Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of The Texas Tribune Tribecast for Tuesday, November eleventh. I'm Eleanor Klibanoff, law and politics reporter at the Texas Tribune, joined this week by special guest hosts politics reporter Alejandro Serrano.
Thank you for having me absolutely.
Matthew will be back with us next week and just for a bit of housekeeping, next week's episode will not be on YouTube because it will be coming at you from the Texas Tribune Tribe Fest.
Where we will be recording audio.
You can get it where you get your podcast audio usually, but we will not be on YouTube. We will come back to YouTube the week after and that is a panel with a tri cast conversation with former House Speaker Dade Feelin. So if you don't want to miss that converse and many other important conversations, make sure you join us at Tripfest later this week.
But that's not what we're here to talk about. It's all Hudro.
A few weeks ago, you and our colleague kay La Guo reported on a very Texas political episode, a this could only happen in Texas sort of situation relating to the governance of the Alamo Historic Site.
Yeah, a lot of people have feelings about the ELBM and a lot of people care about the Alamo, and we saw this growing outrage start with sort of a social media post escalate sort of perpetually, very exponentially quickly, and then the Lieutenant Governor called to the firing of the president who oversees the board of the manch just the Alamo, and today that former leader is here with us today.
Kay Rogers, thank you for joining.
Us, Thank you for having me.
Welcome to the trip cast.
Before we get into all the bruhaha, which we're going to sort of unpack for people who either you know, didn't didn't follow that or sort of at the details of it, but just start off, like, what is the Alamo Trust?
What was your role there?
Certainly so, the Alamo Trust is a nonprofit organization that is contracted by the State of Texas via the Texas General Land Office to oversee the daily operations of the Alamo, but also to implement and realize the five hundred and fifty million dollar Alamo Plan, which is the redevelopment effort that is currently underway on the grounds.
How long did you work there, because we were recently president, but you've been overseeing this for several years now.
Yeah.
So I was brought on in the spring of twenty twenty one, so about four and a half years I was there.
And what's your background?
Interestingly, I'm not a historian by training. I'm in, you know, passionate. My personal passion is around education because I am the daughter, granddaughter, and sister of Texas public school educator. So education has kind of been a thing for me. So I spent most of my career at AGB actually at the company for eighteen years. My last post was vice president of
Communications and Culture at AGIB. Then I left the company and I went to go work for Charles but for several years helping him with some of his activities, including the Holsworth Center that support public school leaders and public school teachers. And then got called by a recruiter sort of out of the blue about this position at the Alamo. Didn't know to your question earlier, that the Trust was even an entity at that time.
Wow.
I mean, CHIB the fourth branch of the Texas government as we consider it.
Especially when it comes to disaster relief, right, nobody does it better than.
HIB, that's for sure.
What drew you to the job.
A few things, right, I really was attracted by the board, just a great group of people.
My interview with them was really.
Wonderful, and then I went down to the grounds to visit, you know. And for many years it's been talk of doing something with the Alamo in San Antonio. You know, Sometimes visitors would come and they would say something like is that it?
Or I thought it would be much bigger, you know.
So there's often been this sentiment, not by all, but by some that the visit itself was somewhat underwhelming. And so there's been multiple versions of this thing we call the Alamo Plan that have been advanced over the years. This one that is currently being implemented is the only one that has successfully garnered strong support from the city of San Antonio, Bear County, and the State of Texas. In the state of Texas obviously the biggest contributor to the project.
What when you took that job, did you sort of understand the.
Fights that were going on around the Alamo, and like, if you had to characterize it, like what is the conflict we are still having over the Alamo?
So I don't think there's any way to actually know the complexity of the work unless you're working there. I knew what I read in the paper because right before I came on board, sort of at the end of twenty twenty, there was a big brew haha, because the prior plan. Ironically, today, on this very day, they're reopening the Cenotaph, which is the monument to the Alamo Defenders.
And many years ago or so before I came on, there was a plan that called for moving the cenotaph from the battlefield storted down the street in front of the Mangro Hotel, and very controversial. It was voted down by the Texas Historic Commission, and pretty much there was a complete reset of the project called for by the
Mayor of San Antonio at the time. So there were new players put in board at the put in position, at the board level, at the staff level, you know, enter Kate Rodgers, and I honestly did not fully understand.
I don't think there's any way you could.
I mean, this has been sort of bubbling up for so long in various ways.
I mean, what is the issue here, right?
It's about how we teach the history of the Alamo, which is so central to Texas's history but has gotten.
Like, yeah, like, what is the conflict here?
I think there's multiple sources of conflict, right, So one of those.
Is the fact that the property itself is.
