From a Migrant Field Worker to a University Professor
Yo Soy is a memoir of Roberto E. Villarreal's life struggle for social justice and equality and a reclamation of his ancestry, language, and culture, forbidden by the Texas state school policies during his childhood in the 1930s. Racism, bigotry, violence, and subordination formed a shell difficult to overcome. The "Mexican problem," as it was ......
Have Horn, Will Travel is the first full-length biography of tenor saxophone virtuoso and in-demand sideman Herman "Junior" Cook, chronicling his life and impact from his Pensacola, Florida, origins to his New York City-based career. Best known for his association with pianist Horace Silver's iconic quintet from 1958 to 1964, Cook continued as a ......
Highway Building and Displacement in El Paso, Texas
The history of how the freeways of El Paso, Texas, were constructed, who lobbied for them to be built, who was displaced, and who opposed them, is largely unknown. Regional studies of highway building have been overlooked in most studies of Mexican American history. As in other Mexican American cities like San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, and Los ......
This anthology collects the eight winners of the 2024 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at UNT's Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. The event is hosted by the Frank W. and Sue Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism at the University of North Texas. The conference launched the competition to honor exemplary narrative work and ......
Fort Worth from World War II to 1960 reviews Fort Worth's history during the challenging times of World War II, the postwar adjustment period, and the first full decade of the Cold War. Harold Rich tells the story in broad strokes with foci on local crime and criminals, vice, the police, race relations, and economic development. What emerges is a ......
Remembering the Antiwar Movement in Austin, Texas, 1967-1973
In Insurgent Politics in the Lone Star State, Martin J. Murray uses his own personal engagement in the antiwar movement in Austin, Texas, to make sense of the entanglements between cycles of protest against the Vietnam War and the efforts of security agencies intent on suppressing dissent. Murray used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain FBI ......
The U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons in the Vietnam War
Much of the history written about the Vietnam War overlooks the U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons. These CAPs lived in the Vietnamese villages, with the difficult and dangerous mission of defending the villages from both the National Liberation Front guerrillas and the soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army. The CAPs also worked to improve ......
From Gentleman Bandit to Movie Star and Back Again
In 1921 headlines across the country announced the death of Henry Starr, a burgeoning silent film star who was killed while attempting to rob a bank in Harrison, Arkansas. Cynics who knew the real Starr were not surprised. Before becoming a matinee idol, Starr had been the greatest bank robber of the horseback bandit era. Born in 1873, Cherokee ......
In 1874 Joseph Glidden patented and manufactured the nation's first barbed wire, and the next year Henry Sanborn came to Texas selling Glidden's wire to cattlemen. Sales increased each year, and in 1883 Sanborn sold Texas ranchers one million dollars' worth of barbed wire, but free-range cattle advocates and homesteaders revolted against the ......
