Texas History Goes to Court
The historians who warp Texas history to suit the fashion of the academy are finally being challenged in a real-world way.
In October 2022, the Texas State Historical Association was in the red. Again. They had a Chief Historian who was not well-liked by the public, whose contract was up and who was overdue for a job evaluation. They had an Executive Director on the way out. They had a board not quite in compliance with the organization’s bylaws.
Enter J.P. Bryan, Jr. — Texas history preservationist, collector, philanthropist, founder of the Bryan Museum, retired oilman.
He parachuted in and bailed the organization out financially, for the fourth or fifth time in his life. The board voted him in as Executive Director. When the academics at TSHA didn’t like the decisions he made in the discharge of his duties, they protested. When he tried to bring the board makeup back in line with the bylaws, they protested more loudly. (See my article here about the wild and wooly business meeting in El Paso.)
After the throwdown in El Paso, an internal battle raged. Things came to a head when an emergency board meeting was called by TSHA president Nancy Baker Jones, presumably, to vote Mr. Bryan out as Executive Director. So he got an injunction to prevent the meeting from convening. He sued.
There has been much Ph.D. weeping and rending of garments since the injunction was granted on May 1. There is a hearing on the case on May 19 in Galveston. We will keep you updated.
(UPDATE: The hearing has been moved to May 30.)
For weeks, the professors have tried to frame this as an attack on academic freedom and tenure (it’s not) and the loudest voices are those of people whose participation in the organization’s activities have been — and I’m being generous here — minimal.
They call Mr. Bryan a “cowardly thug” and an “bitter rich white guy.”
Those are the least profane recent utterances from our academic class. I won’t print the others, but will direct you to where you may find them if you ask nicely.
Texas Monthly told the story in a fair way, thanks to a freelance journalist who took the time to investigate. Fox News ran an article on our big Texas history fracas. Most recently, the Texas Observer took a crack at the story.
(Yes, the same Texas Observer that declared it was shuttering in March, but received a $400k bailout to keep spewing stories like the one I’m about to share with you.)
The story, largely informed by the Twitter feed and talking points of a Chicago professor of environmental history begins:
In the Texas State Historical Association’s (TSHA) March 2023 annual meeting program book, J.P. Bryan, the organization’s executive director—and former CEO of a multi-million-dollar energy company—included a poem:
Pause. Why introduce Mr. Bryan as a former CEO of an energy company and not an iconic Texas history preservationist?
Yeah. You know why.
Anyway, back to the nefarious poem that Mr. Bryan included in his letter of greeting to attendees of the 2023 TSHA annual meeting. Typo courtesy of the Observer.
The poem is described by the reporter as follows:
…from Walter Prescott Webb’s book glorifying the Texas Rangers, reads as a declaration of war to many Texas historians.
The next line shows us the reason this article was filed under “Politics” and not a more appropriate category.
[The TSHA] has become the latest front in conservatives’ quest to control the teaching of Texas history.
I bet you saw that coming from a mile away. Academic historians are upset because a rich conservative guy did a thing. So, basically, it’s a day ending in “y.”
Bryan stated as much in the same program, vowing to ensure that the horror he sees as being depicted in Fairfax-Blakeborough’s poem “does not become reality in the teaching of Texas history….”
There’s horror? Goodness! Let us consult the 2023 TSHA Annual Meeting Program to see how Mr. Bryan, not known for breathless hyperbole, described this horror.
“So as your new director, I have three avowed purposes. First, to see that the above statement of possibility does not become reality in the teaching of Texas history…”
If you don’t detect an air of horror in his statement, you’re not crazy. I guess the horror belongs only to the Observer reporter and her informants. Now to the meat of the article:
Several TSHA members who spoke to the Texas Observer said they feel they are being bullied and that their jobs are in danger if they speak up. They fear Bryan’s actions will unravel the TSHA and muzzle historians, especially those of color.
These off-the-record commenters aren’t afraid they’ll be fired from the TSHA if they comment on the record. They don’t work for TSHA. They are, supposedly, members of a nonprofit organization which has nothing to do with their university jobs. Many don’t even have university jobs. Many don’t live and teach in Texas.
This is an excuse to insert “those of color” into the story. If it isn’t racialized, is it even fit to print anymore?
