 First class, me and the chair of Cullenburg will now introduce our speaker. Local chair. Good morning. Glad y'all are here. This morning, I have a privilege of introducing our speaker. His pursuit of understanding cultures and history began as a young man growing up in New Bromples. At graduate of New Bromples High School, he completed both his bachelor's and his master's at Texas State University. It was after school. Was it after school? After school. Before earning his Ph.D. at Tech. He's taught at Texas Tech University and Texas Southern University. He's currently associate professor of history at the University of Houston downtown. Where he specialized in the history of Texas public schools. Teaching the history of US, Texas, the American West, and Mexican Americans. He authored, co-authored, and contributed to several books and articles including a new textbook on Texas government. The Texas Experiment, Politics, Power, and Social Transformation. Edited by Wayne B. Forrest of CQ Press. He wrote the book, A Kenyanos Journey. Written with US Secretary, former US Secretary of Education and Texas Tech President Laurel F. Cabasso's two year. And his book, To Get a Better School System, 100 Years of School Reform in Texas. Which is a Texas A&M University system. Press from 2009. He won the East Texas Historical Association 2010 Otis Lock. Book Award. And that same book was a Texas Institute of Letters Scholarly Book Award finalist. He's a fellow and past president of the East Texas Historical Association. Past president of the H&M Council. And serves on public and professional organizations including the Texas State Historical Association. A historic preservation non-profit, C68. And the boards of the Houston League of Women Voters and Houston Media Source. He is the creator and co-host of Talking Texas History Podcast. I have the distinct honor and pleasure of meeting him through that podcast. A year or so ago when we talked about German Christmas traditions. Today we'll explore his own Texas history. Not the stuff of textbooks necessarily. But the momentous acts of presidents and kings and leaders. But the ordinary people. Some Texas history. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure that I welcome one of our own Dr. G. B. Price. Welcome. Thank you. I'm going to do a couple of things. I'll move this over here so I can manipulate the power point. Excuse me. I'm going to set my timer. Because I am a university professor. And I was told I've got 25 minutes for my part. And I could easily fill out much more time. I'm going to be respectful over our time here. I'm talking about none of the textbooks. So in our environment that we live in today, there is a lot of concern. What are students learning? And I'm very pleased that you're giving away seven scholarships. Education has always been part of the brothel history. And it's here that I was first interested by education, interested by history. I had teachers like Mrs. Goff and her colleagues in Yvon Vos Middle School where I took Texas history. And I often think back when I'm traveling around. And I used to have a bucket list. And I'm very pleased to say although I'm a little concerned that I've already accomplished most of the things on my bucket list, maybe it wasn't very deep. Or maybe, I don't want to say I'm done and I'm ready to go. But I do want to say that a lot of it was set here in Mrs. Christensen's classroom. Doing social studies. And Baron Shlomoys' Texas history class. So I want to thank my interest in Texas history on people in New Bromple. Some of my classmates are here. Howard Feelon and others. Shlomo, the first woman I was infatuated with, my first crush is here. Charlie Nolte. I said it was like four or five. What I like about history, this is a little thing I do for my class. I'm demonstrating some of the things I teach in class. To get students to be interested in history like I am. I love history, but is there a place for me? I often asked myself this when I was sitting in class. Where am I in history? Not a lot of history in those days. Back in the 60s, 70s and 80s had people that looked like me. And that's changed a lot now. And so when I was at university, I spent a lot of time researching and finding out and learning more. You know, I grew up in New Bromple, so a lot of the history that I knew was German American history. And it surprised me that not a lot of people knew that either. Today, I try to get people to see their place in history and talk about that. And so that is where I get the title of my presentation. It's not in the textbooks, a history of our past and how we rethink that past. I do want to say about lectures. A lot of times, especially at university, professors think their lectures are great. This is a painting from the late 14th century, so the 1300s. This is Henry of Germany lecturing to students in Belogna. And I just want to let you know they were not all enraptured by what he was saying. I told him this guy was checking his cell phone, I guess. So I hope I'm going to do a little bit out of Henry. One of my interests of late, and this is, I guess, what my wife calls my midlife crisis interest, is on the history of guns. And part of that was illustrating. I do a lot of Western history. And so there's the guns that won the West. When we talk about American