Austin Museum Cancels "Forget the Alamo" Book Event Under Pressure from Texas Lawmakers

The AlamoPhoto by @efran31 on Unsplash

Austin, TX--A drama as big as the state of Texas is brewing over a newly released book. Forget the Alamo, by Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford is under heavy scrutiny. The Bob Bullock Museum, in Austin, canceled a scheduled event just three hours before the event was to begin.

The Austin Chronicle listed the event: "Co-presented with the Writers' League of Texas, ReWriting History welcomes authors Bryan Burrough and Chris Tomlinson for a talk about their book Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth and the craft of writing with Becka Oliver, executive director of WLT."

The Bob Bullock Museum had been facing pressure on social media and lawmakers to cancel the event. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and museum board member, tweeted there was no place for this "re-writing of Texas history," and told the staff to cancel the event.

Dan Patrick tweetTwitter: https://twitter.com/DanPatrick/status/1410997053371654145

Greg Abbott is also on the Museum's board, according to some news reports.

Chris Tomlison, a columnist for the Houston Chronicle and co-author of the book tweeted that the book event at the Bullock Museum was canceled without explanation when more than 3,000 people had registered attendance.

TwitterScreenshot by author.

The Texas Tribune reports, "The Bullock was receiving increased pressure on social media about hosting the event, as well as to the museum’s board of directors (Gov Abbott being one of them) and decided to pull out as a co-host all together,” Penguin Random House said in a statement.

But, Becka Oliver, executive director of the Writers' League says the group was prepared to go ahead with the event even if the museum pulled its support, “We were excited to do this event, but we were going to defer to the authors,” she said. “If they were interested in continuing, we would continue. If they were interested in not doing it or rescheduling it, then we would do that. And the word that came back was that they preferred to reschedule.”

KXAN reports, “To know why Texas GOP is working so hard to kill the well-researched book on The Alamo and how its story morphed into myth, read the description. It involves slavery, racism and lots of other uglies the GOP pretends never existed,” wrote New York Times bestselling author Kurt Eichenwald.

On Amazon, the Book is a #1 Best Seller.

Forget the AlamoAmazon

Penguin Random House's website describes the books, "provocatively explains the true story of the battle against the backdrop of Texas's struggle for independence," according to a description on the publisher's website. The description goes on to say that as "uncomfortable as it may be to hear for some, celebrating the Alamo has long had an echo of celebrating whiteness."

"Uncomfortable" seems to be a good way to describe feelings about the book. To understand why lawmakers are so uncomfortable, people are buying the book. Ironically, many tweet that they wouldn't have heard about the book without the controversy.

In an interview, Tomlinson told KXAN:

“I think it is politics, and I think they’re distorting what critical race theory means the same way they distorted political correctness and multiculturalism in the past. It’s just another piece of propaganda.”

CHRIS TOMLINSON, AUTHOR

Recently Tom Hanks also came under fire for his artistic re-writing of history. Forget the Alamo isn't the only recently banned book. See others here.

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