Co owned by the city of San Antonio in the state of Texas. So why do I bring up this idea of consensus between the county, the city, et cetera. So the first step in getting any of this done was a lease agreement that needed to be negotiated between the city and the state because the state owns, you know, the Alamo Church and the Long Barrack, the two most important artifacts, and the grounds behind it, but everything sort of to the west of that Alamo Plaza included, is
actually owned by the city of San Antonio. So in order to get this plan moving forward, the two had to agree. And politically that's not always the case, right. You have a very conservative leadership at the state level, very blue leadership at the city level, and so you know, it took a lot of brokering to get everybody to come to the table and agree that this was the right path forward. So I think that's one thing. The other thing that you mentioned, Alejandro, is it's not that
we don't love the Alamo. It's that we love the Alamo too much. So there's so many opinions about what should be done, what shouldn't be done, And yes, that relates to the story that will be told, but it also relates to the physical space itself. You know, some people would say, is this even needed? Why just leave
it alone? Why even undertake this massive project. You know, other side of the spectrum would say, you know, take it all the way back, you know, bring back the original battlefield and its original footprint, which would have been two feet lower than where it is now. So there's just very strong views on all sides about all things,
including the cenotaph. Obviously, then you have the narrative and you know, let's face it, we're living in an interesting time right now, not just in Texas but across the country and how we interpret our history and the idea and again the partnership between the city and the state actually calls for and the least agreement itself, it calls for telling.
Them full history of the site.
Most people, the Alumo gets somewhere around one point six million visitors a year. Most people are coming because they know about the Battle of eighteen thirty six it's you know, no one would argue that's the most important event that happened on the site, and it's the reason that most people come. They want to learn more about it. They've you know, either watched a movie or read a book. You know, they know about Davy Crockett, and they want
to kind of unpack what happened there. But a lot of people don't know that it was actually a Spanish mission. It was the first of the five missions in San Antonio, and so there's just this great opportunity to teach people about out the full history, what happened before the battle and what happened after, while still keeping the battle as the central focal point.
I think, thank you for that reflection.
We certainly want to get to like all you accomplished and you know, and reading about you, it's interesting how you know, you often have press releases in conferences where you were celebrated for some of the things that you did in the last couple of years. But you know, to get to the last company you're talking about the narrative. There was one thing in particular that sparked a whole new wave of backlashing narrative, and it's this post on
Indigenous People's Day. Could you tell us more about that. It wasn't the first time the Alamo posted this post on social media, but this year it exploded.
It did so.
Yes, to your point, for the last couple of years, there's been a post that reflects, you know, sort of all the things that are represented on that specific day, one representing indigenous peoples. Why would the Alamo post about indigenous peoples? The Alamo itself, the structure was actually built by indigenous hands, so you know, it was a mission. There were people being converted in the mission, and the people who were actually doing the labor were.
Of Indigenous descent.
At the same time, we would normally post a Happy Columbus Day again you know, yes, Italian explorer but also funded by the Spanish crown to come to to explore what we know today as America, right, even though we never technically got here. But that's beside the point. But given the rich history and the relationship between Spain and the Alamo, and also the local American Indian tribes or Native American or whatever you want to call them, it sort of made sense that we would honor both.
Did you expect any backlash to making an Indigenous People's Day post.
No, what were you doing? Can you take us to that moment?
Well, I wasn't even Let's be clear, I wasn't even in San Antonio when that. So, you know, like most organizations, there's a calendar by which things are posted. No, I was not the person who was actually putting the post up. And I think that the communications director was just following what he'd done for the past several years, and none
of us were, you know, shame on us. We're monitoring at the federal level changes within the administration and calls for not the elimination of Indigenous people, say, but to really celebrate Columbus's contributions to the country. And so I think he thought he was doing the right thing by posting both. I was actually so I went to undergraduate at TCU. I was at TCU to give a lecture on the Alamo in their public History department, and so,
you know, I got this phone call. You know, we took the post down, tried to do damage control, obviously unsuccessfully, and.
We should say Land Commissioner Don Buckingham, who has jurisdiction over the Alamo, it sort of tweeted woke has no place at the Alamo and announced an investigation into this tweet sort of and then started, you know, blasting.
Off an email to her supporters like this really became.
A certainly at least the way it was being portrayed in the stories like sort of Don Buckingham versus you know, the woke Alamo. Just from that individual experience, I mean, what do you see as like the full picture there, like what it was being missed in that retelling of how that went down.
I don't know that there's anything being missed.
I mean I think it's pretty self explanatory because it was also public, right.
You know, these are posts on social.
