My family made me a Father’s Day playlist of random earworms I woke up singing over the last year. From the Marx Brothers to Mavis Staples, it’s quite a journey (but no Journey).
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As part of this morning’s ceremony, four historical markers of lynchings in Harris County were unveiled in downtown Houston. In the background stands the county jail. These markers are part of EJI’s Community Remembrance Project.
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Powerful ceremony this morning in Harris County for the unveiling of design plans for Remembrance Park in Houston.
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I spoke with “Houston Matters” this morning about the Houston origins of Juneteenth. Watch on YouTube …
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My essay in the Houston Chronicle shares my new research on the first anniversary of June 19 in Houston and the lessons of Juneteenth for today. Read here or use the gift link.
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The peace lily at my office is blooming this week. This may be the longest I’ve managed to keep an indoor plant alive! I give it an old “Borders Books and Music” travel mug full of water, every Monday.
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Rice News has a story about my new research into Houston’s inaugural celebration of Juneteenth.
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Updated some notes in my open research notebook: Arlington House, Juneteenth, Refugeed Slaves.
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On June 19, 1866, Black Texans marked the first anniversary of Juneteenth. But where and how was that day first publicly celebrated? My new article, “The First Juneteenth,” explores those questions and finds some surprising answers in Houston. Read more …
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Nearly 9 years since Hurricane Harvey, we still occasionally get submissions to the Harvey Memories Project. Yesterday another story came in, and the Contribution form remains open.
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I’ve uploaded a PDF version of my new post on the history of Arlington House to Rice’s Research Repository. DOI: 10.25611/3KFS-1A94
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NEW POST: How “Arlington House” Became “The Robert E. Lee Memorial.” Read more …
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Today I’m at the annual conference of the Alliance for Texas History, which is off to a great start!
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The AI-generated, fake book club solicitation emails are getting pretty weird …
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✅ Enter Spring 2026 grades.
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It’s commencement season! That’s me in the bumblebee suit on Saturday night, seated next to my dear colleague José Aranda. (Credit: Rosie Nguyen)
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I never know how to respond when the robot coffee machine in the business school asks me how my day is going.
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A student in my Civil War history course brought by an interesting artifact she once found in a Baltimore used book store. It appears to be a scrapbook kept by a journalist during the 1860s, with an index of topics in the front. Very cool!
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Maybe it’s the historian in me, but one of the things I like about Record Store Day is the occasional opportunity to relive the experience of hearing music for the first time on a physical medium, never before available or streamed. I’m old enough to remember that being the way of things, so maybe it’s nostalgia at work. But either way, the newly released Roy Hargrove concert album Bern (recommended here by Nate Chinen, who wrote the liner notes) was worth the hour-long wait in line.
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I spoke about Henrietta Wood in an interview with the editors of a special America250 issue of the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society.
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We all have our coping mechanisms!
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Updated some notes in my open research notebook: Arlington House.
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Tonight I will be at the NewSouth Bookstore in Montgomery, Alabama, to talk about Sweet Taste of Liberty.
