An understanding of the past provides valuable insight and perspective into society's current affairs, and in many cases, society's questions of the past are influenced by the events of the present. To answer some of these questions, TSHA presents a special digital issue of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly.

Inside An Honest Past, you will find twenty articles from previous issues of the Quarterly documenting several notable events and people from Texas history, with a special focus on the minority communities of Texas. Learn more about the struggle for civil rights, the events that precipitated the civil rights movement in the state, and the role of violence in the history of ethnic and racial groups.

Table of Contents

1. “Why Urbano and María Trinidad Can't Get Married: Social Relations in Late Colonial San Antonio”

   Jesús F. de la Teja

   Originally published in Vol. 112, No. 2 (October 2008), pp. 121-146

2. “Community Bonds in the Bayou City: Free Blacks and Local Reputation in Early Houston”

   John Garrison Marks

   Originally published in Vol. 117, No. 3 (January 2014), pp. 266-282

3. “The Origins of the African-Born Population of Antebellum Texas: A Research Note”

   Sean M. Kelley and Henry B. Lovejoy

   Originally published in Vol. 120, No. 2 (October 2016), pp. 216-232

4. “Burdens of Landholding in a Freed Slave Settlement: The Case of Brazos County's “Hall's Town”

   Dale Baum

   Originally published in Vol. 113, No. 2 (October 2009), pp. 184-204

5. “Legislated Love in the Lone Star State: Texas and Miscegenation”

   Charles F. Robinson II

   Originally published in Vol. 108, No. 1 (July 2004), pp. 65-87

6. “The Chinese in Texas”

   Edward J. M. Rhoads

   Originally published in Vol. 81, No. 1 (July 1977), pp. 1-36

7. “Tied and Tethered (“Geknippt und Gebinden”): Jews in Early Fort Worth”

   Hollace Ava Weiner

   Originally published in Vol. 107, No. 3 (January 2004), pp. 388-413

8. ““For Our Own Best Interests”: Nineteenth-Century Laredo Tejanos, Military Service, and the Development of American Nationalism”

   Alexander Mendoza

   Originally published in Vol. 115, No. 2 (October 2011), pp. 125-152

9. “Por la Raza, Para la Raza: Jovita Idar and Progressive-Era Mexicana Maternalism along the Texas–Mexico Border”

   Elizabeth Garner Masarik

   Originally published in Vol. 122, No. 3 (January 2019), pp. 278-299

10. “The “Waco Horror”: The Lynching of Jesse Washington”

    James M. SoRelle

    Originally published in Vol. 86, No. 4 (April 1983), pp. 517-536

11. “The Cabiness Family Lynching: Race, War, and Memory in Walker County, Texas”

    Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, Charles Ford, Jami Horne, and Briana Weaver

    Originally published in Vol. 122, No. 1 (July 2018), pp. 1-30

12. “The Handwriting on the Wall: The Klan, Language Issues, and Prohibition in the German Settlements of Eastern Texas”

    Walter D. Kamphoefner

    Originally published in Vol. 112, No. 1 (July 2008), pp. 52-66

13. “Refuting History Fables: Collective Memories, Mexican Texans, and Texas History”

    Omar Valerio-Jiménez

    Originally published in Vol. 123, No. 4 (April 2020), pp. 390-418

14. “The Rise of the NAACP in Texas”

    Michael L. Gillette

    Originally published in Vol. 81, No. 4 (April 1978), pp. 393-416

15. “Texas and the Master Civil Rights Narrative: A Case Study of Black Females in Houston”

    Merline Pitre

    Originally published in Vol. 116, No. 2 (October 2012), pp. 124-137

16. “The Wiley-Bishop Student Movement: A Case Study in the 1960 Civil Rights Sit-Ins”

    Donald Seals Jr.

    Originally published in Vol. 106, No. 3 (January 2003), pp. 418-440

17. ““The Best Bargain . . . Ever Received”: The 1968 Commission on Civil Rights Hearing in San Antonio, Texas”

    Ignacio M. García

    Originally published in Vol. 122, No. 3 (January 2019), pp. 246-276

18. “Streetscape Environmentalism: Floods, Social Justice, and Political Power in San Antonio, 1921–1974”

    Char Miller

    Originally published in Vol. 118, No. 2 (October 2014), pp. 158-177

19. ““The Most Turbulent and Most Traumatic Years in Recent Mexican-American History”: Police Violence and the Civil Rights Struggle in 1970s Texas”

    Brent M. S. Campney

    Originally published in Vol. 122, No. 1 (July 2018), pp. 33-57

20. “The Rediscovery of the Tiguas: Federal Recognition and Indianness in the Twentieth Century”

    Jeffrey M. Schulze

    Originally published in Vol. 105, No. 1 (July 2001), pp. 14-39