KSLA News 12 Shreveport, Louisiana |New Texas historian starting 2-year term
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Associated Press - June 6, 2009 4:15 AM ET
SHERMAN, Texas (AP) - Light Cummins' family pedigree in Texas goes back almost 200 years. His summers growing up were spent on a Texas ranch where he learned to ride horses and handle cattle.
Now 63, Cummins is the new Texas state historian and has a statewide platform to preach the gospel of Texas history, which he's taught for nearly a third of a century at Austin College in Sherman.
He'll spend the next two years advancing awareness of Texas history and providing mechanisms for people to get information about the state's colorful past.
Within days of his swearing-in a couple weeks ago in Austin, he established a Texas State Historian blog.
In his words, "There are several other states that have a uniqueness to them, but Texas is unique in that it may be the only state in the union where people have a state-based identification to it similar to the concept historians call nationalism. That's very very unique."
He credits the decade beginning in 1836 when Texas was an independent republic for fostering that sentiment.
On the Net:
Texas State Historian blog: http://www.historianoftexas.blogspot.com
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