House Bill 2497, passed by the 87th Texas Legislature, established The 1836 Project as an advisory committee to promote patriotic education and increase awareness of the Texas values that continue to stimulate boundless prosperity across this state.
This report is intended to give you an overview and highlight of the discussions on the various topics taken up. It is not a verbatim transcript of the discussions but is based upon what was audible or understandable to the observer and the desire to get details out as quickly as possible with few errors or omissions.
Michelle Haas, Director of the Texas History Trust
- Trust serves a different purpose in Texas History community
- Promote and advocate history based on facts not ideology
- Goal is to provide foundational documents so people can draw their own conclusions
- Working on digitizing documents, almost 16k pages
- Have exclusive rights to digitize papers of the Texas Revolution
- Also publish articles to give context of history, basic rudimentary information
- Will be taking on an education director to help provide historical materials that teachers say they are starving for
- Has had the position of refuting wild accusations being made, refuting inaccurate or deceptive information being provided
- Provided an example from Texas State Historical Association but says in recent years there has been a different public face
- Two special sessions in 2022 dealing with “Hyper-Partisanship”
- Walter Buenger comments referred to in testimony
- Should public get to make a decision if they are going to fund these things?
- Liberal arts studies are siloed studies saying they are being repressed and not spotlighted
- Witness says history has been inclusive by any reasonable measure
- Understand history doesn’t pick sides, we are on the “side of history”
- Asking historians to produce a history that is not divisive
- Patterson – refers to an article that said the commission cannot do this right
- Says those on the committee had some wise objections and worked on phrases, those in the article are not present today to speak during public testimony
- Patterson – assumptions are that they are a bunch of rednecks, have invited the authors of the article and the book of Forget the Alamo and they are not here
- In response to question on hopes and desires on this, hoping to inspire conversations and write less divisive history, there is an over correction for part of history but rage is not the place to come from
- Ultimate goal is to talk to people who disagree, talk about real issues and being told methodology is not appropriate does not move the needle forward
- Agrees they want to complete and accurate history of Texas, if stick to who was there then product is good and diversity will be there
- They have a podcast coming and hope to talk to people who they don’t agree with
- Crimm – Commended for printing Sam Houston letters and Revolution documents
- Patterson – Lincoln said Mexicans are a mongrel race, they were all white supremacists in that time frame
Gloria Meraz, Director and State Librarian at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission
- Reviewed mission and the word they do
- A regular partner is the Bob Bullock Museum
- Have a role in preserving the history of Texas
- Archive is a living and growing resource
- Provided detail on collections and resources (millions and million of records)
- Collections related to early days include early map of new Texas Republic, etc
- Texas Digital archive is broad and deep – research any time, any where (now 120 terabytes of information)
- Agency also has a variety of educational programs
- Work is ongoing
- Illustration shown of digitizing of Battleship Texas collection
- Frazier – approached by people that have confederate artifacts but can’t find a home
- They are neutral, a record is a record and something related to the government is in their scope
- Recommends they contact the archivists
- Patterson – asked about Travis letter going to the Alamo, noted coordination and how history relates to people
- Crimm and Sylvester – thanked them for their work
Audrey Ladd Jody Ginn, Texas Rangers Museum and Hall of Fame
- Official state repository for the Texas Rangers, reviewed scope and history of work
- Texas Treasures and Armstrong Texas Ranger Research Center and educational programming is on site and webinars
- Have developed 10 minute lesson plans and cross curricular
- Ginn – job is to expand resources to a significant scale, also notes not everyone lived up to value of badge
- Patterson and Ginn discuss history of Ranger falling short of legend in a specific history in time
- Ginn discusses calendar and outreach efforts
- Ladd says there are 4 women in the Texas Rangers with two captains and diversity of races
Public Testimony
Richard Johnson, Texas Public Policy Foundation
- “Incumbent to tell story to fullest potential that you can”
