Ron Goodwin
I remember my first day of history class as an undergraduate. The first day of any class is often stressful but history was particularly difficult. Trying to anticipate what the professor thought was important was a guessing game at best, and in all honesty, my mind often drifted to the many other places I would have rather been than stuck in class trying to pay attention to yet another boring history lesson. How things change. Now, I’m on the “other side” of the desk, teaching history at a historically black university near Houston, Texas.
I completed my undergraduate degree from Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, Texas, while serving on active duty in the US Air Force. After an honorable discharge from the military, I completed graduate degrees from Texas Southern University and currently enrolled in a PhD program focusing on urban planning and the historical development of cities. My research interests include urban history, the impacts of planning decisions on neighborhood development, and the historical development of Texas’ black community as seen through the Texas Slave Narratives.
Latest Articles
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Blacks in the Progressive Era
The Progressive Era was a time of intense reform, but for most blacks it was a transition; not from slavery to freedom, but from slavery to Jim Crow.
Oct 20, 2009
- Ron Goodwin
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FDR's Urban Paternalism
FDR believed the government should promote paternalistic housing policies to provide for those devastated by the Depression, but there were unintended consequences.
Oct 20, 2009
- Ron Goodwin
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Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton
While they historically appeared as ideological opposites, both Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton contributed to the early political identity of America.
Oct 20, 2009
- Ron Goodwin
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Booker T. Washington and WEB DuBois
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois differed on their social agendas, but they each agreed that blacks deserved full American citizenship.
Oct 20, 2009
- Ron Goodwin
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Redeemers and Radicals
By 1890, the Redeemers returned the South to political "home rule" which led to the complete disenfranchisement of the new black electorate.
Oct 20, 2009
- Ron Goodwin
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Prophetic Influences
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ideals of ministry and social activism were influenced by the dynamic ministries of his maternal grandfather and father.
Oct 20, 2009
- Ron Goodwin
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Forty Acres and a Mule
Sharecropping replaced slavery as the southern labor system after the Civil War and became just as restrictive to the freedoms of blacks.
Oct 20, 2009
- Ron Goodwin
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The Reconstructing America
The United States should have flourished during the Reconstruction, but instead failed to provide equal status for its black citizens.
Oct 20, 2009
- Ron Goodwin
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The LBJ Influence
The Great Society was a philosophical descendant of the New Deal and introduced civil rights legislation that finally brought an end to Jim Crow.
Jul 18, 2009
- Ron Goodwin
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The Louisiana Purchase
With the Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Jefferson initiated imperialistic policies in expanding American ideals across this continent and eventually throughout the world.
Jul 18, 2009
- Ron Goodwin
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