TEXAS SUPREME COURT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

students. An NPR story critical of the practice baby phenomenon at schools around the country helpedlead to the demise of such programs.• Houston “Gorilla Girls” artists in the 1980s and ’90s used demonstrations, sarcasm, irony, andoccasional vulgarity to make the now well-documented point that the artistic establishment of the timeopenly discriminated against women artists. The last show of the Gorilla Girls was in Verona, Italy, in1997. According to Germaine Greer, discrimination against women artists may be worse now—for youplaintiff’s attorneys reading this.• The astonishing effect of the coming of barbed wire to nineteenth-century Texas. Within one generationafter the development of barbed wire in 1873, the U.S. went from the least developed major country to themost developed, traceable in part to what the Indians called “the devil’s rope.” Fundamental values cameinto sharp conflict in Texas—the natural rights theories of the “open range” (which gave a theoreticaljustification for fence cutting) vs. the property rights theories of the farmers, which eventually, with thehelp of gunfights, prosecutions, the Texas Rangers, and an incredibly persistent rancher in Coleman Countynamed Mabel Doss Day Lea, prevailed—although arguments over land grants and the running of cattleon federal land remain as modern versions of the sometimes bloody disputes of those tumultuous days.• The failure of Wichita Falls developers to improve water quality in the Big Wichita River of the1860s. Imagine a thriving community whose efforts to find, preserve, and exploit the most preciouscommodity on the Western frontier were so stymied as to require it to be shipped in by railroad. Thingsstayed so dry that by 1918 town leaders were exploding dynamite to help bring rain. Finally, politicalforces came together to dam the Big Wichita, creating the biggest man-made reservoir in Texas. But untilthe historic rains of May this year, the lakes supporting Wichita Falls had reached catastrophically lowlevels—a story that many fear is a portent of things to come in many parts of Texas.• The anarchists of Waco? Born a slave in 1851, Waco resident Lucy Parsons became a labor organizer,a writer, and one of the early radicals of Texas. In 1873, she and her husband Albert Richard Parsons, aformer Confederate soldier whom she met at a freedmen school in Waco, migrated to Chicago, becamesocialists, and agitated against business trusts. They allied themselves with the radical German communityof their day, and were heavily involved in campaigning for the eight-hour work day. Later, Albert wasexecuted for his alleged role in the Haymarket Square bombing in Chicago. Ever the activist, Lucy spenttime in Europe attempting to vindicate the Haymarket martyrs, succeeding to the extent that the city ofChicago named a park for Lucy Parsons.• “Texas Fever” and the German migration to nineteenth-century Texas. It has been thought a mysterywhy so many Germans decided to come to Texas in the 1830s and ’40s, in light of the fact that manyof them were stoutly anti-slavery in an era when Texas had just broken with Mexico partly because itwanted to be stoutly pro-slavery. The answers revolve around free land, unemployment among formerGerman soldiers, German travelers touting Texas in letters back home, impresarios like Henri de Castroorganizing expeditions of settlers in response to the new nation’s perceived need for citizens who werenot Comanches, and areas around Brenham where excellent undulating farmland bears a superficialresemblance to northern Germany, except in the winter. Danke schoen to Martin Nester, 1849 settler ofD’Hanis, formerly of Wurttemberg, Germany, who got me here.Dozens of scholars made dozens of other interesting presentations, all relevant to Texas lawyers of somesort. Next year you should go. See www.TSHAonline.org for the latest information.Return to Journal Index6