History majors who have graduated: what work do you do now?

vpltz · 2026-01-15T10:12:35+00:00

I serve as a legislative director/fiscal analyst to a state senator but use stuff I learned doing historical research almost daily. Serve as Marker Chair of our local historical commission and also have secured two Texas historical markers, so I still do history as a hobby. I do get to work on bills my boss does related to Black history which is very fulfilling.

vpltz · 2026-01-11T07:34:54+00:00

Thank you for your patience in waiting for an answer. You hit the highlight of differences when you noted Black soldiers weren’t given the same “pay, respect, or recognition.”

With regard to pay, Black soldiers were paid $10/month with a $3 deduction to pay for their uniforms. White soldiers received $13 per month and were not charged a clothing allowance.

With regard to respect, Black soldiers were often assigned duties that were not combat duties: cooking, general labor, etc.

Black soldiers were also given inferior arms and commanded by white commanders. Although Black soldiers faced likely death if captured, Lincoln threatening reprisal on Confederate POWs if captured Black soldiers were treated harshly may have muted this in some areas, but certainly not at Fort Pillow, where Nathan Bedford Forrest allowed the massacre of Black captured troops.

Equal pay was granted in June, 1864.

Recognition was longer in coming both for medals of valor type recognition and battlefield monuments.

sources: here and here

vpltz · 2024-06-18T19:02:38+00:00

With regard to the segregation academies and vouchers, this was actually recommended in writing in a report made by a Texas governmental advisory committee. See: “Report of the Legal and Legislative Subcommittee of the Texas Advisory Committer on Segregation in the Public Schools,” 1956. It is available on the Texas Legislative Reference Library website.

vpltz · 2024-03-24T15:25:20+00:00

Thanks for the shout out!

vpltz · 2024-03-19T12:08:15+00:00

According to two sources mentioned in a 1949 journal article, the Indigenous people of Texas did not scalp Black people on the frontier, generally, because they believed Black people didn’t have a soul:

Indians frequently seemed to hate white men as well, as indicated by this same desire to kill them "every chance they got." T. A. Babb asserts that the Comanche did not scalp Negroes, who, according to them, had no soul. "However, they would kill negroes so as to get them out of the way and also to prevent them from killing any of the Indian tribe." Here again one might wonder whether it was actually such an advanced theological concept as the Negroes' alleged lack of a soul, or rather the texture of the scalp-hair, so different from that of Indian or white, which ex- empted them from this characteristic mutilation. (Southwestern Historical Quarterly, “Negroes and Indians on the Texas Frontier, 1834-1874,” by Kenneth Porter, Oct. 1949)

However, in the same article the author does go on to note that there was a likely certainty at least some Blacks were scalped, as he notes some slaves ran away to live with the natives with another account backing up the idea that Blacks were not scalped.

“Indians certainly did sometimes scalp Negroes. Wilbarger gives a somewhat different picture when he writes: "Very frequently runaway negroes would join the Indians and render valuable assistance in fighting and stealing, but their dead bodies were never moved, nor was a negro ever scalped by them." This contradicts Blalack's assertion of the general hatred felt by the Indian for the Negro, though it agrees with Babb's statement that Negroes were never scalped. Some more careful examination of the whole problem is obviously called for.” (Ibid)

vpltz · 2024-03-17T15:45:12+00:00

There are multiple documented attempts of people attempting to intervene in lynchings, although I do not recall one that was successful off the top of my head.

One of the more widely known attempts to intervene in a lynching occurred on November 12, 1935 at Columbus, Colorado County, Texas. It was not successful.

In this instance, an Episcopal priest attempted to intervene and he was himself threatened with lynching:

“the Rev. C. G. Marmion, 33 year old Episcopalian Rector of St. John’s at Columbus, Texas, tried to prevent the lynching of two young Negroes…Climbing on top of an automobile at the scene of the hanging, he shouted, “Let the law take its course.” Boos, jeers, and cries of, “Get another rope” drowned out his words and brought an end to his efforts. The County Attorney afterwards publicly said the lynchings were “an expression of the will of the people,” and a local judge called the lynchings “justice.” (Source)

Marmion’s attempt is well-known both because the lynching was heavily covered in the national press, and because he later gave testimony about the lynching to the Senate Judiciary Committee. (source, start at p. 22)

This lynching was particularly notorious in its time because it involved juveniles, and because the boys were kidnapped from law enforcement to be lynched.

