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

Historians seem obsessed with collective memory. Showing the influence of the latest work on the subject while operating within the traditional format of a state study, the eleven contributors to Lone Star Pasts treat memory as, first, socially constructed and, second, as contested. A few of the chapters explore conflicts about memory, but the editors reinforce the phenomenon by including discussions of alternative memories developed within the African-American and Tejano communities. All of the essays assume that groups construct memories more from their needs in the present than based on the realities of the past—a third generally accepted characteristic of memory.

In the volume’s concluding essay, Randolph B. Campbell argues that three events dominate the collective memory of Texans: the Alamo and the Texas Revolution, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the Cattle Kingdom. The editors, surprisingly, chose not to include any essays based on the mythology of the Texas cowboy, but both the Texas Revolution and the Civil War receive substantial attention. Since some selections deal with memories of national events, they also speak to other studies of memory. For example, Turner’s discussion of June-teenth ceremonies that began in Texas but spread to other states includes interesting observations about the use of Abraham Lincoln’s image in them. Kelly McMichael’s discussion of the United Daughters of the Confederacy shows the important work of the Texas Daughters in erecting Confederate monuments but subtly questions the scholarly consensus that women controlled the white South’s celebration of the Civil War.

Texas remains the focus of most of the essays. Laura Lyons McLemore summarizes the work of early Texas historians, and Andrés Tijerina analyzes the construction of Tejano memory. James E. Crisp challenges the accuracy of various mythic treatments of the Alamo, emphasizing the importance of historians confronting distortions in public presentations of memory; Don Graham takes a different stance, criticizing the emphasis on historical accuracy in the film The Alamo. Other essays look at the memory of more recent events. Yvonne Davis Frear explores how African Americans in Texas remember the Civil Rights Movement, concluding that those involved in the movement remember it as a success but that later generations consider it either a failure or passé. Ricky Floyd Dobbs examines the fading memory of President Lyndon B. Johnson, arguing that Texas no longer celebrates Johnson in part because of his association with negative stereotypes of the state but mainly because of its currently conservative political climate.

The volume’s most important contribution to understanding Texas, and for expanding historians’ conception of memory, comes in essays by Walter L. Buenger and Gregg Cantrell. Buenger’s essay about the four strains of memory employed by the Ku Klux Klan and Cantrell’s account of the reburial of Stephen F. Austin, building on earlier work by Buenger, make a convincing case for how, during the early twentieth century, Texans used historical memory to transform the state’s sense of itself from being southem to being western and American.

Lone Star Pasts approaches the study of historical memory just as historians should. Its essays challenge collective memories but also seek to illustrate their diversity, analyze their construction, and, in the process, show how they shape society. The result is an enlightening book that will interest those fascinated by Texas and those who study historical memory.