- Governor in foresight has put commission together to study Texas history
- Providing examples that he thought changes the narrative like Hendrick Arnold in Army at Battle of San Jacinto who was an African American
- Trabulsi – thanks him for his presentation and richness of African American history that was spotlighted
- Church has been a bedrock, schools started out in churches and thinks there are archives there but not sure where data is collected on African American churches
- Frazier – what do you hope becomes of the pamphlet they are working on
- “Clear eyed understanding of Texas”
- Not shallow and manipulative by different groups, but historical and accurate based on facts
- Patterson – would like the list of all the names and historical information was shared
- Chair will get a transcript and get details to the committee
Pamphlet draft discussion
- Frazier – have delivered a project, great input along the way, version before the committee is as refined a project as likely to get
- Frazier – about the Texas Experience, not a history textbook or chronicle on Texas history
- Frazier – target audience is 16 years old getting a drivers license and many may be new to Texas and have not come up through our Texas education system
- Frazier – have arrived at consensus, moves to adopt the copy as presented
- Sylvester – once document is finalized it will be posted to TEA and shared with DPS if future legislature should provide funding
- Frazier – want to make sure they pointed out slavery was a bad thing and Texas participated in it, provided an example
- Crimm – noted page 7 at bottom need to add Tejanos
- Frazier – noted all were Texian army but there were north of 50 of Sequin’s people, trying to capture ideas over the color of skin
- Patterson – seeing Texians with Tejanos
- Frazier – immaterial to him if added
- Motion made to add Tejanos and seconded
- Frazier – TEA and Texas Historical Commission will add details and address typos, etc
- Patterson – How many states were in Rebellion? Has heard 12 or 11 but the pamphlet says 8 and is fine with that conclusion, just wanted to confirm
- Frazier – full blown rebellion vs local rebellion, it’s a tough number to pin down but feels this is a close number
- Patterson – notes Rep. Tan Parker would like to see a quiz attached to this, wants to see a final product with a QR code so they can put a quiz on there and curated list of resources on there
- Motion to approve as amended passed unanimously of those presents (will leave open the ability for committee members to register their vote if they were not present)
Discussion on the Draft Report
- Sylvester – Speaking on this draft report, not the history report but an update on accomplishments
- Recommendation 1) Recommend to lege is maintenance of the 100+ monuments, etc. that commemorate statehood; no agency responsible for maintain
- Recommendation 2) Sen. Creighton plans to introduce a historical monument bill next session, recommending guidelines
- Committee members discuss the recommendation, may need to distinguish between state and local monuments, who owns it, etc.
- Committee members discuss if state should overrule local community decisions to take down monuments
- Sylvester – Task today is to formulate recommendations
- Trabulsi – Do we want the lege acting on independent non-profits?
- Sylvester – Maybe not
- Trabulsi – I think we need to leave Texas State Historical Association alone
- Patterson – Private entity
- Sylvester – Could amend to highlight how the state historian is appointed
- Committee members discuss the state historian, TSHA is independent, state historian may be appointed & doesn’t have anything to do with TSHA
- Frazier – Will need to vote on recommendation to include Texas history into the K-12 curriculum
- Patterson – Spoke with Pat Hardy on the SBOE, not sure if she is for or against; spoke about taking Texas history out of 4-7
- That is what they’re talking about, need to incorporate other events like Hidalgo’s revolution, account for 40% of the population being Hispanic descent
- Crimm – Problem will be the teachers, will need to rewrite all the textbooks
- Recommendation 3) Florida have a law requiring usage of 50% of state approved materials, may want to make a recommendation like this
- Sylvester – Have seen problems with teachers having discretion to use their own materials
- Committee members discuss reports & pamphlets, need to decide what the larger product looks like, e.g. scope of info, resources listed, purpose, etc.
- Sylvester – Can do a first round rough draft, submit back to 1836 Committee, and continue to polish this way
- Trabulsi – Had 3 sections originally?
- Members discuss how the pamphlet was to serve as a template for the full report & committee members could submit stories
- Sylvester – On Nov. 15 there will be a screening of a film called “Forging Texas”