Austin, TX
Complicating The Myth of Red Texas • The Austin Chronicle
Texas is a land that revels in its idiosyncratic history and associated iconography. On bar signs, brand logos, T-shirts, and tattoo sleeves, the Western-outfitted cowboy and land-roping barbed wire feature heavily. These tangled symbols aren’t easily sorted politically, but when it comes to talking about the Texan past, more often than not, that past is associated with conservative, right-leaning political values.
The resilient trail of leftist ideologies that David Griscom traces through the state’s history in The Myth of Red Texas: Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South aim to trouble that assumption. The author’s debut work doesn’t craft an idealized ancestral politic that left-leaning Texans can saunter on home to, but instead lassos the many worker-led movements that’ve impacted Texas history into a traceable path, complicating simple assumptions about the Lone Star State and its people and crafting a loosely tethered intergenerational community of Texas radicals.
In his pages, Griscom attempts to reassociate cowboy individualism with cowboy solidarity in the strikes of late 1800s, and the rural, tough-living pride of said barbed wire with property-hungry landowners that strangled the open range, despite resistance from fence-cutting cowpokes, farmers, and neighbors.
Following these fence-cutters through the populist movement, labor unions, and socialists, Griscom drops in on different casts of characters each cut in the rugged shape of Texas who face variations of the same struggle. Though they differ in ideology and approach, these charismatic speakers and movement leaders grapple with the same temptations of political power and infighting. Griscom does not shy away from interrogating the pitfalls of these movements – particularly the racism and misogyny that manage to transcend solidarity more often than not – and the backstabbing dance of courting imagined moderates in a plea for reelection. The Brotherhood of Timber Workers and some German socialists prove to be exceptions to these common drawbacks, Griscom reveals.
The author’s debut work doesn’t craft an idealized ancestral politic that left-leaning Texans can saunter on home to, but instead lassos the many worker-led movements that’ve impacted Texas history into a traceable path.
As staunchly as conservatives want to turn the wagon around, liberals can fix their eyes on the horizon too closely. In an introductory analysis of recent Democratic defeats in Texas, the writer argues that colloquial assumptions about history deeply impact contemporary campaigns and grassroots organizing. No modern movement is reinventing the wheel, and moving forward with a knowledge of the successes and missteps that came before could embolden today’s organizers. As Texas once led the country in socialist party sign-ups, the Houston chapter remains the organization’s largest branch and, as Griscom notes, the Texas AFL-CIO was the first statewide labor association to advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza. The legacy of collective movements and outspoken groups persists in Texas, even when the overarching narrative doesn’t celebrate them.
Unique though it may be, Texas is also something of a microcosm, a laboratory, and a weather beacon for the politics and culture that ripple throughout the United States – a fact that Griscom, a writer and podcaster for Jacobin and host of Left Reckoning, knows well. A return to the past has been the great call of the political right in America for the past decade, and its leaders have revised and reshaped that past to suit their current intentions. As Griscom writes, recalling Texas’ rich and undertaught liberalist history makes it “difficult for the GOP to remake the state in its own image completely.” As Texas leads the country in enacting conservative policies in education, reproductive rights, and voting legislation, it stands to reason that muddying its narrative can remind other states to look backward for ideas in imagining a radical future.
Griscom is clear-eyed in his introduction about this 177-page primer being a cursory introduction to the history of leftist movements in Texas, much less the history of Texas politics as a whole. But for those who have felt excluded by the mythologizing of Texas’ past, it serves as a galvanizing read for further education and collective action.
The Myth of Red Texas: Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South
By David Griscom
OR Books
This article appears in April 10 • 2026.
Austin, TX
America 250 celebration: Texans who fought for independence honored in Austin – Texas – The Black Chronicle
(The Center Square) – As part of Texas’ celebration of the founding of the United States, a new monument was unveiled in Austin commemorating 69 patriots who fought for U.S. independence who later came to Texas.
Texas is also celebrating its first U.S. Navy fleet week in state history in the Houston area, where roughly 1,000 sailors and Marines are participating in nearly 200 events as part of the America 250 celebration. This also includes commemorating the Texas Navy, which helped win Texas’ independence from Mexico 190 years ago this April, The Center Square reported.
Gov. Greg Abbott and the leaders of the Texas Society Sons of the American Revolution unveiled a new monument honoring Texas revolutionary war patriots at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.
Abbott, a direct descendent of a patriot who supported the cause of American independence, was also inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution and received the Silver Good Citizenship Medal.
