What is Houston’s DNA? By Debbie Z. Harwell “Discover your ethnic origins,” find the “source of your greatness,” trace your “health, traits, and ancestry,” and “amaze yourself…find new relatives.” Ads proliferate from companies like AncestryDNA, 23andMe, and MyHeritage enticing us to learn more about who we really are. People who send a saliva sample for […]
When we conceived the idea for this issue almost a year ago, we planned to focus on examples of industrial accidents and environmental improvement. That was before Harvey hit.
Download the full pdf. Vol. 15, No. 1 (Fall 2017) Letter from the Editor by Debbie Z. Harwell 2 Seeing Frost Town from the bottom up: Using Archeology and Archives to Reconstruct a Forgotten Houston Neighborhood By Jason W. Barrett, Douglas K. Boyd, and Louis F. Aulbach 8 The 1947 Texas City Disaster: Changing Lives […]
Pieces of History By Debbie Z. Harwell My parents were born in the early 1910s and had definite ideas about racial boundaries. Growing up in Houston I learned from an early age, “You don’t socialize with them.” Although I do not specifically remember being told to whom “them” referred, the meaning was clear. As I […]
Rx: Public History By Debbie Z. Harwell In 2006 our late oral history director Ernesto Valdes interviewed many people about Houston’s relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina. Dr. David Persse, Public Health Authority for the City of Houston and Physician Director for Houston Emergency Medical Services (EMS), told him things turned out very differently than what […]
After forty years of teaching and thirteen years at the helm of Houston History, our editor-in-chief Joe Pratt has retired. This is the last letter from the editor he will write, but we are hopeful he will get bored with his gorgeous view of the mountains and write articles for us from time to time, sharing his wealth […]
At times Houston’s “suburbs” appear destined to reach from San Antonio to New Orleans and from Dallas to Cancun. Our city appears to know no bounds. Yet when I first moved to Houston upon entering Rice University in 1966, our city seemed to stop roughly at the current location of Loop 610. What a difference […]
The Heritage Society and Houston History have teamed up to present the magazine’s fall issue along with a complementary exhibit in the museum gallery featuring images, documents, artifacts, and personal items related to the articles. The exhibit is on display now at The Heritage Society, 1100 Bagby in downtown Houston. The magazine will be available […]
Letter from the Editor By Debbie Z. Harwell, Managing Editor A child of the sixties, I believed at the time that activism centered around the power of the people who employed the in-your-face tactics we saw on the news or the protests we participated in on our college campuses. The civil rights and women’s rights […]
The spring issue celebrates thrity years of the UH Center for Public History. The issue includes a retrospective by director Marty Melosi and articles by several of our students on a variety of Houston History topics from the late nineteenth century to the more recent past.
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