![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In On Juneteenth, Harvard historian Annette Gordon-Reed grapples with the myths and contradictions of her beloved home state - a place that once subjugated, segregated, and lynched Black people (including in her home county) and remains ruled by politicians determined to suppress the hard-won votes of minorities and maintain their own power even as demographics inevitably shift. The banners honored in the Texas-based Six Flags Theme Parks’ name include two - the Republic of Texas and the Confederate States of America - from entities that sought not only to preserve slavery, but to enshrine it in perpetuity.Īnd the “heroes” of the Alamo died not to free themselves from despotic Mexican rule, as is often portrayed in our mythology, but, as Mexico was moving toward abolition, to make their newly occupied land forever unfree for the enslaved workers who allowed them to prosper as the plantocracy of East Texas. What's up with Texas? Austin, the blue capital of the red state, is named for a Southern slaveholder, the acclaimed “Father of Texas,” who brought 300 families and their human chattel with him to extend the South’s peculiar institution into the area we now call the American Southwest. ![]()
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