The Alamo Myth: What Really Happened in 1836

Summary

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Gone South — Season 5, Episode: “The Alamo Myth: What Really Happened in 1836”

Date: March 18, 2026
Host: Jed Lipinski (with guest Brian Burrow and other experts)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Gone South delves into the enduring myth and reality of the 1836 Battle of the Alamo, a pivotal moment etched into the fabric of Texas and American identity. Host Jed Lipinski guides listeners through the tangled history and cultural legacy of the Alamo, highlighting how competing narratives—part legend, part fact—have come to shape Texas identity, education, and political discourse. Drawing on historian Brian Burrow’s book Forget the Alamo, the episode unpacks how race, slavery, and political agendas undergird the myth, exploring how that myth persists, evolves, and divides to this day.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Alamo’s Split Legacy: Fact vs. Legend

[02:31–06:41] Jed Lipinski, Brian Burrow, Texas Historian/Author

• The Alamo is both a famous American symbol and the subject of long-running controversy.
• Two dominant camps frame the debate: traditionalists (who revere the legend) and revisionists (who critique its historical accuracy).
  • Ozzy Osbourne is comically invoked as a symbol of revisionism for having “peed on the Alamo (or rather, its cenotaph)” ([03:52–04:33]).
  • Phil Collins, a noted collector of Alamo memorabilia, is positioned as the prototypical traditionalist ([04:33–05:15]).
• The Alamo’s meaning is a story of who controls the narrative—and why Texans, and by extension Americans, choose to remember it.

“The story of the Alamo is in many ways the story of these two competing narratives. The facts of history on one side, the legend on the other.”
— Jed Lipinski [05:15]

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2. Setting the Scene: Texas Before 1836

[05:15–09:42]

• Before the Alamo, Texas was sparsely settled, governed by Mexico, and growing cotton with enslaved labor.
• U.S. settlers (“Texians”) were drawn by land and profit, bringing slavery against Mexican intent.
• Early revolts—such as the failed “Bay of Pigs–like” incursion—reflect a pattern of unauthorized American involvement ([06:41–08:17]).

“Slavery was what was necessary for the Texas economy… Stephen F. Austin once wrote in his private correspondence, money is all that is needed, and Negroes are necessary to make it.”
— Texas Historian/Author [09:00–09:08]

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3. The Road to Rebellion: Immigration, Slavery, and Skirmish

[09:42–12:09]

• A flood of illegal immigrants from the American South—often fugitives—doubles Texas’s population.
• Jim Bowie, a later Alamo hero, was notorious for land fraud and slave trafficking.
• Resistance flares: Small groups—like William Travis’s—provoke authorities, seeing themselves as oppressed despite special privileges.
• The core dispute between Mexico and Texians: slavery, not taxes.
• Mexican leader Santa Anna viewed Texians’ revolt as treason against their generous host.

“I love how generations of Texans have always talked about that they were revolting for their freedom, that they were oppressed. Oh my God. The Texans not only were free citizens of Mexico, they had more rights than regular Mexicans. They were favored.”
— Texas Historian/Author [12:09–12:29]

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4. The Battle: Anatomy & Aftermath

[16:40–23:29]

• The Alamo—a former Spanish mission, never meant for battle—is hastily fortified by about 200 “volunteers,” including William Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett.
• As Mexican troops lay siege, Houston’s new Texian government offers little support—most settlers prefer to avoid the fight ([18:55–19:14]).
• The final assault kills nearly all defenders; the reality is less heroic than legend suggests.
  • Many defenders were trapped, expecting reinforcements or a slower enemy advance.
  • Their deaths, from history’s angle, stem from circumstances rather than a conscious “last stand” ([20:06–20:56]).

“They fought to the death because they had no other choice. They couldn’t get away.”
— Texas Historian/Author [20:51]

• Leaders on both sides spin the story:
  • Santa Anna uses the massacre to instill fear.
  • Sam Houston and Texas media transform it into a rallying cry.
  • “Remember the Alamo” is born, used at the Battle of San Jacinto, where Texians surprisingly defeat Santa Anna ([22:01–22:48]).

