Just got back from making
a speech based on my book "White Metropolis" for the Dallas County
Juvenile Justice Department's "Black History Month" series, "Tha
Was Then, This Is Now." We met at the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center,
named after Dallas' long-time district attorney. They laughed when I
said, "You know this building is named after a really terrible man." I
told them about Wade's congressional campaign against incumbent Republican
Bruce Alger and how each man tried to convince voters that he was the
bigger racist and the more enthusiastic supporter of segregation. I also
mentioned how in Wade's era the motto in the DA's office was,
"Anyone can convict a guilty man." The prosecutors used to
complete to see who could convince juries to convict the largest number of
innocent defendants. I also told them how R.L. Thornton Freeway was named
after a former Dallas mayor who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.
The Juvenile Department
today is made up of an incredibly nice nice group of people -- smart,
full of good questions and friendly. And I got a plaque. I have the rest of the
day off and will read about presidents for a new writing project.
Michael
Phillips has authored the following:
White
Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity and Religion in Dallas, Texas, 1841-2001 (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2006)
(with
Patrick L. Cox) The House Will Come to Order: How the Texas Speaker Became a
Power in State and National Politics.
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010)
“Why Is
Big Tex Still a White Cowboy? Race, Gender, and the ‘Other Texans’” in Walter
Buenger and Arnoldo de León, eds., Beyond Texas Through Time: Breaking Away
From Past Interpretations
(College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2011)
“The
Current is Stronger’: Images of Racial Oppression and Resistance in North Texas
Black Art During the 1920s and 1930s ” in Bruce A. Glasrud and Cary D.
Wintz, eds., The Harlem Renaissance in the West: The New Negroes’ Western
Experience (New York:
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2011)
“Dallas,
1989-2011,” in Richardson Dilworth, ed. Cities in American Political History (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2011)
(With
John Anthony Moretta, Keith J. Volonto, Austin Allen, Doug Cantrell and Norwood
Andrews), Keith J. Volonto and Michael Phillips. eds., The American
Challenge: A New History of the United States, Volume I. (Wheaton, Il.:
Abigail Press, 2012).
(With
John Anthony Moretta and Keith J. Volanto), Keith J. Volonto and Michael
Phillips, eds., The American Challenge: A New History of the United States, Volume II. (Wheaton, Il.: Abigail Press,
2012).
(With
John Anthony Moretta and Carl J. Luna), Imperial Presidents: The Rise of
Executive Power from Roosevelt to Obama (Wheaton, Il.: Abigail Press, 2013).
“Texan by
Color: The Racialization of the Lone Star State,” in David Cullen and Kyle
Wilkison, eds., The Radical Origins of the Texas Right (College Station: University of Texas
Press, 2013).
He
is currently collaborating, with longtime journalist Betsy Friauf, on a history
of African American culture, politics and black intellectuals in the Lone Star
State called God Carved in Night: Black Intellectuals in Texas and the World
They Made.
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