Gregg Cantrell earned his PhD from Texas A&M University and currently holds the Erma and Ralph Lowe Chair in Texas History at Texas Christi.n University His books include Stephen F. Austin, Empresario of Texas (2000), and The People’s Revolt: Texas Populists and the Roots of American Liberalism (2020). He is a former president of the Texas State Historical Association and a Texas Institute of Letters member.

Carlos Kevin Blanton is Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has a Ph.D. from Rice University. Carlos has published The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981 (2004), George I. Sánchez: The Long Fight for Mexican American Integration (2014) and edited A Promising Problem: The New Chicana/o History (2016). His scholarship has garnered awards from NACCS, WHA, and the TSHA.

Bobby Cervantes is a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. A historian of poverty and inequality in modern America, he earned his Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Kansas and bachelor’s degrees in journalism and government from the University of Texas at Austin. His journalistic work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle and Texas Monthly, and his academic research has been published in The American Historical Review and Early American Studies. He was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley.

Light T. Cummins, Ph.D., is the Guy M. Bryan Chair of American History, Emeritus, at Austin College, where he served as a Professor of History from 1978 until 2018. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the Philosophical Society of Texas. The Governor of Texas appointed him as the official State Historian of Texas, a nonpartisan post in which he served from May 2009 until July 2012. He is the author or editor of fourteen books dealing with Texas history.

Sonia Hernández, a native of the Rio Grande Valley, received her Ph.D. from the University of Houston. She is the George T. & Gladys H. Abel Professor in Liberal Arts II at Texas A&M University. She is the author of the award-winning Working Women into the Borderlands (2014), For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands (2021), and co-editor of Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on the History of the Border (2021). She is co-founder of Refusing to Forget.org, a non-profit public history project on anti-Mexican violence.

Brandice Nelson is a public historian and museum professional specializing in 19th century Texas. Brandice has maintained a 15+ year affiliation with National History Day, and champions student engagement with honest history. Brandice received her BA in history and MA in museum studies from Baylor University, and will receive her executive master's in public leadership from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin in August 2024.

Cynthia O’Keeffe is a retired attorney who spent 37 years practicing law in San Antonio and Austin, in both the private and public sectors. In addition to representing non-profit agencies, she also worked in the Office of the Attorney General. In 2017, Cynthia’s passion for historic preservation and Texas women’s history was ignited when she learned that the house her great-great grandmother had built was in danger of demolition.

Cynthia is Professor Emeritus, Eastern New Mexico University in Ruidoso, earning her PhD at UCLA. She is co-editor of Mexican Americans in Texas History (2000); author of No Mexicans, Women or Dogs Allowed, the Rise of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement (2009); Agent of Change: Adela Sloss-Vento, Mexican American Civil Rights Activist and Texas Feminist (2019); and Pioneer of Mexican-American Civil Rights: Alonso S. Perales (2020). She is a TSHA Fellow and received a National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Scholar award in 2023.

Rebecca Sharpless is an eighth-generation Texan and a professor of history at Texas Christian University. She teaches and writes about Texas and the South, particularly women, work, and food. Her current book project is “People of the Wheat: Commodity and Culture in North Texas.” From 1993 to 2006, Sharpless directed the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. She is a Foodways Texas board member and past president of the Oral History Association and the Southern Association for Women Historians. She earned her BA and MA from Baylor and her PhD from Emory University.

Gary L Pinkerton is an avocational historian and the author of works of history that include Trammel’s Trace: The First Road to Texas from the North (2016). Paper Diver: How the World’s Greatest Underwater Treasure Hunter Never Got Wet, was published in 2024 and Bridles & Biscuits: The Contraband Culture of Spanish East Texas is due in 2025. He has a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Houston and spent his professional career in human resources. Gary is an ex officio member of the board.

Click here to see those serving on committees of the Board of Directors.

Click here to see members of the Nominating Committee preparing for our elections in April.