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 […]
Archive | Politics

The Mouse that Roared: Eleanor Tinsley
In the late 1960s Mrs. James Tinsley set a shining example of domesticity in the local press as the “clever hostess,” behind the University of Houston history department’s annual dessert and coffee party. The genteel mother of three rounded out this image teaching Sunday school and offering piano lessons to elementary-aged children at her home […]

Eldrewey Stearns and Houston’s Student Civil Rights Movement
In the late 1950s and early 1960s young people in Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Tennessee held sit-ins that caught the eye of Texas Southern University (TSU) students in Houston

Progressive Programming at KUHT
By Emily Vinson The KUHT television program People are Taught to be Different had the noble aim of improving intercultural understanding, and showing viewers that people are, at their core, much the same. Against a simple stage setting, elegant dancers interpreted moments of joy and sorrow, anger, and love across cultures, as the narrator provided […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.

Voices Breaking Boundaries
In a world full of customs offices and immigration departments, where borders and national identities play powerful roles, thousands of individuals experience similar crises and conflicts, and joys and frustrations, no matter where they live around the globe. Although the commonality of these experiences often goes unrecognized by politicians and policy-makers, the Houston-based non-profit organization […]

Asia Society Texas Center
From some perspectives, Asia Society Texas’s building of understated scale and even-tempered disposition, designed by world-renowned Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi, calmly melds into a tree-lined residential neighborhood within Houston’s Museum District. Contrastingly, the modernist facade features walls of glass bisected by an infinity water garden terrace where steam vapors rise capriciously from its roofline.

A Scream or a Whisper: Images of Activism in Houston
Activism takes many forms. Although most easily recognized by the sights and sounds of protestors marching down the street carrying signs, activism is also demonstrated quietly through the comforting voice that calms a stray animal or in a roadside memorial communicating awareness for road safety. The people behind these social movements, regardless of the voracity […]