Students in Texas learning about the Harlem Renaissance will read in their high school history textbooks that there were some critics who disparaged the output of the cultural movement. High school students in California will read in their history textbooks that there has been legislation passed over the years that restricts the right to bear arms laid out the second amendment to the Constitution, but that detail is omitted in the Texas version of the exact same textbook.

These are two of the discrepancies between high school textbooks that the New York Times found in an analysis of the books used in Texas and California schools. Their report shows how the highly political process that goes into approving textbooks for American schools can alter the way history is conveyed and interpreted. This isn’t news to anyone who has seen the great documentary The Revisionaries, which takes viewers behind the scenes in the ongoing ideological battles waged over how Texas textbooks are written. Still, the report details how children growing up in different parts of the country will emerge from high school with subtle, if significant differences in how they understand this country.

Here’s how it happens:

I was working on another story for D Magazine—on boxing gyms in Oak Cliff—when I heard of Campo Santo de Cemento Grande. Inside Casa Guanajuato’s boxing gym, among the murals of the Virgen de Guadalupe and idyllic landscapes serving as reminders of home, among the musty heavy bags hanging from the ceiling and faded photographs of old boxers inside cheap frames, there was a picture of Eladio R. Martinez. The Martinezes were one of the original Mexican families in Dallas, Tereso Ortiz, founder of Casa Guanajuato, told me. Around a year later, when I set out to write about them, Eladio’s youngest brother and last surviving sibling, Henry, had recently passed.

I first met Henry Jr. in the Jaycee Zaragoza Recreational Center. He invited me there to have breakfast. Homemade tortillas, refried beans, huevos con chorizo, pan dulce, coffee. Several times a week, anyone can eat a free breakfast there. It is, as Henry Jr. explained, part of the legacy his father left.

While we ate, I explained what I wanted to write. About his family and Campo Santo de Cemento Grande, the cemetery where Eladio lies beside his mother, sister, and uncle. I told him how through his family and that small graveyard, I wanted to tell part of the history of Dallas. About the laborers—Mexicans, in this case—who made cement, the literal substance that helped make Dallas into a modern city. It was dangerous, and at times deadly work. In some cases, the negative health effects did not appear until years later, after living around and breathing in those chemicals.

He agreed. He thanked me for keeping alive the memory of his community. And as he drove me around West Dallas and what once was Cement City, he spoke of what certain landmarks—some historical, others sentimental—meant to him and his family’s history. Campo Santo de Cemento Grande remains especially important. “Before my dad passed away, he said, ‘son, I just want to tell you one thing, take care of my family’s cemetery. That’s very, very important to me.”

It’s where Henry Sr. spent hours at a time. It’s where he wanted to get buried. It’s where his son, Henry Jr., still hopes to bury him. It’s where an unknown, or ignored, part of the area’s history is buried. It’s why I wrote about the Martinez family and the people like them who had—and continue to have—an important, difficult, and under-appreciated role in making Dallas what it is today.

Read it today. It is online now.

Remember Sunday Eiselt from our 2017 profile of her? She’s a former Marine, archaeologist, professor, and director of SMU’s Archaeological Research Collections (ARC). She’s also our best chance of saving some of North Texas’ oldest, most important history.

Last week I met up with her to tour the ARC facilities, located in Heroy Hall. It’s been a little over two years since our initial interview, and in that amount of time she’s managed an amazing transformation of the three rooms that comprise ARC. What follows is an update, including before-and-after photos. But prior to getting there, give the photo above a look. That’s Eiselt in one of the rooms surrounded by musty brown boxes, each packed to capacity with artifacts, stacked like sardines on shelving on the verge of collapse. In the span of two years a great deal has changed, and she says there are more developments on the way.

One of the most valuable fashion collections in the nation is housed inside a dusty orange building in Denton, next to the counseling office at the University of North Texas. The structure is little more than 4,500 square feet of concrete and cold air, but its cultural cachet is irreplaceable. The Texas Fashion Collection contains everything from 18th-century coats to modern-day Alexander McQueen dresses, maternity gear to streetwear, couture treasures to home-ec experiments. There are bridal gowns, lingerie, and ceremonial ensembles from indigenous cultures. Accessories include nearly 1,400 pairs of shoes, 2,500 hats, and 750 handbags. Altogether, there are almost 20,000 pieces.

