NOW IT CAN BE TOLD ..... THE DEFENDERS OF THE ALAMO WERE BLACK

Parties avoid trial in feud over telling of Texas history

 

By B. Scott McLendon 

 

The Galveston County Daily News

August 277, 2023 

Texas history as it should be taught: The final attack on the Black defenders of the Alamo

 

GALVESTON -- The Texas State Historical Association will avoid a trial between its board president and executive director after the president and secretary in a Wednesday mediation meeting agreed to resign and rebalance the board between academics and non-academics.

Executive Director J.P. Bryan, retired oilman and founder of The Bryan Museum, 1315 21st St. in Galveston, sued the association’s board that he claimed was unbalanced in its composition and was trying to oust him. Bryan and other non-academics at the association worried President Nancy Baker Jones and other academics were publishing stories that tarnished traditional Texas heroes in the association’s annual magazines and books.

Bryan, who also will be keeping his position as executive director, plans to drop the lawsuit Monday, he told The Daily News Saturday.

“I think we completely achieved everything we wanted,” Bryan said. “In spite of all the commentary, we fully only had one objective. It was simply to balance the board and the various committees that provide that content. They were very much askew from what traditional practice has been.”

The association determines what will be published in works like the “Handbook of Texas,” and the biennial “Texas Almanac,” which is why the board’s composition is so important, Bryan said.

Bryan and other non-academics worry the board has recently published stories bashing traditional Texas heroes. Those who disagree worry Bryan and non-academics want to publish a sanitized, white-washed version of state history.

Association bylaws call for the board’s 21 members to be substantially balanced between academics, defined as those who have been employed at an accredited institution to teach history, and non-academics, defined as those who haven’t taught history at an accredited school.

The board is presently made up of 12 academics and eight non-academics with one vacancy, Bryan said. The board can’t move forward until it’s properly constituted, Bryan argued.

Jones disagreed, saying the board make-up actually is 11 academics and nine non-academics.

To balance the board, Jones and Secretary Stephanie Cole have agreed to resign and be replaced by two non-academics, Bryan said. An already vacant board seat will be filled by a third non-academic, Bryan said.

Bryan and other non-academics took issue with the recent appointment of Mary Jo O’Rear, who from 1999 through 2001 was adjunct professor of U.S. History at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and, from 1999 until 2005 held the same position at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. O’Rear by definition is an academic, Bryan argued.

O’Rear will remain on the board as an academic in a non-academic seat, Bryan said.

Association Vice President Ken Wise, a justice on the 14th Court of Appeals in Houston and adjunct professor at Houston Baptist University, will assume the role of president for Jones’ unexpired term and the next term, Bryan said.