Events

In the early 1970s, Bill Wittliff visited a ranch in northern Mexico where the vaqueros still worked cattle in traditional ways. Wittliff photographed the vaqueros as they went about daily chores that had changed little since the first Mexican cowherders learned to work cattle from a horse's back. Wittliff captured a way of life that now exists only in memory and in the photographs included in this exhibition. This Humanities Texas traveling exhibition features photographs with bilingual narrative text that reveal the muscle, sweat, and drama that went into roping a calf in thick brush or breaking a wild horse in the saddle. For more information, contact the Midland County Public Library.

This Humanities Texas traveling exhibition provides a historical overview of U.S. Latino participation in World War II and features historical photographs from the U.S. Latino & Latina WWII Oral History Project archives and contemporary photographs of men and women of the WWII generation by photojournalist Valentino Mauricio. It focuses on individual stories that reveal larger themes such as citizenship and civil rights and features excerpts from the more than five hundred oral history interviews that were part of the project. For more information, contact the Haskell County Historical Commission.

In the last decade, archeologists have made a number of fascinating new discoveries about the way Paleoindians lived and even how they arrived in the land we now call Texas. These first peoples passed on knowledge and traditions through the generations, eventually giving rise to many culturally distinct Tribes and Indigenous American communities. Some Indigenous Americans traditional stories say that their ancestors were always here. Archeologists, who study objects and evidence left behind from early cultures, believe people have lived here for at least 16,000 years. Both ways of understanding the past are important to the study of Paleoindian history. A Time Before Texas considers both current science and cultural tradition to explore what life was like for the first people to call early Texas home. A Time Before Texas is created by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and ciruculated in partnership with Humanities Texas. For more information contact the Historic Upshur Museum.

On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved Black Americans they had been freed under the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. this day came to be known as Juneteenth and is celebrated throughout the country as the day that marks freedom for all Black Americans. This exhibition explores the context and lasting effects of that announcement from 1865 to the present day, and the journey towards "absolute equality". For more information contact the Historic Upshur Museum.