In April 2024, my wife and I traveled to Houston, Texas for the first time. While at the airport rental car check-out counter I advised the rental cart agent that I wanted my name documented on the rental car paperwork, despite his perspective that it was unnecessary to document me as a driver of the vehicle. While I wished documentation was unnecessary, I persisted on my name being on the rental car paperwork so there was a record that I was an authorized driver, in case such a record became necessary. Like the agent, my wife believed it was unnecessary to document me as a driver on the paperwork, especially after the agent advised that doing so would result in an additional charge. I did not care about the additional charge.
I cared about the anxiety that emerged for me when considering what would happen if I was pulled over while driving the car and I was not listed as a driver. As a Black lesbian, my belief that I should not forgo receiving written authorization, even for a routine activity like driving a rental car that my wife reserved, superseded the polite rental car agent’s well-intended recommendation for me to forgo receiving documented authorization. For me, the paperwork authorized me to drive the vehicle, even if we were pulled over by someone who believed they had the authority to invalidate our word and marriage. Even though I received documented authorization to drive the rental car, I accepted my wife’s invitation to drive to her best friend’s home.
As my wife drove the Dodge Charger on a Texas highway, I comfortably rode with my window down, and excitedly took in the signs and scenery. We were excited for our trip to Houston and to attend the baptism of the child of one of my wife’s best friends. As we headed towards our friends’ home, my wife and I had a different opinion about our driving conditions. She wanted the air conditioner on. I wanted to be a hopeless romantic and keep my window down and serenade her as I sang Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus’s “II MOST WANTED” on Cowboy Carter. There was something special about being the shotgun rider in the car with the love of my life and singing Cyrus and Beyoncé’s lyrics “I’ll be your shotgun rider/ ‘Til the day I die,” (Chorus, Lines 1-2). Next to my wife and singing Beyoncé’s songs, I felt protected, in ways that are akin to the kinds of protection that Elaine Richardson (680) reflects on African American women using their literacy practices to provide for their “loved ones.”
Art’s Role in Our Lives, Teaching and Institutions
At a time when Black, LGTBQ, immigrant, women, and historically disenfranchised communities’ access to opportunities and rights are being attacked and, in some instances, eliminated, we must respond “yes” to Beyoncé’s question “Can we stand for something?,” which she asks in “AMERIICAN REQUIEM” (Beyoncé, 2024). In responding to Beyoncé’s question, we must ensure that our responses are intertwined with an investment in taking stances to create and maintain rights, protections and opportunities for all people. As a rhetoric and composition scholar and teacher, I find comfort in turning to Beyoncé’s question and the possibility of hearing how people I work with, teach, and am in community with respond to the question. In this multi-modal literacy autobiography, I share what I gleaned from doing what Eric Darnell Pritchard (2016) in their definition of literacy refers to as “reading everyday life” while listening to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter (2024) and viewing Kehinde Wiley’s An Archeology of Silence (2024) exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (MFAH) and Kris Graves’s American Monuments (2024) exhibit in the Duke University Rubenstein Library Photography Gallery.
Pritchard writes that, “Freire, like Truth and myself describes literacy as a practice of meaning-making that does include print, but also as a way of reading everyday life as significant to literacy practice” (20). Within this piece, I reveal what reading everyday life while observing art, texts and monuments in public spaces resulted in for me. In “Postmodern Blackness,” bell hooks’ (1990) critiques postmodern theory and calls for more engagement with Black people and culture and advocates for what she refers (6) to as “Radical postmodernism.” hooks also calls people to engage in transformative and inclusive work that connects people regardless of their identities and circumstances. Within writing studies, there are examples of scholars doing work that hooks recommends when stating “…academics have to give the same critical attention to nurturing and cultivating our ties to black communities that we give to writing, articles, teaching, and lecturing” (hooks, 9-10, pdf).
An example of such work is “Black Linguistic Justice from Theory to Practice,” by Hannah Franz et. al. Franz and her co-authors (2024) shed light on how they support and affirm Black students, including in their design and use of the SRTOW website, which provides resources and approaches for teachers to assess African American Vernacular English and Black students’ writing. Franz et. al (2024) shed light on how “[e]ducator bias tilts” negatively impact Black students and provide insights to address the issue. They write “As a result, sociolinguistic research has addressed the need to mitigate such barriers for African American students, while demonstrating that African American student success can be supported and enhanced by having students learn about African American language and culture (see. e.g., Alim and Baugh; Ball; Fogel and Ehri; Labov)” (Franz et. al, 2024, 650).
