In "The Texas Right: The Radical Roots of Lone Star Conservatism," some of our most accomplished and readable historians push the origins of present-day Texas conservatism back to the decade preceding the twentieth century. They illuminate the initial factors that began moving Texas to the far right, even before the arrival of the New Deal.
By demonstrating that Texas politics foreshadowed the partisan realignment of the erstwhile Solid South, the studies in this book challenge the traditional narrative that emphasizes the right-wing critique of modern America voiced by, among others, radical conservatives of the state's Democratic Party, beginning in the 1930s. As the contributors show, it is impossible to understand the Jeffersonian Democrats of 1936, the Texas Regular movement of 1944, the Dixiecrat Party of 1948, the Shivercrats of the 1950s, state members of the John Birch Society, Texas members of Young Americans for Freedom, Reagan Democrats, and most recently, even, the Tea Party movement without first understanding the underlying impulses that produced their formation.

The Texas Left. Some would say the phrase is an oxymoron.
For most of the twentieth century, the popular perception of Texas politics has been that of dominant conservatism, punctuated by images of cowboys, oil barons, and party bosses intent on preserving a decidedly capitalist status quo.
In fact, poor farmers and laborers who were disenfranchised, segregated, and, depending on their ethnicity and gender, confronted with varying levels of hostility and discrimination, have long composed the "other" political heritage of Texas. In "The Texas Left," fourteen scholars examine this heritage.
Though largely ignored by historians of previous decades who focused instead on telling the stories of the Alamo, the Civil War, the cattle drives, and the oilfield wildcatters, this parallel narrative of those who sought to resist repression reveals themes important to the unfolding history of Texas and the Southwest.
Volume editors David O'Donald Cullen and Kyle G. Wilkison have assembled a collection of pioneering studies that provide the broad outlines for future research on liberal and radical social and political causes in the state and region.
Among the topics explored in this book are early efforts of women, blacks, Tejanos, labor organizers, and political activists to claim rights of citizenship, livelihood, and recognition, from the Reconstruction era until recent times.