Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 35, Number 2, Fall 2023 (open access)

Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 35, Number 2, Fall 2023

Biannual publication "devoted to the rich history of Dallas and North Central Texas" as a way to "examine the many historical legacies--social, ethnic, cultural, political--which have shaped the modern city of Dallas and the region around it." The theme of this issue is "Railroad Ties."
Date: Autumn 2023
Creator: Dallas Historical Society
Object Type: Journal/Magazine/Newsletter
System: The Portal to Texas History
Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 35, Number 1, Spring 2023 (open access)

Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 35, Number 1, Spring 2023

Biannual publication dedicated to exploring the rich history of Dallas and North Central Texas and examining the legacies that left an impression on society, culture, and politics in the region. This issue's theme is "legends." It highlights the lives of several individuals from Dallas who left a major impact on society: Hazel Mae "bobby" Peck McGough, Tex Avery, the Lakewood Rats, and Louise Ballerstedt Raggio.
Date: Spring 2023
Creator: Dallas Historical Society
Object Type: Journal/Magazine/Newsletter
System: The Portal to Texas History
Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 34, Number 1, Spring 2022 (open access)

Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 34, Number 1, Spring 2022

Biannual publication "devoted to the rich history of Dallas and North Central Texas" as a way to "examine the many historical legacies--social, ethnic, cultural, political--which have shaped the modern city of Dallas and the region around it." The theme of this issue is "Dining & Drinking in Dallas."
Date: Spring 2022
Creator: Dallas Historical Society
Object Type: Journal/Magazine/Newsletter
System: The Portal to Texas History
Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 32, Number 1, Spring 2020 (open access)

Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 32, Number 1, Spring 2020

Biannual publication "devoted to the rich history of Dallas and North Central Texas" as a way to "examine the many historical legacies--social, ethnic, cultural, political--which have shaped the modern city of Dallas and the region around it." The theme of this issue is "Disasters: Natural and Man-Made."
Date: Spring 2020
Creator: Dallas Historical Society
Object Type: Journal/Magazine/Newsletter
System: The Portal to Texas History
Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 32, Number 2, Fall 2020 (open access)

Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 32, Number 2, Fall 2020

Biannual publication "devoted to the rich history of Dallas and North Central Texas" as a way to "examine the many historical legacies--social, ethnic, cultural, political--which have shaped the modern city of Dallas and the region around it." The theme of this issue is "Tales from Two Cities."
Date: Autumn 2020
Creator: Dallas Historical Society
Object Type: Journal/Magazine/Newsletter
System: The Portal to Texas History
Sowing the Seeds of Stewardship in Texas: An Ethnographic Study of Nature and Visitor Experience at Texas State Parks (open access)

Sowing the Seeds of Stewardship in Texas: An Ethnographic Study of Nature and Visitor Experience at Texas State Parks

This study uses a mixed methods approach to investigate how individuals perceive nature and engage with Texas state park (TSP) programs and resources while also identifying major barriers that visitors perceive/encounter when visiting TSPs. This study looks through the anthropological lens by using theoretical frameworks such as habitus, presentation of the social self, space and place, as well as communities of practice (CoP), to better understand the factors that influence the establishment and maintenance of an individual's relationship to nature and participation in related practices. This study illustrates how an individual's relationship to nature is influenced by experiences in early life that involve activities, landscape or bioregion, and social factors. Relationships with nature are strengthened through social support especially when CoPs are involved. By understanding park visitor experiences through motivations and limitations to participating in the outdoors, parks can expand engagement tactics, foster existing and create new CoP related to nature that aid in the introduction and adoption of outdoor learning and experiences creating lifelong stewards. The study offers recommendations on how TSPs can address visitor barriers and increase nature affinity with the use of targeted outreach and engagement methods through agency interpretive resources and programs with the goal of …
Date: May 2023
Creator: Saintonge, Kenneth C.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Balkan Imbroglio: The Diplomatic, Military, and Political Origins of the Macedonian Campaign of World War I

