"'Discovering Texas History' is a historiographical reference book that will be invaluable to teachers, students, and researchers of Texas history. Chapter authors are familiar names in Texas history circles--a 'who's who' of high profile historians. Conceived as a follow-up to the award winning (but increasingly dated) 'A Guide the History of Texas' (1988), 'Discovering Texas History' focuses on the major trends in the study of Texas history since 1990. In part one, topical essays address significant historical themes, from race and gender to the arts and urban history. In part two, chronological essays cover the full span of Texas historiography from the Spanish era to the modern day. In each case, the goal is to analyze and summarize the subjects that have captured the attention of professional historians so that 'Discovering Texas History' will take its place as the standard work on the history of Texas history"--

discusses each period of African-American history in terms of politics, violence, and legal status; labor and economic status; education; and social life. Black Texans includes the history of the buffalo soldiers and the cowboys on Texas cattle drives, along with the achievements of notable African-American individuals in Texas history, from Estevan the explorer through legislator Norris Wright Cuney and boxer Jack Johnson to state senator Barbara Jordan. Barr carries.

The Republican Union League of America played a major role in the Southern Reconstruction that followed the American Civil War. A secret organization introduced into Texas in 1867 to mobilize newly enfranchised black voters, it was the first political body that attempted to secure power by forming a biracial coalition. Originally intended by white Unionists simply to marshal black voters to their support, it evolved into an organization that allowed blacks to pursue their own political goals. It was abandoned by the state’s Republican Party following the 1871 state elections. From the beginning the use of the league by the Republican party proved controversial. While its opponents charged that its white leadership simply manipulated ignorant blacks to achieve power for themselves, ultimately encouraging racial conflict, the League not only educated blacks in their new political rights but also protected them in the exercise of those rights. It gave blacks a voice in supporting the legislative program of Gov. Edmund J. Davis, helping him to push through laws aimed at the maintenance of law and order, securing basic civil rights for blacks, and the creation of public schools. Ultimately, its success and its secrecy provoked hostile attacks from political opponents, leading the party to stop using it. Nonetheless, the Union League created a legacy of black activism that lasted throughout the nineteenth century and pushed Texas toward a remarkably different world from the segregated and racist one that developed after the league disappeared.

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