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5. The Birth and Spread of the Alamo Myth

[23:29–31:25]

• The Alamo myth is cemented in Texas identity—teaching generations a story of underdog heroism and oppression.
• For decades, outside Texas, the Alamo was little known.
• Early accounts, like that of Reuben Marmaduke Potter, blend fact, fiction, and ever-bolder legend.
  • The “line in the sand” story—central to Texas lore—has no evidence but persists ([26:50–27:41]).
• The myth evolves into state-sponsored history:
  • For most of the 20th century, Texas leaders demand schools teach the “chosen” version.
  • Critics and revisionist academics are marginalized.

“This myth was a state-sponsored myth for the longest time.”
— Texas Historian/Author [28:55]

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6. From Local Legend to Political Symbol

[29:09–31:50]

• In the Cold War era, “Remember the Alamo” becomes national, promoted by military leaders and popular culture (notably John Wayne’s 1960 film).
  • The film reflects anti-communist paranoia, anglo-centrism, and is regarded as poor history and filmmaking by critics.

“John Wayne designed it to be a political statement about the evils of communism, liberalism and John F. Kennedy…”
— Brian Burrow [29:49]

• The rise of Latino scholars in the 1960s challenges the myth, surfacing alternative and more accurate local narratives.
• Revisionism encounters fierce reaction from conservatives and mainstream Texas society.

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7. The Fight for the Narrative: Revisionist Pushback

[31:59–34:14]

• Jeff Long's Duel of Eagles (1990) marks a “big bang” for Alamo revisionism—framing the revolt as a defense of Texas’s slave-based economy.
  • Long faced death threats; revisionist perspectives find their way into some textbooks before a conservative pushback.

“You will remember the way we tell you to.”
— Texas Historian/Author [33:21–33:34]

• The 2021 book Forget the Alamo reignites the debate:
  • Texas politicians (notably Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick) attempt to cancel public events.
  • The controversy boosts the book’s profile and emboldens Latino Texans who recognize their own untold history in its pages.

“I can’t tell you how much this book meant to many Latino people who would come up to us, advancing tears, saying, finally, someone is telling the story that we’ve told each other for years.”
— Texas Historian/Author [34:48]

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8. Myths and Memory: Why Southern Legends Endure

[35:04–37:13]

• Brian Burrow draws parallels with other southern myths, like the story of Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser.
  • Despite evidence refuting local legends, communities often refuse to relinquish mythic heroes.
• These myths, especially in the South, serve as a form of collective memory, identity, and perhaps as a means of obscuring uncomfortable histories.

“Why is it that these type of local and regional myths seem so much stronger? They pull so much harder in the American South.”
— Texas Historian/Author [36:01–36:11]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the intractability of the Alamo myth:

  “At which point the cry of Remember the Alamo and the story of what actually happened there became deeply embedded in the Texas identity. I’m Texan, I can say this with love and a smile on my face, but Texas identity is a much deeper thing…”
  — Texas Historian/Author [23:29]

• On revisionism and backlash:

  “I was like, oh, be serious. Come on, people really still take this shit seriously? And they were like, just you wait.”
  — Texas Historian/Author [33:41–33:58]

• On why these myths endure:

  “I make the argument that none are stronger than in Texas.”
  — Texas Historian/Author [36:32–36:34]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introducing the Alamo myth: [02:31–05:15]
• Competing narratives personified—Ozzy Osbourne & Phil Collins: [03:22–05:15]
• Early Texas history and slavery: [05:15–09:42]
• Road to the Alamo: Slavery, Immigration, Skirmishes: [09:42–12:09]
• The siege and deaths at the Alamo: [16:40–20:56]
• “Remember the Alamo” as rallying cry: [21:00–23:29]
• Construction and teaching of the myth: [25:15–28:55]
• Midcentury transformation and the John Wayne movie: [29:09–29:49]
• Latino revisionism emerges: [30:53–31:50]
• Jeff Long and Duel of Eagles / Conservative pushback: [31:59–33:34]
• Controversy over Forget the Alamo: [33:58–34:48]
• Southern myths and their endurance: [35:04–37:13]

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Episode Takeaway

The story of the Alamo is not just a historical event but a battleground for identity, power, and the shaping of public memory. From its roots in slavery, illegal immigration, and opportunistic mythmaking to its fierce defense in classrooms and politics, the Alamo endures as an emblem—contested, recast, and deeply personal, especially in Texas. The episode illustrates how—no matter how tenacious the facts—myth can become a “state-sponsored” pillar, and efforts to dismantle it evoke passion, fear, and hope in equal measure.

