Women's History Commons^™

Brewing History: How Local Option And Prohibition Altered The Texas Brewing Industry, Shelby Winthrop Dewitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The prohibition movement began decades before the Civil War but did not gain considerable support in Texas until the late nineteenth century. While local option elections and calls for statewide prohibition in Texas failed, national prohibition efforts culminated in the instatement of the Eighteenth Amendment in January 1919 and the Volstead Act in October 1919. This thesis details the prohibition issue through an analysis of eight larger, better-funded Texas breweries who used evolving social and political conditions to combat prohibition and grow their companies, laying the foundation for the Texas brewing industry. This thesis and subsequent digital exhibit provide a …

Ripple Effects: The Transformation Of Sfasu Women's Social Clubs To National Sororities, Lea Brannon Clark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Shortly after Stephen F. Austin Teachers College (SFA) opened in 1923, students began organizing social clubs. By the late 1920s, women formed the Amities and Pine Burrs to develop friendships and a sense of belonging. The Fideles and Sigma Gammas arrived on campus in the late 1940s as more women began attending SFA. Dr. Ralph W. Steen’s appointment as president brought significant changes to SFA and inadvertently to the social groups.

Responsible for adding more classrooms and dormitories, expanding course work and faculty, the new president also influenced the campus population by attempting to bring in students from metropolitan areas. …

The American Civil War In The South: Love, Letters, And Shifting Gender Roles, Cassandra Bennett

Undergraduate Research Conference

Love remains one of the most basic human emotions that provides the motivation and sustains the loyalty of familial bonds. People fight for country and cause due to love and loyalty to those at home. Southern fami-lies involved in the American Civil War were no different. Fathers, husbands, sons, mothers, wives, and daugh-ters loved while in the midst of the “cruel war,” surrounded by death, destruction, and desperation. These same motivations remain in our society and an examination of correspondence between the homefront and the bat-tlefront sheds light into the inner workings of daily life as well as assigned gender …