The Macedonian Campaign of World War I (October 1915-November 1918) traditionally remains one of the understudied theatres of the historiography of the conflict. Despite its vital importance in the outcome of the war, it is still considered as a mere sideshow compared to the Western Front and the Gallipoli Campaign. This dissertation presents a much-needed re-evaluation of the Macedonian Campaign's diplomatic and political origins within the war's early context. In doing so, this study first concentrates on a longue durée perspective and assesses the main historical events in the Balkans and Central Europe from the end of the French Revolution to World War I. In a perspective running throughout the entire nineteenth century, this dissertation integrates the importance of nascent nationalism in the Balkans and examine the Austro-Hungarian Empire's steady decline and subsequent diplomatic realignment toward the Balkans. Similarly, this work depicts the intense power struggle in Southeastern Europe between some of this story's main protagonists, namely the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman Empires. This dissertation also evaluates the rise of new regional powers such as Bulgaria and Serbia and examines their connection to the European balance of power and general diplomatic equilibrium. In the first half of this dissertation, I …
Date: August 2021
Creator: Broucke, Kevin R.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Thinking Outside the Pipe: The Role of Participatory Water Ethics and Watershed Education Community Action Networks (WE CANs) in the Creation of a New Urban Water Narrative (open access)

Thinking Outside the Pipe: The Role of Participatory Water Ethics and Watershed Education Community Action Networks (WE CANs) in the Creation of a New Urban Water Narrative

According to the United Nations, two-thirds of the world's population, approximately 4 billion people, experiences water scarcity at least one month per year. To avoid the water quantity crisis experienced in many regions of the world and the United States, a path to sustainability must be forged. My research aims to identify and critique the salient features of the narrative that drives contemporary urban water decisions and practices and to provide a meta-narrative about the role of narratives as invisible lenses through which individuals see, interpret, and interact with the world often without realizing the existence of those frames. The purpose of this problem-oriented dissertation is twofold: to provide a philosophical policy analysis of contemporary water issues in the United States generally and North Central Texas in particular, and to offer a pragmatic and interdisciplinary approach to discovering a sustainable relationship to water. The intent of my research is not to produce a new metaphysical understanding of water, but to provide a pragmatic application of ideas that can be utilized in the field; ideas that can invoke a new narrative, vision, and direction for urban water issues in North Central Texas and in areas far beyond the Lone Star State. …
Date: December 2022
Creator: Moss, Teresa Jo
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

Goering's Boys in Blue: The Luftwaffe Field Divisions, 1942-1945

The Luftwaffe Field Divisions have remained on the periphery of World War II historiography for over seventy years, overshadowed by the myth of German military excellence during the conflict. The Heer is still known for lightning-quick attacks, brutal firepower, ably trained soldiers, and formidable success on the battlefield; an army of almost faceless, remorseless pain that grimly and efficiently faced down the Allies until the very end. Only recently, flaws have begun opening in this pristine picture as historians have examined how quickly the quality of the German army deteriorated from 1942-onward. Despite the vast landscape of scholarship on the war and the recent historical analysis of the weaknesses the Germans suffered, serious study on the creation and management of the Luftwaffe Field Divisions has been sparse. What has been written about them since 1945 has done little to offer a full picture of the units, their creation, or their significance to the German war effort. The purpose of this study was to fulfill this need by answering the necessary questions about the divisions, provide a complete history of the units, and place the LwFDs properly within the historiography of the Second World War.
Date: May 2022
Creator: Stout, Michael John
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

A Spatial Decision Support System to Dynamically Compute and Map Neighborhood Indices

Neighborhoods are organic entities that are in a state of constant change and are driven by the specific context of the problem being investigated. The subsequent lack of consensus on a universal geographic definition for what constitutes a neighborhood can lead to biased interpretations of relationships between human activities and place. Further, while existing geographical information system software allows users to combine a range of geographic objects to generate regional units of analyses, their design does not explicitly assess how changing patterns, such as populations, impact the data expressed within them. This research develops an exploratory geographical information system framework that allows users to dynamically delineate neighborhoods based on user-specified characteristics. These include socioeconomic and similar measurements of neighborhood classification from information obtained from secondary data sources, including parcel data, land use/land cover information, and attribute data provided by the United States Postal Service. The proposed methodology creates custom geographies from readily available tract data obtained from various federal and state data repositories to produce indices. By allowing the user to dynamically weigh the combinations of variables used to define their neighborhood, this thesis introduces a solution to a common analytical problem in the discipline.
Date: May 2020
Creator: Barnett, Melissa Marie
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Multigenerational Development of Oklahoma City's African American Community as an Urban Ethnic Enclave