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Transcript

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If you're not from Texas, you may know next to nothing about the Alamo. Perhaps you've heard the expression remember the Alamo, but you're not sure why it needs to be remembered. Maybe you visited San Antonio once, and after a stroll on the Riverwalk, you walked the Alamo's grounds and admired the chapel's distinctive limestone facade without actually going inside and learning what happened there. This pretty well captures my own experience of the Alamo. My distant impression was that it was just another fortress where a battle once took place. People fought and died there, and Texans were proud of those people. But if you look more closely, you'll find that the Alamo has a very complex and controversial history and that Texans have been engaged in a 190 year battle over the Alamo narrative.

[Brian Burrow]

That battle entered a new phase a

[Jed Lipinski]

few years ago when a book with a provocative title hit the shelves. It was called Forget the Alamo. According to Brian Burrow, one of Forget the Alamo's three Texas based authors, Alamo enthusiasts fall into two schools of the traditionalists and the revisionists. As strange as it sounds, these two sides are personified by two British rock stars, with Ozzy Osbourne representing the revisionists.

[Texas Historian/Author]

One of the great stories of modern Texas lore has been that Ozzy Osbourne peed on the Alamo and was thrown out of the state. And it turns out that the actual

story is pretty close.

He didn't pee on the Alamo, he peed on the cenotaph, which is a statue just outside the Alamo. But it has the names of all the people who died, so it's still pretty holy in the Texas canon. And it's never been exactly clear why he did it. We know he was in a dress, we know he was deeply drunk. And either he just got lost and peed on something or he was trying to get a little publicity for his show. Ever since then, Ozzy has kind of been, for me, a symbol of those who might pee on the Alamo legend, if you will.

[Jed Lipinski]

On the other side you have Phil Collins, the former drummer for the band Genesis, who as a solo singer has sold millions of albums. Phil, it turns out, is a classic Alamo traditionalist.

[Texas Historian/Author]

He grew up reading the stories. As an adult, he began visiting the Alamo regularly, sometimes for weeks at a time, and he got to know everybody on the site. And he ultimately began collecting Alamo memorabilia, weapons, anything associated with the battle and is very much personification of those who want to believe the classic legend, which, needless to say, doesn't really stand up.

[Jed Lipinski]

The story of the Alamo is in many ways the story of these two competing narratives. The facts of history on one side, the legend on the other. It's also a story about who controls that narrative and the ways in which generations of Americans have used the Alamo legend to serve different purposes. Everything from inspiring Texas soldiers to combating the threat posed by communism and John F. Kennedy. But to understand why the Alamo still Divides Texans and why it matters. Far beyond Texas, you have to go back to where it all began. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is gone South. As I said, the story of the Alamo is complicated. The battle took place in 1836, but the story of how it came about begins more than 20 years earlier, in 1812. At the time, Texas was still part of Mexico. There were only three towns, San Antonio, Goliad and Nacogdoches, and not many people lived there. States in the American south, meanwhile, were prospering thanks to the creation of cotton plantations. It was the biggest business in the western hemisphere and it depended entirely on the labor of enslaved people. But as the land in southern states was leased and bought up, people across the south began looking to Texas, wondering, what if we moved there?

[Texas Historian/Author]

Well, President Monroe kind of thought the

same thing and long story short, mounted this kind of Bay of Pigs like, semi deniable invasion of Texas in which a couple of hundred individuals, not soldiers, not American soldiers, went across the Texas border from Louisiana. Long story short, they invaded, they took it over. It wasn't very difficult. There were, you know, maybe 100 soldiers. Everybody ran and they suddenly are in control of Texas.

[Jed Lipinski]

The victory was short lived. Mexicans reinvaded, killing the majority of male civilians involved in the conflict. By 1820, the Texas Province had lost most of its white settlers. Those who remained lived in deadly fear of the Comanche and their allies.

[Texas Historian/Author]

And this was not nice warfare. This was rape the women, scalp the men, kill everybody type of warfare. It was scary stuff.

So by 1820, 1821, Mexico had a problem. They needed some people in this province,

right, to keep it safe, to keep it viable, to keep it inhabitable. Nobody from Mexico wanted to go up there, so what did they do? They invited in their first Americans. You know, the Mexican experiment with inviting Americans in was a real success. A young Missouri man named Stephen F. Austin, now known as the Father of Texas, arranged for some land and got like three or four hundred families from around the south brought them in. Everybody settled down down by the coast, down by where Houston is now, so pretty far away from Native Americans and

began, you know, assembling and making cotton plantations.