“It is appropriate to remember that today, April 18th, 251 years ago, the Battles of Lexington and Concord occurred with the shot heard around the world,” Mel Oller, president of the Texas Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, said.
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On the evening of April 18, Paul Revere rode from Boston to Charlestown warning colonists that British troops were coming. Several hundred Minute Men and colonial militia fought British soldiers the next morning in Concord and Lexington, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War.
The commemoration in Austin was important “to reflect on the courage, sacrifice and enduring principles that gave birth to the United States of America,” Oller said. “This monument stands as a tribute to those patriots and reminder to future generations of the ideas that continue to shape our Republic.”
“Texans played a role in the war too, and it’s important to recognize them, and the sacrifices they made for our freedom,” he said.
“The history that is etched the United States into the annals of the greatest country in the history of the world,” Abbott said. As others try to rewrite American history or “try to condemn the glory of what America has been able to achieve,” Abbott said Texas was focusing on teaching children about U.S. and Texas history. “We must educate every generation about why it is that America grew from just a tenuous 13 colonies into the most powerful country in the history of the world.”
“There could hardly be a better time to dedicate this monument than during our 250th celebration of freedom, of independence,” he said. It’s “an enduring testament to the heroes who fought for that freedom that is unique to America.”
One of the greatest gifts Revolutionary War heroes gave Americans was freedom, Abbott said, “but freedom is not a one-time event. The fight didn’t end with the Treaty of Paris. It’s an everyday process, perpetually. Just as the patriots took to the hillsides to battle the Red Coats, modern day Patriots” continue to fight for freedom, including the failed policies of Marxism, he said. Many Texans’ ancestors “died for a country they would never get to see. Stories of these heroes must be told. Generations of Americans must be reminded of who they are and what they fought for.”
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There are 69 American Revolutionary War heroes listed alphabetically on the monument who later settled in Texas, including native Tejanos who fought for American independence, according to TSSAR.
Listed first is John Abston, who enlisted in the militia in Virginia when he was 18. He fought alongside and under men like John Crockett, father of Davy Crockett, in one of the most pivotal battles of the war: the Battle of Kings Mountain, in South Carolina. He later moved to Collin County, Texas.
Another is José Santiago Seguín, the grandfather of Texas Revolutionary hero Juan Seguín, the first and only Tejano to be elected to the Republic of Texas Senate. He also fought with Sam Houston in the Battle of San Jacinto.
Another is Peter Sides, who fought with a North Carolina regiment against the British. He later joined the Gutierrez-Magee expedition in 1812 and was killed in 1813 at the Battle of Medina in what is now Bexar County. The battle is “known as the bloodiest battle on Texas soil. The rebels’ bodies were desecrated and their body parts were removed and scattered,” the TSSAR explains.
Another is William Sparks, who joined a North Carolina militia when he was 17. He and his family later moved to Nacagdoches, Texas; his sons and grandsons fought for Texas independence.
Listed at the bottom of the monument is Ira Hobart Evans, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient and the youngest Speaker of the Texas House who founded the Texas Society of the Sons of American Revolution.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas’ highway system dropped two spots since 2025, and now ranks at No. 27 in the country for its cost-effectiveness and overall conditions, according to the Reason Foundation’s 2026 Highway Report.
The report assessed pavement conditions, fatalities, deficient bridges, infrastructure costs and congestion levels across the United States. Texas earned the following rankings:
- 33rd in urban interstate pavement conditions
- 21st in rural interstate pavement conditions
- 39th in urban arterial pavement conditions
- 12th in rural arterial pavement conditions
- 3rd in structurally deficient bridges
- 26th in urban fatality rate
- 42nd in rural fatality rate
- 41st in traffic congestion
“More than 42,000 of the nation’s 618,923 highway bridges, nearly 7%, are still structurally deficient. Arizona, Nevada, and Texas reported the lowest percentages of deficient bridges,” the report said.
The full report can be found online.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Small hail peppered the Austin area as strong thunderstorms moved through Saturday.
A few of the storms dropped rain and up to pea-sized hail in San Marcos, Dripping Springs and the Austin metro area.
A Severe Thunderstorm Warning was issued for Williamson County around 8:15 p.m., and then canceled shortly after. However, it was enough for the Two Step Inn music festival in Georgetown to cancel shows for the rest of the evening. Event organizers say the festival will run as planned Sunday.
KXAN’s First Warning Weather team is monitoring the storms. We will update this post as the evening continues.
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America 250 celebration: Texans who fought for independence honored in Austin – Texas – The Black Chronicle
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