TSHA Community

Great publications from our members and award recipients.

These books were authored by members of TSHA or received one of TSHA’s book awards. They are provided here for reference and support of the historical content they contain.

List of Publications (120 total) Page 5 of 10

Indomitable Sarah: The Life of Judge Sarah T. Hughes

Judge Sarah T. Hughes is perhaps best remembered as the woman who swore in Lyndon Johnson as president aboard Air Force One on November 22, 1963, after President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. But long before then, she had been making headlines as the foremost woman Democrat in Texas. In 1935, over the protests of a local senator who said she should be home washing dishes, Sarah T. Hughes was appointed the first woman district judge in Texas. She was nominated for vice president of the United States at the 1952 Democratic National Convention, and in 1961 she was nominated by President John F. Kennedy as a federal district judge. A feminist who devoted her life to liberal causes, she presided over the three-judge panel and wrote the opinion that overturned Texas’s abortion laws in 1970 in Roe v. Wade, a decision upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, a decision that has rocked American society and politics to this day.

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By Darwin Payne

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.

Minnie Fisher Cunningham: A Suffragist's Life in Politics

The principal orchestrator of the passage of women's suffrage in Texas, a founder and national officer of the League of Women Voters, the first woman to run for a U.S. Senate seat from Texas, and a candidate for that state's governor, Minnie Fisher Cunningham was one of the first American women to pursue a career in party politics. Cunningham's professional life spanned a half century, thus illuminating our understanding of women in public life between the Progressive Era and the 1960s feminist movement.

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By Harold L. Smith and Judith N. McArthur

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.

Maria von Blucher's Corpus Christi: Letters from the South Texas Frontier, 1849-1879

“This is a fascinating book. Maria von Blucher’s letters are highly informative reading for anyone who is interested in learning about the daily life of a woman and her family in nineteenth-century Texas, particularly from a German perspective. Maria von Blucher’s correspondence can also be viewed as one of the earliest examples of writing produced by a woman who wrote in the German language in Texas. Maria von Blucher’s edited correspondence is a book well worth reading and rereading, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the story of the German experience in Texas.”--German-Texan Heritage Society

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By Bruce S. Cheeseman

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.

Her Act and Deed: Women's Lives in a Rural Southern County, 1837-1873

Deeds, wills, divorce decrees, and other evidence of the public lives of nineteenth-century women belie the long-held beliefs of their public invisibility. Angela Boswell's Her Act and Deed: Women's Lives in a Rural Southern County, 1837–1873 follows the threads of Southern women's lives as they weave through the public records of one Texas county during the middle of the nineteenth century. Her unique approach to exploring women's roles in a South that spanned the frontier, antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras illuminates the truths of the feminine world of those periods, and her analysis of this set of complete public records for those years challenges the theory of men's and women's separate spheres of influence, as advanced by many scholars.

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By Angela Boswell

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.

Capitol Women: Texas Female Legislators, 1923-1999

This first complete record of the women of the Texas Legislature places such well-known figures as Kay Bailey Hutchison, Sissy Farenthold, Barbara Jordan, Irma Rangel, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Susan Combs, and Judith Zaffirini in the context of their times and among the women and men with whom they served. Drawing on years of primary research and interviews, Nancy Baker Jones and Ruthe Winegarten offer concise biographies and profiles of all eighty-six women who have served or currently hold office in the Texas Legislature.

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By Nancy Baker Jones, Ph.D. and Ruthe Winegarten

Available for purchase at Legacy of Texas .

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, 1900-1940

Rural women comprised the largest part of the adult population of Texas until 1940 and in the American South until 1960. On the cotton farms of Central Texas, women's labor was essential. In addition to working untold hours in the fields, women shouldered most family responsibilities: keeping house, sewing clothing, cultivating and cooking food, and bearing and raising children. But despite their contributions to the southern agricultural economy, rural women's stories have remained largely untold.

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By Rebecca Sharpless

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women. Recipient of the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History.

Women and the Creation of Urban Life: Dallas, Texas, 1843-1920

Throughout the history of Dallas, women have worked both alongside and apart from the men now remembered as the city's founders and builders. In truth, women helped to create the definitive forms of urban life by establishing organizations and agencies that altered the responsibilities and functions of local government, amended the public conception of political issues, changed the city's physical structure, and affected the day-to-day lives of thousands of people.

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By Elizabeth York Enstam

Available for purchase at Legacy of Texas .

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women. Recipient of the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History.

Gordon Conway: Fashioning a New Woman

Follows the course of Conway's life from her Dallas upbringing in a wealthy society family through her working years in New York, London, and Paris as a fashion artist for Vanity Fair and fashion designer for stage and film. Her story underscores the role that women played in creating the image of the flapper or New Woman of the 1920s, as well as the limits of their influence. Includes color illustrations and b&w photos and illustrations, plus a catalogue of work.

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By Raye Virginia Allen

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.

Hands to the Spindle: Texas Women and Home Textile Production, 1822-1880

Through the stories of real women and an overview of their textile crafts, Paula Mitchell Marks introduces readers to a functional art rarely practiced in our more hurried times. Photographs of some of their actual handiwork and evocative pen sketches of women at work and the tools and dye plants they used, skillfully drawn by artist Walle Conoly, bring the words to life.

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By Paula Mitchell Marks, Ph.D.

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.

Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph

Women of all colors have shaped families, communities, institutions, and societies throughout history, but only in recent decades have their contributions been widely recognized, described, and celebrated. This book presents the first comprehensive history of black Texas women, a previously neglected group whose 150 years of continued struggle and some successes against the oppression of racism and sexism deserve to be better known and understood.

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By Ruthe Winegarten

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.

Claytie and The Lady: Ann Richards, Gender, and Politics in Texas

It was like a remake of The Cowboy and the Lady, except that this time they weren't friends. The 1990 Texas governor's race pitted Republican Clayton Williams, a politically conservative rancher and oil millionaire, against Democrat Ann Richards, an experienced progressive politician noted for her toughness and quick wit. Their differences offered voters a choice not only of policies and programs but also of stereotypes and myths of men's and women's proper roles.

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By Jeanie R. Stanley and Sue Tolleson-Rhinehart

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.

Pioneer Woman Educator: The Progressive Spirit of Annie Webb Blanton

In this biography of Texas educator Annie Webb Blanton (1870-1945), author Cottrell traces Blanton's rise from teaching in a rural schoolroom in Pine Springs, Texas, to her service as the state's top administrator of public schools and, subsequently, her tenure as a professor of education at the University of Texas. Drawing on archives and interviews with Blanton's surviving relatives and associates, Cottrell depicts Blanton's devotion to Texas schools and to the professionalism of women and analyzes her success in professional and state politics. She places Blanton's accomplishments within the context of Progressive-era reform and of gender issues as they defined and contributed to her work.

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By Debbie Mauldin Cottrell

Available for purchase at Legacy of Texas .

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.