This is the story of how Guadalupe Quintanilla, “a first grade drop-out” became an outstanding and influential figure in Houston and the United States, founding a Cross Cultural Communication Program with the Houston Police Department, and recognized by the Department of Justice, President Reagan, and the United Nations.
By Ryan Graham The greatest and most successful college football coaches are those who unlock the hidden potential in a program. Not only do they bring out the best in themselves, they also bring out the best in their assistant coaches and, most importantly, their players. From perennial “P5” powerhouses (Power 5 NCAA Division 1 […]
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 […]
It has been over 50 years since the last Turkey Day Classic was played, yet still to this day the game is the conversation among Jack Yates and Phyllis Wheatley Alumni alike. The classic initially began as a rotation of holiday games between Yates, Washington, and Wheatley High Schools in 1927. By 1946, the overwhelming […]
In May 2015, Houston native Dr. Tatcho Mindiola, Jr., the long time Chicano activist, sociology professor, and director for the Center for Mexican American Studies, retired from the University of Houston (UH) after forty years of service. Months later he donated his papers, over sixty boxes, to the Hispanic Collections at the University of Houston […]
By La’Nora Jefferson The University of Houston marching band was founded in 1946. Any student could participate as long as they auditioned. Even in its early years, the marching band supported the Cougars at all football and basketball games, traveling to several away games. The band led the Frontier Fiesta parade and the first football […]
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 […]
The UH English Department, with John McNamara as chair, shaped its creative writing program in the late 1970s, when such programs were sprouting up across the country, as a way to draw students at a time of “steadily declining graduate enrollment in the Department.” In 1978, the department asked poet Cynthia Macdonald, then at Johns […]
Not content with the status quo and lacking an organization to represent them, a small group of thirty Taiwanese women from the United States and Canada formed what became the North America Taiwanese Women’s Association (NATWA) in March of 1988. A non-profit run primarily by volunteers, NATWA created a nongovernmental organization to address major issues […]
In May 1957, Maria Jimenez arrived in Houston, having just left her native Coahuila in Mexico to reunite with her father. Her family settled in a small Magnolia Park home near Maria’s school, Franklin Elementary. There, as a first grader, she experienced her first dose of anti-Mexican sentiments. Within the halls, classrooms, and playgrounds, school […]
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