Gene and Scott continue their discussion about planning their university/college level Texas history courses. They break down their unique methodologies for teaching Texas history, comparing and contrasting their approaches. We don't promise all the answers (. . . or any, for that matter!), but we do guarantee a deep dive exploration of what goes into teaching the history of the Lone Star State. Don't miss out!
If you missed part 1, here's a link, you can link to it direct at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2030352/episodes/13882637
Gene and Scott continue their discussion about planning their university/college level Texas history courses. They break down their unique methodologies for teaching Texas history, comparing and contrasting their approaches. We don't promise all the answers (. . . or any, for that matter!), but we do guarantee a deep dive exploration of what goes into teaching the history of the Lone Star State. Don't miss out!
If you missed part 1, here's a link, you can link to it direct at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2030352/episodes/13882637
This podcast is not sponsored by. It does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas, based upon our professional training and study of the family.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it and, of course, all of us who live it and love it. Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Parois.
Speaker 1:I'm Scott Sosby.
Speaker 2:Scott, let us continue, and I sound like LBJ there.
Speaker 1:You do sound like LBJ, but you gotta say let us continue.
Speaker 2:I did that on purpose. Let's finish talking about Texas history, or let's continue the discussion about how we put together our Texas history courses.
Speaker 1:Sounds like a great idea.
Speaker 2:You know I say a lot of people don't think about how this is done and even a lot of professors don't think about how it's done. You know you just kind of a lot of times, you know I teach the course every semester. I just hit the copy, changed a few dates and I'm off right, dates of the assignments, dates of things that are due and I'm off. But let's think about how we put together our classes, and we talked last time kind of about some of the ideas we have going into, what our big picture is and what we want to get across to our students. Let's talk about the actual nuts and bolts of putting those courses together.
Speaker 1:I think that's very appropriate for such a discussion, because everybody has different approaches to how they put together, because everybody has probably different aims and goals. I think that's significant that we talk about. You know, there's probably not one. Our old mentor, camilio Martinez, pointed out something to me a long time ago that's kind of appropriate here, when he was at Texas Tech, that the textbook to use was the, you know, the standard that Arnoldo De Leon, greg Cantrell, both of these used, and the title of that book is the History of Texas, and Cameron always started off with class. What's wrong with this book? What's the problem with this book's title? And of course it's that he would say it should be a history of Texas. Because there's not the history of Texas, because everybody kind of has a different way of going, and I think that's what we do. We have a different goal than how we go about it.
Speaker 1:So if I'll start, I'll say, of course, because when I arrange my class it is a chronological arrangement, just because that's the best way to do it. You know, if you go from, this is chronology too. But I would say it's somewhat divided into three parts is what I do, and so I would say part one which is essentially the first month, month and a half of the course that we would take, and we do would be covering the period of pre-Columbian Texans, spanish contact, mexican Texas and then ending with the Texas Revolution and the Republic of Texas. That's what I do for the first part of that, and you know, middle of September, towards the end of September, where I finished that my goals and that periodization is to essentially show that the development of Texas began long before Anglo showed up, and then how, when that this development was very, was very, and essentially that Texas was virtually unpopulated other than Native Americans for such a long time until, I mean, even Mexico had a hard time populating Texas.
Speaker 1:And then here came Anglo Texans moving in and we found people who actually wanted to live in Texas other than Native Americans, but they couldn't live in harmony because of the cultural differences. And that's how I really, you know, want to talk about the Republic period, the Revolution period. A lot of that is is cultural differences that we could not get, you know, we couldn't put together, and that's why they had to split up. So for my purposes, that's my first part of the course. What's your first part of the course?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, actually, when you were talking about that, I was saying I don't, I didn't know if I put that much thought into the visions. Here's how I divide my course. I we have roughly 15, 16 weeks in a semester and I divide my course into two week units. And so the first, but it's essentially the same as yours. I was, I was as you were going along, I was looking at mine. It's essentially the same of yours. I try to do it this way for two reasons. One I've been in, I've taught numerous courses, and I do it chronologically too. I tried to do it by topic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it doesn't work.