And, you know, by 1830, they'd been there eight, nine years. It was a massive success.

[Jed Lipinski]

After a while, though, the Mexican government in far off Mexico City had a sobering realization. There were barely any Mexicans in Texas and next to no government presence. The American colonists, known as Texians, were treating it like part of the US When Mexican authorities reacted by installing tax collectors and Some troops the Texians pushed back. But the real argument, the one Mexico and the Texians had been having for years, wasn't about taxes. It was about slavery.

[Brian Burrow]

Specifically the Texians dependence on enslaved people to work their cotton fields.

[Texas Historian/Author]

Slavery was what was necessary for the Texas economy.

Stephen F. Austin once wrote in his

private correspondence, money is all that is

needed, and Negroes are necessary to make it. Unfortunately, the Mexican government, which had just revolted 10 years earlier against the Spanish government and was now free. You have to remember, most Mexicans are people of color. They did not look kindly on white people owning them or other people of color. So the Mexican government from the beginning had been ardently anti slavery.

But they allowed, for the most part,

the Texans to go ahead with their

slaves for several years because, yeah, well,

it really wasn't bothering us, and they're making a lot of money, yada, yada, yada.

[Jed Lipinski]

But then, in the early 1830s, the price of cotton exploded. It triggered a flood of illegal immigrants from the American south across the Texas border. In just four years from. From 1831 to 1835, Texas population doubled. These newcomers had no respect for Mexican law. Many of them were running from something, mostly arrest warrants or debts. As one historian put it, for any man to go to Texas in those days meant his moral, mental, or financial dilapidation. One of these newcomers was Jim Bowie, who would later die at the Alamo. Before arriving in Texas, Bowie earned a living through real estate fraud and illegally smuggling African slaves from Cuba. He'd become famous for killing a man in a knife fight, an incident that gave us the Bowie knife. Mexico responded to these new arrivals by raising taxes and installing more troops in forts. Some of the newcomers took offense.

[Texas Historian/Author]

So, long story short, this one group,

sometimes called the war party, it wasn't literally a party. And it's not even clear that it was more than 50 guys. Some historians think it was like 20 guys began bitching in the newspapers, in letters, in speeches, they began bitching about Mexico.

Why are we part of Mexico?

This is ridiculous. And finally, this one keen troublemaker, William Travis, decided to capture a little government outpost there on Galveston Bay. And he did. And he thought, wow, this is the first step toward rebellion.

Everybody in the state is going to

rise in arm and fight Mexico with me. And then Mic drop, total silence. People around the state were like, he did what he wants us to.

What?

And everybody was like, this guy is nuts.

So Travis is like suddenly in the newspaper saying, well, you know, I kind of thought maybe this was a mistake. Sorry, won't do it again.

[Jed Lipinski]

But Travis did it again. A string of uprisings followed. Mexico became convinced that the Texas province was slipping into rebellion. Mexican President and general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna decided it was time to deal with the problem. In the Alamo legend, Santa Anna is often portrayed as a bloodthirsty tyrant. In truth, he was by most reports, a standard military leader of his time, charged with defending Mexico's legal territory, a territory that had accommodated American settlers for years.

[Texas Historian/Author]

And I love how generations of Texans

have always talked about that they were revolting for their freedom, that they were oppressed.

Oh, my God. The Texans not only were free citizens of Mexico, they had more rights than regular Mexicans. They were favored. And so when a small group of

them led by Travis dared to kind

of revolt, Santa Anna's reaction was he was kind of pissed. I mean, this isn't some territory. This is a state of Mexico. Santa Ana felt about these ungrateful Texans

the way you and I would feel if 20,000 Canadians had been allowed to settle in Montana. And then one morning they woke up, shot the governor, and decided to take

over Montana for themselves. Well, how do you think Washington would feel? How would you feel?

That's how Santa Anna felt.

[Jed Lipinski]

And so in February 1836, Santa Anna organized an army and marched north to crush the revolt and arrest its leaders. His first line of resistance would be the Alamo.

