Dozens of artifacts donated by music star Phil Collins are key attractions among the items displayed at the Alamo s new Ralston Family Collections Center.
Adapted from
Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford. Reprinted by arrangement with Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, a Penguin Random House company. Copyright Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford, 2021.
Kaye Tucker thought she had come up with a clever idea. If everything fell into place just right, she could accomplish two things at once: transform the Alamo into a world-class historical site and help an aging British rock star clean out his basement.
The path to that strange opportunity began about a decade ago, when Tucker was given an important assignment. A mid-level bureaucrat in the General Land Office, she was tasked with helping turn things around at the Alamo, where visitor surveys show that most tourists are disappointed with the outdated exhibits and lowbrow surroundings. In 2011 the Texas Legislature had asked land commissioner Jerry Patterson to shore up the
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This past week, Texas State Historical Association chief historian Walter Buenger made two controversial assertions regarding the Alamo in a story published by
Although the battle has become a symbol of patriotism and freedom for many Texans and Americans, like the Confederate monuments erected after the Civil War, the myth of the Alamo has been used to “commemorate whiteness,” according to Walter L Buenger, Texas State Historical Association chair.
The battle itself was relatively insignificant tactically speaking, but it gained recognition decades later in the 1890s as backlash to African Americans gaining more political power and Mexican immigration increasing, Buenger said. In 1915, “Birth of a Nation” director D.W. Griffith produced “Martyrs of the Alamo,” which solidified the myth further by pitting white virtuous Texans against racist caricatures of Mexicans on screen.