• Editor's Note
• Walter L. Buenger

This issue of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly begins a new feature for a journal soon to start its 125th year of publication. Every January the editors of the Quarterly hope to publish a review essay of books published over the previous twenty years on a relevant and important topic. To initiate this project we asked Carlos Kevin Blanton to write on books about racial and ethnic violence. We asked that this review essay be as much an essay as a review of books familiar to many readers. What did the books mean? What did they signify? How did they fit within the unfolding understanding of Texas history? Blanton's essay is a worthy starting point for this addition to our normal offering.

To mark this new experiment, I selected a particularly evocative cover. After all, how often in the history of a journal this longstanding is a new feature introduced? The illustration is evocative because it depicts the lynching of George Hughes in Sherman, Texas, in 1930 from the perspective of a French journal. As Blanton points out lynching was common in Texas, and the Texas Rangers were sent to head off violence in the Sherman case. They failed, leading to questions of just how hard they tried to preserve the life and fair trial of an African American.

Memory of events in Sherman in 1930 and much else about the history of violence differs from reality for most Texans, especially Anglos. Lynching has receded in public memory while the Rangers, especially in popular culture, have more often been celebrated as exemplars of law and order and virtuous manhood. The following essay and the books under review call those silences and tropes into question. They call for an honest, nuanced, and inclusive past based on a clear-eyed examination of the evidence and the asking of new questions. [End Page 337]

• 编者注
• 沃尔特·布恩格（Walter L.Buenger）

本期《西南历史季刊》为即将开始其发行125年的期刊提供了新功能。每年一月，《季刊》的编辑们都希望发表一篇有关过去20年中有关重要主题的书籍的评论文章。为了启动这个项目，我们请卡洛斯·凯文·布兰顿（Carlos Kevin Blanton）在有关种族和族裔暴力的书籍上写书。我们要求这篇评论文章与对许多读者熟悉的书籍的评论一样多。这些书是什么意思？他们代表什么？他们如何适应对德克萨斯历史的不断了解？布兰顿（Blanton）的文章是对我们正常服务内容的补充的一个有价值的起点。

为了纪念这个新实验，我选择了一个特别令人回味的封面。毕竟，这个历史悠久的期刊在历史上多久引入一次新功能？该插图令人回味，因为它从一本法国杂志的角度描绘了1930年乔治·休斯在得克萨斯州谢尔曼的私刑。正如布兰顿指出的那样，私刑在得克萨斯州很普遍，得克萨斯流浪者被派去阻止谢尔曼案中的暴力行为。他们失败了，引发了一个问题，即他们如何努力挽救非洲裔美国人的生命和公正的审判。

对于大多数德州人，特别是盎格鲁人，1930年在谢尔曼（Sherman）发生的事件以及有关暴力历史的许多其他事件与现实情况有所不同。Lynching在公众记忆中已消退，而流浪者，尤其是在流行文化中，流浪者则更多地被誉为法律和秩序的典范和男子气概。接下来的文章和所审查的书将这些沉默和比喻置于疑问之中。他们呼吁以诚实的眼光检查证据并提出新的问题为基础，建立一个诚实，细微和包容的过去。[结束页337]