This thesis examines the response to the AIDS crisis in Houston and Dallas, two cities in Texas with the most established gay communities highest number of AIDS incidences. Devoting particular attention to the struggles of the Texas’ gay men, this work analyzes the roadblocks to equal and compassionate care for AIDS, including access to affordable treatment, medical insurance, and the closure of the nation’s first AIDS hospital. In addition, this thesis describes the ways in which the peculiar nature of AIDS as an illness transformed the public perception of sickness and infection. This work contributes to the growing study of gay and lesbian history by exploring the transformative effects of AIDS on the gay community in Texas, a location often forgotten within the context of the AIDS epidemic.

This study analyzes the rise of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Dallas, Texas, in the context of the national Klan. It looks at the circumstances and people behind the revival of the Klan in 1915. It chronicles the aggressive marketing program that brought the Klan to Dallas and shows how the Dallas Klavern then changed the course of the national Klan with its emphasis on politics. Specifically, this was done through the person of Hiram Wesley Evans, Dallas dentist and aspiring intellectual, who engineered a coup and took over the national Klan operations in 1922. Evans, as did Dallas's local Klavern number 66, emphasized a strong anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic ideology to recruit, motivate, and justify the existence of the Ku Klux Klan. The study finds that, on the local scene, the Dallas Klavern's leadership was composed of middle and upper-middle class businessmen. Under their leadership, the Klan engaged in a variety of fraternal and vigilante activities. Most remarkable, however, were its successful political efforts. Between 1922 and 1924, the Klan overthrew the old political hierarchy and controlled city and county politics to such a degree that only the Dallas school board escaped the Invisible Empire's domination. Klavern 66 also wielded …