This dissertation examines the history and importance of Oklahoma City's Black Ethnic Enclave. It focuses on how this community developed over generations and the role of its leaders in shaping its identity, despite facing segregation. The settlement in this region began in 1889 when unassigned lands in central Indian Territory were opened for homesteaders by the US government. As a result, Oklahoma City became one of the major towns and eventually the state's capital. Most historical accounts primarily focus on the viewpoint of the white founders of the city, ignoring the experiences of minority residents and the urban aspects of the city. This study takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining historical analysis, urban studies, and sociocultural perspectives. It aims to understand the complex relationship between racial dynamics, urban development, and identity formation. By thoroughly examining primary and secondary sources like archival records, oral histories, and scholarly literature, the research uncovers the struggles, achievements, and cultural contributions of the community builders who overcame systemic barriers to create a thriving enclave within Oklahoma City. By highlighting their stories, this research enriches our understanding of the city's history and the diverse urban experiences it encompasses.
Date: July 2023
Creator: Ritt-Coulter, Edith Mae
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Earps Invade Southern California: Bootlegging Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and the Old Soldiers’ Home

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Most readers of the Wild West know Wyatt Earp, Virgil Earp, and Morgan Earp for the famous shootout on the streets of Tombstone, Arizona. But few know the later years of the close-knit Earp family, which revolved around patriarch Nicholas Earp, and their last push at a major monetary coup in Los Angeles. By 1900 a newly established Old Soldiers’ Home was in place at Sawtelle (between Santa Monica and Los Angeles), with thousands of veterans earning monthly pensions, but in an environment where alcohol was prohibited. Enter the Earps and their “blind pig” (illicit alcohol sales) scheme. Two of the Earps, Nicholas and son Newton, were enrolled in the Soldiers’ Home, and Newton’s far more famous half-brothers Wyatt and Virgil showed up from time to time, but the star of the operation was older brother James. Booze would flow, the pension money would be “dispersed about,” and jails were sometimes filled, as the Earps and several other men on the make competed for the veterans’ money. We are also reintroduced to Old West figures such as “Gunfighter Surgeon” Dr. George Goodfellow, “Silver Tongued Orator” Thomas Fitch, millionaire George Hearst, detective J.V. Brighton, Lucky Baldwin, and many other well-known westerners …
Date: July 15, 2020
Creator: Chaput, Donald & De Haas, David D., 1956-
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

'The Marshall System' in World War II, Myth and Reality: Six American Commanders Who Failed

This is an analysis of the U.S. Army's personnel decisions in the Second World War. Specifically, it considers the U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall's appointment of generals to combat command, and his reasons for relieving some generals while leaving others in place after underperformance. Many historians and contemporaries of Marshall, including General Omar N. Bradley, have commented on Marshall's ability to select brilliant, capable general officers for combat command in the war. However, in addition to solid performers like J. Lawton Collins, Lucian Truscott, and George S. Patton, Marshall, together with Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lesley J. McNair, often selected sub-par commanders who significantly underperformed on the battlefield. These generals' tactical and operational decisions frequently led to unnecessary casualties, and ultimately prolonged the war. The work considers six case studies: Lloyd Fredendall at Kasserine Pass, Mark Clark during the Italian campaign, John Lucas at Anzio, Omar Bradley at the Falaise Gap, Courtney Hodges at the Hürtgen Forest, and Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. at Okinawa. Personal connections and patronage played strong roles in these generals' command appointments, and often trumped practical considerations like command experience. While their superiors ultimately relieved corps commanders Fredendall and Lucas, field army and …
Date: August 2020
Creator: Carlson, Cody King
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Arsenal of the Red Warriors: U.S. Perceptions of Stalin's Red Army and the Impact of Lend-Lease Aid on the Eastern Front in the Second World War (open access)

The Arsenal of the Red Warriors: U.S. Perceptions of Stalin's Red Army and the Impact of Lend-Lease Aid on the Eastern Front in the Second World War

