East Texas Historical Association

Member News

East Texas Historical Association Fall Meeting 2010: The East Texas Historical Association met for the Association's Fall Meeting at the Stephen F. Austin State University campus in Nacogdoches, Texas from September 16-18. Thursday opened with a Board of Directors meeting followed by several sessions including "Folklore: A Catalog of Our Culture" and "Periodicals in Texas History." The evening concluded with the Max and Georgiana Lale Lecture Series. Dr. Kenneth Brown, Professor of Archeology at the University of Houston, spoke on "Finding Africa under North American Soil: Historical Archaeology and the Development of African American Culture." Friday opened with the Black History Breakfast followed by a variety of sessions such as "Labor in Texas History," "Creating a Sense of History by Creating a Sense of Place: National Register Designation," "Editing East Texas History: A Roundtable Discussion," and "Transcultural Trade in the East Texas Borderlands." Friday evening activities began with the banquet presided over by Cynthia Beeman, Second Vice-President, at which Milton Jordan, President, presented on the importance of water to East Texas history with "A River Creeps Through It." A reception followed at the Nacogdoches Convention and Visitors Bureau located in the Old Town Center. Saturday morning began with the Women's History Breakfast followed by multiple sessions including "Keeping Music Alive in East Texas" and "Hearing African American Voices: An Oral History Project." The Fall Meeting met for lunch at Millard's Crossing where Dr. Kyle Wilkison presented "Socialists in the Woodwork, or 'They Are Everywhere'" and the Association presented a variety of awards. Some members concluded the day with a Rosenwald School Site Tour led by Dr. Jeff Roth. Nearly 200 people registered for and attended at least a portion of this year's meeting.

Congratulations to this year's East Texas Historical Association award recipients. The following awards were presented at the Fall Meeting's Saturday Luncheon. The C.K. Chamberlain Award went to Linda Hudson for "Uppity Women Rise Up and Have Breakfast: The East Texas Historical Association's Women's History Breakfast" and L. Patrick Hughes for "Private Trials of a Public Man: Jimmie Allred and the Vicissitudes of Family." Both articles appeared in The East Texas Historical Journal , Volume XLVIII, No.2, 2009. The Otis Lock Endowment Award for the Best Book on East Texas History went to Heather Green Wooten for The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown from Texas A&M University Press and Gene Preuss for To Get a Better School System: One Hundred Years of Education Reform in Texas from Texas A&M University Press. Dennis Bradford received the Otis Lock Endowment Award for Educator of the Year. Otis Lock Endowment Research Grants went to Steven Reich for "The Social World of the East Texas and Southwest Louisiana Lumber Industry" and Carolyn White for "The Texas Capitol: Connecting Scotland and the Gilded Age." Finally, L. Patrick Hughes and Bruce Glasrud became Fellows of the East Texas Historical Association.

Congratulations to the newly appointed East Texas Historical Association officers and board members! The 2010-2011 East Texas Historical Association officers are as follows: Tom Crum, President; Cynthia Beeman, 1 st Vice President; Bruce Glasrud, 2 nd Vice President. The Board of Directors for 2010-2011 includes the following: Cynthia Devlin, Mary Kelley Scheer, Portia Gordon, George Cooper, Mary Lenn Dixon, Charles Grear, Bernadette Pruitt, Joe Atkins, Ted Lawe, Milton Jordan, Cissy Lale, and Archie P. McDonald. Many thanks to last year's officers and board members for their work and support.

Robert Wooster, Regents Professor of History at Texas A&M, Corpus Christi and a member of the East Texas Historical Association, has been awarded the Robert M. Utley Prize in history by the West Texas Historical Association for his latest book The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army in the West, 1783-1900 (University of New Mexico Press, 2009).

