- This event has passed.
Images and Stories from TCU’s First 100 Years, 1873-1973
October 7, 2023 @ 10:30 am - 12:00 pm
In honor of TCU’s sesquicentennial this year, TCU’s own Dr. Gene Allen Smith and PhD Candidate Jackson W. Pearson will discuss the first 100 years of the university’s history. Many interesting tidbits can be found throughout its past, including an on-campus plane crash during a football game, and the enrolment of African American soldiers as part of a federal contract. Join us to learn all that and more!
Gene Allen Smith is a Professor of History at Texas Christian University, in Fort Worth, and recently served as the Class of 1957 Distinguished Chair in Naval Heritage at the U.S. Naval Academy; he served in that position in 2013-14 and is the only professor invited to serve twice. He is author or editor of fourteen books as well as numerous articles and reviews on the War of 1812, naval and maritime history, and territorial expansion along the Gulf of Mexico. Among his most recent books is TCU’s First 100 Years: Images and Stories, (written with with Jackson W. Pearson, published in the spring 2023), and In Harm’s Way: The American Military Experience (Oxford, 2019). He is also a prize-winning teacher, having received awards at TCU and at Montana State University-Billings. He has served as the Director of the Center for Texas Studies at TCU since 2002, and from 2007-14 was also a curator of history at a major Fort Worth museum.
Jackson Pearson is a PhD Candidate at TCU where he works in the Center for Texas Studies. Jackson’s research examines the Neutral Ground Agreement and the Louisiana-Texas Borderland from 1803 to 1821. He has published book chapters related to his research in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Ingenieros para la paz. Militares para la guerra: Del Caribe y Sudeste Asiático (1748-1825), and the forthcoming Republic of Scoundrels. He has also received grants from the American Philosophical Society, the Texas General Land Office, the Louisiana Historical Association, the Dolph Briscoe Center of American History, and the TCU History Department to support his research.