Speaker 2:You want to, but it doesn't work Right and so I do it chronologically as well. So the first, first unit is prehistory up until about, you know, more recent times, or at least more modern history. So Texas, I talk about the land, the people. You know how big is Texas? What do we want to know? What do we need to know about it? Kind of Texas almanac facts, and so to get people oriented with what Texas history is, get a lot of students who've grown up in Texas and live in Texas. But you know that doesn't mean you know the history, and I'm I'm I may make some people mad here I always find it interesting when I turn over the I see a book usually the supermarket shelves, and I turn it over. It's some book on Texas history and what are the author's qualifications? That's what I look at and it says seventh generation Texan. And you know that doesn't tell me anything, because you can live in a place all your life and not know the history.
Speaker 1:Let me ask this question. I have to because that's such a thing. I hear that all the time. Seventh generation Texan, if you count generations Gene can an Anglo be a seventh generation Texan? Are there enough generations back for them to be a seventh generation Texan?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure, I'm not sure there are.
Speaker 1:I mean, I heard a lot of people you know say that, but I don't know that there are enough, Maybe there are now.
Speaker 2:Well, if you look at generations as being 20 years, seventh generation and that's not how people count generations, right? They're my father, my father, me, my father, my grandfather, my great-great grandfather, my great grandfather. I forgot him, and then you know maybe a couple of others, but that you know how long. So let's say that goes back to 140 years. That barely skirts on Anglo-Texas history, because that's usually where you get it from right. That's very common, and we're talking about the immigrants who came in from the Southern United States, predominantly in Settle Texas. But you know, I did a little ancestrycom research on mine, and my roots go back to the 1740s. So what does?
Speaker 1:that make me, I don't know, 10 generations, 11 generations.
Speaker 2:But you know, it doesn't make any difference. Does that mean you're?
Speaker 1:more Texan than anybody else. Is that what that means? Yeah, maybe. I'll claim it, but, and you know, of course, I'm Mexican-American and he still puts beans in a chili folks, so you know.
Speaker 2:That's right. So I'm part indigenous, right? So does that you know? How far back to? I don't know, but I don't think that matters. So, going back to from ancient times, what do people you know need to know about Texas history? Then, who settled Texas? History, and remember the expresses where those people came across? The? That takes me up. That's two units four weeks, that's a month. That takes me up to the Texas Revolution. And I asked the question why did Texas form a republic? And that takes me through the whole revolution. Independence, mexican independence, they're not talking about in the revolutionary era. I put that in that larger context that we were talking about last time. So that's my first part, right, the first three units facts about Texas, the settlement and Spanish Texas. And then, why did Texas form a republic? Now that's, if you think about it, time wise, that's like several thousand years of Texas history in four weeks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's me out Of course we always have to make these things pretty quick. Only do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you do. It's a survey, yeah certainly.
Speaker 1:Well, that's it and I think that's how we do pretty much clay. My second, if you will part and that some people might say it's you know, it's the heart of it. I don't know if that's true, but I will then cover and it's you know, roughly it's a little longer than the first part because it'll go for, you know, three, almost four weeks is what this one would go for, and that is essentially Texas as part of the United States, when Texas comes in the United States, all the way through the beginning of the progressive era. So I end from that and I go through the populist era as the next real unit, if you want to talk about and what the central theme of that essentially is how Texas developed as a southern state in the United States. It's culture was southern, it's society was southern, it's economy was southern, it's politics was southern. It marched in lockstep with, I mean, texas was not.
Speaker 1:You know a lot of Texas. You know Texas. I say, oh, we weren't like some of those days. No, no, we were pretty much just like Mississippi, just like Alabama. We looked a lot like those places in our economy.
Speaker 2:That's why a lot of the settlers came Exactly.
Speaker 1:And they all came here, and so Texas develops as a very, very southern state, and in that it is explains why Texas is seated with the Confederacy and it explains why they developed the biracial concept of ordering their society along the concepts of white superiority, why after the civil war they, the bourbon Democrats, the redeemer Democrats, took charge and shaped Texas as a Jim Crow type place. And then the populace revolt scares them so much that it becomes part of the progress there. So it sets out to me, it sets the student up to okay, here's Texas Now on the cusp of the 20th century, and then we can start discussing how the 20th century plays out. And that's to some extent how I do that at that time Well, you know that's curious because I do a very similar.
Speaker 2:So again, I'm going back to two week units, right, unit three and unit four. So that's four weeks, that's a month. Go from how did Texas form a republic to Texas in the Civil War era. And it covers very much the same material that you're talking about, scott. The same topic Is it Texas?
Speaker 2:So this is talking about southern immigration into Texas, southern United States immigration into Texas forming, you know, stephen F Austin, bringing the old 300 in all the way up to the end of the reconstruction period.