I have teaching experiences that align with Franz and her coauthors’ (2024, 650) recommendation for students to engage in educational experiences where they, “…learn about African American language and culture.” In the Spring 2024 semester, my Literacies for Our Lives: Lessons from African American Rhetoric class visited the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. During our tour of María Magdalena Campos Pons Behold Exhibit, our class discussed Campos Pons’ focus on Black women and the essential role they play as leaders and life-givers, who make invaluable contributions to humanity. Our class discussed those themes in Campos Pons’ work, her use of her literacy practices and texts we read about Black peoples’ literacy practices. My experiences with my students, like my forthcoming discussions of my personal experiences with art, evidence hooks’ points that:
One can talk about what we are seeing, thinking, or listening to; a space is there for critical exchange. It’s exciting to think, write, talk about, and create art that reflects passionate engagement with popular culture, because this may very well be “the” central future location of the resistance struggle, a meeting place where new and radical happenings can occur.” (hooks, 10)
hooks’ (10) perspective about the role art and literacy practices play in developing “…a meeting place where new and radical happenings can occur” should motivate us because such work may result in creating spaces, resources and opportunities for people. Similar to hooks’ recognition of the powerful role art plays in our lives, Nina Simone calls artists to raise awareness about the human experience. Simone states, [1] “An artist’s duty, as far as I am concerned is to reflect the times.”
In sharing my experiences with these artists’ work, I reveal how Beyoncé (2024), Kehinde Wiley (2024), and Kris Graves (2024) shed light on Black people’s circumstances and culture in a way that fulfills what Simone refers to as their duty. I believe the artists’ work is best described as work Jacqueline Jones Royster and Jean C. Williams (1999) says “allows us to re-see and re-think” (583) our lives, legacies and society. For educators, this piece should illustrate the value of adhering to Gwendolyn Pough’s (2011) advice for compositionists to “…push it further and give (students) critical thinking skills, to teach the(m) how-to-read society, or in the words of Sojourner Truth, “read men and nations” (308).
In classifying the experiences I reflect on as experiences where I am seeing, thinking and listening as hooks (10) calls people to do, and reading as Pough and Pritchard calls us to do, I hope to inspire people to, as Royster and Williams (583) say, “re-see and re-think” how scholars within academic spaces and artists within their work educate, affirm, and protect cultures and identities. As I continue in this literacy autobiography, I will discuss Black art and Black scholarship that stands for something. Through sharing my experiences with Black art and scholarship that respond “Yes” to Beyoncé’s question, “Can we stand for something,” I show that Black art and scholarship are essential sources of knowledge and affirmation that can help thwart efforts to exclude people and eliminate their access to institutions, resources, and opportunities.
Reading Everyday Life Everywhere We Are
During our trip to Houston, Texas, on a 7.03-mile run, I ran from our friend’s home through different areas in Houston. While it was my first time running in Houston, it was not my first time running as an African American lesbian, so I am well-aware of the realities that some runners with my identities experience while running. That awareness does not trump my love for running or my lived realities of running being liberating. I wore a Duke University t-shirt, which served as a source of privileged protection, even though I knew the t-shirt did not protect me any more than Beyoncé’s wealth and status protect her. Still, as I ran, I wore the t-shirt and bumped Beyoncé in my headphones. I hoped that people would see me as a runner instead of a threat who needed to be chased.
I ran through Mandell Park, where there was a local garden. I ran in residential communities with local neighborhood roads and sidewalks. I made my way to a part of the city that still had homes and sidewalks, but without the enclosed neighborhood feel, due to the homes being located off of what seemed to be a major roadway. Eventually, I made my way to Hermann Park. At some point, taking in beautiful scenery and freely running as Beyoncé harmonized, as she and Black women country singers and vocalist (Adell, Tanner, Beyoncé, McCartney et. al) do when they sing, “Blackbird singing in the dead of night/ Take these broken wings and learn to fly” (“BLACKBIIRD”, 2024, Verse 1, Line 1-2) turned into processing what I, with a closer look, learned was a statue of Sam Houston[2]. While our friend had shared some information about Houston and the city, I possessed limited knowledge of the historical figure, who I researched for this piece. Even with limited knowledge of Houston, the statue of Houston on a horse reminded me of other celebrated American historical figures who enslaved Black people. The resemblance resulted in feelings that are similar to Wiley’s (2023) perspective on Confederate monuments, which I will later share and feelings that I view as akin to Louis Maraj’s (2020) sentiments that, “…Black beings ‘fit the description of the nonbeing, the being out of place, and the noncitizen always available to and for death’” (Sharpe, 2016, 86, qtd. by Maraj, 114).
