Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives

Abstract

Although Texas history textbooks influence the selection of textbooks in numerous states, Texas still has a ways to go to catch up in its own histories, including in its study of women in the state. Thus, three women historians approached the University of Georgia Press to add Texas to its Southern Women series. The resulting somewhat balanced book covers numerous important subjects. Organized chronologically, the 520-page tome is organized into three periods: 1660–1880, 1880–1925, and 1920–2000. Neither this periodization nor the introductory sections adequately situate the earliest Indian women, the “Spanish” era (1536–1821) or the “Mexican” era in Texas (1821–1836), which is absent. Moreover, the editors utilized a few irritating word choices, such as calling Indians “groups” (p. 498) rather than nations or tribes; writing of “the final defeat of Indians” (p. 3); and identifying “the” civil rights movement (p. 498). Based on a conference, the chosen topics represent mostly new research themes both significant and interesting. Topics focus on individual women but a few deal with legislation, women in specific cities, and nonfeminist ranch women and women rodeo performers. While not intended to present a comprehensive portrait, the book offers a good sketch of Texas women. Texas Women features numerous excellent chapters, some with national significance. The woman suffragist Mariana Thompson Folsom and Casey Hayden of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee are addressed; Barbara Jordan's feminist political ambition is revealed (though not her lesbian identity); the Women's Army Corps's Oveta Culp Hobby is included, as is the African American Houstonian astronaut Mae C. Jemison.