Every mass grave in Texas offers morbid proof that at one time, in that place, something went very, very wrong. Texans have resorted to mass graves out of necessity, desperation and appalling indifference. These sites mark natural disasters or hide unnatural crimes that tested the limits of human endurance and empathy. Because of this, memorializing those who lie in mass graves can be controversial. Not everyone wants to dig up the darkness of the past, much less admit that the dirt is still fresh. Nevertheless, to honor those whose bones lie mixed with others, their stories must be told. In so doing, Kathy Benjamin exhumes essential shards of Lone Star history, from the Alamo to the present day.
In late July 1910, a shocking number of African Americans in Texas were slaughtered by white mobs in the Slocum area of Anderson County and the Percilla-Augusta region of neighboring Houston County. The number of dead surpassed the casualties of the Rosewood Massacre in Florida and rivaled those of the Tulsa Riots in Oklahoma, but the incident--one of the largest mass murders of blacks in American history--is now largely forgotten. Investigate the facts behind this harrowing act of genocide in E.R. Bills's compelling inquiry into the Slocum Massacre.
You can’t attend your own funeral. But you can have a blast planning it! Death is scary—but planning your funeral doesn't have to be! It's Your Funeral! will help demystify death, decrease your anxiety, and put the fun back in funeral, whether that means a drunken bacchanal or a somber reflection on just how great you were. Every stage of the legacy planning process is considered, from a burial outfit to a funeral theme. Practical and cheeky questions alike are answered, including: • What is the most eco-friendly burial method? • Can I write my own obituary? • Can my body be shot into space after I die? • How can I manage my digital legacy? Offering a plethora of curious facts, strange stories, and inspiration to help you think outside the coffin, It’s Your Funeral! includes worksheets that will ensure your wishes are recorded for posterity. Planning for death should be the time of your life, so let’s get started!
A Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the mistreatment of black Americans. In this 'precise and eloquent work' - as described in its Pulitzer Prize citation - Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an 'Age of Neoslavery' that thrived in the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Blackmon unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude thereafter. By turns moving, sobering and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals these stories, the companies that profited the most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.
This text explores the natural history of Texas and more than 2900 springs in 183 Texas counties. It also includes an in-depth discussion of the general characteristics of springs - their physical and prehistoric settings, their historical significance, and their associated flora and fauna.
The myth of the peace-loving "noble savage" is persistent and pernicious. Indeed, for the last fifty years, most popular and scholarly works have agreed that prehistoric warfare was rare, harmless, unimportant, and, like smallpox, a disease of civilized societies alone. Prehistoric warfare, according to this view, was little more than a ritualized game, where casualties were limited and the effects of aggression relatively mild. Lawrence Keeley's groundbreaking War Before Civilization offers a devastating rebuttal to such comfortable myths and debunks the notion that warfare was introduced to primitive societies through contact with civilization (an idea he denounces as "the pacification of the past"). Building on much fascinating archeological and historical research and offering an astute comparison of warfare in civilized and prehistoric societies, from modern European states to the Plains Indians of North America, War Before Civilization convincingly demonstrates that prehistoric warfare was in fact more deadly, more frequent, and more ruthless than modern war. To support this point, Keeley provides a wide-ranging look at warfare and brutality in the prehistoric world. He reveals, for instance, that prehistorical tactics favoring raids and ambushes, as opposed to formal battles, often yielded a high death-rate; that adult males falling into the hands of their enemies were almost universally killed; and that surprise raids seldom spared even women and children. Keeley cites evidence of ancient massacres in many areas of the world, including the discovery in South Dakota of a prehistoric mass grave containing the remains of over 500 scalped and mutilated men, women, and children (a slaughter that took place a century and a half before the arrival of Columbus). In addition, Keeley surveys the prevalence of looting, destruction, and trophy-taking in all kinds of warfare and again finds little moral distinction between ancient warriors and civilized armies. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, he examines the evidence of cannibalism among some preliterate peoples. Keeley is a seasoned writer and his book is packed with vivid, eye-opening details (for instance, that the homicide rate of prehistoric Illinois villagers may have exceeded that of the modern United States by some 70 times). But he also goes beyond grisly facts to address the larger moral and philosophical issues raised by his work. What are the causes of war? Are human beings inherently violent? How can we ensure peace in our own time? Challenging some of our most dearly held beliefs, Keeley's conclusions are bound to stir controversy.