Instead of giving into the “out of place” feeling that Maraj (2020, 115) draws on Sharpe to reflect on, I kept enjoying my run and reflected on what I loved about Houston. When I got back to our friends’ home, I told my wife about my phenomenal run. I told her about seeing Houston’s statue and my perspective that Beyoncé’s Cowboy Cartercover subverted symbols like Houston’s statue. I found comfort in discussing the Cowboy Carter cover where Beyoncé, a successful Black woman, is sitting on a white horse and displaying her patriotism by representing America. In seeing Beyoncé posing with the American flag, I read her to be communicating a “This land is your land, this is my land” sentiment. Communicating such a sentiment presents an American legacy and history that includes Black people thriving. What I view as a showing of patriotism on the album cover coexists with my reading of some of Beyoncé’s lyrics in “AMEN,” where she sings “This house was built with blood and bone/ And it crumbled, yes, it crumbled/ The statues they made were beautiful/ But they were lies of stone…” (Verse 1, Lines 1-4). I read Beyoncé’s lyrics as her shedding light on inhumane and unpatriotic parts of American history.
In considering my reading of Beyoncé’s lyrics, it is productive to engage with Dr. Adrienne D. Lentz-Smith’s insights about celebrated histories, which she shared while reading her paper as a co-panelist at the From Slavery to Freedom Symposium at Duke University in October 2023. Associate Professor of History[3], Lentz-Smith[4] said:
Classroom building is a silly name for a building that is filled with faculty offices…But it is so named because actually until 2018 it was called the Carr Building. It was denamed in 2018 because it was named for North Carolina Industrialist and Democratic Party scholar Julian Carr. … Carr and his cohort of Democratic up and comers inspired on and capitalized on the paramilitary racial terrorism of the 1898 election season … All of this is to say that we would do well to recall, that alongside the Duke Buildings and Institutes celebrating Dr. John Hope Franklin, Duke’s built environment, until recently was littered with reminders of and monuments to the very people who crafted and defended the systems of political and economic exploitation that stalled and rolled back the kind of work that Dr. Franklin chronicled. In this, Duke is no different from its rival, UNC or its aspirant peer, Princeton nor corners of Yale or Vanderbilt, nor really most predominately White, or should we say historically white colleges and universities. (1:30:37 -1:32:33)
When thinking about Lentz-Smith’s points and Beyoncé’s lyrics in “AMEN,” I wonder how America’s honoring and inclusion of people who built and are building buildings, and making essential contributions for everyone to thrive, are compromised by commemorating legacies that devalue those people? In this wondering, it is helpful to consider Lentz-Smith’s insights about the past, which she said she drew on William Faulkner’s quote for. Lentz-Smith said,
…The past is never dead. It’s not even past, although in this age of insurrection and voter suppression and violent policing, Lord knows that I think of that quote often…Rather, it’s to note that we live and walk and work among contesting understandings of our past; that those contests are never abstract. They have walls and have heft, and they affect how we map and maneuver through the present. (1:32:56-1:33:26)
We should heed Lentz-Smith’s insights about the past while being cognizant of creating a now in a way that acknowledges that the present will one day be a past that others will live with.
The Reading Will Be Televised
Throughout my time in Houston, I had enriching and invigorating experiences. Our friend invited us to the MFAH which, like Duke University, celebrated their centennial in 2024. While at the MFAH, we attended the Spring Festival New Beginnings. According to the MFAH website, the event was a “…community celebration of spring and new beginnings. In the spirit of resilience and renewal, the MFAH also honors its 100th anniversary of opening in 1924, and ushers in the next 100 years” (2024 Spring Festival: New Beginnings). My attendance at the Spring Festival marked another occasion where I celebrated the centennial of an institution, which I also did by attending Duke University’s centennial celebration. In the 1924 version of the institutions, it is unlikely that I would have been permitted to exist in the ways that are illustrated in the video of my wife and I dancing to “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” at MFAH.
