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Full-Text Articles in History

Birth Control On The Border: Race, Gender, Religion, And Class In The Making Of The Birth Control Movement, El Paso, Texas. 1936-1973, Lina Maria Murillo Jan 2016

Birth Control On The Border: Race, Gender, Religion, And Class In The Making Of The Birth Control Movement, El Paso, Texas. 1936-1973, Lina Maria Murillo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study examines the history of the birth control movement on the U.S-Mexico border from 1936 until 1973. Historians have focused on various aspects of the history of reproductive control and rights nationally, but none have analyzed the borderlands region in this regard. In order to address this absence in the historical literature, this study seeks to highlight the role of organizations, activists, and patients, specifically within the ethnic Mexican community as they defined reproductive control and rights along the Texas border. El Paso, Texas served as a major port of entry for Mexicans and other groups at the turn …


"Only Steers And Queers Come From Texas": The Texas Sodomy Statutes And The Making Of An Other, 1860-1973, Jecoa Ross Jan 2016

"Only Steers And Queers Come From Texas": The Texas Sodomy Statutes And The Making Of An Other, 1860-1973, Jecoa Ross

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Thesis explores the history of sodomy as it has been conceptualized through the creation and enforcement of the Texas sodomy statutes between 1860 and 1973. In analyzing state court cases, legislative records, and newspaper accounts, I argue that the evolution of the concept of sodomy from its inception as a broad criminal category in the 1860 Texas sodomy statute to its more-narrow conceptualization by Texas legislators as a behavioral characteristic of homosexual status in the 1973 homosexual conduct statute was a political and historically contingent process. This process was political firstly in that it allowed for the construction of …