The Observer continues:
Bryan told the Galveston newspaper that professional historians on the board want to “demean the Anglo efforts in settling the western part of the United States for the purpose of spreading freedoms for all.”
Nope. What he actually said (I’m paraphrasing) is that the academics on the board prefer grievance studies to integrated history and that there should be balance of viewpoints in the organization:
Unless you’ve been living under a rock a decade, you know that Mr. Bryan is not wrong. It is de rigueur in the academy to write the “White Man Bad” story from every angle and new angles are being fabricated every day.
Recall that Chief Historian Walter Buenger favorably reviewed a book that claimed the Alamo Defenders were defending only slavery. Recall the special sessions TSHA dedicated to that book and its themes.
Next, the Observer article quotes Dr. Ben Johnson, who wrote a book about Texas in the Mexican Revolution twenty years ago, and now teaches at Loyola University in Chicago.
The idea that you’re going to make a historical organization tell only stories that are consistent with that kind of thinking—that is the death knell for any serious history.
Only stories that are consistent with that kind of thinking? Johnson conveniently missed the part where Mr. Bryan said the point of a balanced board is to ensure that “all voices and narratives of Texas history are heard.”
Perhaps the Observer reporter omitted the same quote from Mr. Bryan in her story because it doesn’t fit the White Man Bad narrative she must rely upon for cover in the absence of facts.
Former State Senator and Land Commissioner, Jerry Patterson, was up next. The reporter mentions that Patterson serves on the 1836 Project Committee, which she describes as “an effort to indoctrinate new state motorists and others with myths about Texan white-settler heroism.”
The 1836 Project Advisory Committee produced a pamphlet about Texas history to be distributed to everyone applying for or renewing a TDL. It is a succinct production, and quite inclusive since it's based on the historical record. It is twelve pages, with little room for emotion-laden jargon required for so-called indoctrination. More on this in a minute…back to the article.
Walter Buenger, TSHA’s chief historian for the past seven years, said the organization now includes far more diverse voices, topics, and approaches to documenting Texas history than it did when the Handbook of Texas started in the 1950s when it “focused mainly on white elite men.”
Quick quibble: Dr. Buenger was the Chief Historian for five years. He was due for a performance review in September 2022 to determine if he would continue on in the role. We have petitioned TSHA to conduct that review. We thank Dr. Buenger for admitting, finally, that it’s not the 1950s anymore!
Buenger, who declined to add comment to any article that preceded the one in the Observer, continued:
At a time when the organization is becoming increasingly diverse, Buenger said, Bryan “wants to take TSHA and Texas history in a different direction” and in doing so is “alienating its members.”
Yes. It does appear Mr. Bryan wants to take it in a different direction. He wants to take the organization, not back to the 1950s, but to a time when “all voices and narratives are heard.”
That includes his voice. It includes my voice. It includes your voice.
Dr. Buenger will have a hard time convincing anyone that Mr. Bryan is alienating members since a supermajority of TSHA’s membership does not identify as being part of the academic class. On the contrary, Dr. Buenger has been alienating the membership for five years by fetishizing white supremacy.
Regardless of the board’s makeup, it’s apparent the lawsuit is personal for Bryan. He told the Observer that he filed the lawsuit “to stop the board meeting’ when he found out he might be fired.”
Regardless of the board’s makeup? <insert cry-laughing emoji here>
The board’s makeup IS the story, honey.
I could handily make the case that Mr. Bryan’s lifelong personal commitment to the history of all Texans is the reason he is investing his resources in this drama. I could make the case that he has a personal stake in preserving the integrity of an organization he’s bailed out so many times, but the reporter failed to try to make any case at all.
In March, when O’Rear’s nomination came to a floor vote, Bryan disrupted the vote and attempted to nominate conservative former Texas Supreme Court Justice Wallace Jefferson, who could not be verified as a TSHA member.
Incorrect and misleading. I was there. Here ya go:
Mr. Bryan didn’t disrupt the vote. He asked for the podium and it was granted to him. The same courtesy was granted to others who opposed what he had to say.
The floor nomination wasn’t made by Mr. Bryan, though he did call for nominations from the floor. He was disrupted numerous times.
The article describes Justice Jefferson as “conservative” but omits the fact that he happens to be a black conservative gentleman.
The article omits that the bylaws do not require a board nominee be a member.