Media and tweets about you know, what one side believes and what you know versus the other. And in my view, woke is a you know, it's a term. It's a police political term that is, you know, thrown around a lot in today's world to describe any number of activities. You know, I think everything we did at the Almo, or I did at the Almo. You know, there was no movement, if you will, to not honor the men
who died, who fought and died there. That was definitely not something that was underway in the new Visitor Center museum. The largest gallery is dedicated to the battle. The interesting thing about it is that, you know, this narrative that's been being developed to inform all the exhibits and so forth, that's been going on for you know, a few years. So it was interesting that this all the sudden became this flash point. You know, that that all of a sudden, it's it's.
Woke, right, And was it just that? Or do you think there was more to it? Like I think you said another interview, that's a million dollar question whether this post was really it? But was What was your relationship like with you know, state leaders and your colleagues, Like what were their tensions?
Like what was the lead up to this? Yeah?
I mean I think at times there were tensions, not so much with the Lieutenant Governor's office, but the General Land Office in particular is exceptionally involved in the project and you know, wants to have a lot of involvement in many of the daily decisions that are made there.
How did that play out, like how did that work with you? Was there conflict over that?
I wouldn't say there was ever outright conflict. There were rumors, you know, but that's hearsay, I don't know that rumors that the commissioner was not a fan of mine. You know, we never had an exchange, a conflict, an altercation, anything of that nature. But there were you know, buzz out there that you know, she's not a fan of yours.
So this bubbles over a couple of days, and then the next flashpoint is the Lieutenant Governor's letter that I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, and when he quoted your dissertation, he quoted like a couple sentences from I think it's very long.
I speed read it, very long and very boring, Aleandre.
But I want you to tell us about it and why you decided to go down that path of inquiry, because, you know, reading it, in hindsight, it seems like some of the things you you wrote about and believed in you kind of accomplished, especially when it came to like treating the historical site as a place where teachers and students can really learn and kind of engage with their history.
Yeah.
I mean it might be woke on my part. I don't I've never considered myself woke. Right, I'm a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. I'm a descendant of the original Canary Island family, one of them that settled San Antonio in seventeen thirty one. You know, my dad was a West Point graduate who served five tours in Vietnam. I've never considered myself woke, so it's
interesting to have that label placed upon me. Definitely Texan, Texan, Texan through and through for sure, and so it was a great honor to be at the Alamo, you know. So I'm not one hundred percent sure how you know that characterization got got made?
How did you come to write to.
For anybody who's ever written a dissertation, you know that the selection of a topic can be a very arduous process because it has to be something so specific that you can that one person could actually tackle the research and write about it. So you start out with something really grand that you think is going to change the world, and you end up with this very very you know, minor topic that you spend several years of your life
writing and learning about. So mine was on the role of US historic sites and museums in supporting social studies instruction and Kate twelve classrooms. So you have the intersection of my passion around education. I was getting a doctorate degree in global education at the University of Southern California, and so, you know, my research sites were Monticello, Mount Vernon, Gettysburg, and the National World War Two Museum in New Orleans. And I really thoroughly enjoyed the topic. And I was
going to say earlier to your question at Alijandro. So one of the things that came out of that was I attended these multi day professional development experiences for teachers that happen at these really well known sites, and they're all expenses paid. You know, teachers can come, they can really stand in the place where history happened, they can interact with living historians who are Thomas Jefferson or George Washington. Just a really special, meaningful experience. And so we started
doing those at the Alamo. But one of them is actually to Mexico City for five days of professional development a partnership with UNAM. You really help teachers understand the connectedness between Mexican history and Texas history. For some that might be considered woke. For the teachers, it was a really rewarding experience.
And it's also a Texas component right where there they do like a also development in some of the battlefields here.
Yeah, so there's a Texas Revolution road trip where you know, again to really understand the revolution in its entirety. So it starts at the Alamo and then moves on to Goliad, Washington on the brass because of course the Constitution was being signed at the same time, you know, and nobody knew what was happening at the Alamo versus the the attendees at Washington on the Brasas, then on to San Felipe d Austin, and then finally San Jacinto on San
Jacinto Day. So the teachers kind of get to walk in the footsteps of those who fought all of those battles as part of the revolution.
And part of it.
I don't know if you objection to me reading, but you know, kind of it is like you were really candid in some of these views, and this was ears like you know, at one.
Apparently too candid.
Just for clarity, this dissertation was written while you were working at the partially partially at the Element partially, So.
I mean you have to remember that a dissertation is written over several years, and so part of it was written I started the program before I got to the Alamo, and then part of it, yes, would have been written afterward. And as you're evolving and you're writing the various chapters, there's a lot of cutting and pasting of things you wrote before that's being well, this belongs in this section
or that section. And when this all came up, honestly, I had to go find my dissertation and read what I had written, because I honestly couldn't remember, and I was thinking, what did I write that was so offensive? Because again, if you've ever written a dissertation, you know that no one ever reads them other than your committee. So your audience for your dissertation is largely your committee, right,
your chair and the committee members. And for this in particular, I was my committee were faculty members at the University of Southern California who really have no visibility into politics in Texas.
