Author: Holly Beachley Brear Publisher: Univ of TX + ORM ISBN: 0292763239 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 307
Book Description
This study explores the multiple histories and mythologies of San Antonio’s famous Spanish mission and Texas Revolution battle site. The Alamo Mission still evokes tremendous feeling among many Americans, and especially among Texans. For Anglo Texans, it is the “Cradle of Texas Liberty” and a symbol of Western expansion. But Hispanic Texans increasingly view the Alamo as a stolen symbol, its origin as a Spanish mission forgotten, its famous defeat used to rob Hispanics of their place in Texas history. In this study, Holly Beachley Brear explores what the Alamo means to the numerous groups that lay claim to its heritage. Brear shows how—and why—Alamo myths often diverge from the historical facts. She decodes the agendas of various groups, including the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (who maintain the site), the Order of the Alamo, the Texas Cavaliers, and LULAC. She also probes attempts by individuals and groups to rewrite the Alamo myth to include more positive roles for themselves. With new perspectives on all the sacred icons of the Alamo and the Fiesta that celebrates (one version of) its history each year, Inherit the Alamo challenges stereotypes and offers a new understanding of the Alamo’s ongoing role in shaping Texas and American history and mythology.
Author: Holly Beachley Brear Publisher: University of Texas Press ISBN: 029279181X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 307
Book Description
This study explores the multiple histories and mythologies of San Antonio’s famous Spanish mission and Texas Revolution battle site. The Alamo Mission still evokes tremendous feeling among many Americans, and especially among Texans. For Anglo Texans, it is the “Cradle of Texas Liberty” and a symbol of Western expansion. But Hispanic Texans increasingly view the Alamo as a stolen symbol, its origin as a Spanish mission forgotten, its famous defeat used to rob Hispanics of their place in Texas history. In this study, Holly Beachley Brear explores what the Alamo means to the numerous groups that lay claim to its heritage. Brear shows how—and why—Alamo myths often diverge from the historical facts. She decodes the agendas of various groups, including the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (who maintain the site), the Order of the Alamo, the Texas Cavaliers, and LULAC. She also probes attempts by individuals and groups to rewrite the Alamo myth to include more positive roles for themselves. With new perspectives on all the sacred icons of the Alamo and the Fiesta that celebrates (one version of) its history each year, Inherit the Alamo challenges stereotypes and offers a new understanding of the Alamo’s ongoing role in shaping Texas and American history and mythology.
Author: Phillip Thomas Tucker Publisher: Casemate ISBN: 1935149520 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 433
Book Description
The award-winning historian provides a provocative new analysis of the Battle of the Alamo—including new information on the fate of Davy Crockett. Contrary to legend, we now know that the defenders of the Alamo during the Texan Revolution died in a merciless predawn attack by Mexican soldiers. With extensive research into recently discovered Mexican accounts, as well as forensic evidence, historian Phillip Tucker sheds new light on the famous battle, contending that the traditional myth is even more off-base than we thought. In a startling revelation, Tucker uncovers that the primary fights took place on the plain outside the fort. While a number of the Alamo’s defenders hung on inside, most died while attempting to escape. Capt. Dickinson, with cannon atop the chapel, fired repeatedly into the throng of enemy cavalry until he was finally cut down. The controversy surrounding Davy Crockett still remains, though the recently authenticated diary of the Mexican Col. José Enrique de la Peña offers evidence that he surrendered. Notoriously, Mexican Pres. Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna burned the bodies of the Texans who had dared stand against him. As this book proves in thorough detail, the funeral pyres were well outside the fort—that is, where the two separate groups of escapees fell on the plain, rather than in the Alamo itself.
