Discover the latest issue of Houston History exploring people who have impacted the Houston community and beyond.
Archive | Military and War
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A Surprise Discovery: Making Art History Public Art
By Mercedes Del Riego 22 February 1916 “Sunday Evening in a Village in the Ardennes.” Says “Dear Irma, many heartfelt thanks and greetings, your Otto. Have had no mail from you for days.” All photos courtesy of Irene Guenther. Peter Guenther and his wife, Andrea, died a few short months apart. “I should not have […]
Cougars Fostering Inclusion in the U.S. Military
By Christine Le with Jacob Loew General Barrye Price, LTC Melissa Comiskey, and 2LT Katelyn Kubosh have each played a role in opening doors to women in the U.S. Military. Photos courtesy of the U.S. Army. Serving in the military requires a noble spirit along with a strong passion for service and our nation. Enlistment, […]
El Programa Bracero
“You never forget the Bracero experience,” former bracero Aurelio Marin commented, perfectly summarizing the triumphs, tribulations, and turbulence of America’s highly-controversial and highly-impactful Mexican Farm Labor Program Program, commonly known as the Bracero Program, which started in 1942 to supply able-bodied Mexican laborers to U.S. industries suffering shortages at the outset of World War II. […]
Pioneering Houston EMS: Answering the Call
Houston EMS personnel recall stories of an auto accident on a Houston roadway, most likely on Westheimer near its current intersection with Loop 610. Two ambulances arrived at the scene to find one person dead and another badly injured. The two men who worked for separate private companies, believed to be funeral homes, fought over […]
Katy: West Houston Wonder
Long before the Katy Mills Mall bustled with customers, the Katy rice mills watched over the area. Earlier still, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) railroad traversed the fertile prairie near Cane Island Creek.
Rise, Decline, and Rebirth of the Cullen Rifles
The sound of hands clasping the wooden stocks of 1903 Springfield rifles echoed loudly across the field as a crowd of Houston Cougars football fans watched. Thirty young men, all dressed in their pink and green military dress uniforms, were executing the Queen Anne’s Drill—a complex rifle maneuver that required high levels of discipline and […]
An American Chinese in Houston
E. K. T. Chen spent half his life a Texan and died a patriot in Washington, DC, on October 16, 1957, while preventing Chinese internment during the Korean War. This is the story of the extraordinary things accomplished by this ordinary son of Chinese immigrants that benefited all Americans, and my efforts to continue his […]
From “Tom Brown” to Mykawa Road
In 2012, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University declared Houston to be the most diverse city in the nation, replacing Los Angeles and New York at the top of the list. Of the nearly 2.1 million people in the city, fewer than 130,000 were Asians according to the 2010 Census, with Japanese […]
The Pinoys of Bayou City
The history of Filipinos in the southern United States stretches back to the mid-eighteenth century, when burgeoning trade routes between the two lands encouraged small numbers of Filipino migrants to settle in some of their first enclaves in the Americas.