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[Jed Lipinski]

The Alamo is one of the most famous battle sites in America. But what is it exactly? Basically, it was a former Spanish settlement, or mission that priests used to convert and settle indigenous people. It consisted of a chapel and a handful of buildings behind a low wall. It was not designed for war. When the Texians Learned that Santa Anna's army was approaching, a group of volunteers, about 200 men, converted it into a makeshift fort. They piled sandbags, hauled cannons to the walls and posted guards while couriers rode for help. Chief among the volunteers were William Travis, the hot headed young lawyer from Alabama, and Jim Bowie, who'd come to Texas after the feds got wind of his fraudulent land deals. They were joined by a man named Davy Crockett. Yes, the Davy Crockett. Crockett was a former congressman from Tennessee who'd come to Texas to start over.

[Texas Historian/Author]

He had been voted out of office and didn't have a clue what to do with himself.

He was kind of a national figure

because he had been celebrated in a book and a play. He was kind of a folk he wrote. Anyway, in an effort to reinvent himself, he too came to Texas, where he

said, sure, you can have those 60 free acres of land, but you need

to serve in the army for a few months first. And as luck would have it, he was assigned to the Alamo. So those three men, Travis, Bowie, and

Crockett, we in Texas refer to as the Holy Trinity, they are our three

main characters of the Alamo story.

[Jed Lipinski]

As Brian points out, holing up inside the Alamo didn't really make sense. It was not a military outpost, and it wasn't built to endure a siege. But for reasons unknown, Travis, Bowie, Crockett, and the rest decided to stay.

[Texas Historian/Author]

And as the months wore on, they began to get these reports that Santa Anna is coming, that Santa Anna's cavalry has crossed the Rio Grande, that they could be here any day, and these guys never leave.

[Jed Lipinski]

But they did ask for help. As the Texians held their position at the Alamo, an ad hoc government took shape and declared independence from Mexico. The president of this brand new republic was a former congressman and governor from Tennessee named Sam Houston.

[Texas Historian/Author]

Travis just starts firing off these letters to the new president, Sam Houston, saying, hey, Sam, think the Mexicans could be on the way?

You want to send us some guys? And he keeps asking and he keeps

asking, and it's one of the dirty

little secrets of this great Texas revolt, that no one comes. 22 guys from a town called Gonzalez show up. Nobody else.

The fact is, most Texans don't want to be fighting this. They want to be on their plantations making money. They just want it to go away.

[Jed Lipinski]

It doesn't go away. The Mexican forces entered San Antonio in late February and laid siege to the Alamo for two weeks. Finally, on March 6th, they stormed it. What happened next is shrouded in mystery because almost everyone died. Historians would later construct the events from Mexican reports, officers, diaries, and a few survivors who escaped. These sources agree that Travis died fighting and that Bowie, who'd fallen ill, was likely killed in his sickbed. Crockett's final moments remain disputed, though a Mexican officer claimed he surrendered and was shot on Santa Anna's orders. From Brian's point of view, the whole

[Brian Burrow]

thing was a fiasco the that could

[Jed Lipinski]

easily have been avoided.

[Texas Historian/Author]

And so from that point, the Alamo's defenders have always been extolled for this incredible bravery. How they decided to draw this line in the sand and fight when no one else would.

And it's all just not true in reality.

[Brian Burrow]

Brian says there was no grand decision to make a last stand.

[Jed Lipinski]

Most of the men at the Alamo

[Brian Burrow]

didn't think Santa Anna's army would arrive so soon. And by the time they realized it, they were surrounded.

[Texas Historian/Author]

There was a bunch of guys who didn't believe the Mexicans were coming, who got trapped. They were unable to get away.

They waited too late. And I'm sorry.

After that, once the battle comes and the Mexicans storm and kill everyone, how you can say these guys are the essence of bravery?

I'm sorry.

They fought to the death because they had no other choice. They couldn't get away.

[Brian Burrow]

The battle may have been a pointless massacre, but the moment it ended, the Mexican and Texian leaders began spinning the story. Santa Anna spread the message that this is what happens when you dare to challenge Mexico. Sam Houston, the Texian's new commander in chief, extolled the heroism of the Alamo's defenders, giving his soldiers a purpose and a cause. The Texas media helped the Telegraph and Texas Register, a reliable source of Texian propaganda called the battle, quote, an event so lamentable and yet so glorious to Texas that we will never cease to celebrate it. Based on this narrative, Houston was able to raise a small army. A month later, they fought Santa Anna's invading army at the Battle of San Jacinto. It was here that Houston supposedly told his troops, remember the Alamo using the famous phrase for the first time, against all odds, the Texians won. Brian calls it among the unlikeliest battles ever fought on North American soil.