industrial history, we don't often talk about this, but anybody remember Eli Whitney? What do we know him for? Cotton Gin. The Cotton Gin. You know what his bread and butter crap was? It was a gunman factory. The American industry, American capitalism was largely founded on the need for reproducible arms. And so I wanted to show you in 2021, our governor signed legislation that made a certain gun, the handgun of Texas. And this is a picture of it right here. And I put it next to other guns. I mean, we've got our sheriff here in town who, you know, this is a similar to a Glock. Very good. Nineteen-ish size gun or revolver. So that's, you know, look at the size of this pistol. That's nine inches across the top. This thing weighed five pounds. Your typical Glock unloaded weighs about half a pound. So I always find this interesting that this is the state gun of Texas. Because in reality, if we look at the facts of history, it was a horrible gun. It blew up a lot. They didn't know how to load it. And so the cylinder often erupted and it was rendered unusable. This thing here to load wasn't secured and it would go flapping around. It didn't shoot more than once. So it was not a good gun. It was later replaced by this one, which during the Civil War, the 1851 Colt Navy. Sam Colt made the other one too. But we like it because it has a tie to Texas, right? It's the Walker Colt, Texas Ranger Captain, held with that so that was Texas connection. So it's interesting about what we think about our past and how politicians and lawmakers think about our past. And what we think about history. So some ideas about history. Of course this is the famous one by Henry Ford, right? History is more or less bunk. And there's a background to that. But a lot of people remember that, and actually the newspaper reported he says that Ford was granting. And just talking about a lot of things. But this is what we remember. Edward Getten, who wrote The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, said history is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. And if we look at history, that's a lot of what we teach about. This is the historian, the Greek historian, Cicero, although he probably pronounced it Kikero. They didn't have the C under Tupor, I guess, but they didn't have that way of saying the C in those days. I don't even know if they had a C. History is a witness that testifies the passing of time. It eliminates reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity. I love that definition. I think that's a great definition that was written almost 3,000 years ago. And I remind students of this all the time. I think it says much about history. But I'm going to jump forward a little bit. To the 1890s, Frederick Jackson Turner was often whom we call, historians call, the father of modern American Western history. And what Jackson Turner said, each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time. History is about us. It is about you and me and the time we live in today. History is about respect. Washington D.C. If you go across the street from Ford's Theater where Abraham Lincoln was shot as the Peterson House, this is part of the historic Ford's Theater National site. And there is, when you are leaving, this massive tower of books. They're all on Abraham Lincoln. Do we need another book on Lincoln? My goodness. I remember when I was in graduate school, my professor said, you know, there's 6,000 books on the Civil War. Do we need another? And in those days, there was a new book that had just come out called Appomattox Day 1. It was a massive tower. 400, 500, 800 pages. It was followed a few years later by Appomattox Day 2. So I guess we do need more. So what is history? History is perception. Academic history is not just the chronicle of things that happened. It's certainly important, and that's what we build on, but it is about perception. And how about Baron Shlomoice? This was a photo that Baron Shlomoice would show us in some great history class. And I later on found out that President Johnson, when he grew up as a small child, his mother had this in their public parliament. And the question is, who writes history? History is written by the winners. How do we decide what's historical? What's important? And how do current events affect how we view history today? Can history change? Does true history exist? Let's talk a little bit about this. I looked up the history of this organization before I came. In essence, it's part heritage organization. It's about the heritage of the people of the Republic of Texas. And I found very interesting. A member of the DRT had to be a linear descendant of a man or woman who rendered loyal service for Texas prior to the conservation of the annexation agreement of Texas, which occurred on the 19th of February, 1846. A friend of mine, a colleague of mine, and I wrote a history of this. This day, President of Texas, Anson Jones, lowered the Long Star flag and said the Republic of Texas is no more. And so the question we asked is, when exactly was the Republic of Texas no more? Because there's a lot of controversy over when the date was. We can talk about that later, but that's the next lecture I present. When we think historically, I was always told about the territorial questions, right, the who, what, when, why, where, and