During our time in the MFAH, we saw thought-provoking and powerful art exhibits. We went to Wiley’s (2024) Archeology of Silence exhibit, which was among Black art that affirmed and inspired me. Wiley’s art, and the work of other Black artists in the museum communicated the truth that Beyoncé speaks in “Ya Ya” where she states, “History can’t be erased.” In Wiley’s (2024) exhibit, I saw the burgundy-colored wall with Wiley’s (2024) quote, “That is the archeology I am unearthing: The specter of police violence and state control over the bodies of young Black and Brown people all over the world.”
I saw Wiley’s (2024) paintings of vibrantly colored fields of flowers with Black people portrayed in different positions and statuesque sculptures, which appeared lifelessly stuck in the positions they were in. I read Wiley’s placement of name brand clothing on Black people in various poses as commentary on how Black people invest in industries that do not invest in them. When I reached the “An Archeology of Silence” (2024) statue, I wondered why the Black man was positioned the way he was positioned. Still, I appreciated that he appeared to be safely across the back of a horse that was carrying him instead of in a position with someone riding the horse to terrorize him. Of the sculpture, Wiley (2023) said:
For the equestrian monument the show is named after…I was walking down the Monument Row in Richmond, Virginia, and I noticed all of the Confederate officers mounted on horseback. Number one, I was deeply offended. Number two, I was deeply affected. And number three, I was deeply inspired. I felt as though there was a type of drag going on that I wanted to try on. And it was weaponized and mobilized against me, and I could either be blown away by that momentum or I could in a jiujitsu move, bend into it blast field and try to create some response that was more of a “Yes, and…’And so this is my “Yes, and…” As opposed to seeing the insistent figure of the dominant white male figure who’s defending chattel slavery, what we have here is the fallen body of a young Black man who could be in Senegal, in L.A., in Europe. (49)
I encourage people to consider Wiley’s reflections in tandem with my discussions about seeing Sam Houston’s statue and Lentz-Smith’s commentary on the Classroom Building and the historical figure the building was formerly named after. Along with my reflections on experiencing Black art during my trip to Houston suggesting that we are in the times that hooks (1990) envisioned as times when art would be “the central future location of the resistance struggle,” I have experienced other Black art, that suggests that we are in the moment hooks (1990) was speaking of.
In May 2024, during a break from a work session with colleagues, I caught a glimpse of Kris Graves’s American Monuments, which despite initially being unsure of what was being commemorated, I decided to tour after my work session. When I went to the exhibit, reading an excerpt from Diana McClure’s (n.d.) commentary on the exhibit provided clarity about the focus of Grave’s powerful photography. On my trip back to Graves’s exhibit in August 2024, I read McClure’s piece on Graves’s work where she wrote about Graves photographing confederate statues that artists used as platforms to commemorate Black people. McClure (n.d.) stated:
The demise of this storyline is ritualized most vividly in a suite of photographs taken by Graves at Lee Circle in Richmond, Virginia in July 2020. The images caught at night capture a series of projections superimposed onto a 60-foot-tall statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee port of Richmond’s iconic Monument Avenue. Run by an artist Videomedtry, the projections feature the faces of recent Black victims of fatal white violence… (McClure)
When considering McClure’s points about the “…the demise of this storyline,” it is important to consider how what she refers to as the “demise of this storyline,” helps to make possible the commemoration of the legacies commemorated in Videomedtry and Graves’s work. In May, I commemorated my experience at Graves’s (2024) exhibit with a selfie with the blue wall where the words Kris Graves, American Monuments, and an excerpt from McClure’s exhibit commentary appeared in black font. I photographed Graves’s (2024) photo of Trayvon Martin’s face projected on a confederate monument that read “BLM,” which is a message that the historical figure originally celebrated in the confederate monument would never communicate on his own. I believe Graves’s “American Monuments,” Wiley’s “Archeology of a Silence,” and Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter chastise oppressive legacies, commemorate Black people, and enhance society. I hope that Graves, Wiley and Beyoncé’s art and the cultures, histories, and identities represented by their art live on to be celebrated 100 years from now. I hope this piece and the art and scholarship spotlighted in this piece inspires people to continue to navigate the current moment while envisioning the futures we want and need.
