Fall’s Focus

Even though the words and ideas coming out of Washington DC are unique during my lifetime, those will be examined in a scholarly work I outlined below. My classes on US history from 1877 to the present will continue to focus on women’s history in my lectures and and by reading primary source documents on women’s history. But this semester, assignments will focus on local history as I’ve heard from more students interested in learning about the history of their neighborhoods after they heard a six hour lecture series on the history of the neighborhood surrounding the college -Magnolia Park.

Those students will be reading two monographs on Houston. One examines migration history, segregation, and the blurring of race (Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City) and the other looks at racial identity in the 1970s (Brown, Not White: School Segregation and the Chicago Movement in Houston).

Students will have the choice to complete various assignments on their neighborhoods or the larger Second Ward. Those projects will include their own histories, oral histories of residents from the various neighborhoods, traditional research papers on those neighborhoods, and histories of unique buildings and businesses. The final assignment will be letters to future Eastside campus students about the experiences of my students at the college. There will be a website that will display students’ works in the hope of adding to the rich history of Houston’s Eastside started by Dr. Irene Pocatello.

This project is dedicated to the memory Dr. Irene Pocatello, a past president of Houston Community College’s Eastside campus and a champion of recording the tapestry of the neighborhood surrounding the college, Magnolia Park in what is commonly known as the Second Ward. In celebration of the neighborhood’s 100th anniversary, Dr. Pocarello launched various projects to record the centennial, to include an oral history project and a monograph of the first 100 years of Magnolia Park. Dr. Pocatello was from Magnolia Park and died in 2018.

The Fall 2018 will be the first time I am using this format. Throughout the semester I will ask for students’ feedback: What they liked and didn’t like and why, as well as their ideas on enhancing the project.

Hidalgo Park quiosco