Southwestern Collection

New TSHA President Merline Pitre with past President Jesús F. de la Teja.

New President

Dr. Merline Pitre will serve as president of the Texas State Historical Association for 2011–12. She received her Ph.D. from Temple University and is a professor of history and the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Behavioral Sciences at Texas Southern University. She has written numerous articles for scholarly publications. Two of her most widely noted works are Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares: The Black Leadership of Texas, 1868–1900 and In Struggle against Jim Crow: Lulu B. White and the NAACP, 1900 to 1957. She was named a Fellow of the Association in 2009. Her book Black Women in Texas History, co-edited with Bruce Glasrud, won the 2008 Liz Carpenter Award for the best book in Texas women’s history. She has been the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, Humanities Texas, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Pitre is a member of the Speakers Bureau for the Texas Council for the Humanities and serves on the nominating board of the Organization of American Historians.

Second Vice President

Dr. Gregg Cantrell of Texas Christian University, who will likely need little introduction to many of our members, was appointed Second Vice President of the TSHA at the 2011 Annual Meeting. Cantrell grew up in Abilene and earned his Ph.D. in History from Texas A&M University in 1988. He taught at Sam Houston State University, Hardin-Simmons University, and the University of North Texas before joining the history department faculty at TCU in August of 2003, where he holds the Erma and Ralph Lowe Chair in Texas History. He is the author or editor of several books, including Stephen F. Austin, Empresario of Texas; The History of Texas (coauthored with Arnoldo De Léon and Robert A. Calvert); and Lone Star Pasts: Memory and History in Texas (co-edited with Elizabeth Hayes Turner). His books have won the TSHA’s Kate Brooks Bates and Coral Horton Tullis awards, and three times he has received the H. Bailey Carroll Award for the best article in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. Cantrell serves on the TCU Press Editorial Advisory Board and is editor of the TCU Press’s Texas Biography Series. He is a Fellow of the TSHA and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.

New Board Members

The TSHA welcomed three new board members at the Annual Meeting: David A. Gravelle, Albert “Boo” Hausser, and Richard B. McCaslin.

David A. Gravelle of Dallas is currently the Vice Chairman of the Texas Historical Commission. A Commission member since 2001, he serves as Chair of the Organizational Excellence/Strategy Committee, the Marketing Communications Committee, and leads the organization’s legislative effort. A native Texan, David is the owner of Gravelle Branding. Marketing, a branding consultancy. He was the founding partner of Richards/Gravelle, advertising and public relations agency and from 1975 to1986 he was Director of Marketing for MCorp, a Texas-based bank holding company. Gravelle is U.S. Army veteran with more than thirty military parachute jumps. He has climbed Mounts Rainier and Shuksan in Washington State, made a sunrise ascent of Mt. Fuji, and completed an Outward Bound survival course. He and his wife Linda have two grown children.

Albert Ford “Boo” Hausser, a native San Antonian, is a fifth generation rancher in Frio and Zavala Counties. Hausser currently serves on the boards of Friends of the Governor’s Mansion and Friends of the Texas Historical Commission and advisory boards of Scenic Texas, the Witte Museum, the Port Aransas Museum, and Los Compadres de San Antonio National Historical Park. He previously served as commissioner of the Texas Historical Commission, president of the Friends of the Governor’s Mansion, and chairman of Los Compadres de San Antonio National Historical Park. Hausser received his bachelor’s degree in history from Southwestern University in Georgetown. He received the George Christian Volunteer of the Year Award for outstanding volunteer service to historic preservation in...