Through the U.S. Lend-Lease program, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to keep Joseph Stalin's Red Army fighting Adolf Hitler's forces to prevent a separate peace and Nazi Germany's colonization of Soviet territory and strategic resources during the Second World War. Yet after the Red Army's 1943 counterattacks, Roosevelt unnecessarily increased Soviet Lend-Lease aid, oversupplying Stalin's soldiers with more armament than they required for the Soviet Union's defense and enabling their subsequent conquest of East Central Europe and large parts of East Asia. Roosevelt's underestimation of the Red Army's capabilities, his tendency to readily rely on Soviet-influenced advisers, and his unquestioning acceptance of Stalin's implicit threats to forge a separate peace all contributed to his excessive arming of Moscow from 1943 forward. Expanding on the findings of other scholars, this work identifies and explains the impact of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty on Roosevelt's reasoning, the key role of the Arctic convoys in delivering material to the Red Army, and how the unnecessary aid routes through Iran and Alaska resulted in the oversupplying of Stalin's troops. Had Roosevelt not opened these unnecessary routes, the Arctic convoys could have continued to sufficiently supply the Red Army's defensive efforts without empowering it to aggressively spread …
Date: May 2023
Creator: Fancher, James Reagan
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

Living in the Shadow of a Hell Ship: The Survival Story of U.S. Marine George Burlage, a WWII Prisoner-of-War of the Japanese

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
U.S. Marine George Burlage was part of the largest surrender in American history at Bataan and Corregidor in the spring of 1942, where the Japanese captured more than 85,000 troops. More than forty percent would not survive World War II. His prisoner-of-war ordeal began at Cabanatuan near Manila, where the death rate in the early months of World War II was fifty men a day. Sensing that Cabanatuan was a death trap, he managed to get transferred to the isolated island of Palawan to help build an airfield for his captors. Malaria and other tropical diseases caused him to be sent to Manila for treatment in 1943 (a year later, 139 of his fellow POWs were massacred on Palawan). After another year of building airfields, Burlage survived a 38-day voyage in the hull of a Japanese hell ship and ended the war as a miner for Mitsubishi in northern Japan. By sheer luck, strength, and a bit of sabotage, he survived and was freed in September 1945 after the Japanese surrendered. He had endured starvation and torture and lost half of his prewar weight, but no one had killed him. After the war Burlage became a journalist and wrote about …
Date: September 15, 2020
Creator: Burlage, Georgianne
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Eagles Overhead: the History of US Air Force Forward Air Controllers, from the Meuse-Argonne to Mosul

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
US Air Force Forward Air Controllers (FACs) bridge the gap between air and land power. They operate in the grey area of the battlefield, serving as an aircrew who flies above the battlefield, spots the enemy, and relays targeting information to control close air support attacks by other faster aircraft. When done well, Air Force FACs are the fulcrum for successful employment of air power in support of ground forces. Unfortunately, FACs in recent times have been shunned by both ground and air forces, their mission complicated by inherent difficulty and danger, as well as by the vicissitudes of defense budgets, technology, leadership, bureaucracy, and doctrine. Eagles Overhead is the first complete historical survey of the US Air Force FAC program from its origins in World War I to the modern battlefield. Matt Dietz examines their role, status, and performance in every US Air Force air campaign from the Marne in 1918, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and finally Mosul in 2017. With the remaking of the post-Vietnam US military, and the impact of those changes on FAC, the Air Force began a steady neglect of the FAC mission from Operation Desert Storm, through the force reductions after …
Date: February 2023
Creator: Dietz, Matt,
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Two Counties in Crisis: Measuring Political Change in Reconstruction Texas

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Two Counties in Crisis offers a rare opportunity to observe how local political cultures are transformed by state and national events. Utilizing an interdisciplinary fusion of history and political science, Robert J. Dillard analyzes two disparate Texas counties—traditionalist Harrison County and individualist Collin County—and examines four Reconstruction governors (Hamilton, Throckmorton, Pease, Davis) to aid the narrative and provide additional cultural context. Commercially prosperous and built on slave labor in the mold of Deep South plantation culture, East Texas’s Harrison County strongly supported secession in 1861. West Texas’s Collin County, characterized by individual and family farms with a limited slave population, favored the Union. During Reconstruction, Collin County became increasingly conservative and eventually bore a great resemblance to Harrison County. By 1876 and the ratification of the regressive Texas Constitution, Collin County had become firmly resistant to all aspects of Reconstruction.
Date: September 2023
Creator: Dillard, Robert J.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Weston Post (Weston, Tex.), Issue No. 6, Spring 2021 (open access)

