The Truth is Marching On…
Good news has been hard to come by lately, on every front.
As we all prepare for the coming winterpocalypse, I hope the story in this email will warm your heart and encourage you to once again find a place in it for the Texas State Historical Association.
Three years ago, I introduced y'all to an activist Texas history professor at the height of his career, saying some pretty wild things to the press.
Among his most memorable takes were claims that traditional Texas history undergirds white supremacy and several comments about the Alamo and "whiteness."
In that inaugural video series, we traversed the career of Dr. Walter Buenger.
We explored how, while he was teaching at Texas A&M in the 1990s, he rallied to bring all of the "studies" departments to Texas universities.
Our final destination was his current status: as Chief Historian of the Texas State Historical Association and a cushy endowed chair in Texas history at U.T.
I pointed out all the ways in which an activist in those roles distorted how information about Texas history is disseminated.
What did I expect from that 2021 series? Nada.
Surely people smarter than me were aware of all this and I was just late to the party, right? I was prepared to hear that. I was likewise prepared for no response at all.
What changed because of that 2021 series? Everything.
People remembered Dr. Buenger's comments when it came time to renew their TSHA memberships. Some of the Association's biggest donors began to see things a little differently. Scholars who had witnessed the hijacking of our institutions firsthand got in touch with me.
I quickly learned that Buenger and his fellow travelers - historians of the Only Oppression & Power Studies (OOPS) school - had been squeezing more traditional historians out of the TSHA for years. I fully understood the landscape when, in March 2023, I watched them try to deepen their control at the annual meeting in El Paso by electing more academics to an already imbalanced board.
They'd done it before, sure, but this time they were met with resistance from someone who doesn't agree that oppression is the only subject worthy of study, someone who has fervently supported TSHA for six decades, someone who happened to be the Executive Director:
Mr. J. P. Bryan.
Not only did Mr. Bryan have the audacity to insist that TSHA comply with its bylaws, he openly said he disagreed with the OOPS view of history. The nerve of some people!
Well, the OOPS brigade decided the best way to handle a dissenting voice was to eliminate it. At the next board meeting, they planned to abolish the role of Executive Director and Mr. Bryan along with it.
Mr. Bryan successfully sought an injunction to prevent that. There was a lawsuit, settled by a mediation agreement that compelled the resignations of two academic board members. Once they were replaced, the board could again meet. (They were and they have.)
But back to Buenger...
He's gone.
Yep, you read that correctly. He has resigned.
Can you truly resign from a job when your employment contract expired in September 2022? Don't know, don't care.
Walter Buenger is no longer Chief Historian of TSHA.
And that's not all!
Most of the OOPS scholars who were on the board? Their resignations trickled in over the last couple of months. Other OOPSies who served on committees also packed it in. The idea of sharing an organization with scholars of non-OOPS topics and the Texas public was too much to bear, I guess.
So much for academic discourse.
The task that lies ahead for us is restoring TSHA to what it was before they commandeered it to serve their needs. We left in droves and we will return in droves. But this time, we'll be vigilant and understand that membership comes with a voice and a vote.
At this year's annual meeting in College Station, members will vote on NINE board members. That's nearly half the board, y'all. The Nominations Committee will select six academic and three non-academic candidates. On March 1, we'll vote on them.
Register for the conference and buy your membership here:
https://tsha.wildapricot.org/event-5312433
For those of you who want to kick up your heels, Texas style, there will be a gala and auction on the evening of March 1 at the Hall of Champions.
Gov. Perry will emcee the event. Chancellor Sharp and Coach Slocum will be honored. The auction items will be stellar, the food will be spectacular, but the fellowship will be what you remember most.
https://tsha.wildapricot.org/event-5385912
A journey that started three years ago with some videos I thought nobody would watch helped us reach this inflection point. It also put a target on my back and the backs of anyone who dares say there's so much more to Texas history than OOPS.
But we have to keep saying it because it's true. They had their long march through the institutions but now the truth of all Texans is marching on.
