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The 12th Cotton
& Rural History Conference
Saturday, April 19, 2008, 9:30
AM-1:30 PM
Audie Murphy/American Cotton Museum, Greenville,
Texas
"Cotton Fields No More: Seaman Knapp and
Cotton Culture in Kaufman and Hunt counties"
Keynote Speaker James M. Smallwood
Dr. Smallwood is Professor Emeritus of History at Oklahoma State University and author of
numerous books and articles on Texas, Oklahoma and Southern History.
Among his books are: Time of Hope, Time of Despair: Black Texans During
Reconstruction (1981), Struggle for Equality: Blacks in Texas (1983),
Murder and Mayhem: The War of Reconstruction in Texas (2003), and The
Indian Texans (2004).
The 12th Annual Conference will feature two
panels, musical presentations, a barbecue lunch and a keynote
presentation. Panelists will present papers on a rich variety of cotton
and rural history. Prof. Pam Gaiter (Sociology,
Collin College) takes a look at 130 years of rural life in East Texas in
"Living the Legacy: Black Land Owners in East Texas,
1870-2000s." Dr. John Lundberg (2007 TCU graduate) traces
cotton's western expansion in "From Black Land to High Plains: Texas
Cotton Production 1940-1960." The second panel will feature music
and memoirs from folklorists. Well-known dulcimer player Dr. Deborah Porter (Texas A& M
University - Commerce)
will present "Hard Times Again No More." Author and folklorist Jack Duncan recounts the ups
and downs of one North Texas family's
Depression-era survival in "I’m Here to Tell You!" Finally, author, folklorist and musician Dr. Chris
Grooms (Collin College) will musically challenge the audience with
"How Cotton Brought the Blues to Texas."
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Gaiter
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Porter
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Duncan
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Grooms
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The conference is
sponsored each year by the Department of History, Social and Behavioral
Sciences, Collin College, and the Archives and Oral History
Program, Texas A&M University
- Commerce A $10 registration fee includes
lunch. Advance reservations may be made by contacting the Audie Murphy/American Cotton Museum, 600 Interstate 30
East, P.O.
Box 347, Greenville, Texas 75403.
The museum can be reached by telephone at (903) 454-1990 or (903)
450-4502.
Directions to the Museum
Past Cotton and Rural History Conferences
For the past eleven years the conference has benefited from the generosity of
notable and award-winning scholars working in the fields of social,
agricultural and rural history, folklore and the oral narrative. They have
included J. Brett Adams, Jacques D. Bagur,
D. Clayton Brown, Walter Buenger, the late Robert A. Calvert, Jr.,
Randolph B. "Mike" Campbell, Adrienne Caughfield,
Edward Countryman, John Hanners, Paul
Harvey, Jr., Karen Gerhardt, Eric Gruver, Melissa LaPrelle, Gwendolyn Lawe,
Kay Mizell, Lois E. Myers, Kristopher Paschal, Jeri Reed, Debra Reid,
Rebecca Sharpless, Thad Sitton,
Susanne Summers, Carol Taylor, Sam Tullock,
Stephen A. Townsend, Keith Volanto,
Jeannie Whayne, Patricia Wingate, Lee
Winniford and Dan K. Utley.
Presenters have represented colleges,
universities, libraries and museums from across Texas and the nation
including the the A. C. McMillan African-American
Museum (Emory, Tex.), the University of Arkansas, the Burton (Tex.) Cotton
Gin and Museum, Baylor University, Collin College, Hill College, the Heritage
Farmstead Museum (Plano, Tex.), the University of Houston, the University of
Illinois-Chicago, New Mexico Junior College, St. Edward's University, the
University of North Texas, Southern Methodist University, Texas A&M
University - College Station, A&M - Kingsville and A&M - Commerce,
Texas Christian University, and Texas Woman's University and the Weslaco
(Tex.) Bi-Cultural Museum.
Kyle Wilkison and James H. Conrad co-chair the
annual event and welcome paper proposals from historians working in the
fields of rural, social or agricultural history. Please submit
proposals via email to each address listed below:
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James H. Conrad, Ph.D.
james_conrad@tamu-commerce.edu
University Archivist
James G. Gee Library
Archives and Oral History Program
P.O. Box 3011
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Commerce, Texas 75429-3011
903-886-5737
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Kyle Wilkison, Ph.D.
Kwilkison@CCCCD.edu
Professor of History
Department of History
Division of Social Sciences
Collin County
Community College
Plano, Texas
75074
(972) 881-5834
FAX: (972) 881-5700
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