 - Urban and Suburban History - Spring 2016

Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution, by Benjamin L. Carp

The Park & the People: A History of Central Park, by Roy Rosenzweig & Elizabeth Blackmar

Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco by Judy Yung

Crabgrass Frontier, by Kenneth Jackson

The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Surgrue

Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms, by Richard R. W. Brooks & Carol M. Rose

The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles, by Scott Kurashige

Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community, by Monica Perales

History 5377 - The American West - Summer 2016

The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture by Neil Foley

Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol by Kelly Lytle Hernandez

The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space by William David Estrada

Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown by Nayan Shah

History 5385: A Seminar on the History of Latin American Commodities - Fall 2016

Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World, by Marcy Norton

Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes, by Nicholas A. Robins

Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States, by John Soluri

Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug, by Paul Gootenberg

Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of The Pill, by Gabriela Soto Laveaga

History 5389.01 Great Britain and the British Empire - Spring 2017

Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire, by David Cannadine

Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, by Bernard Cohn

The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain, by Nicholas Dirks

Ideologies of the Raj, by Thomas Metcalf

Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century Africa, by Richard Price

English lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China, by James Hevia

Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East,  by Priya Satia

Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, by Caroline Elkins

History 5098.03 Auschwitz - Summer I 2017

Auschwitz, by Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt

Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, by Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum

Commandant of Auschwitz, by Rudolf Hoess

The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, by Witold Pilecki

Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi