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Author : Gary Brown
Publisher : Taylor Trade Publishing
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2001-01-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9781461625629
Texas convicts and inmates have made the Texas prison system the most colorful in the world over the past 150 years. T
Author : Mitchel P. Roth
Publisher : University of North Texas Press
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2016-08-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781574416527
Convict Cowboys is the first book on the nation’s first prison rodeo, which ran from 1931 to 1986. At its apogee the Texas Prison Rodeo drew 30,000 spectators on October Sundays. Mitchel P. Roth portrays the Texas Prison Rodeo against a backdrop of Texas history, covering the history of rodeo, the prison system, and convict leasing, as well as important figures in Texas penology including Marshall Lee Simmons, O.B. Ellis, and George J. Beto, and the changing prison demimonde. Over the years the rodeo arena not only boasted death-defying entertainment that would make professional cowboys think twice, but featured a virtual who’s who of American popular culture. Readers will be treated to stories about numerous American and Texas folk heroes, including Western film stars ranging from Tom Mix to John Wayne, and music legends such as Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. Through extensive archival research Roth introduces readers to the convict cowboys in both the rodeo arena and behind prison walls, giving voice to a legion of previously forgotten inmate cowboys who risked life and limb for a few dollars and the applause of free-world crowds.
Author : Elliott Light
Publisher : Bancroft Press
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1890862150
Reilly Heartwood, a famous country singer, is dead. His sister doesn't recognise the body. The local reverend has refused to bury him. The funeral home director plans on exhibiting Reilly -- and charging admission -- to his adoring fans from all over the country. The people of Lyle detest Reilly -- holding him responsible for unmade fortunes and lost investments. His death, to the concern of no one other than his sister, is ruled a suicide. Shep, 32-year-old divorced and disbarred lawyer, arrives to attend the funeral of the now deceased Reilly Heartwood, and finds all of this too puzzling, especially the part about Reilly killing himself. Shep is compelled to ask a few questions, then a few more. Before he knows it, he's drawn into a complicated web of grudges, half-truths, and misplaced good intentions that only a small town could weave. As he reconstructs the final destructive minutes of Reilly's life, Shep ultimately learns the startling truth about his mother, Reilly, and himself. Shep is surrounded by a cast of characters--Doc Adams, the Reverend Billy, the four residents of the local poor farm (Jamie, Carrie, Harry, and Cecil) and Rose Abernathy to name a few. And Shep's life is complicated when he meets Cali McBride, a reporter in need of a story. Besides the death of Reilly Heartwood, there are several old mysteries to unravel. Why does the town hate Reilly? What is the connection between Reilly and someone named C.C. Hollinger (the name under which Reilly recorded most of his music)? What is the old feud between Shep's mother and Rose about? And what had Reilly planned for the poor farm? Shep, the book's main character and its likeable narrator, comes easily to his new role of amateur sleuth. Because of his own recent experience, he's deeply distrustful of authority, having just spent three years in prison for a white collar crime he didn't commit. Yet, in digging out the particulars of Reilly's demise, he is neither bitter nor uncaring, and the book manages adroitly to be an engaging who-dunnit set in a small town. Woven into the story line are universal themes -- classic injustice, unrequited love, and consequences of an unforgiving heart.
Author : Norman Cohen
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 774 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2008-09-30
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780313088100
This state-by-state collection of folksongs describes the history, society, culture, and events characteristic of all fifty states. Unlike all other state folksong collections, this one does not focus on songs collected in the particular states, but rather on songs concerning the life and times of the people of that state. The topics range from the major historical events, such as the Boston Tea Party, the attack on Fort Sumter, and the California Gold Rush, to regionally important events such as disasters and murders, labor problems, occupational songs, ethnic conflicts. Some of the songs will be widely recognized, such as Casey Jones, Marching Through Georgia, or Sweet Betsy from Pike. Others, less familiar, have not been reprinted since their original publication, but deserve to be studied because of what they tell about the people of these United States, their loves, labors, and losses, and their responses to events. The collection is organized by regions, starting with New England and ending with the states bordering the Pacific Ocean, and by states within each region. For each state there are from four to fifteen songs presented, with an average of 10 songs per state. For each song, a full text is reprented, followed by discussion of the song in its historical context. References to available recordings and other versions are given. Folksongs, such as those discussed here, are an important tool for historians and cultural historians because they sample experiences of the past at a different level from that of contemporary newspaper accounts and academic histories. These songs, in a sense, are history writ small. Includes: Away Down East, The Old Granite State, Connecticut, The Virginian Maid's Lament, Carry Me Back to Old Virginny, I'm Going Back to North Carolina, Shut up in Cold Creek Mine, Ain't God Good to Iowa?, Dakota Land, Dear Prairie Home, Cheyenne Boys, I'm off for California, and others.
Author : Stephen Calt
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2008-04-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781569769980
Skip James (1902&–1969) was perhaps the most creative and idiosyncratic of all blues musicians. Drawing on hundreds of hours of conversations with James himself, Stephen Calt here paints a dark and unforgettable portrait of a man untroubled by his own murderous inclinations, a man who achieved one moment of transcendent greatness in a life haunted by failure. And in doing so, Calt offers new insights into the nature of the blues, the world in which it thrived, and its fate when that world vanished.
Author : Bill V. Mullen,James Smethurst
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2012-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780807882399
This collection of fifteen new essays explores the impact of the organized Left and Leftist theory on American literature and culture from the 1920s to the present. In particular, the contributors explore the participation of writers and intellectuals on the Left in the development of African American, Chicano/Chicana, and Asian American literature and culture. By placing the Left at the center of their examination, the authors reposition the interpretive framework of American cultural studies. Tracing the development of the Left over the course of the last century, the essays connect the Old Left of the pre-World War II era to the New Left and Third World nationalist Left of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as to the multicultural Left that has emerged since the 1970s. Individual essays explore the Left in relation to the work of such key figures as Ralph Ellison, T. S. Eliot, Chester Himes, Harry Belafonte, Americo Paredes, and Alice Childress. The collection also reconsiders the role of the Left in such critical cultural and historical moments as the Harlem Renaissance, the Cold War, and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The contributors are Anthony Dawahare, Barbara Foley, Marcial Gonzalez, Fred Ho, William J. Maxwell, Bill V. Mullen, Cary Nelson, B. V. Olguin, Rachel Rubin, Eric Schocket, James Smethurst, Michelle Stephens, Alan Wald, and Mary Helen Washington.
Author : Gary Brown
Publisher : Taylor Trade Publishing
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2002-02-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9781461625711
For fifty years prison inmates in Texas were leased out to railroads, coal mines, farm plantations, and sawmill crews with terrible incidences of brutality, cruelty, injury, and death to the prisoners. They were forced to produce daily work quotas of seven tons of coal, three hundred pounds of cotton, or one and one-half cords of wood. They were fed spoiled hog meat and slept on mattresses filled with bugs and filthy from sweat, blood, and dirt. They were punished by brutal whippings with an instrument known as the "bat" and by various other methods. Self-mutilation by cutting off fingers, hands, and feet and even self-blinding were commonplace to avoid working in these lease camps. It was a period in which the state prison system was shrouded in secrecy. Former prisoners had only one option available to try to inform the public about the brutality and corruption. They could write their personal memoirs. And an amazing number of them did—dating back to the 1870s. Herein are some of their stories.
Author : Kenneth L. Untiedt
Publisher : University of North Texas Press
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2017-12-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781574417081
There is sometimes a fine line between history and folklore. This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society features articles that tell stories about real-life characters from the historical past of Texas, as well as offer personal reflections about life from diverse perspectives throughout the last century. These contributors go beyond merely stating facts about dates or locations or names of the events and people that can be found in court documents or genealogical records; several of these authors provide a very intimate connection to the tales they share. These articles are not just about people that we read about as school children, and they do not merely describe how our culture used to be, or how vastly it has changed; rather, they emphasize the ways we keep our culture alive through the retelling of the events and customs and major figures that are important enough to pass on from one generation to the next. The first section covers legendary characters like Davy Crockett, Mody Boatright, Sam Houston, and Cynthia Ann Parker from our state’s past, as well as people who were bigger or bolder than others, yet seem to have been forgotten. Some of those characters came from different countries, while others are connected directly to our Texas Folklore Society family tree. The second section includes works that examine songs of our youth, as well as the customs and social constructs associated with music, whether it’s on a football field or in a prison yard. The works in the final section recall memories of a simpler time, when cars and home appliances lacked modern conveniences we now take for granted, before Facebook and YouTube allowed us to become Internet movie stars, and when it was a treat just to go and “visit” with family and friends.
Author : Patrizia Barrera
Publisher : Tektime
Page : 469 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2024-05-30
Category : Art
ISBN : 9788835466611
A journey into the ancient world of Blues: how it was born, its origins, its path in the world. And then many stories and biographies about its protagonists, black and white, who helped create it and spread it to the general public. Translator: Ivan Alexandra PUBLISHER: TEKTIME
Author : B. A. Botkin
Publisher : Transaction Publishers
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2024-06-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1412835852
Comprises traditional songs, stories, customs, and beliefs which have been handed down, by word of mouth for so long that they seem to have a life of their own.
Author : Mike Cox
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2015-09-07
Category : History
ISBN : 9781625854872
Since colonizer Stephen F. Austin proposed hiring ten rangers "for the common defense" in 1823, the Texas Rangers have protected the Lone Star State from its enemies with dedication and fortitude. All across Texas are places where Rangers made history. From the Alamo to nearly forgotten graves and battle sites, important landmarks in the story of these legendary lawmen lie in every corner of the state. Historian and author Mike Cox reveals history hiding in plain sight and true tall tales of the world-famous Texas Rangers.
Author : Maurice Chammah
Publisher : Crown
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2022-01-18
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781524760281
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A deeply reported, searingly honest portrait of the death penalty in Texas—and what it tells us about crime and punishment in America “If you’re one of those people who despair that nothing changes, and dream that something can, this is a story of how it does.”—Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times Book Review WINNER OF THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS AWARD In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: the country’s death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment. Then, amid a larger wave of criminal justice reform, came the death penalty’s decline, a trend so durable that even in Texas the punishment appears again close to extinction. In Let the Lord Sort Them, Maurice Chammah charts the rise and fall of capital punishment through the eyes of those it touched. We meet Elsa Alcala, the orphaned daughter of a Mexican American family who found her calling as a prosecutor in the nation’s death penalty capital, before becoming a judge on the state’s highest court. We meet Danalynn Recer, a lawyer who became obsessively devoted to unearthing the life stories of men who committed terrible crimes, and fought for mercy in courtrooms across the state. We meet death row prisoners—many of them once-famous figures like Henry Lee Lucas, Gary Graham, and Karla Faye Tucker—along with their families and the families of their victims. And we meet the executioners, who struggle openly with what society has asked them to do. In tracing these interconnected lives against the rise of mass incarceration in Texas and the country as a whole, Chammah explores what the persistence of the death penalty tells us about forgiveness and retribution, fairness and justice, history and myth. Written with intimacy and grace, Let the Lord Sort Them is the definitive portrait of a particularly American institution.
