Eyes of Texas: Blackface to Whitewash

By Alberto Martínez

The beloved song has dark roots? Inspired by the Civil War, a university president told his all-White students: "The eyes of Texas are upon you " By 1903, it was a campus joke and a song at a show mocking Black people. And recently, thousands of students rejected it. To them, it's a racist relic of the Jim Crow South, when Black Americans were wrongly jailed and forced to build railways, while overseers kept them from escaping. But to many alumni, the song is about devotion to Texas. What is its true history?

This book reveals how 'The Eyes of Texas' changed. It's a history of music, shaped by jokes, dignity, football, protests, and threats. It traces how a minstrel song about uneducated Black prisoners evolved into the anthem of Texas higher education. It explains how some alumni whitewashed the past, by creating imaginative histories of the song.

Alberto Martinez is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of eight books, including Negative Math (Princeton, 2005), Lost Origins of Einstein's Relativity (Johns Hopkins, 2009), Science Secrets
(Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and Burned Alive (Reaktion / Univ. of Chicago Press, 2018). He also writes articles for The Hill, Austin American-Statesman, the USA Today newspapers, Scientific American, Houston Chronicle, Salon, New Standard Press, The Daily Texan, and others.

Reviews of Martínez's past books: "Outstanding ... his scholarship is admirable. Every subject needs its history told in a careful and useful manner, and Martinez clearly succeeds in this endeavor." ⎼ Choice"at once scholarly and readable ... anyone with an interest in intellectual history would benefit." ⎼ Books & Culture

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FB3T4NMJ
• ISBN13: 9798317371227
• Release Date: May 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 370 Pages
• Weight: 1.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"