Speaker 2:And yes, texas is a southern state, it becomes a southern state and that's why we have the Texas Revolution and it is why we sought and wanted to join the United States. And then, which leads into the Civil War right, the Civil War, texas was the spark that started that conflagration. Right, it started the Civil War because then it accelerates the question of the expansion of slavery and we get into the Civil War, we join the Confederacy and we emerge and we have to go through reconstruction like everybody else. And then that sets up the progressive period, which the populist progressive period and Western settlement, and I think that goes hand in hand. Those three things go hand in hand. And but that's in, that goes into my unit five. So that's the, that's we're in two months. Already I'm in four units and we'll start unit five after you talk about what you do, after you talk about the reconstruction era which is, of course we think that we can go along the same lines.
Speaker 1:The next thing I'm going to buy it up, that's roughly another month. This thing is essentially Texas in the first part of the 20th century to the mid part and it covers from the progressive era through World War Two, and I kind of call this as the if there's a theme Texas setting the foundation of its modernization to some extent, because Texas profoundly changes during this time, and I like to say not culturally, not socially, not politically, but economically particularly. Texas begins moving away from the rest of the South during that era and a lot of that, of course, is due to the discovery of oil and the fact that oil becomes so important in Texas and it establishes an industrial base in Texas before the rest of the South has that which is going to come largely after World War Two. So Texas is prepared to take off. However, culturally it's still a Southern state and so you get this kind of conflict between changing to something different and modern economically, but culturally we're still kind of an old South place. You know, we're still hearkening back to that whole division on race and supremacy, and that becomes so much.
Speaker 1:The progressive era particularly becomes a somewhat of a struggle between are we going to hang on to the southerness of the state?
Speaker 1:We're going to get modern, and of course in that regard southerness kind of wins it out. Progressive reform under Thomas Campbell, for example, points to the larger deals of progressivism, reforming against corporate entities. But that doesn't last in Texas because you get cultural issues. Prohibition, for example, becomes a big thing, and so Texas kind of falls back on its southerness then and Jim Crow laws become more important and that kind of takes over the operation of the state. And then the 20s come and you have some more of that conflict and that becomes a beginning conflict between urban and rural. But that's all smashed on the rocks of the Great Depression when everything kind of takes a retardation and then World War II comes, and then that sets Texas up for becoming the modern Texas, and so a lot of World War II is like look at this Texas is about to change once more and we'll get to that. So that's the next unit that we get to, and again you can see, to me it's a progression, we're progressing in a somewhat of a way to do it.
Speaker 2:Well, let me tell you what I do. So my unit five. So this is 10 weeks into the semester. You know we're already coming to an end, right? So well, actually we're at eight, at the end of unit four.
Speaker 2:So unit five how is West Texas settled? And I'm kind of along with you. You know, texas was a southern state, but as it starts moving into the 99th Meridian and beyond that, or the 100th Meridian and beyond that I talk about, and, like we were talking about last time, I try to draw it into the bigger picture of world history, or at least American history. And the 99th Meridian or the 100th Meridian, whichever one you want to talk to or you want to claim, is the dividing line between East and West and the United States. It's the dry line, right, it's the line between what is arid and what is not. And as you're driving through Texas, you can certainly see it. If you look at a Texas map on Google Maps, you can certainly see the difference. And I tell the students you know you've got different kinds of soil, you've got different kinds of land, you've got different kinds of plants and you've got different kinds of rainfall. In Houston, where I live, we have 60 inches of rain on average In West Texas. In Lubbock, where you and I went to school, they had 10 inches of rain on average.
Speaker 2:And now how do you think southern farmers who are raising cotton are going to do in that kind of environment? And the point of the matter is, is they're not, and it's not until the 20s that places like Lubbock and Amarillo really get settled. So people are moving out there, though, after the Civil War, you have the cattle drives. You have all that, and that is where Texas starts to become a Western state. And how do you reconcile those differences between Western and Southern, between farmers and ranchers, for example? You have the cattle drives, you have the fence range wars, and so, talking about that, the farmers demands because the largest third party in the United States, the biggest challenge to the Democrat and Republican strongholds, and we're talking about this during election week, scott. So this is pertinent for that right you think about during the elections. Most people vote Democrat or Republican these days, but in those days they had an alternative, and you have the beginnings of that alternative party and why it becomes popular across the United States, starting with the populist movement, the agrarian movement, the populist movement, and then moving on into the progressive era. So I talk about that.
