With regard to WWII, I suggest a topic that many are unaware of - the war in the Gulf of Mexico. Talk about the dirigible base at Hitchcock, the foundations of which are still visible. U-Boats sinking merchant shipping - there is a good book on the topic called Torpedoes in the Gulf. Battery emplacements located along the Texas Gulf Coast. And perhaps a good bit more obscure, "Camp Chemical", built for the war effort either by Dow Chemical or later became Dow near Freeport, Clute, and Lake Jackson.

Lots of good discussion as usual. I don't mind the digressions outside of US (I was a German major originally and could go on and on about that), but want to keep my focus on the US here.

Quote:

---

San Antonio has a deep history in american aviation. Might be an interesting topic that could include some site visits to Stinson

---

This is a very great idea. The university is literally five minutes from it. Not aware of any museum or aviation stuff, but maybe there's an old hangar. I need to look into this and develop the concept a bit more.

Quote:

---

Russell Lee took fantastic photographs of San Antonio during the great depression. Really eye popping stuff

---

Indeed, Traces of Texas has them all the time. The same with the series he did in the Corpus area. Get them faces that look like theirs: black, white Hispanic. All suffered during the period. There isn't white privilege, there's rich privilege, and while most of the people who had it were white, they were still a tiny fraction of whites (mostly on the East Coast), and not all whites did have it. Again, I'm not trying to steer their politics, but there are takeaways that follow that can lead them down a variety of paths, provided with this insight.

Quote:

---

A study of the impact of the massive grow of television in the 1950s and how it revolutionized how we not only were entertained but how we were informed via mass media. This could tie into a comparison to the growth of social media in the early 21st century to make it more impactful to todays kids.

---

Great point, though I would start with Radio and move onto TV. Play a couple of radio clips from the 30s, then some early 50s variety TV. In fact, you could go beyond that to vaudeville. Media in a lot of ways became a thing in the 20th Century. In the 19th, it was still very limited and mostly provincial. Traveling acts started creating national media landscapes in maybe the late 1880s-90s, then radio really started uniting the country with people in Delaware and Oklahoma for the first time listening to the same content. You could go all the way into these implications, to the spread of McDonalds and Hilton hotels and Starbucks, creating a unified landscape across the country which, oddly enough, failed to smooth out our geographical peculiarities.
Wow. Lots of rabbit holes

Quote:

---

The 1960 debate between Kennedy and Nixon was an absolute game changer in Presidential politics. I've always wondered if the story that those who saw it on TV thought Kennedy won while those who listened to it on the radio thought Nixon had won was based on reality or was mere urban legend.

---

It's a fair question. Also might be sample discrimination. Where had TV penetrated? If most TV watchers were on the East Coast and most radio-only people were in the hinterland, they might have already had a predelection for one candidate or the other before the debate even happened. So this might in fact be more myth than reality.

Quote:

---

With regard to WWII, I suggest a topic that many are unaware of - the war in the Gulf of Mexico. Talk about the dirigible base at Hitchcock, the foundations of which are still visible. U-Boats sinking merchant shipping - there is a good book on the topic called Torpedoes in the Gulf. Battery emplacements located along the Texas Gulf Coast. And perhaps a good bit more obscure, "Camp Chemical", built for the war effort either by Dow Chemical or later became Dow near Freeport, Clute, and Lake Jackson.

---

Yes, good points. I used to work at the newspaper in Lake Jackson. I know all that history well. Have you ever read "Torpedoes in the Gulf" by Melanie Wiggins?

Another point to bring WWII home is the German POWs in Texas. My former prof at A&M, Dr. Krammer, was the leading authority on this back in the day. By the way, I miss old school Texas. I took his History of Nazi Germany class in 1993 or 94, and some kid in the class was the son of a doctor who had treated an old WWII vet who had helped capture Hermann Goering. The vet gave one of Goering's sidearms (I believe it was a Walther) to the doctor late in life. So somehow the kid taled to Krammer and brought the pistol in to class for show-and-tell). It was unloaded of course, and he had it in a shoebox. We all passed it around the class. It was a great teaching tool. But imagine doing that today! Holy hell would break loose in the faculty lounge and the media.

Quick thoughts. I'm trying to find good supplemental material. Do you think Band of Brothers would be good? Use the actual book in the WWII section, then follow with some video clips? I can do just the clips, but I do want these kids doing actual reading.
On the one hand, Band of Brothers is a great and well-written story, and kids can relate to folks their age doing these things. I do have to consider that the university is very diverse, and the population is probably majority hispanic. I do want to talk about heroes that look like them like Cleto Rodriguez.
As I'm typing, it occurred to me that Roy Benavidez would be a HUGE inspirational topic when we get to Vietnam. I actually interviewed the guy as a reporter. Maybe I can get his memoir. I've seen it, but don't know how readable it is.

I've often wondered why SGM Benavidez isn't more talked about/studied within Texas broadly. I thought Fort Hood if it did need to be renamed shoulda gone with that, but I also admit I didn't know about Richard Cavazos until that happened (and the Army always loves officers for post names, of course).