[Texas Historian/Author]

You know, a Mexican army that should have dominated this scrappy little group of Americans. The Americans, basically, in the middle of a siesta, in the middle of an afternoon, charge across an open field, and Santa Anna's guys are, you know, kind of drinking and being with women, and they look up and, you know, like,

the attackers are 10 yards away, and

they're like, oh, God, I should put my beer down.

[Brian Burrow]

The Texians slaughtered the Mexican army at San Jacinto and captured Santa Anna, Mexico's president and top military general. A month later, they signed the Treaties of Velasco, which ended the hostilities and sent the Mexican troops south. The Texians had already declared their independence from Mexico during the siege at the Alamo. Texas would exist as an independent nation for the next ten years before joining

[Jed Lipinski]

the United States in 1845.

[Brian Burrow]

As Brian puts it, people may have forgotten the Alamo entirely had Sam Houston not used it as a rallying cry before the Texians defeated Santa Ana at the Battle of San Jacinto.

[Texas Historian/Author]

If you look at it, there is no reason on its face that anyone should remember the Alamo.

It's, you know, a couple hundred guys

who shouldn't have been there who just got rolled over.

This happens all the time in wars going back to prehistory, and most of those stories you've never heard of.

The only reason you've ever heard of the Alamo is that the Texans went on to win in Sag Jacinto, and

many of them yelled Remember the Alamo while they were attacking the Mexicans.

At which point the cry of Remember the Alamo and the story of what actually happened there became deeply embedded in the Texas identity. I'm Texan, I can say this with love and a smile on my face, but Texas identity is a much deeper thing, let me tell you, than Ohio identity or Connecticut identity.

Texans.

It is the idea that we were an independent country that overcame this incredible oppression by Santa Ana and these dastardly Mexicans is taught some version of it to every child who's ever grown up in the state. We all internalize it.

[Brian Burrow]

The Alamo entered history at the Battle of San Jacinto. The winners would now sit down to write it Foreign.

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[Brian Burrow]

The phrase Remember the Alamo may have first appeared during the Battle of San Jacinto, but for decades, after few People actually remembered it. Texans were busy with bigger things like becoming the 28th state and fighting the Mexican American War and fighting with the

[Jed Lipinski]

Confederacy during the Civil War.

[Texas Historian/Author]

You know, we have to remember this was a time before the modern academic pursuit of history.

There were no professional people running around saying, we need to know more about that. And also there were almost no American survivors. So there weren't a lot of people who even knew what the story was. To this day, we don't have nearly

as much information about the battle as you want.

So for 30 years, until after the

Civil War, nobody remembered the Alamo.

[Brian Burrow]

The first semi academic account of the battle was written by a balding former clerk from New Jersey named Reuben Marmaduke Potter. Potter had managed a warehouse in Matamoros during the Texas revolt, and he'd picked up a lot of stories from Mexican and Texian soldiers. Potter got a lot of details right, but he also embraced the legend and later admitted to making stuff up. In his version, for instance, Davy Crockett charged into a line of Mexican troops and died fighting. In truth, his death is disputed. A Mexican officer claimed he was captured and shot. Regardless, Potter's book became what Bryan calls a veritable petri dish of Alamo folklore. For years, pulp writers and amateur historians used it to concoct their own fanciful accounts of what happened at the Alamo.

[Texas Historian/Author]

You know, a lot of it was essentially just nicely dressed anti Mexican propaganda, how dastardly the Mexicans were. And it was during this period that the single greatest component of the myth came up. And that is a guy came forward in East Texas who said, I escaped the Alamo. I was there. And he said, and it was more heroic than we have any memory of, because William Travis came forward and with his sword drew a line on the sand and said, if you will fight with me, step across this line, and if you don't, stay on the other side and you may escape. And that has been the centerpiece of the alamo legend for 120, 130 years,

even though from the moment he said

it, we knew it wasn't true. There is no evidence whatsoever that this gentleman was ever at the Alamo or even even near the Alamo.

