PLEASE JOIN US FOR THE CLEMENTS CENTER’S SPRING SYMPOSIUM IN COLLABORATION WITH THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY SUNBELT RISING: THE POLITICS OF SPACE, PLACE, AND REGION IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH AND SOUTHWEST SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 2009 AT SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY www.smu.edu/swcenter The Sunbelt, a region born of recent history, has been steadily drawing Americans from older cities to Editor: Andrea Boardman, Assistant Editor: Ruth Ann Elmore burgeoning metropolitan centers across the southwest since World War II. Warmer temperatures and air conditioning only begin to tell the story. This conference will explore the political, economic, and social transformations that have been making the Sunbelt into a unifi ed region rivaling traditional centers of Volume 10, No. 1 N E W S L E T T E R Fall 2008 power in the East. From the Associate Director: Clements, benefactor of the Clements Center, played an important part. He won the Governorship in 1978, the fi rst Republican Historians Michelle Nickerson, University of Texas at Dallas, and Darren Dochuk, Purdue University, This fall, much of the to win that offi ce in Texas since Reconstruction. As one of the have gathered an interdisciplinary group of scholars with topics that promise to deepen, complicate and nation’s attention will focus on Governor’s friends later put it, “He was the right candidate to be broaden how we understand the Sunbelt. the U.S. Presidential election. on the cutting edge of history. It was going to happen sooner or Several aspects of the contest later; this [Republican ascendancy] was happening all over the Please see the Clements Center’s Web site for details and updates: http://smu.edu/swcenter/ strike observers as particularly South.” During the campaign, Bill and his wife Rita seemed to SunbeltRising.htm noteworthy, including a fi rst- time understand these changes and worked hard to capitalize on them. African American candidate They visited more than 200 rural counties. They appointed county running under the banner of a campaign chairmen in 244 of 254 counties – dozens of which major political party. American had not had enough Republicans to even hold a primary during voters will also decide whether the the preceding spring. Governor Clements’ television campaign Republican bloc, that Republican emphasized he was a man of the people who pulled himself up strategist Kevin Phillips once by his bootstraps and a candidate who knew energy – one of the described as a new hegemony in major issues of the day. Clements was, after all, an oil man. He The Clements Center’s newsletter is published semi-annually at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters. For an electronic national politics, will hold. Should Barack Obama win, pundits also was a person who knew his way around Washington, D.C., version of this newsletter or for more information about the Clements Center’s grants, fellowships, publications and programs, might very well mark the 2008 election as one denoting a sea having served as manager of the Department of the Defense please visit our Web site at http://smu.edu/swcenter/index.asp or contact us at (214) 768-3684 or [email protected]. change in American politics. It will, of course, not be the fi rst. during the Nixon and Ford Administrations. He also received Throughout American history, one can identify particular help from nationally-known Republicans. Former President Ford Southern Methodist University elections which reveal, and symbolize, signifi cant changes in the and former California Governor Ronald Reagan campaigned for William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies political landscape. This year’s Clements Center symposium, Clements in Houston and Dallas. And the Clements campaign Dallas Hall, Room 356 3225 University Ave. “Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Space, Place, and Region in the understood the growing importance of a Christian voting bloc in PO Box 750176 American South and Southwest” examines the shift which, about the days before the “Moral Majority” emerged in the 1980s. Dallas, TX 75275-0176 forty years ago, united conservatives in the South and Southwest. On election day the Clements’ supporters worked the This, in turn, led to the Republican Party ascendancy over the phones, reaching 20% of all voters. One third of the voters made Democrats, particularly in the newly coined “Sunbelt” region. up their minds during the last week and 15 percent not until (For more information on this event see p.16.) election day, so this last minute effort was particularly important. Texas, of course, had a role in this story and Governor Bill So close was Clements’ contest with Democratic candidate John Hill, that Bill and Rita went to sleep that night, uncertain of the outcome. Although the next day’s Amarillo Globe-News CONTENTS: mistakenly published a headline declaring Hill the victor, a 2 Awards & Recognition recount revealed that Clements won the race by a margin of 16,909 votes out of 2.2 million cast. “My election marks a new 3 Introducing the 2008-09 Clements Center Fellows day for Texas,” Clements said