Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 20, Number 1, Spring, 2008 Page: 5 of 64
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Although Dallas County has fortunately
never been the site of military battles, every
national conflict from the Mexican War to the
current war in Iraq has affected local residents in
some way, whether through economic hardships
or the loss of loved ones serving with the troops.
The recent Ninth Annual Legacies Dallas History
Conference focused on life on the homefront
during wartime, and this issue includes articles
based on five of the papers presented there.
ElizabethYork Enstam reveals how the Civil
War cut the area off, just as it had begun to
develop markets and the standard of living had
begun to rise. As a result, local families found
their living conditions set back at least a decade,
to a frontier era when they were forced to produce
most of the basic products of life, or else do
without. And with so many men away fighting,
women had to assume new responsibilities, especially
economic ones, whether on farms or in
town.
Melissa Prycer examines how World War I
provided new opportunities for women to support
the war effort, and in so doing, gain self
confidence and new skills that would enhance
their lives in the future. Many women also
became more politically engaged, a development
that was also to bear fruit in the coming decades.
Three articles look at life in Dallas County
during World War II. Pamalla Anderson writes
about how Southern Methodist University, just
emerging from the financial challenges of the
Great Depression, responded to the loss of so
many of its male students to the military by
attracting training programs to the campus. For
African Americans, the war seemed to offer
opportunities for industrial training as well as
military service, but those opportunities oftenproved to be elusive. Guy C.Vanderpool examines
the role of the principal African-American
newspaper, The Dallas Express, in waging what it
called a "Double V" campaign-victory at home
in the arena of civil rights as well as victory in
the war abroad. For women, World War II also
offered new opportunities, as Sarah Rickman
reveals in her study of the pioneers who served
in the Woman Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) at
Dallas's Love Field.
Space precludes publishing all the papers
delivered at the recent conference, but more will
follow this fall.
* * *
We are pleased to announce that back issues
of Legacies will soon be available online. Every
issue from the first one in the spring of 1989
through last fall's is being scanned by the digital
library at the University of North Texas and will
be accessible through UNT's "Portal to Texas
History." Al of the historic material published in
the journal will be key-word searchable. This
means that a researcher can enter the name of an
individual, for instance, and every reference to
that individual, through all the issues, will be listed,
along with a few words of surrounding text.
The researcher can then click on those references
that seem most promising in order to read
more. All of us associated with the publication of
Legacies are excited that the wealth of historical
research material contained in the journal will
now be so easily accessible, and we thank the
UNT Library (and modern technology) for
making this possible.
-Michael V. HazelSpring 2008 LEGACIES 3
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Dallas Heritage Village. Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 20, Number 1, Spring, 2008, periodical, 2008; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth46805/m1/5/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Historical Society.