The Weston Post (Weston, Tex.), Issue No. 6, Spring 2021

Quarterly newsletter from Weston, Texas that includes news and information about the community.
Date: Spring 2021
Creator: Yurkovitch, Brittany
Object Type: Journal/Magazine/Newsletter
System: The Portal to Texas History

Identified with Texas: the Lives of Governor Elisha Marshall Pease and Lucadia Niles Pease

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Identified with Texas is the first published biography of Texas Governor Elisha Marshall Pease (1812-1883), presented by historian Elizabeth Whitlow as a dual biography of Pease and his wife, Lucadia Niles Pease (1813-1905). Pease volunteered to fight in the first battle of the Revolution at Gonzales, and he served with the Texan Army at the Siege of Bexar. Pease served in the first three state legislatures after Texas joined the Union in 1845, was elected governor in 1853 and re-elected in 1855, and returned to the governorship as an interim appointee from 1867 to 1869 during Reconstruction. His achievements in all these positions were substantial. Lucadia Niles Pease was known as the Governor’s “Lady.” Moreover, her early, independent travel and her stated position as a “woman’s rights woman” in the 1850s, as well as her support for sending a daughter away to college in the 1870s to earn a degree, all serve as markers of her intelligence and the strength of her convictions. To tell their story, Whitlow mined thousands of letters and papers saved by the Pease family and housed in the Austin History Center of the Austin Public Library, as well as in the Governor’s Papers at the …
Date: March 2022
Creator: Whitlow, Elizabeth
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Fort Worth Stories

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Fort Worth Stories is a collection of thirty-two bite-sized chapters of the city’s history. Did you know that the same day Fort Worth was mourning the death of beloved African American “Gooseneck Bill” McDonald, Dallas was experiencing a series of bombings in black neighborhoods? Or that Fort Worth almost got the largest statue to Robert E. Lee ever put up anywhere, sculpted by the same massive talent that created Mount Rushmore? Or that Fort Worth was once the candy-making capital of the Southwest and gave Hershey, Pennsylvania, a good run for its money as the sweet spot of the nation? A remarkable number of national figures have made a splash in Fort Worth, including Theodore Roosevelt while he was President; Vernon Castle, the Dance King; Dr. H.H. Holmes, America’s first serial killer; Harry Houdini, the escape artist; and Texas Guinan, star of the vaudeville stage and the big screen. Fort Worth Stories is illustrated with 50 photographs and drawings, many of them never before published. This collection of stories will appeal to all who appreciate the Cowtown city.
Date: February 2021
Creator: Selcer, Richard F.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Texas Transportation Plan 2050 (open access)

Texas Transportation Plan 2050

The TTP 2050 describes future planning and programming trends and issues, evaluates long-term investment priorities, identifies planned rural investments, presents implementation strategies, and consider s the performance implications of different investment strategies under potential future scenarios.
Date: June 25, 2020
Creator: Texas. Department of Transportation.
Object Type: Report
System: The Portal to Texas History
The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record, Volume 56, 2021 (open access)

The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record, Volume 56, 2021

Annual journal of the Texas Gulf Historical Society publishing papers about the history of people, events, and development in the Texas Gulf region.
Date: 2021
Creator: Texas Gulf Historical Society
Object Type: Journal/Magazine/Newsletter
System: The Portal to Texas History
The Altus Times (Altus, Okla.), Vol. 115, No. 20, Ed. 1 Thursday, May 20, 2021 (open access)

The Altus Times (Altus, Okla.), Vol. 115, No. 20, Ed. 1 Thursday, May 20, 2021

Weekly newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.
Date: May 20, 2021
Creator: Hilley, Kevin
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Gateway to Oklahoma History

Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas

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Utilizing many sources new to publication, James L. Haley delivers a most readable and enjoyable narrative history of Texas, told through stories—the words and recollections of Texans who actually lived the state’s spectacular history. From Jim Bowie’s and Davy Crockett’s myth-enshrouded stand at the Alamo, to the Mexican-American War, and to Sam Houston’s heroic failed effort to keep Texas in the Union during the Civil War, the transitions in Texas history have often been as painful and tense as the “normal” periods in between. Here, in all of its epic grandeur, is the story of Texas as its own passionate nation.
Date: February 2022
Creator: Haley, James L.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library