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2010Book Reviews405 Herbert Gambrell, Claude Albritton, Jerry Bywaters, and Lon Tinkle. Although he modesdy does not do so, Professor Terry might also have included himself as a significant factor that has created the modern academic program. Given the distinguished history of SMU, this reviewer supposes that an academic historian will eventually embrace the researching and writing ofa comprehensive history of die school. Until that occurs, this very readable and informal history will suffice. Austin CollegeLight Townsend Cummins Blacks in East Texas History. Edited by Bruce A. Glasrud and Archie P. McDonald. Foreword by Cary D. Wintz. (College Station: TexasA&M University Press, 2008. Pp. 2008. Notes, appendix, index. ISBN 9781603440417, $29.95 cloth.) A collection of articles published in the East Texas HistoricalJournal between 1976 and 2006, Blacks in East Texas History convincingly demonstrates that the journal has, as its foreword claims, "contributed greatly" to the field of AfricanAmerican history in Texas. The thirteen articles include a retrospective written by the editors on the state of the field and the role of the East Texas HistoricalJournal in that field, and a survey of available primary sources written in 2000 by Alwyn Barr. The articles that follow are heavily driven by primary research and offer interesting perspectives on topics ranging from the childhood of slaves to postcivil rights-era battles to restore rural Rosenwald Schools in East Texas, with the goal of creating usable public spaces while respecting the legacy of segregation embodied in their walls. Because they span thirty years of historiography, the collection itself does not offer an entirely convincing picture of the current state of African-American history in Texas, but the retrospective does offer some interesting snapshots. James Smallwood's article on blackTexans during Reconstruction, a snapshot ofthe issues he would explore in 1981's Time ofHope, Time ofDespair, and Bruce Glasrud's brief but chilling piece on white attitudes towards African Americans from 1900-1910 offer careful portraits of the limits on black freedom that white Texans maintained well after emancipation. Other articles offer new perspectives on often-neglected topics, such as Karen Kossie-Chernyshev's exploration of the social uplift agenda of the Church of God in Christ during its first decades in Texas during the early twentieth century. Gail K Beil, William H. Wilson, and Stephanie Decker offer moving personal portraits ofWiley College English professor, playwright, and poet Melvin Toison, mid-century residents of the Hamilton Park community in Dallas, andJuanita Craft of the Dallas NAACP, respectively. Decker's portrait of Craft and her long career working with youth in the Dallas area, during which she served as a driving force behind demands for equal rights, does something that not all of the pieces in the collection do effectively: It grounds her portrait of Craft against a clear understanding of the unique features of the civil rights struggle in Dallas and how Craft's strategy specifically upset the "Dallas Way" of gradualism and tokenism. Along with Decker's article, James Marten's "Slaves and Rebels: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1861-65," which offers a picture of how Texas slaves during 4?6Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJanuary the Civil War were affected by being far from the battle lines and thus from the emancipation and enforcement power of the Union Army, does what few of the other articles do and invites comparison to broader issues ofAfrican American history . Books like Neil Foley's The White Scourge (1998) and Michael Phillips's White Metropolis (2006) have established the idea that Texas is a complicated space for discussing issues ofrace, and the question ofwhere Texas, even East Texas, fits into broader, regional historiographies in America remains a tricky one, not served by this volume's limited perspective. Ultimately, the collection of articles in Blacks in East Texas History serves its primary purpose, and offers an appealing introduction to the East Texas HistoricalJournal, as well as an engaging, ifsomewhat unsystematic survey of Black history in Texas. However, while die anthology deserves a place on library shelves, and the introductory essays will prove useful to beginning scholars , the essays included in the volume are not likely to command the attention of academics in the field. University ofTexas at AustinJennifer Eckel TLĀ· Lipan...

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