how. And these are very important, and we need to know these. But they're about the events, right, the things that happen at the center. A person does something, that action, and that's what we ask those questions about. As a professional historian, I'm concerned with other things. I'm concerned with what somebody has called the five C's. Change, change over time, or no change. Causation, context, and then two things, complexity and contingency. Complexity means not everybody had the same idea. Not everybody agreed. DRT says loyal service. Well, that's not as easy to figure as we think it is, because we talk often about a peace and a war party, but those were very fluid terms. Many people who served them, or Stephen F. Austin, for example, did not start off supporting them. And likewise, the other way around, contingency. Things have to happen in order. We talk about the butterfly effect, right. That a thousand millions of butterflies flapping their little wings in South America cause this weather surge that we're seeing in the California coast right now. Maybe not, but certainly a lot of things have to happen before we all came here today. And so our being here today, our being together, are having this wonderful little rush, which was very good by the way. I compliment you guys on that. That was a very good meal. A lot of things had to come together in order for this to happen. And so these are the things that historians, professional and academic historians look at. One of my bucket list things was to go to Boston and see some of the early places of the American Revolution. And there in the, I think it's the Greater East Cemetery, not far from Boston Commons, just a few blocks from Boston Commons, you'll find this grave. This is a mass grave. There's four or five people buried here. And these were people, the first victims, the first people who gave their lives in the Boston Massacre. What we say began the American Revolution. One of the names on here is a man named Crispus Addix. Anybody remember Crispus Addix? What did he do, sir? He was the African-American, I believe, who was killed at the Boston Massacre? First casualty of the American Revolution, exactly. So just a few blocks from here where the Boston Massacre occurred, Crispus Addix and these other people were killed. And so they're buried there. And so we, if we're teaching African-American history, we often say the first person who died of the American Revolution was a black man. In Texas history, there is a correlation. This is a memorial. And by memorial, I'm not sure where they get the name from. It's not how I would use the term memorial, but we look at the land office records and they're available on ancestry.com. The Texas Memorials and Petitions. And these were recorded by people who had served during the Texas Revolution. And we're living here during the Republic here. This is a man named Samuel McCullough. Samuel McCullough has the distinction of being the first casualty he was wounded in the Battle of Goliath, one of the first actual battles in the Texas Revolution. And Samuel McCullough also, like Crispus Addix, had a white father and a black mother. And so he is our Crispus Addix. And this is him recounting of his service in the Texas Revolution. And he's not the only one. There are others. And so this led, leads people like me to ask questions about blacks during the Republic here. There's been a couple of good articles and books written on this. So I'm just relating to you some of the things that we historians think about. We know that people, African-Americans, participated in the Texas Revolution. And this is Black History Month. So this is the tie-in with this, is that blacks didn't participate. Now I was told, I've been told in classes that no blacks participated in the Texas Revolution. Not true. And it's true because maybe people didn't know and so it's assumed that they weren't, but there were. Which is interesting because after the Texas gained its independence, Texas gained its independence in the Constitution of 1836, we forbade free blacks. These were African-Americans who were not enslaved. We forbade them from living in Texas and they had several years to get out. And so in these memorials and petitions, there are numerous petitions from white citizens who were pleading with the Texas Congress, the Senate and the House, to allow these people to stay, free blacks to stay. And some free blacks were the ones in danger of leaving. Slave people were, of course, not allowed to leave. But talking about the service that they had performed and talking about why it was important for them to stay and attesting to their fidelity, their good citizenship and sometimes putting them a bond for them to stay. This is Wiley Martin. Wiley Martin was an important figure in Texas from his 1936 state marker in Richmond, Texas, talking about all the service he did. So Wiley Martin was an important part of the Republic period. A few years before he died, he appealed to the Texas legislature to allow him, because this is how you did it, if you owned slaves and you wanted to free them. You couldn't just say, here's your free. You had to appeal to Congress. And so Wiley Martin appealed to Congress, and Wiley Martin had served in the Congress. So these people knew him. They weren't aware of who he