American Rhapsody: Recent Episodes
American Rhapsody
On each episode of American Rhapsody we interview those who have witnessed American history firsthand: politicians, reporters, photographers and activists—all of whom have since donated their personal or professional archives to the Briscoe Center. We also interview historians, filmmakers and other researchers who work in the center’s collections. These collections are the evidence of the past. Without them, there is no history, only myth. Each week we ask: what actually happened? The sum of all those answers in an American Rhapsody.
“Freedom Papers: Evidence of Emancipation” highlights examples of how enslaved people gained freedom before the Civil War in the American south. Through the purchase of bonds, travel to states where the right to freedom was inherent, and other methods, these people secured a fragile hold on their freedom and sometimes the freedom of their children […]
Documents used in this exhibit cover an era from Spanish rule to the end of the Civil War, including petitions signed by Spanish Governors, survey maps, and emancipation papers for entire families. These personal, often complex, stories show how the legacy of enslavement permeates American history. “Freedom Papers: Evidence of Emancipation” highlights examples of how […]
After establishing himself as a pioneer in the news media industry in Texas, Will Hobby served as Lt. Gov. of Texas from 1915 until September 1917, when he became Governor. He led Texas’ effort to support the American military during World War I, and he had to resolve significant political and social issues that swept the state and the nation, including lawlessness and corruption on the state’s southern border, and heated battles over prohibition and women’s suffrage. Will signed the bill giving women the right to vote in primary elections, and he subsequently played a role in the ratification of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
During World War II Oveta took her place on the national stage as the celebrated founding commander of the Women’s Army Corps. In recognition of her extremely difficult but outstanding performance during the war, she received the Distinguished Service Medal, the first woman so honored. In 1953, Oveta became only the second woman in U. S. history to serve on a presidential cabinet when Eisenhower appointed her as the Secretary of the newly established Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. While head of the HEW, Oveta directed the effort to expand the number of Americans covered by Social Security, and she oversaw the development and controversial distribution of the Salk polio vaccine.
The “Hobby Team” of Will and Oveta quickly forged an intimate personal and professional relationship leading to the establishment of an influential media business that eventually included ownership of the Houston Post and Houston’s pioneering KPRC Radio and KPRC TV.
On this episode, we interview Don Carleton, the Briscoe Center’s executive director. Don joins us to discuss his most recent book, a dual biography of Will and Oveta Hobby, The Governor and the Colonel.
First drawn into the fight against racial segregation in the 1960s, Alice Embree became a leader of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Texas at Austin and embarked on a lifelong journey of social activism involving a wide array of grassroots political, economic, social, and cultural causes.
The Briscoe Center has recently published Alice’s memoir, Voice Lessons, which draws heavily from her papers, part of the center’s civil rights and social justice collections. Alice’s thoughtful memoir opens our eyes to what it was like to serve as an active participant in causes that continue to affect us all.
In this podcast, Alice is joined by Dr. Julia Mickenberg, a professor of American Studies at UT Austin and an award-winning author. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on such topics as US Cultural History; Women Radicals and Reformers; and Society, Culture, and Politics in the 1960s. Dr. Mickenberg also wrote the foreword to Voice Lessons.
Voice Lessons is published by the Briscoe Center for American History and distributed by the University of Texas Press.
To purchase a copy of Voice Lessons, please visit: https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/embree-voice-lessons
This episode of American Rhapsody was produced by Ashley Carr.
The audio was mixed and mastered by Morgan Honaker and Ean Herrera.
It might surprise you that the Briscoe Center’s collections are not only global in their reach—they are, literally, astronomical. In this episode, we will explore outer space through the art of quilts.
While living on the International Space Station in 2013, astronaut (and UT alum) Karen Nyberg stitched a nine-inch, star-themed quilt block. She and NASA invited crafters and artists to help create a global quilt, inspired by the stars. Nyberg’s single quilt block sparked a worldwide project that resulted in the submission of 2,400 quilt squares to NASA, many accompanied by letters and stories of the inspiration provided by outer space. A team of NASA and Johnson Space Center volunteers quilted the squares together, resulting in twenty-eight king-sized quilts.
Briscoe Center Associate Director Sarah Sonner speaks to astronaut Karen Nyberg about the unique challenges of sewing in space, as well as the connection between mechanical engineering and quilting. Sarah also discusses the Astronomical Quilts! project with Bob Ruggiero and Vicki Mangum, longtime staff members of Quilts, Inc. and key figures in the Astronomical Quilts! project on the ground, which involved coordinating submissions and volunteers to make twenty-eight quilts that are out of this world!
These discussions show how historical evidence can be found in many places—even in orbit around the earth.