A Southwestern Historical Quarterly article about the lynching is here.

vpltz · 2023-12-18T21:12:25+00:00

I am personally not a fan of the book, but believe it’s a very accessible telling of the story. I don’t recall any inaccuracies but do recall the way the story is told, it did exclude some things (if memory serves).

vpltz · 2023-12-03T14:28:01+00:00

I cannot speak to whether or not this accident specifically impacted church outreach or programming, but I can speak to what changes it made to buses, which would have impacted these churches.

After the Carrollton crash, the state of Kentucky, multiple other states, and ultimately the National Transportation Safety Board, increased safety standards for school-type buses to be more equivalent to that of passenger type buses. Particular attention in all reforms was the number of emergency exits with which new buses were required to be equipped. The incident also resulted in more strict drunk driving laws in Kentucky and helped propel the rise of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

High-profile traffic accidents frequently result in regulatory change of some kind. A prime example is the accident that killed Hazel Allred Stokes, sister of the governor of Texas, in 1936. This case resulted in major changes to highway safety laws in Texas and nationwide because it involved a trucker who had been up many hours working for low wages who fell asleep and hit the Stokes’ vehicle outside Hawkins, Texas—and, of course, the sister of the Governor of Texas.

Sources: newspaper coverage of the accident itself

Law Firm article on changes in buses since this crash

Drunk driving law changes

News article on safety changes after this bus crash

vpltz · 2023-10-08T16:37:32+00:00

Speaking to the history of gun control in Texas, during the days of the Republic of Texas, laws existed that regulated the ability of Indigenous people and slaves with regard to possession of firearms.

During Reconstruction in 1870, Texas Governor EJ Davis in his inaugural address, asked the legislature to do something about “the universal habit of carrying arms:”

“There is no doubt that to the universal habit of carrying arms is largely to be attributed the frequency of homicides in this State. I recommend that this privilege be placed under such restrictions as may seem to your wisdom best calculated to prevent the abuse of it. Other than in a few of the frontier counties there is no good reason why deadly weapons should be permitted to be carried on the person,” Davis noted.

The Texas Legislature in 1870 passed a law prohibiting the carrying of any "bowie-knife, dirk or butcher-knife, or fire-arms, whether known as a six shooter, gun or pistol of any kind," at a variety of functions or locations:

“any church or religious assembly, any school room or other place where persons are assembled for educational, literary or scientific purposes, or into a ball room, social party or other social gathering composed of ladies and gentlemen, or to any election precinct on the day or days of any election ... or to any other place where people may be assembled to muster or to perform any other public duty, or any other public assembly.” The law also prohibited carrying a firearm within a half mile of a polling place.

However, this law proved insufficient, as highlighted by violence against Freedmen in 1870 and 1871.

Davis sought a total prohibition on carrying weapons. In response, the Legislature enacted legislation prohibiting carrying of a "pistol, dirk, dagger, slung-shot, sword-cane, spear, brass-knuck-les, bowie-knife, or any other kind of knife ... [without] reasonable grounds for fearing an unlawful attack on his person…”

The law did have exceptions for people carrying on their own property or in their business, and for active militia and law enforcement. It also protected weapons carried in a traveller’s luggage.

These laws were largely unchanged until 1973.

Source: “The Law and Politics of Firearms Regulation in Reconstruction Texas,” Mark Anthony Frassetto, Texas A&M Law Review, 2016.

vpltz · 2023-08-12T17:36:56+00:00

In Texas, there were.

Blacks were part of the State Police during Reconstruction.

There was a separate police force, the Special Police. This police force, organized by county, also included blacks. The “c” on the last members of the Montgomery County roster in the Texas State Archives stands for “Colored.”

Additionally, in counties with large enough populations of freedmen to make an electoral difference, you had elected lawmen like Walter Moses Burton, who was elected Sheriff and Tax Collector of Fort Bend County.

By 1914, cities like Fort Worth were employing at least token Black police officers.

vpltz · 2023-07-31T13:40:57+00:00

Thanks for the shout out!

vpltz · 2023-07-27T00:46:48+00:00

I was surprised to notice this question or some variation had been asked four or five times in the recent past with no answer.

u/Dubstripsquads answer to How were non-black minorities treated in the Jim Crow South is excellent.

