Tuck this book under your arm, jump in your car, and get ready to discover the ghosts of North Texas! These aren't tall tales-these are stories about places you can visit on your own ghost-hunting excursion!

With unlimited archival access and a journalist's attention to detail, James L. Rogers updates and expands his 1965 publication to bring the university's history into the next century. The founder of the Texas Normal College, Joshua C. Chilton, declared in 1890 the institution's aim "to become leaders in the education of the young men and women of Texas, fitting them to creditably fill the most important positions in business and professional circles." By 1965 the eighth president, J. C. Matthews, presided over an institution granting doctorates in the sciences, mathematics, humanities, social sciences, teacher education, business administration, and the fine arts. In the last thirty-five years the institution has grown to become the University of North Texas System under the leadership of Chancellor Alfred Hurley and President Norval Pohl, with campuses in Dallas and Fort Worth. It now stands as the leading university of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Generously illustrated with over eighty photos of people and events on campus, The Story of North Texas provides the definitive history of this institution and is an inspiration to its alumni and friends..

Based on articles written for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, author Richard J. Gonzales draws on his educational, inner-city and professional life experiences to weave eyewitness testimony into issues facing Chicanos, including economic, health, education, criminal justice, politics, immigration, and cultural issues. Raza Rising presents a personal recounting of a Chicano's struggle with and understanding of the socio-economic policies and historical actions that impact their ascendancy. Raza Rising offers first-hand observations, supported by well-documented scholarly research, of Chicanos' growth and subsequent struggles to participate fully in North Texas' political and economic life. Raza Rising takes the reader to the organization of a Fort Worth immigration reform march, to the actual march with 20,000 people on Main Street on Palm Sunday, to a protest demonstration of the City of Farmers Branch's attempt to prohibit renting to the undocumented immigrant, to the author's awakening in Chicago on the importance of learning, and to his poignant experience as a guest speaker in a Fort Worth public school classroom. Other observations offer insight on how Chicanos struggle with their ethnic identity and understanding of their history. In addition, the book highlights important historical and political events that illustrate Chicanos' attempts to overcome barriers to their rise. At a time when global economic competition threatens the United States' first world status, this country must nurture academic excellence for all its citizens. Raza Rising provides specific explanations for the Chicano educational lag and workable solutions to accelerate their political, economic and academic achievements. Prophetic state and national demographers have forecasted the steady increase in Chicano populations and decrease in white populations. Raza Rising offers students, instructors, policy makers, politicians and neighbors a deeper understanding of Chicanos, who in the near future will transition from minority to majority status in Texas.

Written by a Texas inmate trained as a reporter, this book gives practical advice on how inmates live, eat, play, work, and die in the Texas prison system. It spotlights the day-to-day workings of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice--what's good, what's bad, which programs work and which ones do not, and examines if practice really follows official policy. "While the book is meant to be a primer for those with loved ones in prison, it should be required reading for any attorney involved in criminal law."--Texas Lawyer de Novo Magazine

Convict Cowboys is the first book on the nation’s first prison rodeo, which ran from 1931 to 1986. At its apogee the Texas Prison Rodeo drew 30,000 spectators on October Sundays. Mitchel P. Roth portrays the Texas Prison Rodeo against a backdrop of Texas history, covering the history of rodeo, the prison system, and convict leasing, as well as important figures in Texas penology including Marshall Lee Simmons, O.B. Ellis, and George J. Beto, and the changing prison demimonde. Over the years the rodeo arena not only boasted death-defying entertainment that would make professional cowboys think twice, but featured a virtual who’s who of American popular culture. Readers will be treated to stories about numerous American and Texas folk heroes, including Western film stars ranging from Tom Mix to John Wayne, and music legends such as Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. Through extensive archival research Roth introduces readers to the convict cowboys in both the rodeo arena and behind prison walls, giving voice to a legion of previously forgotten inmate cowboys who risked life and limb for a few dollars and the applause of free-world crowds.

"Back in 2005, the board of the directors of the Houston Police Officers' Union commissioned Mitchel Roth, Ph.D., and Tom Kennedy to research and write a book that chronicled the history of the Houston Police Department and the Houston Police Officers' Union."--Foreword.

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.

In the states of the former Confederacy, Reconstruction amounted to a second Civil War, one that white southerners were determined to win. An important chapter in that undeclared conflict played out in northeast Texas, in the Corners region where Grayson, Fannin, Hunt, and Collin Counties converged. Part of that violence came to be called the Lee-Peacock Feud, a struggle in which Unionists led by Lewis Peacock and former Confederates led by Bob Lee sought to even old scores, as well as to set the terms of the new South, especially regarding the status of freed slaves. Until recently, the Lee-Peacock violence has been placed squarely within the Lost Cause mythology. This account sets the record straight. For Bob Lee, a Confederate veteran, the new phase of the war began when he refused to release his slaves. When Federal officials came to his farm in July to enforce emancipation, he fought back and finally fled as a fugitive. In the relatively short time left to his life, he claimed personally to have killed at least forty people--civilian and military, Unionists and freedmen. Peacock, a dedicated leader of the Unionist efforts, became his primary target and chief foe. Both men eventually died at the hands of each other's supporters. From previously untapped sources in the National Archives and other records, the authors have tracked down the details of the Corners violence and the larger issues it reflected, adding to the reinterpretation of Reconstruction history and rescuing from myth events that shaped the following century of Southern politics.

From country and blues to rap and punk, Texas music is all over the map, figuratively and literally. Texas musicians have pioneered new musical genres, instruments, and playing styles, proving themselves to be daring innovators who often call the tune for musicians around the country and even abroad. To introduce some of these trailblazing Texas musicians to a wider audience and pay tribute to their accomplishments, Michael Corcoran profiles thirty-two of them in All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music. Corcoran covers musicians who work in a wide range of musical genres, including blues, gospel, country, rap, indie rock, pop, Cajun, Tejano, conjunto, funk, honky-tonk, rockabilly, rhythm and blues, and Western swing. His focus is on underappreciated artists, pioneers who haven't fully received their due. He also includes well-known musicians who've been underrated, such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Selena, and invites us to take a closer look at the unique talents of these artists. Corcoran's profiles come from articles he wrote for the Dallas Morning News, Austin American-Statesman, Houston Press, and other publications, which have been expanded and updated for this volume. His musical detective work even uncovers a case of mistaken identity (Washington Phillips) and corrects much misinformation on Blind Willie Johnson and Arizona Dranes. Corcoran closes the book with lively pieces on the Austin music scene and its most famous, if no longer extant, clubs, as well as his personal lists of the forty greatest Texas songs of all time and the twenty-five essential CDs for Texas music fans.

This book is about the other Texas, not the state known for its cowboy conservatism, but a mid-twentieth-century hotbed of community organizing, liberal politics, and civil rights activism. Beginning in the 1930s, Max Krochmal tells the story of the decades-long struggle for democracy in Texas, when African American, Mexican American, and white labor and community activists gradually came together to empower the state's marginalized minorities. At the ballot box and in the streets, these diverse activists demanded not only integration but economic justice, labor rights, and real political power for all. Their efforts gave rise to the Democratic Coalition of the 1960s, a militant, multiracial alliance that would take on and eventually overthrow both Jim Crow and Juan Crow. Using rare archival sources and original oral history interviews, Krochmal reveals the often-overlooked democratic foundations and liberal tradition of one of our nation's most conservative states. Blue Texas remembers the many forgotten activists who, by crossing racial lines and building coalitions, democratized their cities and state to a degree that would have been unimaginable just a decade earlier--and it shows why their story still matters today.