Bunkering With Books

BY CONNIE CRONLEY

“Forget the Alamo” is a bestseller, well researched, and written in a breezy, hip style. The subtitle is “The Rise and Fall of an American Myth,” which explains why the book has stirred considerable Texas huff, puff and outrage.

Texas was occupied by Native Americans then claimed by France, Spain and Mexico before it was an independent nation and then a state. The authors explain that tangled history but focus on shining the light of truth and clarity on that greatest of all Texas history, The Battle of the Alamo in 1836.

The myth is that Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and a small band were fighting for independence from Mexico and defeated at the Alamo by a bloodthirsty Santa Anna. Three Texas authors Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford write that it was really a fight about slavery. Texas wanted to preserve it; Mexico prohibited it.

As for the “holy trinity of Alamo heroes,” the authors say Bowie was a murderer, slave holder and con man who was sick in bed during the battle; Crockett was a “self-promoting old fool” who didn’t go down swinging the butt of his rifle, but who surrendered and was shot; and William Barret Travis, famous for his “victory or death” letter, was a “pompous, racist agitator and syphilitic lech.” Historically the Battle has been written as “Heroic Anglo Narrative,” when actually Tejanos (Texans of Mexican origin) fought alongside Anglo rebels. Fun, informative, a bit too long and colloquial, but you’ll never remember the Alamo the same way as before.

Award-winning “The Great Oklahoma Swindle,” by native Oklahoman Russell Cobb, is even more of a smarty pants. The subtitle is “Race, Religion, and Lies in America’s Weirdest State.” The author reports on the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy, preacher Billy James Hargis who became the “godfather of fundamentalism as a political movement,” and beloved Oklahomans who made their oil fortunes with shady deals with Indian landowners. Prime Tulsa land (Maple Ridge, Brookside) he tells us, was swindled from Muscogee (Creek) Indians.

Cobb is brassy enough to take on Tulsa’s No. 1 philanthropist and mega park, musing in print about private versus public monies and private foundations that are appointed, not elected by citizens. One woman I know read this chapter and was so enraged that she refused to read the rest of the book.

We are lucky to live in a country where anybody and anything can be publicly questioned. Where, to quote the ancient proverb, “a cat can look at a king.”

“This Land is Herland” is a more academic style with essays about 13 Oklahoma women written by female scholars and subtitled “Gendered Activism in Oklahoma from the 1870s to the 2010s.” It’s more readable than the subtitle might suggest with interesting profiles of women who earned their place in Oklahoma history. Prominent Tulsan Lilah Lindsey was a celebrated educator who, in 1898, became the first Creek woman to receive a college degree and became a civic reformer, notably the temperance movement.

Some are names we know (Alice Robertson, LaDonna Harris), and some are likely new to us (Mattie Mallory, California M. Taylor.) The book is edited by Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin.

“A Life on Fire” is my own book published in August by the University of Oklahoma Press. It is a traditional-form biography of Oklahoma’s fiery politician and political activist Kate Barnard, the first woman elected to state office in 1907, before women could vote. She became a political powerhouse and national celebrity who championed the poor, workers, children, the imprisoned and the mentally ill. But then – she began defending the state’s Native orphans against a conspiracy to defraud them of their properties.

Grafters closed ranks against her and defunded her office. It broke her health and her heart. She died a recluse in 1930. Tulsa author Randy Krehbiel said, “The story of Kate Barnard is as wonderful and heartbreaking as the story of Oklahoma itself.”