Author : Bob Alexander,Richard K. Alvord
Publisher : University of North Texas Press
Page : 601 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2020-10-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781574418163
Texas has one of the world’s largest prison systems, in operation for more than 170 years and currently employing more than 28,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of people have been involved in the prison business in Texas: inmates, correctional officers, public officials, private industry representatives, and volunteers have all entered the secure facilities and experienced a different world. Previous books on Texas prisons have focused either on records and data of the prisons, personal memoirs by both inmates and correctional officers, or accounts of prison breaks. Tall Walls and High Fences is the first comprehensive history of Texas prisons, written by a former law enforcement officer and an officer of the Texas prisons. Bob Alexander and Richard K. Alford chronicle the significant events and transformation of the Texas prison system from its earliest times to the present day, paying special attention to the human side of the story. Incarceration policy evolved from isolation to hard labor to rodeo and educational opportunities, with reform measures becoming an ever-evolving quest. The complex job of the correctional officer has evolved as well—they must ensure custody and control over the inmate population at all times, in order to provide a proper environment conducive to safety and positive change. Alexander and Alford focus especially on the men and women who work with diligence and dedication at their jobs “inside the walls,” risking their lives and—in too many instances—giving their lives in a peculiar line of duty most would find unpalatable. Within these pages are stories of prison breaks, bloodhounds chasing escapees, and gunfights. Inside the walls are deadly confrontations, human trafficking, rape, clandestine consensual trysts, and tricks turned against correctional officers. Famous people and episodes in Texas prison history receive their due, from Texas Rangers apprehending and placing outlaws in prison to the famed gunfighter John Wesley Hardin’s time in and out of prison. Tall Walls and High Fences covers numerous convict escape attempts and successes, including the 1974 prison siege at Huntsville and the 2007 prisoner gunfight and escape at the Wynne Unit. Throughout this long history Alexander and Alford pay special tribute to the more than 75 correctional officers, lawmen, and civilians who lost their lives in the line of duty.
Author : Richard Congress
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2010-02-11
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781628467635
Yank Rachell and his mandolin playing style moved every musician lucky enough to hear him perform in the early sixties. When he died in April 1997, he left behind a stack of unanswered requests to tour Europe and to play blues festivals in the United States. In Blues Mandolin Man: The Life and Music of Yank Rachell, Richard Congress delivers the first biography of a family man whose playing inspired and energized the likes of David Honeyboy Edwards, Sleepy John Estes, and Henry Townsend. No other biography discusses the mandolin's influence and role in the blues. Guitar great Ry Cooder said, "Yank's style fascinated me because it had a lot of power and it's very raw-and what a great thing to do, just attack this little instrument like that." Charlie Musselwhite, the noted harp player, worked with Rachell and club hopped in Chicago with the elder bluesman. "He just had a great spirit about him," Musselwhite said of Rachell's playing and singing, "really just shouting it out. If the world was made up of people like Yank Rachell it would be a wonderful place to live." Blues Mandolin Man chronicles the life, times, and music of a man who was born into a family of sharecroppers in 1910 in rural western Tennessee. An active musician for 75 years, Rachell mastered several musical instruments and first recorded for Victor in Memphis in 1929. Through the blues, Rachell's world expanded to include Chicago, New York, recording studios and, after the sixties, radio, TV, and national and European tours. Yank's recollections reveal new information about personalities and events that will delight blues history buffs. Rich appendixes detail Yank's mandolin and guitar style and his place in the blues tradition. For this book Richard Congress, who reissued two of Rachell's old LPs in CD format, worked closely with him to record memories spanning decades of blues playing. Congress tells a compelling and engaging story about a colorful and thoughtful character who as a child picked cotton and plowed a field behind a mule, who grew to manhood coping with the southern Jim Crow system, and who participated in the creation and perpetuation of the blues.
Author : Bob Alexander,Donaly E. Brice
Publisher : University of North Texas Press
Page : 672 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2017-07-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781574416916
Authors Bob Alexander and Donaly E. Brice grappled with several issues when deciding how to relate a general history of the Texas Rangers. Should emphasis be placed on their frontier defense against Indians, or focus more on their role as guardians of the peace and statewide law enforcers? What about the tumultuous Mexican Revolution period, 1910-1920? And how to deal with myths and legends such as One Riot, One Ranger? Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy is the authors’ answer to these questions, a one-volume history of the Texas Rangers. The authors begin with the earliest Rangers in the pre-Republic years in 1823 and take the story up through the Republic, Mexican War, and Civil War. Then, with the advent of the Frontier Battalion, the authors focus in detail on each company A through F, relating what was happening within each company concurrently. Thereafter, Alexander and Brice tell the famous episodes of the Rangers that forged their legend, and bring the story up through the twentieth century to the present day in the final chapters.