TELL-TALE TEXAS
Investigations in Infamous History
by E.R. Bills
Bills, a veteran journalist, exposes the history of racism and violence in Texas in this nonfiction work.
“They say the victors write the history,” the author observes, “but here in Texas…We also ‘white’ the history, forgetting the diversity that ensured our victories.” A product of Texas public schools, Bills was “shocked” in college to discover the narrative of the state’s history he had been taught left students with “historical unawareness and utter obliviousness.” In the course of 10 vignettes, this book seeks to expose a history of racism and violence to dispel the rampant mythologization of the Lone Star State. Each of the book’s 10 stories pair a historical event with a parallel narrative from the present (referencing the Covid-19 pandemic, a chapter on the Laredo Smallpox Riot of 1898 explores the impact of systemic racism on public health from the 19th to the 21st century). As in many of the book’s chapters, this retelling of a historical crisis emphasizes the role of the state in maintaining white supremacy through violence (in this case, confrontations between Texas Rangers and Mexican Americans). Though this is a brutal history, the text also emphasizes the courageous actions of activists like Jovita Idar, an acclaimed suffragist and immigrant rights advocate. Another chapter juxtaposes the heroism of Frank J. Robinson, an East Texas civil rights activist who rallied Black voters in the 1960s and 1970s, with the cowardly actions of an unknown white assassin who murdered Robinson, and a corrupt justice system that ruled his death a suicide. Multiple chapters examine the prevalence of lynching in Texas history, with local law enforcement agencies complicit in the murders. While many of the events covered may be well known to scholars of Black history, and are not difficult to find in the primary source records, Bills underlines the roles of censorship, myth-making, and “white fragility” in preventing such atrocities from entering the public consciousness. Even the author’s own efforts at commemorating those killed by acts of racial violence through the installation of historical markers were sidelined, derailed, or delayed by bureaucratic red tape.
An award-winning freelance journalist and author of multiple books on Texas history, Bills has a firm grasp on the state’s past and its warped self-perception, and he bolsters his analysis with more than 100 endnotes and a nine-page bibliography. The book’s lack of a chronological throughline (and jumps between multiple time periods within each chapter) may be dizzying to some readers, but overall, the text balances sound research with a harrowing narrative and biting commentary. Ample photographs and newspaper clippings further immerse readers in the milieu. Texas history is also used as a lens through which the author explores larger trends in the American story; each chapter features historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr. or Ida B. Wells, who link events in Texas to a larger narrative of American anti-immigrant sentiment, white supremacy, and racial discrimination. “Sometimes, when you confront the past,” he warns readers, “the past confronts you back.”A searing indictment of racism in Texas, past and present.