Nearly 150 members of the new Texas Alliance for History, including university professors and students, community historians, and staff members of historical sites and museums gathered Saturday at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth for the event, “Looking Back, Moving Forward.” Their collective goal: to form a group dedicated to sharing untold stories of Texas history, efforts that seem even more crucial in an era when various efforts to diversify the state’s historical record are under fire.
The Alliance for Texas History arose in response to an attack on academic historians in the 127-year-old Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) by executive director J.P. Bryan. In May, the Texas Observer reported how the energy tycoon filed a lawsuit against the president of the board at the time, Nancy Baker Jones, in an attempt to stack the board with more conservative, nonacademic historians, claiming there were too many academics on the board than the bylaws allowed. Bryan dismissed Jones and other academic historians as “woke,” and told the Galveston Daily News that professional historians on the board want to “demean the Anglo efforts in settling the western part of the United States for the purpose of spreading freedoms for all.”
In September, the lawsuit ended when Jones resigned. Many other TSHA members followed her, including its Chief Historian Walter Buenger and Alliance interim president Gregg Cantrell, another longtime board member. “Denigrating academic historians made it impossible for me personally to remain affiliated with TSHA,” Cantrell said.
