The Briscoe Center for American History remains temporarily closed in line with university policy toward Covid-19. While the university is holding some classes on campus, many functions are still being conducted remotely, including a majority of those provided by the Briscoe Center. This policy applies to the center's exhibit spaces, classrooms, reading room, public services and off campus divisions, which include the Briscoe-Garner Museum in Uvalde, the Sam Rayburn Museum in Bonham and Winedale in Round Top. Most of our staff are working remotely and we continue to respond to online queries and requests. Updates to this policy will be posted on this page.
Briscoe Center Publishes Flash of Light, Wall of Fire
The Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin announces the Anti-Nuclear Photographer's Movement of Japan collection, a large archive of rare atomic bombing photographs.
Struggle for Justice: Four Decades of Civil Rights Photography
Drawn from the center’s photojournalism collections, Struggle for Justice (forthcoming by UT Press) documents the flashpoints and achievements of the civil rights movement from the 1930s through the 1970s—from Jim Crow to Black Power.
When I Rise Documentary
When I Rise is the Briscoe Center's award-winning documentary film about Barbara Smith Conrad, a gifted student at UT Austin who finds herself at the center of an unjust racial controversy during the 1950s.
The Stephen Shames Photographic Archive
The center’s collections include the photographic archive of Stephen Shames, perhaps best known for his role as the Black Panther Party’s photographer between 1967 and 1973, Shames has also documented many political and social issues over a 50-year career.
The Littlejohn and Hickman Archives: Photographs of African American Lives
The center is home to the R.C. Hickman and Calvin Littlejohn collections. Both documented dynamic African American communities in North Texas during the decades that followed World War II. Hickman (1922-2007) covered Dallas, Texas, while Littlejohn (1909-1993) worked in Ft. Worth.
South of Slavery
Mariah Hammack’s work focuses on the experiences of enslaved women, indentured servants, Black Seminole refugees, and free blacks who took solace in escaping the United States to live in a "free" Mexico. She is a former Briscoe Center fellow and researches under the supervision of Professor Daina Berry, chair of UT’s Department of History.
Neither Slave Nor Free: The Plight of Freedmen in the Antebellum South
Phebe Martin was a free black woman born on the eve of the American Revolution. Abducted in the 1790s from her home in Georgia, she was taken to Mississippi and sold into bondage. Her kidnappers claimed all along that she was just another runaway slave.
Oil City Blues
Dr. Henry Wiencek, an alumni of the UT History department’s doctoral program, used the Briscoe Center's ExxonMobil Historical Collection for his research into the Louisiana oil boom of 1900–1930. The discovery of oil may have led to predictions of a "New South," but as Wiencek shows, old racial codes and privileges managed to persist and even thrive.
