Academic Historian

MERLINE PITRE is a professor of History and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Behavioral Sciences at Texas Southern University. She received her Ph.D. degree from Temple University and has published a number of articles in scholarly and professional journals. Her most noted works are Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares: The Black Leadership of Texas, 1868 to 1898 (a book which was reissued in 1997 and used in a traveling exhibit on black legislators by the State Preservation Board in 1998), and In Struggle Against Jim Crow: Lulu B. White and the NAACP, 1900 to 1957 (Texas A&M University Press, 1999). Pitre has been the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, Texas Council for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is also a former member of the Texas Council for the Humanities. Currently, she is a member of the Speakers Bureau for the Texas Council for the Humanities and serves on the nominating board of the Organization of American Historians.

Texas Southern University (1947- )

Texas Southern University, a state-supported institution of higher learning located just southeast of downtown Houston, was established on March 3, 1947 when the Fiftieth Texas State Legislature passed a bill establishing a “Negro University with a law school to be located in Houston.” This bill … Read MoreTexas Southern University (1947- )

Eldrewey Joseph Stearns (1931-2020)

Eldrewey Joseph Stearns, political activist, and student organizer was born in Galveston, Texas, on December 21, 1931, to Devona and Rudolph Stearns. He spent his formative years during the 1930s and 1940s in San Augustine, Texas, but returned to Galveston in 1945 and graduated from … Read MoreEldrewey Joseph Stearns (1931-2020)

Hobart T. Taylor, Sr. (1890-1972)

Entrepreneur, millionaire, and political activist, Hobart T. Taylor was born in 1890 in Wharton, Texas, to Millie (Wright) and Jack Taylor. Jack Taylor, a former slave, who had become an entrepreneur and landowner, had acquired 2,000 acres of farmland in Fort Bend and Wharton Counties … Read MoreHobart T. Taylor, Sr. (1890-1972)