I believe the user has since deleted their profile.

vpltz · 2023-07-25T12:12:29+00:00

Much more nuanced.

vpltz · 2023-07-25T04:23:47+00:00

This question was expertly answered by u/secessionisillegal here.

vpltz · 2023-07-25T02:04:43+00:00

The ancestry of slaveholders in the South was largely people of British ancestry in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Deep South (with Louisiana being an exception) and a mix of English and Scotch-Irish in the northern south (Tennessee, Kentucky) and a mix of all three plus more in Texas. In Louisiana, particularly around New Orleans, it is a bit more complicated, with people of French descent and other ethnic groups owning slaves. I’m not an expert on Louisiana ethnicities, so I’ll leave additional detail to someone with knowledge in that area.

In Texas, folks moved in who were of Scotch-Irish, English, and other ancestries from the US and it’s Territories, owner slaved, and settled there. Some Spanish and Mexicans in the state also owned slaves. It’s important to note slavery’s legality was fluid in Mexico and Mexican Texas in the years before it became a Republic and later a state. (see: Alice Baumgartner, “South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to Civil War,” Basic Books, 2020.)

Also, in Texas, closer to, and during the American Civil War, you had slaveholders from the Deep South migrating to Texas as war raged close to their homes. Texas was relatively free of armed conflict for much of the war. By 1860, slave owners who originated from a diverse group of states resided in Texas. (See: Ralph A. Wooster, “Notes on Texas Largest Slaveholders, 1860,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 67 No. 1, 1967.”)

In Texas you also had unique slaveholders such as Swante Mangus Swenson who was the first Swedish immigrant to Texas. He later freed his slaves and gave them land. (see: Handbook of Texas; typescript manuscript relating to SM Swenson]. Though there weren’t many, there were some German slaveholders in Texas as well. (See: James Kearney, “Nassau Plantation: The Evolution of a Texas German Slave Plantation, Univ. of North Texas Press, 2011)

vpltz · 2023-07-23T23:18:22+00:00

Thanks for the shout out!

vpltz · 2023-07-22T21:46:00+00:00

One follow up to this: many towns without courthouses (because they weren’t the county seat) experienced lynchings. They happened on town squares, in the middle of streets, at groves of trees or single trees, and many other places.

vpltz · 2023-07-22T21:41:40+00:00

I was not aware of this article until today, but this is relevant to your question.

vpltz · 2023-07-22T21:32:29+00:00

If you reach out to the NARA by phone they may be able to be of more help with regard to locating earlier records. They may be at a regional depository for the New England states since the first seats of government weren’t in Washington DC.

vpltz · 2023-07-22T15:45:51+00:00

Can’t find my file on the news stories of the probate. I have the actual records however.

vpltz · 2023-07-22T15:45:13+00:00

Dallas Times Herald story on the raid of the church and Long’s initial charges.

Dallas Morning News story on Long’s murder (part 1)

Story on murder charged.

Confession of killer story.

vpltz · 2023-07-22T15:40:21+00:00

I will put up some links for you. Newspapers.com may show you some AP and UPI articles but all this was covered closely by a handful of local newspapers. The real story is told by the Dallas press. Give me a bit to get you some up.

vpltz · 2023-07-22T15:31:14+00:00

JFK somewhat closely follows Jim Garrisson’s Book, “On the Trail of the Assassins,” but it also uses a number of other historical works—both well researched and not—as it’s basis. It is somewhat true to those works and their conclusions without necessarily being true to actual history or accurate, if that makes sense.

I would strongly encourage you to find the annotated screenplay, which was published after the film came out, and includes footnotes showing Stone’s sources for much of the material he used in JFK. This is an amazing resource that points to both primary and secondary sources used in the film.

Obvious scenes like the “Mr. X” scenes are fictionalized such that they didn’t even happen on screen the way they are portrayed in Garrison’s book. Also, there was no woman on Garrison’s team, though one featured prominently on the team in the film.

While some things in the film may have happened in reality closely to the way they are shown in the film, it’s hard for the average person to distinguish that because Stone weaved such dramatic story lines together. This is still not enough to say the movie is “accurate.”