at the time, “We literally have 5 News from Past Fellows turned a page in history, and the political scene will never be the 7 Bill Clements Dissertation Fellowship & Ph.D. Updates same.” 9 Publication News Historian Kenneth Bridges agrees that this 1978 election 10 DeGolyer Library: “Emily’s Sisters” “saw the twilight of the age of unquestioned Democratic superiority” in Texas. Republicans demonstrated they could win 14 Clements Center–DeGolyer Travel Research Grants statewide elections and attract Democrats who wanted a more 14 Fall Events Calendar conservative organization. On the other hand, Bridge argues 16 Spring Symposium: “Sunbelt Rising: The Politics that Texas politics changed very little. By the early twenty-fi rst of Space, Place, and Region in the American South and century, Texas was still a state dominated by one political party. Southwest” The difference was simply in “which party label that conservative CLEMENTS CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST STUDIES / www.smu.edu/swcenter / 1 party has chosen to wear…[A] transformation the ways we bring our audiences perspective and began from conservative Democratic domination to understanding of the Southwest. Please join us if you conservative Republican domination of the state.” The can! ~ Sherry L. Smith, Associate Director David Weber spent the 2007-08 academic year as the objects found in well-to-do colonial future? Only one thing is clear – political shifts and Frederick W. and Carrie S. Beinecke Senior Fellow at homes arrived from throughout the transformations are inevitable and as Bridges put it, it is Yale, where he completed work on a book to be called: Spanish Empire. Unlike the colorless “[t]he voters [who] will ultimately determine the future For more information on Governor Clements’s career “Fiasco: George Clinton Gardner’s Correspondence environments found in Hollywood fi lms, course of politics in the Lone Star State.” and the 1978 Texas Governor’s race see Carolyn Barta’s from the U.S.-Mexico Boundary Survey, 1849-1854.” colonial buildings were alive with bright The confl uence between past and present in Bill Clements: Texian to his Toenails (Austin: Eakin The book contains 175 letters that he and his co-editor, colors, rich textures, and an array of politics, as refl ected in the current election and the Press, 1996) and Kenneth Bridges’ Twilight of the Texas Jane Lenz Elder, have introduced and annotated. interesting items. historical scholarship the Clements Center supports Democrats: The 1978 Governor’s Race (College Station: His talk will explain the signifi cance of Gardner’s through symposiums and fellowships, is just one of Texas A & M Press, 2008). correspondence and explain why editing is a risky DR. KELLY DONAHUE-WALLACE business for historians in the academy. is chair of the Department of Art Education and Art History in the A Spaniard and his College of Visual Arts and Design Mexican Indian Wife and AWARDS & RECOGNITION TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28 at the University of North Texas. She their Child, from a series on mixed race marriages William P. Clements Prize for Best Non-Fiction Book received her Ph.D. in art history from the in Mexico (oil on canvas) The Clements Center welcomes CORDELIA CHÁVEZ Energy: Exploitation and Opportunity in the American University of New Mexico in 2000. Dr. by Miguel Cabrera on Southwestern America: (1695-1768) © Museo de CANDELARIA as SMU’s new Dean of Dedman College of Southwest,” completed and submitted the manuscript Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Donahue-Wallace teaches undergraduate America, Madrid, Spain/ Humanities and Sciences. Previously she was at Arizona based on participants’ essays to SAR Press at the School Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands by and graduate courses in Latin American The Bridgeman Art State University serving as the Regents Professor in for Advanced Research on the Human Experience, Santa art, the history of prints, and European Library. early modern art. Her research addresses the Department of English and the Department of Fe, NM. JULIANA BARR, Assistant Professor Transborder Chicano/o and Latina/o Studies. At ASU of History, University of Florida, the history of prints in eighteenth-century Mexico City she also was the founding associate dean of the Offi ce The Clements Center welcomes BENJAMIN H. JOHNSON Gainesville. and the function of prints in the colonial context. of Strategic Initiatives in the College of Liberal Arts and as Associate Director of the Clements Center. Ben is an st Sciences. Dean Candelaria joined SMU on July 1 . Associate Professor of History and a specialist in both “Juliana Barr reconstructs a world in THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13 borderlands and environmental history. He collaborated which Indians were the dominant power Lecture & Book Signing DAVID WEBER, Clements Center Director and Dedman with photographer Jeffrey Gusky on Bordertown:The and Europeans were the ones forced to “Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the Professor of History, received the Lon Tinkle Award Odyssey of An American Place (2008) and is the author accommodate, resist, and persevere.