Texana

Texans know March 2 as Texas Independence Day. At a small shack at a place called Washington-on-the-Brazos in 1836, Texas declared its independence from Mexico. The Battle of San Jacinto, fought and won by the Texans on April 21, 1836,…
Read more

What moment in Texas history would you have liked to have witnessed—to have been a fly on the wall—and why? Dr. Mary L. Scheer, a Lamar University history professor, thought it made an interesting question. She reached out to fellow…
Read more

He might not have had a starring role in politics or the movies, but it’s fair to say that Jack Valenti was a key member of the cast. Valenti was a Houstonian. He grew up on Alamo Street, near downtown….
Read more

On February 8, 1836—181 years ago yesterday—Davy Crockett and his men arrived at the Alamo. The rest, of course, is history, and has been told on the silver screen more than once. The first film about the Alamo story came…
Read more

Think of the fictional private investigator/lawyer Perry Mason, and chances are you know he’s a Los Angeles-based character created by the writer and novelist Erle Stanley Gardner. Gardner (1889-1970) was not a Texan. He was born in Massachusetts and eventually…
Read more

Lacking actual photographs and video taken at the time on scene, it can be difficult to envision what the battles at the Alamo and San Jacinto looked like. In more recent times, movies about the battles—most recently, The Alamo (Touchstone…
Read more

As I wrote previously, the Battle of Gonzales was a small but key skirmish fought in 1835. It marked the beginning of the Texas Revolution, in which Texas won its independence from Mexico and became a republic. Yet for the…
Read more

NOTE: Richard Morehead was a long-time reporter and columnist for the Dallas Morning News. In 1982, Eakin Press published a collection of his columns, Richard Morehead’s Texas. One of his columns was about my late grandfather, George Slaughter Sr., and…
Read more

Chances are that you’ve seen bumper stickers, coffee mugs, replica flags, or framed wall images with a Texas lone star, a cannon, and the slogan, “Come and Take It.” The slogan reflects a proud, Don’t-Mess-With-Texas attitude today. It reflected the…
Read more

This week Americans remember the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It’s a good time to remember the story of a Texan who was cited for his bravery in fighting back on that infamous day. His name…
Read more