Browsing by Author "Wang, Tim"

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    Preserving the Spirit of National Parks: The U.S. Army in Yellowstone
    (Rice University, 2016) Wang, Tim
    As the flagship U.S. National Park, Yellowstone,throughout its administrative history, has set many precedents for park management policies and practices across the United States. This essay examines the period of administration of the park by the United States Army from 1886 to 1916, which was especially formative for Yellowstone. The army reversed the trend of ineffective leadership in administering the park. The policies enacted during that period — regarding nature, wildlife, and tourism management — laid the groundwork for the administration of Yellowstone. In turn, many of these best practices were adopted by subsequent national parks. Most importantly, the army's work served as a major factor in the very preservationof the national parks system. Therefore, the park administration by the United States Army left a lasting legacy that is still evident in both Yellowstone and many other national parks today.
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    Tet Offensive: How Lyndon B. Johnson Won the Battle but Lost the War
    (Rice University, 2017) Wang, Tim
    Historians have often depicted the relationship between freed African Americans and Freedmen’s Bureau Agents as being a relationship where African Americans often depended on bureau agents for protection, guidance in understanding politics and labor, etc. This paper argues that bureau agents and freedpeople had a more complex and interdependent relationship in which bureau agents also depended on African Americans. Black civilians served as informants to bureau agents providing them with important local knowledge to better understand the physical spaces in which they operated. This paper will rely primarily on the assistant state commissioner’s Freedmen’s Bureau Records for Texas and the Texas Field Office Records to support these claims. Bureau agents used this information to request assets from the state commissioners in the form of military manpower, supplies, and other things to help implement Reconstruction policies in Texas in an effort to extend liberties associated with citizenship to newly freed African Americans.