Speaker 2:And then I asked this question in my Unit 6. And so I'm just going to get up to World War I in Unit 6. Here's my question how progressive was progressive Texas? Now we talk about the progressive movement in American history as this reform. You know, they're coming into the 20th century and people are cognizant of that. Right, the world's changing. We're becoming more modern. Over in England, queen Victoria passes away, and so you have the beginning of the new era. How does that affect Texas and the rest of the United States around Texas? And so you've got all these changes. Women are changes. You have the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance and a lot of that is coming out of Texas. Right, you've got Led Belly and many of these other jazz musicians coming out of Texas, and so Texas does have a big role in that.
Speaker 2:But we talk about progressive. We talk about women's suffrage and women getting the right to vote very important, but not all Texans were in favor of that. And so you have the rise of the Klan to kind of fight back against that, and against you have the rise of fundamentalism, and so there was a conflicted political milieu of the time, and so we start talking about that. Then, of course, you're talking about World War II. Let's talk about how we get in. So that's how I end up and go through World War I. Let's talk about how we get into World War II. How do you get?
Speaker 1:into that? Well, of course I get into that in my first lecture. After I talk about the World War II and you tell that Texas, World War II, the main thing is during that lecture in World War II what I do is the main theme is setting a foundation for modern Texas and it kind of goes back to, you know, we're talking about how progressive was Texas, right? Well, like all Southern states, there was a limit to Texas progressivism because of the race issue and the things like this. This is one of the things that gets debated in modern Texas, All those things we couldn't really debate because there were limitations to it. And progressive Texas Well, those start. We start shedding those in modern Texas and a lot of that continues.
Speaker 1:The theme of Texas's economy and population differentiates and I have what I get into then is then World War II even further gets the modern base for Texas industrialism. Particularly it's during World War II. You see all these refineries built along the Gulf Coast, the petrochemical plants, the aerial space plants in the Dallas footwear area, you know, consolidated both E and stuff. You began to see a movement. The farming aspect and all the agricultural aspects of Texas almost moved completely into South Texas and West Texas and the rest of the bulk of where the population of Texas is becomes a very complex industrial type mix. And the other theme of that is urbanization because the urban areas explode so much in those World War II years and then those immediate years afterwards.
Speaker 1:You see, places like Corpus Christi is amazing. Always when you look at it you take a place that in the 1930s census was about 25,000 people and in the 1950s census, just 20 years later, it's over 100,000 people. That's phenomenal growth. And other cities go through growth like that. It is unbelievable and that begins to change Texas. It begins to bring more conditions on there. And then of course you have the civil rights movement that you first then begin to confront that Southern tradition of white superiority. And you have African Americans, always never in the majority in Texas and always a small minority, but enough of a mass, particularly in cities like Houston, in places like Dallas, where they can have these centers of civil rights movement that make a difference. And you also see a change in the Dallas population, I mean the Texas population, in that it's not just southerners movement to Texas. Why don't I want to keep saying Dallas, it's another Texas, Dallas.
Speaker 2:Why do you want to know?
Speaker 1:Because the Texas Rangers on the World Series. You see, now, with some of this growth in this industrialism and these different types of mixed economy, people aren't coming from Alabama and Georgia to Texas, they're coming from Michigan and Ohio and other places and these post year and that adds a new dynamic To everything in Texas and there's become questions of this and it becomes not as much southern anymore and they're beginning to see that change. You know it's an interesting thing. You know Our old mentor, don Walker, used to tell us too that you want to start a fight amongst testis historians Stand amongst the middle of them and yell out is Texas a southern state or a western state? And then watch the fights break out. And I've always kind of not always seems to be the dichotomy.
Speaker 1:We do one thing I get into in this section, this last section, that really I take it all the way. Then we take modern Texas, go into the All the way to the ending, wherever. You know my tech history class, always on wherever I get guys. Some semesters it's just to the 1990s, others we might get all the way through the 2010s. We'll see how much I thought. But I Don't know that Texas is a and this is kind of, oh you know, somewhat Hearing what some other Western historians have said, like Richard White's high cash in somewhat says this too Texas may be neither southern nor western, it may just be Texas and it may be an interesting mix of the two that you can't place and either camp. You know, the new Western historians always said oh, we're not even gonna clue Texas, you know cuz it just, and it was because it didn't fit their little model that they developed so that might be the thing and I want my students to think.