The Observer spoke with TSHA members who attended the meeting but did not want to share their names or university affiliation for fear of retaliation. They said current attempts by conservative Texas legislators to curtail tenure and to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and policies in higher education make them even more fearful of losing their jobs for speaking up.
So these people are afraid of talking about what happened at a nonprofit business meeting because of tenure legislation?
I’m sure that makes sense to someone, but that someone ain’t me.
The TSHA members told the Observer that after the vote, they witnessed Bryan target a Latinx historian, yelling, “You’ve got something to say to me?” Bryan had mistaken him for another TSHA member who publicly criticized his nomination. When two other Latinx historians tried to point out to Bryan that he had misidentified the person, Bryan then turned on them and questioned why they were at the meeting.”
(Y’all, please stop trying to make “Latinx” a thing. Non-academic Hispanic people just laugh at you when you do that.)
Many people witnessed this non-event. Because a frumpy white professor yelled twice at Mr. Bryan from the audience at the end of the meeting then skittered away, he wasn’t there when Mr. Bryan walked over and asked another frumpy white man if there was something he would like to talk about. Mr. Bryan addressed the wrong man. Two Hispanic women nearby verbally protested Mr. Bryan being present at all.
The whole exchange lasted less than ninety seconds. I know this because I watched it from where I stood by the podium waiting to ask Mr. Bryan a question.
“It was clear that this was a bullying and intimidation tactic coming directly from J.P Bryan,” the source said. “He had a bone to pick with somebody and thought he could try to intimidate a group of scholars of color into silence.”
Into silence about what, exactly? He had a well-mannered bone to pick with the man who had shouted during the meeting (see above) but this is just another excuse to insert “of color” into the article and the narrative.
You know an argument hasn’t much merit when you see the “of color” flag go up.
A bit of context you won’t find it in the Observer piece: Mr. Bryan spent seven years in litigation to prevent the demolition of El Paso’s oldest neighborhood, Duranguito. El Paso wanted to bulldoze it to build a sports arena. Duranguito has always been inhabited by those who academics would call “people of color” and Mr. Bryan fought tirelessly to preserve that Hispanic heritage area. And he won.
TSHA’s next president could steer the association in a direction more favorable to conservatives. Justice Ken Wise of Texas’ 14th Court of Appeals is expected to succeed Jones as board president next year. His podcast series, “Wise About Texas,” recounts the Texas Rangers as “protecting the young Republic of Texas from hostile Indians” among other tales about Texas’ traditional heroes.
This is a cheap mischaracterization lifted directly from Dr. Johnson’s Twitter feed/grievance journal.
Justice Wise’s podcast is not a “series.” It’s an ongoing, active podcast that tells the stories of Texans of all stripes. There are no series within the show. The reporter, by way of Loyola’s Ben Johnson, takes nine words from one episode out of about 125 episodes. It’s a shame the reporter didn’t listen to a couple of episodes about our black heroes, Tejano statesmen, female trailblazers or anything other than what Johnson told her. She might’ve learned a little Texas history.
On April 28 Bryan invited Michelle Haas, the founder of the Texas History Trust, to deliver introductions at TSHA’s patrons’ dinner.
Note to the Observer: it is proper form, when you name an organization in an article, to link to the organization’s homepage, not the page Dr. Ben Johnson shoved under your nose. (Instead of a link to the Trust homepage, they linked to our Texas Ranger video that discredits Dr. Johnson. Ha!)
About that dinner…here’s the reaction of one board member to my introduction of Mr. Bryan on April 28 at the San Jacinto Symposium Patron’s Dinner.
He was the only board member in attendance at this TSHA fundraising event, by the way. The Observer reporter did not contact me for comment or I’d have happily told her the funny story of how I came to introduce Mr. Bryan at that dinner.
The board member sitting directly across from me at my table could likewise have asked. But he didn’t. Too scandalized, I guess.
I would ask the board member who was taking video of me at the podium and sending it to his colleagues: Why is it a scandal or newsworthy that I would introduce a speaker at a dinner?
A good many people in that room were there because I invited them to attend. I asked them to pay money to support the TSHA and they did.
I’ve just digitized tens of thousands of pages of source documents on Texas history and have received recognition for that service to Texas history. Does that not qualify me to introduce a speaker? Would you have done it if you were asked?
