Title: Texas women : their histories, their lives /
Authors: Turner, Elizabeth Hayes,; Cole, Stephanie, 1962-; Sharpless, Rebecca,
Year: 2015
Subjects: HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Southwest (AZ, NM, OK, TX); Women Texas History.; Women Texas Social conditions.; Women Texas Biography.; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women.; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies.
Abstract: "Texas Women : Their Histories, Their Lives engages current scholarship on women in Texas, the South, and the United States. It provides insights into Texas's singular geographic position, bordering on the West and sharing a unique history with Mexico, while analyzing the ways in which Texas stories mirror a larger American narrative. The biographies and essays illustrate an uncommon diversity among Texas women, reflecting experiences ranging from those of dispossessed enslaved women to wealthy patrons of the arts. That history also captures the ways in which women's lives reflect both personal autonomy and opportunities to engage in the public sphere. From the vast spaces of northern New Spain and the rural counties of antebellum Texas to the growing urban centers in the post-Civil War era, women balanced traditional gender and racial prescriptions with reform activism, educational enterprise, and economic development. Contributors to Texas Women address major questions in women's history, demonstrating how national and regional themes in the scholarship on women are answered or reconceived in Texas. Texas women negotiated significant boundaries raised by gender, race, and class. The writers address the fluid nature of the border with Mexico, the growing importance of federal policies, and the eventual reforms engendered by the civil rights movement. From Apaches to astronauts, from pioneers to professionals, from rodeo riders to entrepreneurs, and from Civil War survivors to civil rights activists, Texas Women is an important contribution to Texas history, women's history, and the history of the nation"--
Contents: Pt. 1. 1600-1800. Indian women who "carry gallantry still further than the men": a barometer of power in eighteenth-century Texas -- Spanish law and women in colonial Texas, 1719-1821: "I wish to make use of all laws in my favor" -- The lives of enslaved women in Texas: changing borders and challenging boundaries -- Sallie McNeil: a woman's higher education in antebellum Texas -- Harriet Perry: a woman's life in Civil War Texas -- Capitalist women in central Texas, 1865-1880: "a ready market". Pt. 2. 1880-1925. Adele Briscoe Looscan: a daughter of the Republic -- Ellen Lawson Dabbs: waving the equal rights banner -- Marianna Thompson Folsom: laying the foundation for women's rights activism -- Jovita Idar: the ideological origins of a transnational advocate for La Raza -- Maternity wars: gender, race, and the Sheppard-Towner Act in Texas. Pt. 3. 1925-2000. Frances Battaile Fisk: clubwoman and promoter of the visual arts in Texas -- Latinas in Dallas, 1910-2010: becoming new women -- Oveta Culp Hobby: ability, perseverance, and cultural capital in the twentieth-century success story -- Ranch women and rodeo performers in post-World War 2 west Texas: a cowgirl by any other name - than feminist -- Casey Hayden: gender and the origins of SNCC, SDS, and the Women's Liberation Movement -- Julia Scott Reed: presenting the truth about African Americans in Dallas -- Barbara Jordan: the paradox of Black female ambition -- Hermine Tobolowsky: a feminist's fight for equal rights -- Mae C. Jemison: the right stuff -- Epilogue: exploring women' stories: a personal perspective -- Writing Texas women's history: looking back, looking forward