References[5]
Adell, Tanner, Beyoncé, McCartney, Paul, Kennedy, Tiera, Roberts, Reyna, Spencer, Brittney & Tyler Khirye. 2024. “BLACKBIIRD.” Track 2. Cowboy Carter. Parkwood Entertainment, LLC, under exclusive license to Columbia Records.
Adell, Tanner, Beyoncé, McCartney, Paul, Kennedy, Tiera, Roberts, Reyna, Spencer, Brittney & Tyler Khirye. “BLACKBIIRD.” Genius. Accessed August 2024, https://genius.com/Beyonce-tanner-adell-brittney-spencer-tiera-kennedy-and-reyna-roberts-blackbiird-lyrics.
Beyoncé, Cyrus, Miley. 2024. “II Most Wanted.” Genius. Accessed 6 Feb. 2025, https://genius.com/Beyonce-and-miley-cyrus-ii-most-wanted-lyrics
Beyoncé. 2024. “AMERIICAN REQUIEM.” Genius. Accessed August 2024, https://genius.com/Beyonce-ameriican-requiem-lyrics.
Beyoncé. 2024. “AMERIICAN REQUIEM.” Track 1 on Cowboy Carter. Parkwood Entertainment, LLC, under exclusive license to Columbia Records.
Beyoncé. 2024. “AMEN.” Genius. Accessed August 2024, https://genius.com/Beyonce-amen-lyrics.
Beyoncé. 2024 “AMEN.” Track 27 on Cowboy Carter. Parkwood Entertainment, LLC, under exclusive license to Columbia Records.
Beyoncé. 2024. Cowboy Carter. Parkwood Entertainment, LLC, under exclusive license to Columbia Records. [Album Cover].
Beyoncé. “YA YA.” Genius. Accessed August 2024, https://genius.com/Beyonce-ya-ya-lyrics.
Beyoncé. 2024. “YA YA.” Track 20 on Cowboy Carter. Parkwood Entertainment, LLC, under exclusive license to Columbia Records.
Bradley, Barrie, Scardino. “Hare & Hare: 1924-1951” Houston’s Hermann Park: A Century of Community. Texas A & M University Press, 2014, first Ed. Accessed 4 March 2025.
Pons Campos, María. Behold. Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, https://nasher.duke.edu/exhibitions/maria-magdalena-campos-pons-behold/
Franz, Hannah, Grue, Michelle, Petty, Rowell, Angela, Tano, Marie, Johnson, Sierra, J. & Hudley, Anne, Charity. “Black Linguistic Justice from Theory to Practice.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 75., no. 4, 2024, pp. 647- 674.
Graves, Kris. American Monuments. Rubenstein Library Photography Gallery, April 5, 2024- October 27, 2024, https://library.duke.edu/exhibits/2024/KrisGraves.
History.com Editors. “Sam Houston.” History, https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/sam-houston, June 6, 2023 (Updated) November 9, 2009 (Original), https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/sam-houston.
hooks, bell. “Postmodern Blackness.” Postmodern Culture. John Hopkins University Press, 1990, vol. 1, no. 1,
Maraj, Louis. Black or Right: Anti/Racist Campus Rhetorics. Denver: University Press of Colorado, 2020.
McClure, Diana. Essay on Kris Graves American Monuments, n.d.
Makeig, John. “Hermann Park’s Sam Houston dismounts for its first scrubbing in 71 years.” Houston Chronicle (TX). News Bank INC, https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/0ED7B570A7AB627C&f=basic. Accessed 4 March 2025.
McPherson, James, M. “The Lone Star.” The New Republic, 208, vol. 208 iss. 16 (1993), n.p.,https://login.proxy.lib.duke.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=11930824&site=ehost-live&scope=site . Accessed 4, March 2025.
Pritchard, Eric, Darnell. Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 2016.
Pough, Gwendolyn. “2011 CCCC Chair’s Address: It’s Bigger than Comp/Rhet: Contested and Undisciplined.” College Composition and Communication, 63, no. 2, 301-313, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23131586.
Richardson, Elaine. “To Protect and Serve:” African American Female Literacies.” College Composition and Communication, 2002, vol. 54, no. 4, pp. 675-704.
Royster, Jacqueline Jones and Williams, Jean, C. History in the Spaces Left: African American Prescence and Narratives of Composition Studies.” College Composition and Communication, 50, no. 4 (1999), 563-584, https://doi.org/10.2307/358481.