Band of Brothers is great, without doubt, but Speirs' depiction I think was not real accurate. Questioning historical tellings in media is another element to good history studies imho (I added this video last month in the entertainment thread on the series):

aalan94 said:

---

Quote:

---

With regard to WWII, I suggest a topic that many are unaware of - the war in the Gulf of Mexico. Talk about the dirigible base at Hitchcock, the foundations of which are still visible. U-Boats sinking merchant shipping - there is a good book on the topic called Torpedoes in the Gulf. Battery emplacements located along the Texas Gulf Coast. And perhaps a good bit more obscure, "Camp Chemical", built for the war effort either by Dow Chemical or later became Dow near Freeport, Clute, and Lake Jackson.

---

Yes, good points. I used to work at the newspaper in Lake Jackson. I know all that history well. Have you ever read "Torpedoes in the Gulf" by Melanie Wiggins?

---

Ah yes, The Brazosport Facts.

Yes, I read that book many years ago. Still have it on one of my book shelves. Off topic, but another book written by a Brazosport-area author that was a favorite of mine growing up down there was Ghosts Along the Brazos.

Bob, the pacific, masters of the air would all be good sources. Maybe something like "the lost battalion" of TX army national guard soldiers in Italy and the Japanese Americans who helped rescue them would be a good unit asit covers a lot of WW2 related topics with Japanese Americans, internment, Texans and so on.


There is a museum at Stinson. Don't know how good it is. https://www.texasairmuseum.org/

Not sure of the value of this sort of book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1933981.Wings_Over_San_Antonio_Texas

https://stmupublichistory.org/sass/?page_id=102

Another WWII-era topic that many are probably unaware of - POWs in Texas.

A book by Dr. Krammer that you are likely aware of: Nazi Prisoners of War in America

https://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/when-afrika-korps-came-texas-world-war-ii-pows-lone-star-state

https://texoso66.com/2016/09/08/wwii-prisoners-of-war/

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/d94f32ad662b41e391ddde4c6b6d7bf2

Personal opinion, but history is difficult for many to focus on because it's largely just words on paper. But with something like that last link, you can point to places you can actually visit to learn more than simply reading a book. (And I say that as one who, in an alternate reality, would have majored in History rather than BANA).

I have always believed the 16th and 17th amendments did more to alter the federal/state government relationship than is typically understood. Certainly the 14th Amendment is the most impactful but taxation of income and popular election of Senators also had significant consequences on the relative power of the federal and state governments, much to the diminution of the state.

I generally agree, but the 17th Amendment is overrated. It's become a libertarian talking point in recent years, but I've seen little evidence it actually changed much. The senate does have some grandstanders and outliers, but they generally reflect the states they're from. You get an occasional Ralph Yarborough, but they don't often last too long.

aalan94 said:

---

I generally agree, but the 17th Amendment is overrated. It's become a libertarian talking point in recent years, but I've seen little evidence it actually changed much. The senate does have some grandstanders and outliers, but they generally reflect the states they're from. You get an occasional Ralph Yarborough, but they don't often last too long.

---

I can't quantify it, but I think its impact on the balance of power between the federal and state governments is significant. A senator appointed by the state legislature is more likely to represent the interests of the state government, which are not necessarily synonymous with the interests of the citizens of the state. The original plan wanted something more like the house of Lords but now we have basically two houses of commons.

I think that's theoretically absolutely true, but in practice, Senators, once installed, were never removed by their states, so the only constituency they represented was the legislature at the time they were appointed, and that was more about favors owed or promised.

The other point is that all the conservatives who say how great a conservative paradise we would be if we appointed Senators by the legislature fail to consider the fact that if we did that today, the two senators from Texas would not be Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, but David Dewhurst and Joe Straus. The power of unintended consequences is indeed unstoppable.

aalan94 said:

---

I think that's theoretically absolutely true, but in practice, Senators, once installed, were never removed by their states, so the only constituency they represented was the legislature at the time they were appointed, and that was more about favors owed or promised.

The other point is that all the conservatives who say how great a conservative paradise we would be if we appointed Senators by the legislature fail to consider the fact that if we did that today, the two senators from Texas would not be Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, but David Dewhurst and Joe Straus. The power of unintended consequences is indeed unstoppable.

---

Agree to an extent but my point is not so much "political" but structural, as in polity not so much politics. I think the question of whether the constitutional republic created by the founders is degraded by the 17th Amendment is one worth exploring. I think the answer is "yes", but I acknowledge that is a matter of opinion.

My daughter, a junior in HS, took APUSH over the summer.

She had a soccer tournament in Denver and we drove up, so we had plenty of windshield time to discuss.

While we were in CO, news broke that CO had sued over the Kroger/Safeway proposed merger. She did know about the Sherman Act, but was mostly tuned out to Dad's news radio. I took the opportunity to relate a current event to her studies

The "Trust Busting" era and what companies exist to this day due to the Sherman Act would be something I think kids could relate to. Add in that Google is being sued for anti competitive add placement and you have a current event.

I would also emphasize JP Morgan and his role in WWI and how he and his Wall St buddies financed the Brits and French in WWI. You could also add that he may, or may not have heavily influenced US entry to the war.

Dude was arguably the most powerful man on earth at the time.

I will second the "Men That Built America" as well. If you haven't seen it, they highlight men like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Tesla, Westinghouse, Ford, etc.

I would also highlight how discourse has changed since the industrial revolution and media's impact.