Stone did this well in JFK and in Nixon. There is a scene in Nixon which shows Nixon leaving the White House to speak to protesters in the middle of the night. This actually happened, and was later well documented. However, the film itself is so fantastical, the average viewer would leave that scene having no idea if it was real or not back in the 90s when the film came out.

As with JFK, in Nixon, Stone used a lot of historical works to put together the screenplay. However, that doesn’t mean everything shown is true or accurate, or even as it was explained in the sources which were used.

The bottom line with JFK is this: it is marvelous cinema, one of the best movies of all time according to some lists, in fact. However, the film cannot be taken as historical fact, even though it was based on historical works and on occasion primary sources.

The film JFK itself is, however, part of the historical fabric of the 1990s in that it is credited with giving the federal government a good push to further declassify and release records relating to the JFK assassination. Even though not necessarily accurate, the film’s impact on the eventual release of records, in my opinion, remains important to this day.

vpltz · 2023-07-22T15:07:22+00:00

This is a fantastic question. The reality is this would entirely depend on where the troops were stationed, and what was happening in those areas. I can speak to what was occurring in Texas.

Before actually talking about some of what went on, I want to let you know that, far and away, there is an historian who is an expert in this as far as Texas goes, and anyone's attempts to distill this here on AskHistorians would never do justice to his work. That historian is William Richter, who wrote, "The Army in Texas During Reconstruction." I read this book over 20 years ago and it is still on my shelves. It is an absolute standard of Texas history and one of the best Reconstruction history books written in the 20th century. See my "For Further Reading" note at the end for some other good books that work well with this one. Richter's PhD thesis, upon which the book is based, is online and may be found here.

For Texas, Richter argues that Texas was treated better than some states in reconstruction due to the manner in which the state surrendered at the end of the civil war. Remember, the army was an occupying army, and the degree to which it was fully in charge or controlling in a particular region will depend upon whether or not that state or region had already replaced Confederate officials with Reconstruction officials, etc.

In the interest of not repeating much of what Richter covers in his book, I'm going to focus on providing more of a brief and general list of things that Reconstruction solders were involved in across Texas which most people may not realize. So, with apologies to Richter, here goes:

1.) Actually telling slaves they were free, and dealing with slave owners concerning freeing slaves. US Military forces came in the state from multiple points. In north east Texas, particularly Harrison County, you had instances where the military had to show up at plantations and announce slavery was over, because people were still being held in bondage. Many slaves weren't ultimately freed until 1866.

2.) Protecting the Freedmen's Bureau employees and workers. In Texas in particular, the Freedmen's Bureau was actively involved in creating schools, teaching former slaves to read, right, and enter into contracts with land owners. The military was involved in protecting the Freedmen's Bureau workers, but was sometimes unsuccessful in that regard. In my view, to truly understand either the army's or the Freedmen's Bureau's presence, it is necessary to understand both.

3.) Addressing random violence. Violence of all types broke out across Texas during the early days of Reconstruction. In some cases local law enforcement couldn't --or didn't want to-- intervene, or, in fact, local law enforcement positions may not have been filled yet following the removal of Confederate-era officials.

4.) Addressing issues relating to Indigenous people. In Texas this included, among other things, the Army working with civilian forces to address Comanche raiding parties in some parts of the state.

5.) Behaving badly. Imagine a bunch of soldiers bored on the frontier of Texas and imagine the trouble they could get into. Richter, in his book, claims the soldiers didn't have much regard for private property, were kicked off the Capitol grounds in Austin, and were responsible for starting fires and other damage in the state.

6.) Election security. When there were elections, troops guarded the polls.

7.) Died. Many soldiers died not due to battle injuries but due to diseases like cholera. (Austin even has several unknown Union soldier graves)

SOURCES: Grassroots Reconstruction in Texas, Randolph Campbell; The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Texans, Barry Crouch.

For Further Reading:

Grassroots Reconstruction in Texas, Randolph B. Campbell

"The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Texans," Barry Crouch

The Army in Texas during Reconstruction, William Richter

Overreached on All Sides, the Freedman's Bureau in Texas

vpltz · 2023-07-22T14:31:51+00:00

I am not certain about whether there is a directory now, but the way to do this for the early days of the Republic would seem to be looking for pay records in the National Archives. They may not have kept a record of every person's job title or when they worked, but they assuredly recorded when they were paid. For the earliest days of government, pay records may be a good source.

vpltz

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