Browse Exhibits (12 total)
The Daily Texan, October 18th-31st, 1950
On September 19th, 1950, after the culmination of a four year legal battle, Heman Marion Sweatt registered for classes at The University of Texas School of Law. The implications were enormous, Sweatt and his colleague George Washington Jr. became the first African-American students admitted to the University, and the Supreme Court decision in Sweatt vs. Painter created the precedent for the landmark school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education. However, the community response was not harmonious. While the student body and The Daily Texan generally favored the integration of The University of Texas at Austin, hostility from the community manifested most notably in a large wooden cross wrapped in kerosene soaked rags and lit ablaze.
On October 18th, 1950 the student newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin, The Daily Texan, ran a small news feature on the front page, below the fold. The headline read "Cross is Burned Near Law School," and the Editorial Assistant, Charlie Lewis, detailed the discovery of a large wooden cross found burning near the Law Building. The article also covered the efforts to douse the flames and the graffiti "KKK" found painted multiple times around the steps of the Law Building. Although the institutional response was non-existent and no arrests were made in conjunction with the hate incident, the burning cross touched off a community conversation in the editorial section of the newspaper. For the next two weeks pg. 4 of The Daily Texan featured opinion pieces, reprints from larger publications, and short letters to the editor in the “Firing Line” section of the paper, all discussing the implications of the burning cross, the integration of the University, and the state of race relations in the South.
The coverage of the hate incident in The Daily Texan is significant because in the absence of an official University statement the student written and directed paper featured a variety of voices from the community discussing the incident and implications. The responses vary greatly—far from a pro-integration vs. pro-KKK debate, the Austin community contributed a variety of nuanced perspectives—on racial identity, minority status, divine law, and the pace of progress. While the dates of the paper allow for the chronological ordering of the articles, “Firing Line” editorials that respond directly to an article or another “Firing Line” are organized as such.
The Eccentricities of Beaver Island
In northern Michigan, just off of Charlevoix, sits Beaver Island, the Largest Island in Lake Michigan: thirteen miles long, six miles wide. It is a two-hour boat ride or twelve-minute plane ride from Charlevoix and has become a summer tourist destination for many Midwesterners. Its rustic strangeness is not for everyone. Rumor is that the founder of Land’s End clothing company built a house on the island, only to sell it since his wife did not understand the allure of the island.
There are many past and present characters of Beaver Island who add to its eccentricities. There is Mary who runs the Toy Museum where you can find candies of all kinds, toys from your past, stuffed animals with scarily large eyes, old photographs of the island, and original artwork by Mary herself. There is Feodor Protar, more commonly referred to as Protar, whose home and tomb are Beaver Island staples. Protar was a self-taught healer who was beloved by the residents of the island. He was somewhat of a recluse and was regarded as the island “doctor” who often treated even those who could not afford medical attention during his time on the island from 1893 until his death in 1925. Yet, among the cast of characters that make up Beaver Island’s mysterious and unique persona, is the not-so-charming King Strang: the self-proclaimed Mormon monarch of Beaver Island who reigned from 1850-1856. While his reign ended in his assassination, work done during this time is still evident on the terrain: he cleared a significant amount of land and built many roads.
I have been going to Beaver Island every summer with my family since I was born, I have yet to miss a year. Over the years I have photographed the mundane as well as some of the historical sites I have mentioned, and have felt that the oddness and cryptic nature of the island has a way of sneaking into the photographs. A year or two ago I purchased a Beaver Island Historical Map from the Beaver Island Historical Society. I am interested in the subjectivity of maps and how they are embedded with the ideologies of the author. Whereas many maps are seen as purely factual documents, what I appreciated about the Historical Map was its quirky and anecdotal approach to addressing factual information about the island.
As I went about researching Beaver Island while living in Austin, TX I was able to find topographic maps of the island in the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection as well as books documenting the monarchy on the island. Recognizing the humor in my quest to make sense of the Historical Map of Beaver Island while living about 1,500 miles away I used the seemingly more “objective” resources available to me to examine how these sources approach the history of the island.