Cutting Fences

A timely call for Texas—and the South—to reclaim its radical history, drawing lessons for today’s struggle from the populists and socialists of yesteryear.

In blood-red states such as Texas, politics operates under the fallacy that these places were always conservative, so that it would be foolish, even utopian, to propose a progressive alternative. The Myth of Red Texas, David Griscom’s debut book, reassesses this misconception, arguing that the Lone Star Left must embrace its hidden past to reach a brighter future.

Cowboys on strike, socialists on the ballot, farmers fighting tooth and claw for what they termed the “cooperative commonwealth”—Texas was once a wellspring of radicals hell-bent on taking power from the robber barons who ruled the day. With a careful eye for history, Griscom demonstrates how Texans’ left-wing parties, from the populists to the socialists, organized against the Right and often won—and how reclaiming that tradition can help today’s Left break the political deadlock in Texas and beyond.