Simone, Nina. “An Artist’s Duty.”, n.d., YouTube. February 21, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99V0mMNf5fo.
Smith-Lentz, Adrienne, D. Duke Scholars@Duke, https://scholars.duke.edu/person/adriane.lentz-smith. Accessed 13 February 2025.
Smith-Lentz, Adrienne, D. “From Slavery to Freedom, From Durham to the World Symposium 10/25/2023 (Day Two), AM/PM Panels.” DukeUnivLibraries, 27, October 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzduTuTPLPM, Accessed February 2025.
Wiley, Kehinde. “In His Own Words.” Kehinde Wiley: An Archeology of Silence, 46-54. New York: Delmonico Books and Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2023.
Wiley, Kehinde. Kehinde Wiley: An Archeology of Silence. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 19, 2023-May 27, 2024, https://www.mfah.org/exhibitions/kehinde-wiley-archaeology-silence.
[1] The date of Nina Simone’s quote is not listed with the YouTube Video footage, which was published on February 21, 2021.
[2] I researched so that my reflections about Sam Houston’s statue would not result in inaccurate claims about Houston. According to Sam Houston’s History.com page (2023), “In the Senate from 1846 to 1859, he made a name for himself as a staunch Unionist in an era of increasing sectional tensions over the issue of slavery. Houston was a slaveholder himself and defended slavery in the South, but he repeatedly voted against its expansion into the territories” (History.Com Editors 2023/2009- “President, Senator and Governor of Texas”, para. 2). In James McPherson (1993) book review “The Lone Star,” a review of Marshall De Bruhl’s “Sword of San Jacinto: A Life of Sam Houston” and John Hoyt Williams’s A Biography of the Father of Texas, like Houston’s History.com page, McPherson also discussed Houston’s ownership of enslaved people. McPherson stated, “Houston was no abolitionist – he owned a dozen slaves and deplored Northern agitation of the question. But he did not wish to risk the nation’s survival to expand slavery” (McPherson, para. 12). McPherson said that Houston “…held more military and public offices than anyone else in American history,” including his positions as, “congressman and governor of Tennessee” and “…member of the Congress and twice president of the Republic of Texas; United States senator from the state of Texas; and finally, governor of the state when it seceded from the United States in 1861…” (McPherson, para. 1). Along with the initial research, I conducted to learn about the legacy of Houston, I contacted Duke University Librarian Heather Martin and shared some information about what I found on Houston in my research and inquired about library resources and processes that could help me verify and confirm that the Sam Houston discussed in the sources I found and represented in the statue I saw were the same person. Martin provided two resources, including John Makeig’s (1996) “Hermann Park’s Sam Houston dismounts for its first scrubbing in 71 years” which I read and Barrie Scardino Bradley’s book, Houston’s Hermann Park: A Century of Community, which I used the control find feature to search for references of Sam Houston in. In Makeig’s (1996) article where he discussed the anticipated outcome of the restoration work on Houston’s statue, he shared points about Houston’s legacy that are in alignment with McPherson’s points about the political offices he served in. Makeig (1996) wrote, that, “When they are done, the statue gets boosted back into position to be seen by millions of passerby on Main and Fannin, a starkly impressive reminder of Sam Houston-former Tennessee governor, former Tennessee congressman, former commander of the Texas army that defeated Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna in 1835, former president of the Republic of Texas and former Texas governor” (Makeig). In chapter four “Hare & Hare: 1924-1951” of Bradley’s book, Bradley (2013) states, “Gen. Sam Houston (1793-1863), first president of the Republic of Texas and subsequently a US senator and state governor, embodied the myth of Texas. Three of his children were still alive in 1925, as were elderly Texans who remembered him. The forty-foot-high statue was placed in the monument circle at the entrance to Hermann Park, where Kessler in 1916 envisioned a monumental statue.” (59). The birth year for Sam Houston that was provided by Bradley (2013), who discussed the Sam Houston statue in Hermann Park is also the same birth year McPherson (1993) provided. Like Bradley (2013) and McPherson (1993), the Sam Houston History.com (2023) webpage also reports that Houston’s birth year was 1793.
[3] Smith-Lentz, Adrienne, D. Duke Scholars@Duke, https://scholars.duke.edu/person/adriane.lentz-smith. Accessed 13 February 2025.
[5] The publication year for Graves and Wiley’s exhibit that I listed is the year their exhibitions were located in the spaces I saw them in.