Dr. James V. Reese, 75, of Nacogdoches, Texas died Wednesday, March 17, 2010, while recovering from cancer surgery. James was born Dec. 23, 1934 in Itasca, Texas, son of James Ottie and Sally Mauvleen Reese. James, his parents, and sister Sally Sue moved to Pasadena, Texas, in 1943. He attended Pasadena High School, graduating in 1953, then attended Rice University where he completed a B.A. in History in 1957. He married Shirley Joel Martin, of Houston, Texas, on May 31, 1958, and they moved to Austin where James completed a M.A. in History at The University of Texas at Austin in 1961, and a PhD in History in 1964. James and Shirley moved to Lubbock, Texas, in 1962 where James worked as a professor of history at Texas Tech University until 1977. James also served as Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Texas Tech from 1972 - 1976 and Director of the Museum at Texas Tech from 1976 - 1977. James and family moved to Nacogdoches, Texas in 1977 where James served as Dean of Liberal Arts at Stephen F. Austin State University from 1977 - 1985 and Vice-President for Academic Affairs from 1985 - 1992. Afterward, he taught history until his retirement in 2003. James was active in the Texas State Historical Association, East Texas Historical Association [for which he was Past President and a Fellow], National Academic Deans Council, and was appointed to the Sam Houston Sesquicentennial Commission by Governor Ann Richards. An active liberal Democrat for all his adult life, James supported the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, and many similar groups. [taken from The Daily Sentinel , Nacogdoches, Texas, page 2A, Sunday, March 21, 2010]
The Texas Left: The Radical Roots of Lone Star Liberalism from Texas A&M University Press is now available. Edited by David O'Donald Cullen and East Texas Historical Association member Kyle G. Wilkison, The Texas Left includes articles by several East Texas Historical Association members: " 'The Right to Work, to Stave, to Die': The Forgotten Radical Heritage of Texas," by David O'Donald Cullen and Kyle G. Wilkison; " 'A Host of Sturdy Patriots': The Texas Populists" by Gregg Cantrell; "Texas.Unions.Time: Unions in Texas from the Time of the Republic through the Great War, 1838 - 1919" by George Norris Green; "Confronting White Supremacy: The African American Left in Texas, 1874 - 1974" by Bruce A. Glasrud and Gregg Andrews; "A Modern Liberal Tradition in Texas?" by Patrick Cox.
Why Texans fought in the Civil War? By Charles David Grear is now available from Texas A&M University Press.
The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor by Theresa A. Case is now available from Texas A&M University Press.
East Texas Historical Association / West Texas Historical Association Spring Meeting 2010: The East Texas Historical Association and the West Texas Historical Association met in a joint spring meeting at the DFW Marriott at Champion's Circle Hotel in Fort Worth, Texas from February 25 - 27. Both associations held Board of Directors meetings on Thursday afternoon followed by an opening panel discussion titled "Whither Texas History?: The State of Texas History and Its Future." That evening, the East Texas Historical Association hosted a welcome reception. Friday morning began with the Presidential Breakfast followed by a variety of sessions such as "Religious Leaders of Texas," "Texas Rangers: Real, Reel, and Media," and "Texas Speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives." The evening ended with a banquet presided over by Dr. James Smallwood, First Vice-President of the East Texas Historical Association. The program was "A Texas Serenade and Sing-Along" led by "The Distinguished Band of Renown." Saturday morning began with the Women's History Breakfast followed by a variety of sessions such as "Tracing Trails, Drought and Water Laws in the Southwest," "The Rise and Fall of the Tung Oil Industry in East Texas," and "Sports in West Texas." The Presidential Luncheon featured the Presidential Address by West Texas Historical Association President Dr. Tiffany Fink, "West Texas Women." Some members stayed Saturday afternoon and evening to enjoy a tour of the Fort Worth Stockyards, dinner at Risckey's Bar-B-Que, and a rodeo.
In recent weeks, The History Center in Diboll has hosted tours and programs for a number of groups including the Trinity County Historical Commission, The Lufkin Senior Kiwanis Club, the Diboll Garden Club, and 3 kindergarten classes from Lufkin's Garrett Primary. Topics covered included local history, preservation tips, World War II, gardening with native plants, and transportation in East Texas. In addition to speaking to these onsite groups, Center staff made presentations to a variety of group meetings. The director spoke to the Tyler County Heritage Society in Woodville, the Lufkin Evening Lions Club, and the Daughters of the American Revolution, while the archivist spoke to the Friends of the Angelina County Historical Commission about their oral history project.
The History Center in Diboll plans to continue to explore the topics of segregation and integration, particularly in Diboll, with its ongoing Oral History project that focuses on the racial integration of Diboll Independent School District in the 1960's. Center staff and members of the Diboll Historical Society have already begun interviewing community members and will continue meeting with former students, teachers, administrators, school board members, and other members of the community in order to preserve their memories of this important part of Diboll's history.