But it's a great story and Texans

really loved it and really hugged onto

[Brian Burrow]

was these amateur historians and some invented accounts that created the foundation of what Bryan calls the heroic Anglo narrative of Texas history. As one of them put it, the Anglo Saxon American race are destined to be forever the proprietors of this land of promise and fulfillment. This narrative held Sway for much of the 20th century thanks to the Texas government.

[Texas Historian/Author]

You know, if you look at what happened to the legend after the 19th century, it's easy to say, oh, Texans just promulgated this myth because they all loved it and they all just told the story and it lived on.

In fact, it was a much more

top down and structured event. Texas government 100 years ago as now, it was run by intense conservatives. And they made very clear with written instructions that the teaching of history would adhere to the legend of the Alamo and to the lost cause myth of the old South. And a series of academics who challenged that over the first half of the 20th century were kind of disappeared or led to know that no young man,

we will be teaching our version of the Alamo and our version of Texas history.

So, you know, this myth was a state sponsored myth for the longest time.

[Brian Burrow]

Even so, for the first half of the 20th century, the Alamo legend was mostly a regional thing. People outside Texas didn't know much about it.

[Texas Historian/Author]

In 1947, if you lived in Vermont, you probably had not even heard, remember the Alamo. It really wasn't a thing beyond Texas. And then Suddenly, during the 50s, at a time of rising fears of global communism, that a number of people, including people in the military, generals from Texas, began to use the Alamo as a metaphor for fighting back against the brown skin tides of communism, if you will. And so the Alamo began to be a popular meme, if you will, on the right side of the political spectrum. And where you see that most vividly is in John Wayne's famous 1960 movie called the Alamo.

[Brian Burrow]

The Alamo was billed as a Disney entertainment. In fact, John Wayne designed it to be a political statement about the evils of communism, liberalism and John F. Kennedy, who was running against Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential campaign. As Wayne wrote in a press release, he made the movie to remind the freedom loving people of the world that not too long ago there were men and women in America who had the guts to stand up and fight for the things they believed in. Wayne's version of the Alamo deviated wildly from the truth. I haven't seen it, but by most accounts it's a bad movie. Time magazine called its first three hours as flat as Texas. The critic for the New Yorker called it a model of distortion and vulgarization. And yet the movie endures as perhaps the most popular narrative around the Alamo. It also symbolized what Brian calls the high watermark of Texas Anglo centric creation myth. Not long after its release A chorus of new voices began calling that myth into questions.

[Texas Historian/Author]

It was then after that that the 1960s came. And with that, the rise of all sorts of voices that had not been heard before that in our case, what

matters the most is the rise of

the first Latino scholars and academics of note.

Among their first takes was, hey, how about we start telling the accurate story of the Alamo?

And so this whole idea of Alamo revisionism as personified early on by. By Ozzy Osbourne, we can really trace to academic ways of thought that arose first in the 1960s.

[Brian Burrow]

These scholars popularized the revisionist narrative. But in truth, this more nuanced view of the Alamo, one that didn't demonize Mexicans and captured the contributions of Latinos living in Texas at the time, had lived in oral histories in Texas Latino families for decades.

[Texas Historian/Author]

And they only began finding the light of the day when the first Latino scholars began tackling this stuff in the

60s, especially the 1970s.

[Brian Burrow]

The 1970s saw the first public revisionist controversy. When someone published a book claiming that Davy Crockett didn't go down fighting the

[Texas Historian/Author]

idea that he didn't go down swinging Old Betsy covered by the corpses of Mexican soldiers. I mean, that was sacrilege. But it did feed the appetite of

people who thought, maybe there's a little more here. And so we saw the first serious academic study of the alamo in the 70s and 80s. And then came this book. It's called Duel of Eagles in 1990, written by a guy named Jeff Long, who's nobody from nowhere, just a guy who got very angry about the Alamo and all the things that he found in the archive.

[Brian Burrow]

Jeff Long's Duel of Eagles portrays the Alamo in the Texas revolt as less a revolution than a secessionist revolt intended to defend Texas slave based economy. He leaned heavily on Mexican accounts and took aim at the Alamo's supposed heroes. He calls Davy Crockett an arrogant mercenary and Jim Bowie a thug. Fleeing a lifetime of frauds and hoaxes. Duel of Eagles was not received well in Texas. Long got death threats. A Houston newspaper half jokingly wondered why his house was still standing. Brian calls Duel of Eagles the big bang of Alamo revisionism. A rush of revisionist works followed, making the 90s what he calls the golden age of Alamo reassessment. Elements of revisionism crept into Texas textbooks for the first time.