Speaker 1:But mostly this is how Texas is changing and it's becoming, and a Lot of this and of course, getting into something in my belly with Suburbanization changes things so much because Texas becomes truly a suburban state. Texas, in my mind, may be the most suburban state in the union. Even states, even cities that we don't even call suburbs. Lufkin I like to say Lufkin's, what a suburb of what? Nothing, but it's a suburban model. It looks like a suburb. It developed like a suburb. Yeah, lovebook, it's kind of like a suburb, you know, because of the way it's developed and why businesses come and other states don't have that as much as Texas and a lot of that is this core of this development that takes place in this post-warward to modernization.
Speaker 1:Now I will say Texas begins changing again in the late 1990s and the 2000s. One thing is, politics begins to change. It becomes a Republican state, of course, and you begin to see more influences coming in from high tech and things like that and that's and it's creating a whole new Conflict in the state. And of course, when you get to the end now Texas is a minor, a majority minority state. Now Right, and that's going to cause all kinds, and I kind of end my semester with and I actually call the last weather, last Lecture with their Texas, the southern state, and it goes into this whole whether or not how Texas is changed. Can we fit it into this neat little hole anymore, or are this culture changing so much? So you know, at some extent I start the semester with the question and end it with a question.
Speaker 2:Well, let me so my last two units. So, how did the war change Texas? And, like you and I, you know we talked about last time, we're really 20th century historians and it it kind of pains me that it's I'm wrapping things up, wrapping this, mr Robert, talking about World War two. But how did I think World War two was a key Event in Texas history? It changed everything.
Speaker 2:You've got the, the battle over the pipelines. You've got the oil industry really booming in those days and, as you're talking about the, the war Creates an urban Texas. For the first time Texas becomes a majority urban residential area, people moving into their urban areas because of the Depression, and that changes everything. And also it's the beginning of the civil rights movement. You've got minorities that are moving into Texas and Saying we need our rights too and starting to fight for those rights. My last unit, which is wrapping things up, it is also a question. It's called how Texan is Texas and and because, as you're saying, the state starts to change and this whole idea of you know Tia and a TR Ferenbach talks about the true Texan.
Speaker 2:True Texans believe Absolutely talks about how Texans are and behave and what they do. I don't think that. I think in after about the 1980s you get so much migration that that that starts to disappear and that starts to change and I think some of what we see today may be a reaction Against those changes. But I think Texas is evolving and changing and so the history is going to change. Scott, We've only got two minutes left, Just two minutes. So Quick question we can talk about this next time we get together. What textbook do you use?
Speaker 1:My textbook that I use is I use two textbooks, two things, as a text. One is a reader. That is, hey, shameful promotion, then I'm one of the editors, so you know not to do it. That is a Lone Star reader that has articles from this, and then I use as the textbook. I use the from Abigail Press, texas Beyond Myth and Legends from Keith Bellanto, ken Howell or the authors of that that I use and I think it's good. Textbooks are textbooks and of course that one goes. It follows along sort of more closely with how I lay this out than what I said.
Speaker 2:Right, well, I use. I use Mike Campbell's Gone to Texas and you know that was a, that was. It's a big, thick book and it's a lot of narrative.
Speaker 1:I used that one semester and I love it. Of course I love it. I think it's the best single volume history of Texas. I don't know if it's just SFA students. I didn't find the undergraduate students relating to it as well. The undergraduate, the grad students love it and it, I don't know, seemed to be some disconnect.
Speaker 2:I think it is a good book, but you know, students are changing. They don't want to read so much anymore, and maybe I don't either. But I think it's a good book and I'm still going to use it, for a while at least, until maybe two other authors write a textbook.
Speaker 1:I was going to say, gene, how about? What's a good idea? Maybe somebody else should write a new textbook. What do you think? Maybe, maybe two people already have that idea. Huh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just getting off our getting off our podcast and actually writing it.
Speaker 1:We have to get our posteriors in shape. Well, I think it's another successful podcast, gene, and you know I'm not going to ask you what do you know? Because I think we both established neither one of us know anything.
Speaker 2:So Well, thanks a lot for discussing this, Scott, and thank everybody for listening to us for another 30 minutes.
Speaker 1:Many thanks given everybody, because this will be about that. So good bye.
Speaker 2:Good night, Kevin.