Author: Bryan Burrough Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1984880101 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 416
Book Description
A New York Times bestseller! “Lively and absorbing. . ." — The New York Times Book Review "Engrossing." —Wall Street Journal “Entertaining and well-researched . . . ” —Houston Chronicle Three noted Texan writers combine forces to tell the real story of the Alamo, dispelling the myths, exploring why they had their day for so long, and explaining why the ugly fight about its meaning is now coming to a head. Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas was a nation before it was a state, it's no surprise that its myths bite deep. There's no piece of history more important to Texans than the Battle of the Alamo, when Davy Crockett and a band of rebels went down in a blaze of glory fighting for independence from Mexico, losing the battle but setting Texas up to win the war. However, that version of events, as Forget the Alamo definitively shows, owes more to fantasy than reality. Just as the site of the Alamo was left in ruins for decades, its story was forgotten and twisted over time, with the contributions of Tejanos--Texans of Mexican origin, who fought alongside the Anglo rebels--scrubbed from the record, and the origin of the conflict over Mexico's push to abolish slavery papered over. Forget the Alamo provocatively explains the true story of the battle against the backdrop of Texas's struggle for independence, then shows how the sausage of myth got made in the Jim Crow South of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As uncomfortable as it may be to hear for some, celebrating the Alamo has long had an echo of celebrating whiteness. In the past forty-some years, waves of revisionists have come at this topic, and at times have made real progress toward a more nuanced and inclusive story that doesn't alienate anyone. But we are not living in one of those times; the fight over the Alamo's meaning has become more pitched than ever in the past few years, even violent, as Texas's future begins to look more and more different from its past. It's the perfect time for a wise and generous-spirited book that shines the bright light of the truth into a place that's gotten awfully dark.
Author: Phillip Thomas Tucker Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476613281 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 277
Book Description
For the first time, the true story of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" is told in full, revealing a host of new insights and perspectives on one of America's most popular stories. For generations, the Yellow Rose of Texas has been one of America's most popular western myths, growing larger over time and little resembling the truth of what happened on April 21, 1836, at the battle of San Jacinto, where a new Texas Republic won its independence. The woman who has been popularly connected to the story was an ordinary but also quite remarkable free black woman from the North, Emily D. West. This work reconstructs her experience, places it in full context and explores the evolution of a most fanciful myth.
Author: John Myers Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 9780803257795 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
"The majority of the stories of the Alamo fight have been partly legendary, partly hearsay and at best fragmentary. It has been left to John Myers Myers to present an exhaustively researched book which reveals the chronicle of the siege of the Alamo in an entirely different light. . . . Myers' story will stand as the best that has yet been written on the Alamo. . . . It's a classic."-Boston Post "Here is a historian with the vitality and drive to match his subject. A reporter of the first rank, he can clothe the dry bones of history with the living stuff of which today's news is made."-Chicago Tribune John Myers Myers authored sixteen books, including Doc Holliday and Tombstone's Early Years, also available as Bison Books.
Author: Teresa Bergman Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1315428725 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 254
Book Description
Examining interpretive materials, exhibits, and films at major US historic sites where controversy has erupted over historical interpretation, Exhibiting Patriotism shows how historical narratives change over time, shaped by the dynamic relationship between these museums, their visitors, and the public.
Author: Light Townsend Cummins Publisher: University of North Texas Press ISBN: 1574416480 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
Texan Identities rests on the assumption that Texas has distinctive identities that define “what it means to be Texan,” and that these identities flow from myth and memory. Each contributor to this volume provides in some fashion an answer to the following questions: What does it mean to be Texan? What constitutes a Texas identity and how may such change over time? What myths, memories, and fallacies contribute to making a Texas identity, and how have these changed for Texas? Are all the myths and memories that define Texas identity true or are some of them fallacious? Is there more than one Texas identity? Many Texans do believe the story of their state’s development manifesting singular, unique attributes, which are prone to expression as stereotypical, iconic representations of what it means to be Texan. Each of the essays in this volume addresses particular events, places, and people in Texas history and how they are related to Texas identity, myth, and memory. The discussion begins with the idealized narrative and icons revolving around the Texas Revolution, most especially the Alamo. The Texas Rangers in myth and memory are also explored. Other essays expand on traditional and increasingly outdated interpretations of the Anglo-American myth of Texas by considering little known roles played by women, racial minorities, and specific stereotypes such as the cattleman.
Author: Cara A. Kinnally Publisher: Rutgers University Press ISBN: 1684481228 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 245
Book Description
Forgotten Futures, Colonized Pasts traces the existence of forgotten histories of inter-American alliance-making, transnational community formation, and intercultural collaboration between Mexican and Anglo American elites. Using close readings of literary texts, including novels, diaries, letters, newspapers, political essays, and travel narratives produced by nineteenth-century writers throughout Greater Mexico, Kinnally brings to light how elite Mexicans and Mexican Americans defined themselves and their relationship with Spain, Mexico, the United States, and Anglo America in the nineteenth century.
Author: Holly Beachley Brear
Author: Holly Beachley Brear
Author: Phillip Thomas Tucker
Author: Robert Noyola
Author: Bryan Burrough
Author: Phillip Thomas Tucker
Author: John Myers
Author: Teresa Bergman
Author: Light Townsend Cummins
Author: Cara A. Kinnally