was. And they got his petition to free the man who was enslaved to him, a man named Peter. And we know about this because we have Wiley Martin's petition, and this was the letter that Wiley Martin wrote. And we also have in the Texas Congressional Journal a reprint of a newspaper. The Austin City Gazette reported what was actually said. And here's what they said. I'm going to give you a short summary. The senators of the congressman argued about whether or not Wiley Martin could free his enslaved man, Peter. And said, well, we've known Wiley Martin for a long time. We think he's a good guy. He means well. And what he doesn't want is when he passes away for Peter to be enslaved by anybody else. We don't know if there was a relationship beyond the bomb that they had as free man and enslaved man. We don't know. Maybe they were related. But he didn't want Peter to be enslaved by anybody else. And so he wanted Peter to have his freedom. And it was, well, we're going to have to have him leave. People said, well, maybe he should take his earnings. Peter had earned a lot of money. During the revolution, he drove a wagon and he often delivered goods and services to the soldiers, to the army, oftentimes for free. But in the years after the Texas Revolution, Peter, an enslaved man, had earned for himself about $16,000, which in 1836, Texas was a considerable sum of money. So here was a wealthy enslaved man who the man who owned him was trying to set free. This tells us a lot about slavery. And it raises many questions beyond what we've learned in school or what movies we've seen in movies. The problem, one of the lawmakers said, was that Peter had done so well. Setting him free, one of the lawmakers said, would be a bad example. We have been telling everybody, abolitionists, which in the 1830s was becoming a more and more important thing. We've been telling abolitionists that slavery is good because blacks are incapable of thinking and controlling and caring for themselves. By his very success, Peter made a bad example by doing all the right things. I read this, I found this tremendously disparate. The good news is that eventually the Texas Congress agreed that Peter and many other free blacks, they gave him his freedom and they allowed his freedom and they also said that he and other free blacks could stay in Texas. And so this was challenged and overturned the law that said they had to leave. When we think about history and what it is, I know this is a heritage organization, but is history our DNA? This is my DNA, by the way, thanks to Ancestry.com. Grandmother Kyleberg from the Bastrop-Smithville area. Our family has long roots there. John Price first came to the United States in Texas in 1850. We miss the 45 Kyleberg. But we've been here a while. Although I'm in Zorn where my grandfather lived and had a farm since the Depression, one of my aunts always says, yeah, we've been here 75 years, but we're still outslifers. Is it about ethnicity? This is my ethnicity. And it's very global. I like Finland as much as the next person. A little Finnish, but a lot. Native, indigenous person. Not Indian, indigenous person. And from other parts of the world. Is it our family? Is that our history? Is it the people we went to school with? The good-looking guy in the center is me. Is it our education and experiences? Or is the past how we remember it? How we put these stories together? How what we tell other people are important? And that changes from time to time. What is important? We call this a usable past. The groups like the DRT look at the usable past. How does the story of our past relate to us so that you, your group, can preserve our past, can preserve this part of our history and of Texas history, which is very important. And I thank you for all that you've done and the daughters from preserving the Alamo and maintaining the Alamo for many years. For preserving the legacy and now building a new museum. I think all that's wonderful because it makes my job not only easier, but it also helps people realize why it's important. That we learn about our past and that we preserve it and we continue it. I do have to say this. Again, Anson Jones is lowering the flag. I'm going to say that Republic of Texas actually ended at the end of 1845. We could fight about that outside. I actually read an article about this. This was also important as well. This was an important time as well. On February 19th when the flag was lowered the next year. So thank you for what you do. Thank you for having me. Thank you for letting me come back and speak to people. I had a great time visiting with old friends and teachers and people that I knew growing up. Thank you very much and thank you for having me. And thank you for being on our show. Again, it's called Talking Texas History. Me and Scott Sozby. Scott Sozby is the executive director of the East Texas Historical Association. He and I started doing this. This was actually my idea. I grew up in U of Rumpels. I worked at U of Rumpels Radio with Herb Scoot, Gerald Teely, Frutzee Richter, Jack Kaufman and that group, Don Ferguson and Bob Freeman. And those are the people I grew up with. I looked up to. They were my celebrities when I was a little kid and then I worked with them. And they still are my celebrities. So thank you for having me and thank you.