Lone Star Pasts: Memory and History in Texas (review)

Why does the concern for a past differ from place to place? In Lone Star Pasts, a dozen academic historians reflect upon and explore the intersection of memory and history for a state that arguably has done more to enshrine, revere, and some might say exaggerate its past than most others in the nation.

Following the introduction by the editors who contextualize the themes of memory and history for the volume, authors—including the editors—examine, dissect, and interpret early shapers of memory: the memorializations of Stephen F. Austin, Civil War chronicles, the KKK, Juneteenth, Tejano stories, African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement, LBJ, the Alamo, and history and collective memory. A central assertion established early by the editors argues that collective memory shapes a past through the power relations of particular groups, and in Texas, like much of the American South, this often results in distortion when one dominant view suppresses other views of a past. The shapers of the Texas past have largely been Anglo Americans who have tended to valorize their past at the expense of African-American and Mexican-American Texans.

This theme, touched upon by many of the contributors to this work, is especially revealing in the chapters about the Juneteenth celebration among black Texans and the construction of Tejano memory. Elizabeth Hayes Turner reveals that June 19th, 1865, Emancipation Day for black slaves in Texas, was not simply a date on the calendar, a day of remembrance; rather it created public access for black Texans, who began to use parks and then private spaces to gather annually, thereby anchoring themselves to sites without monuments in a world where no black statues graced courthouse lawns. Today, Juneteenth celebrations are popular in communities throughout the state and bring attention to cultural arts events as much as they do to the historic past. Turner’s essay reminds us how time must inevitably be linked to place, and for disenfranchised groups, this can be equally as powerful as a day to recollect. Andrés Tijerina relates how Texas Mexicans—Tejanos—whose ancestry precedes Anglos in the state have with few exceptions also been denied recognition through public monuments. That neglect, however, is being remedied by the plans to construct a life-sized Tejano Monument on the capitol grounds in Austin. The monument will likely include statues of a Spanish explorer, a mounted vaquero herding longhorn cattle, a nineteenth-century Tejano family, and other figures all positioned on a platform in the shape of South Texas, the cultural and historical homeland of Tejanos.

Randolph Campbell’s provocative, concluding essay asserts that there is no Texan collective memory; rather there are Texas collective memories, but these are never the same as narrative histories that are crafted by professionals nor should they be considered the same. This brings Lone Star Pasts full circle, returning the reader to Pierre Nora’s premise from his seven-volume work Les Lieux de mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–1993) referenced by many of the contributors, to wit, history and memory do not complement each other; rather they are in basic conflict.