[Texas Historian/Author]

And then, as luck would have it, conservatives retook control of the state government. And for about the last 25 years have really been very resolute about you not only will remember the Alamo. You will remember the way we tell you to.

And you know, Texas politicians can get

really touchy about the Alamo creation myth.

And, you know, when we started this

book, I wrote this book with two buddies. I had been gone from Texas for years and had only been back five years. They both worked here, and they said, we are going to stir up our hornet's nest. I was like, oh, be serious. Come on, people really still take this shit seriously? And they were like, just you wait.

[Brian Burrow]

Their book, Forget the Alamo the Rise and Fall of an American Myth, came out in 2021. Bryan and his two co authors thought the only way it'd get attention was if a conservative Texas politician came after them. Bryan didn't think it would happen. Then it did.

[News Anchor]

Tonight, a new controversy about Texas history and free speech, all centering around a new book about the history of the Battle of the Alamo. Now the book is called Forget the.

[Texas Historian/Author]

And ultimately it happened. The Lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, came after the book. Our biggest publicity event was at the state history museum, and he canceled us. And it became this big controversy, and of course, it vaulted us into the top 10 New York Times bestseller.

[Brian Burrow]

According to Brian, it found a large Latino readership in Texas who began to say, this isn't the story I Learned about in 7th grade history.

[Texas Historian/Author]

I can't tell you how much this book meant to many Latino people who would come up to us advancing tears, saying, finally, someone is telling the story that we've told each other for years. I mean, I have written my share of books over the years. I never had one where people acted so emotionally to it.

[Brian Burrow]

I first came across Brian's book while researching the story of Buford Pusser, the famous Tennessee sheriff whose wife was allegedly ambushed by a local crime syndicate in 1967. Buford became a folk hero in the south after a series of hit movies depicted him as a righteous crime fighter who avenges his wife's death. But last summer, Tennessee investigators and the local DA announced that based on a review of the evidence, the ambush probably never happened. They concluded that Buford shot his wife that night. The evidence was strong and backed up by a case file 2,000 pages thick. But many people in Buford's hometown who'd been raised on the Buford Pusser legend refused to believe it. Brian had followed the Pusser story, too. He saw direct parallels with the Alamo and other Southern myths.

[Texas Historian/Author]

You know, I hear you about Pusser, and I certainly have lived the myth around this.

Why is it that these type of

local and regional myths seem so much stronger. They pull so much harder in the American South.

Like, do you go to Vermont and

find people there who really want to are just so thrilled about, I don't know, the guy who first discovered maple syrup in Ohio?

Do they have festivals for Johnny Appleseed

and talk about, I'm a Johnny Appleseed, Ohio?

I just don't think so. In every Southern state they have these heroes and these prized myths and legends.

I make the argument that none are

stronger than in Texas. Well, maybe others are, I don't know. But I do find myself wondering if

part of this is the fact that

everyone who grew up in the south

and I was born in Memphis in 1961 and we we had black servants from the outset, throughout my childhood that I had no problem with because no

one in my family told me I

should have a problem with it. And I've always wondered if part of the reason for the tenacity of these Southern myths has been somehow wanting to obscure all that came before.

[Jed Lipinski]

If you have information, story tips or

[Podcast Host]

feedback you'd like to share with the

[Brian Burrow]

Gone south team, please email [e-mail] that's gonesouthpodcastmail.com for bonus content. You can follow us on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram at Gone south podcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on substack at Gone south with Jed Lipinski Gone south is an Odyssey original podcast. It's created, written and narrated by by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Leah Rees Dennis, Maddy Sprung Keyser and Lloyd Lockridge.

[Jed Lipinski]

Our story editor is Katie Mingle.

[Brian Burrow]

Gone south is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basel. Production support from Ian Mont and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney and Hilary Schuff. Thank you for listening to Gone South.

[Jill Schlesinger]

Hi, this is Jill Schlesinger, CBS News Business Analyst, Certified Financial Planner and the host of the Jill on Money Podcast. With the new year upon us, there's no better time to take control of your financial life, and the Jill on Money podcast is here to help. It's your questions that make it possible for me to provide unconventional and, I hope, entertaining insights on your money and more importantly, on your life. Follow and listen to Jill on Money wherever you get your podcasts.