Haas has criticized Texans for not being “thankful to the Texas Rangers,”
No. I have criticized anti-Ranger scholars for not showing a modicum of gratitude for the work of the Rangers that falls outside the scope of their grievance studies. I have assured Texans that it is quite alright to be grateful for the service of the Rangers.
...called historians “enemies of the Rangers,”...
Indeed I have. I titled a ninety-minute video “Enemies of the Texas Rangers” because that’s what they are. Those professors, most of whom are not historians, are proud of their disdain for the law enforcement body.
…and wrote ‘Land is for Winners’ in reference to the forced removal of Native Americans from their lands.
The piece in question is not just a reference to the Indian Wars. It is a well-considered article about the history of conquest and how the Boomers and later generations refuse to accept that war and conquest were the way of things until WWII.
Land really was for winners.
Both Haas and Wise testified for the bill that created the 1836 Project.
No we didn’t. I never attribute to malice what I can attribute to ignorance, though, so allow me this brief explanation for the benefit of our Observer reporter:
A bill created the 1836 Project Advisory Committee. We didn’t not testify “for the bill.” The Committee invited testimony from all sorts of history people to report on what they do for Texas history. People from the Bullock, Texas State Library, the Capitol, the Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, the Alamo, etc. were all invited.
Justice Wise gave invited testimony as a representative of the TSHA. He explained what the TSHA does. I gave invited testimony as chairman of Texas History Trust. I explained what we do. The testimony is all online. Some of it is on our website. Our reporter could’ve watched some of it, but clearly she didn’t.
“At the heart of all this, it’s about history—what is good history and what is not good history,” TSHA Chief Historian Buenger said. “Good history is about assigning dignity to all groups, [with] accuracy, and honesty.”
Dignity is something one has or one does not have. It isn’t something a member of The Elect can assign. You cannot gift it or bestow it upon someone, especially someone long since dead.
Good history is much simpler and less priestly in its garb.
Here’s how you do it: Look at the source material, seek more source material, interpret the facts in all the material you’ve gathered, place it in the context of the history that surrounds it, try to remove your emotionality and biases…then you write with accuracy and honesty.
Where Dr. Buenger goes wrong is by leading with emotion. You may treat those sources with dignity. You may interpret that a historical figure behaved in a dignified fashion, but historians cannot assign dignity to anyone. Neither can I. Neither can you.
The Bryan Museum in Galveston offers a glimpse of the Texas history TSHA might promote if Bryan gets his way. The museum, which displays Bryan’s personal collection of historical documents, rifles, and Western gear, extolls the legends of Confederate soldiers who “fought bravely” and “defended the western frontier” and applauds the planters from Bryan’s family who with their own industry profited from agriculture, without mentioning the use of slave labor.
How embarrassing for the reporter and her informants that she left out the Bryan Museum’s video series on Tejano and black history, in which you may see several of the current and past TSHA board members who would happily vote to give Mr. Bryan the boot.
Or the Bryan Museum Book Club, which routinely features black, Tejano, and women’s history. Oops.
The museum owns about 75,000 artifacts. Some of the most fascinating artifacts on display are those from Native American and Mexican history. These are displayed as elegantly and prominently as any of the items the Observer reporter has been told are problematic.
In her protest, though, she illustrates the point Mr. Bryan tried to make in his comments to her. All of those stories in the Bryan Museum — the Old 300 families, the Comanches, Mexicans, Anglos, Confederates, cowboys, Unionists, vaqueros, Germans, conquistadors and empresarios, artists, men and women — those are the collected pieces of the Texas heart woven together in one building. They are the panorama of The West. That is how Mr. Bryan views Texas and Western history.
What he was asking for — and is now suing for — is that people like him are as equally represented at TSHA as the people who only write about systemic racism or women’s history; that folks who integrate our history are as equally represented as those interested in segregated history.
“If you forget systemic racism or the role of women in the past, for example; if you forget those things so you can have a sort of happy history where everybody came together to build Texas,” Buenger said.
Here, Buenger says the quiet part out loud: a unified history where everybody came together, to him, is bad history. It’s “forgetting.”
It has never occurred to him or Johnson or the Observer reporter that a unified history where markedly different cultures melded over centuries to form an ethos needn’t omit the unhappy parts of history. It has never occurred to Buenger that the Texan culture we share today is a result of Texans accepting and forgiving , not forgetting.