For more information about Dr. Karen Nyberg and her work please visit: https://karennyberg.com/
For more information about the International Quilt Festival, the Texas Quilt Museum, or quilting in general, please visit: https://www.quilts.com/
This episode of American Rhapsody was produced by Ashley Carr. The audio was mixed and mastered by Ean Herrera and Morgan Honaker.
Americans have been shocked by the stream of visual information that has flooded the news and social media over the past year. We have also witnessed the deplorable treatment of many journalists covering these events. In this episode, we’ll hear from Carolyn Cole, a photojournalist with the Los Angeles Times whose archive is part of the Briscoe Center’s collections. Despite her lengthy experience working in combat zones, she didn’t expect to be targeted as a journalist in her own country. In June 2020, Cole was temporarily blinded with Mace when she covered the “Black Lives Matter” protests in Minneapolis following the vicious murder of George Floyd. In this episode, she discusses the Minneapolis protests, the importance of portraying the human cost of conflict, and her conscious effort to record history.
Carolyn is interviewed by Alison Beck, the center’s director for special projects, and Ben Wright, the center’s former associate director for communications.
Below are a selection of photographs taken from Cole's work covering the Minneapolis protests.
This episode of American Rhapsody was mixed and mastered by Sofia Salter and Morgan Honaker.
The passage of the 19th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote for women -- a significant constitutional milestone. But women’s activism has not always united disparate groups into collective action, nor have its aims and achievements always resulted in equity. In this episode, the Briscoe Center’s Dr. Sarah Sonner and filmmakers Ellen Temple and Nancy Schiesari discuss On with the Fight! and Citizens at Last, their recent projects on women’s suffrage and activism. The exhibit On with the Fight! was curated by Sonner and documents 150 years of women’s activism through the Briscoe Center’s collections. Temple and Schiesari are the team behind Citizens at Last, a documentary film that tells the story of the Texas women who organized, demonstrated, and won the vote for women.
This episode of American Rhapsody was mixed and mastered by Morgan Honaker.
A pioneer of a street-theater approach to activism, Abbie Hoffman played a key role in the Chicago police riot of 1968 and the ensuing court case known as the trial of the Chicago 7. Johanna Hoffman Lawrenson discussed their shared life together, both in the spotlight and on the run. Robert Abzug and Thorne Dreyer speak to the importance of counterculture, underground press movements, and Hoffman’s cultural significance.
This episode of American Rhapsody was mixed and mastered by Morgan Honaker.
Don Carleton speaks with Daina Berry, chair of the Department of History at UT Austin. Her research and teaching—which focuses on the history of the enslaved—has utilized many of the Briscoe Center’s collections, in particular the Natchez Trace Collection, a which documents life in the Lower Mississippi River Valley from the 1760s to the 1920s. Dr. Berry was also the chief consultant for Teaching Texas Slavery, an educational K-12 resource that launched in 2019 and features items from the center’s collections.
This episode of American Rhapsody was mixed and mastered by Morgan Honaker.
Sometimes, politics is so nasty, so partisan, that you better laugh—or else you might cry. Molly Ivins was a legendary reporter and columnist — hilariously acerbic, staunchly feminist and uniquely Texan — who pilloried the powerful and defended democracy. She is the subject of “Raise Hell” a documentary biographic by filmmaker Janice Engel.
This episode of American Rhapsody was mixed and mastered by Harper Carlton and Morgan Honaker.
Investigative reporter Wayne Barrett began reporting on Donald Trump in 1979. He was perhaps the first journalist to take Trump seriously and became a renowned authority on the would-be president, as well as a mentor to a new generation of muckraking journalists. Barrett died the day before Trump took the oath of office. Fran Barrett and Eileen Markey are the driving forces behind Without Compromise, a new edited volume of Wayne’s papers, which are archived at the Briscoe Center.
Don Carleton speaks with Ben Wright about the Briscoe Center’s Texas Oil Industry records, which help document the miseries of the Spanish Flu pandemic between 1918 and 1920. Austin American-Statesman columnist Michael Barnes and Christopher Rose Ph.D., a lecturer at St. Edwards University, join later in the episode to discuss the pandemic’s effects in the city of Austin, across America and around the globe.
On each episode of American Rhapsody, we interview those who have witnessed American history firsthand: politicians, reporters, photographers, and activists—all of whom have since donated their personal or professional archives to the Briscoe Center. We also interview historians, filmmakers, and other researchers who work in the center’s collections. These collections are the evidence of the past. Without them, there is no history, only myth. Each week we ask: what actually happened? The sum of all those answers in an American Rhapsody.