Picked up in a used book store. This is the fourth edition (1999) of a book originally published in 1978, listing every roadside historical marker in Texas, alphabetically by town or city. This makes for an interesting tour of Texas history, since you randomly jump through the different eras, from prehistoric to modern, depending on what happened in that particular town. It’s also telling what the Texas Historical Commission considered important: the Texas Revolution, the Confederacy, and oil wells get a lot of prominence. There are some nods to Hispanic, native, black Texans, but the Hispanics mentioned are mostly pre-Revolution, the natives are stereotypical, and the blacks are “credit to their race” types. (Well, they were a credit to their race – the human race – and there is nothing dishonorable about playing well even if you’ve been dealt a difficult hand).

One marker, for Gainesville, particularly stood out. It describes an incident in 1862 where 42 men were summarily hanged (and two more shot trying to escape) on charges of conspiracy and insurrection. The historical marker makes the Great Hanging a triumph of Confederate vigilance over a nefarious scheme to destroy the local government, murder officials, and bring in Federal troops; what actually happened was a few sham trials followed by a mass lynching, the largest in American history (see Frontier Defense in the Civil War for more).

If it were up to me, I’d keep the old, “politically incorrect” markers – removing them reminds me too much of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth – but put up new ones alongside. (To be fair, perhaps that’s already been done; this book is 20+ years old). ( )