A vivid history of America's biggest, baddest prison system and how it came to lead the nation's punitive revolution In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. The most locked-down state in the nation has led the way in criminal justice severity, from assembly-line executions to isolation supermaxes, from prison privatization to sentencing juveniles as adults. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became the national template. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, historian Robert Perkinson reveals the Southern roots of our present-day prison colossus. While conventional histories emphasize the North's rehabilitative approach, he shows how the retributive and profit-driven regime of the South ultimately triumphed. Most provocatively, he argues that just as convict leasing and segregation emerged in response to Reconstruction, so today's mass incarceration, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights. Illuminating for the first time the origins of America's prison juggernaut, Texas Tough points toward a more just and humane future.
Author Tristan Smith offers an insightful guide through two dozen of Houston and Galveston's most historic cemeteries. Houston and Galveston's historic cemeteries lie scattered amongst the neighborhoods and thoroughfares of the nation's fourth largest city. Some of these portals to the past nestle in hidden pockets of the bustling metropolis. Other cemeteries carve out the kind of contemplative sanctuary that rivals the city's largest greenspaces. Explore the burial grounds around the Bayou City, where astronauts, musicians, movie stars and civic leaders rest alongside rogues, scoundrels and murderers.
From undocumented men named Angel, to angels falling from the sky, Natalie Scenters-Zapico’s gripping debut collection, The Verging Cities, is filled with explorations of immigration and marriage, narco-violence and femicide, and angels in the domestic sphere. Deeply rooted along the US-México border in the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, and Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, these poems give a brave new voice to the ways in which international politics affect the individual. Composed in a variety of forms, from sonnet and epithalamium to endnotes and field notes, each poem distills violent stories of narcos, undocumented immigrants, border patrol agents, and the people who fall in love with each other and their traumas. The border in Scenters-Zapico’s The Verging Cities exists in a visceral place where the real is (sur)real. In these poems mouths speak suspended from ceilings, numbered metal poles mark the border and lovers’ spines, and cities scream to each other at night through fences that “ooze only silt.” This bold new vision of border life between what has been named the safest city in the United States and the murder capital of the world is in deep conversation with other border poets—Benjamin Alire Saenz, Gloria Anzaldúa, Alberto Ríos, and Luis Alberto Urrea—while establishing itself as a new and haunting interpretation of the border as a verge, the beginning of one thing and the end of another in constant cycle.
In this gripping and provocative “ethnography of death,” anthropologist and MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Jason De León sheds light on one of the most pressing political issues of our time—the human consequences of US immigration and border policy. The Land of Open Graves reveals the suffering and deaths that occur daily in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona as thousands of undocumented migrants attempt to cross the border from Mexico into the United States. Drawing on the four major fields of anthropology, De León uses an innovative combination of ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, and forensic science to produce a scathing critique of “Prevention through Deterrence,” the federal border enforcement policy that encourages migrants to cross in areas characterized by extreme environmental conditions and high risk of death. For two decades, systematic violence has failed to deter border crossers while successfully turning the rugged terrain of southern Arizona into a killing field. Featuring stark photography by Michael Wells, this book examines the weaponization of natural terrain as a border wall: first-person stories from survivors underscore this fundamental threat to human rights, and the very lives, of non-citizens as they are subjected to the most insidious and intangible form of American policing as institutional violence. In harrowing detail, De León chronicles the journeys of people who have made dozens of attempts to cross the border and uncovers the stories of the objects and bodies left behind in the desert. The Land of Open Graves will spark debate and controversy.
