A Single Star and Bloody Knuckles
A History of Politics and Race in Texas
-
- $449.00
-
- $449.00
Descripción editorial
Finalist, 2021 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award
For John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner, there was one simple rule in politics: “You’ve got to bloody your knuckles.” It’s a maxim that applies in so many ways to the state of Texas, where the struggle for power has often unfolded through underhanded politicking, backroom dealings, and, quite literally, bloodshed. The contentious history of Texas politics has been shaped by dangerous and often violent events, and been formed not just in the halls of power but by marginalized voices omitted from the official narratives.
A Single Star and Bloody Knuckles traces the state’s conflicted and dramatic evolution over the past 150 years through its pivotal political players, including oft-neglected women and people of color. Beginning in 1870 with the birth of Texas’s modern political framework, Bill Minutaglio chronicles Texas political life against the backdrop of industry, the economy, and race relations, recasting the narrative of influential Texans. With journalistic verve and candor, Minutaglio delivers a contemporary history of the determined men and women who fought for their particular visions of Texas and helped define the state as a potent force in national affairs.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Minutaglio (coauthor, Dallas 1963) delivers a vibrant political history of Texas from the 1870s to the 2020 presidential election. He describes how the former slave owners and Confederate soldiers who settled in Texas after the Civil War put up a "fierce, galvanizing resistance" to Republican governor Edmund Jackson Davis's creation of a state police force that included freed Black men. Minutaglio also tracks the rise of the KKK as an "immutable political force" in the 1920s; documents Houston NAACP leader Lulu Belle Madison White's involvement in successful campaigns to open Democratic primaries to Black voters and integrate the University of Texas; and examines how Republican operative Karl Rove groomed George W. Bush to unseat Democratic governor Ann Richards in 1994. Minutaglio packs his brisk history with entertaining anecdotes, including the rumor that Bob Bullock, who served two terms as lieutenant governor in the 1990s, pulled out his handgun to shoot at rats ("real or imagined") in restaurants, and keeps a close eye on the ways that Black and Latino voters have been marginalized by Texas power brokers. This is a rollicking and richly detailed portrait of the Lone Star state.