The trove of designer labels includes 387 designs by Hubert Givenchy, 301 by Oscar de la Renta, 151 from the House of Dior, and an impressive 340 by Cristobal Balenciaga. It is believed to be the largest holding of the designer’s work in the world aside from Balenciaga’s own archive.

The seeds of the collection were planted by the Marcus brothers—Stanley, Edward, Lawrence, and Herbert Jr.—who began gathering 20th-century styles, some say, in the late 1930s. They named it in honor of their aunt, Carrie Marcus Neiman, upon her death in 1953. She co-founded Neiman Marcus with their father and had donated pieces from her wardrobe. The brothers made a point of keeping the collection in Dallas, though offers came to take it east. It eventually was put in the care of the Dallas Fashion Group, which bestowed what was then a few thousand garments to UNT’s fashion design program in 1972 to serve as a resource for its students. It has since become a resource for artists, authors, and curators near and far.

Vogue’s Hamish Bowles has visited. So has Akiko Fukai, curator of Japan’s famed Kyoto Costume Institute. André Leon Talley borrowed pieces when he was putting together the posthumous Oscar de la Renta exhibition, as did the Kimbell Art Museum for last year’s blockbuster “Balenciaga in Black.” The Dallas Embroidery Guild recently took a tour, and designers from Dickies stopped by to study denim styles over the decades. Last year, about 3,500 people accessed the collection for one reason or another.

Historical images of politics, social activism, and community organizing help illuminate the ways in which the Latino community strives to make Dallas a better city with each passing decade. Dallas Public Library’s Dallas History and Archives Division has photos depicting numerous aspects of Latino life in Dallas spanning generations, many of which are available to view in the library’s online catalog.

See how Latino Dallasites played roles in larger historical events. Learn more about Dallas neighborhoods such as Little Mexico, Los Altos, Eagle Ford, and others. View images of local businesses and everyday life such as weddings, students at area schools, churches and religious services, and more.  You might discover a photo of someone you know from the past, whether it’s a friend, relative, or even yourself at a younger age.

For our October issue, contributor Dalila Thomas takes us on a tour of some of Dallas’ best soul food restaurants, from Styrofoam joints to white-tablecloth establishments. There’s fried chicken and waffles, barbecue and biscuits—even vegan Salisbury steak. But in spite of the variety, it all shares a complicated history.

In the American South (and North), slave owners controlled food supplies. According to Adrian Miller, the James Beard Award-winning author of Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, most enslaved African-Americans received weekly rations consisting of an inexpensive starch (cornmeal, rice, or sweet potatoes); a modest amount of dried, salted, or smoked meat; and a jug of molasses. It was up to the enslaved to supplement their diets by growing their own vegetables (some with seeds, like okra, brought with them from Africa), foraging for wild greens, hunting, and fishing.

After the Civil War, black church gatherings became a place for celebration, with decadent foods like fried chicken and fish, buttery cakes, and pies sweetened with refined sugar. Daily meals weren’t that different than those of slavery—heavy on vegetables, light on meat, and subsidized with starch. Sharecropping meant that many poor tenants were forced to maximize commodity crops in order to pay the rent, leaving little room for gardening for personal consumption.

In search of a better life, millions of Southern blacks headed north as part of “The Great Migration.” Cooking foods from home was a way to build community. But in many urban cities, conditions were cramped. It was often easier and cheaper to eat out than cook at home. Restaurants started meeting the need, and the term soul food was applied as a point of identity and pride in the 1960s, even though it had been coined several decades earlier with the advent of jazz.

Now, soul food is morphing once again. Farm-to-table trends mean seasonal vegetables and heritage animals are being emphasized alongside traditional techniques. And vegan and vegetarian versions are coming to the forefront. It may seem at first like an oxymoron, but vegan soul food may be the truest version of the cuisine. It is a reminder that soul food came from humble and limited ingredients, which were ingeniously repurposed not only for survival but also as a means of cultural expression. And that there wasn’t always bacon grease to fry with.