So I was trying to explain the environment to them. Was the point of the section that was pulled out, and some.
Of your views as well. Again, I just wanted to read this for listeners. We said.
Philosophically, I do not believe it is the role of politicians to determine what professional educators can or should teach in the classroom. Instead, teachers should be afforded the autonomy to make those decisions based on their own expertise as well as their needs the needs of their students.
It feels pretty straightforward, right, You're essentially saying politicians should not play a role in dictating sort.
Of how this history is taught.
Is that.
Yes?
Did you consider that to be a controversial statement at the time, obviously not.
Yeah, it's a different time, you know, it was a few years ago. Things have changed. I don't think that some of the things that are happening today were happening then. I'm not the only person who's you know, been singled
out in this fashion. It's happening in our universities, you know, the president of A and M just recently, you know, I I think it's it's it is interesting that, you know, politicians who publicly support the right to free speech and actually argue for the right to free speech, are you know, sort of saying, well but not not when you write something that is potentially critical of something we believe, do.
You feel like that hypocritical of them?
Do you feel like there's this shift that you're talking about is sort of contradictory.
You know, I think you can't be selective if you if you stand for the First Amendment right, and you stand for people's right to express their own views, their own opinions, even if they disagree with you. I don't think you can be selective in your defense of the First Amendment. You're either supportive of it or you're not.
In an op ed, Lieutenant Governor Dean Patrick pulled out a partner thesis on which you said the Alamo should be quoting a beacon for historical reconciliation. Do you still believe that that's sort of Is that how you would frame that today?
It's interesting because historical reconciliation is an academic term, right. So look, there are all sorts of boogeyman things that are quoted in my dissertation, one of them the Forget the Alamo Book. I'm not suggesting that I was a fan or am today a fan of the Forget the Alamo Book. It just I was trying to explain that it came out right when I got there, and it created all of this controversy.
That was the only reason for bringing it up. What did you ask me?
I think that like just sort of do you stand by the idea that it should be a beacon for historical reconsiam.
Yeah, So.
At that time I also mentioned critical race theory, which you know is also a big flashpoint the thing for me, as you know, a person writing a dissertation, most of us, in my experience, I went.
To school public schools in Texas.
I didn't learn about theoretical frameworks until I was working on my doctoral degree, where you're sort of searching for a framework around which your research will be based, right so Colb's experiential learning theory or you know, some of my classmates would use critical race theory. But I never experienced in my public school years that theoretical frameworks were
even a part of K twelve education, you know. But it became this big thing, sort of similar to the term well, you know, it's it's a label that has become more of a political term in my view, to say, you know, I don't agree with this person, you're this, you're that. You know, so I'm sure that's what was in my head when I was writing this.
Again, I had to go back and look at what I had written, because I had you once you're done with that thing.
Everyone knows the best kind of dissertation is a done dissertation, and you put the thing on your on your shelf and probably never to be heard from again. The fascinating thing. So there's two things I want to say. A is I have been overwhelmed by the number of people who have reached out to offer their support, you know, letters to the editor in San Antonio. Friends, I haven't talked to you since high school who read about this, and there's a lot of you know, concern, sometimes anger, you
know that this this was not a fair thing. Not for me to decide that, obviously, but I've also been floored how many people have said, well, I read your dissertation and I thought you did, and they'll say, yeah, I read it, and I didn't really see what was so offensive about it. I talked to one reporter who said, it's not even about the Alamo, and I said, I know it's not, but for whatever reason, it became a very offensive thing before.
Three weeks ago. Had anyone read it? Have you received any pushback, especially in sho.
No, I've never even had because sometimes the only time someone might reference your dissertation is someone who is doing research on a similar topic, right, and then they'll reach out to the researcher to say, hey, you know, I'm working on a similar paper and they may have a question for you. But I've never even had that. I've never had anyone mention it. So it does, you know the million dollar question about how all of this transpired? Also who went and found it and why?
And do you know who flagged this to the Lieutenant governor?
I do not.
How did you reach the decision to resign? I mean where walk us through that experience?
Well?
I was asked to resign, so and you you know, just like I didn't want to be a distraction.
To the product the moment you were asked to resign, essentially being told like the implication there being you'll be fired, which you're not going to get to that point in all likelihood. So like, what was that experience of getting that like order more or less and how did you come to like, yes, it's time.
Well, I I was obviously very upset. I really loved my job at the Almo and I felt like we were doing good work, you know, so this wasn't anything based on my performance per se. Right, So technically, even though the general land office is really the one overseeing everything at the project. Technically, I reported to the board, two boards of the Trust and the remember the Alamo Foundation, and by all accounts, all of my reviews and evaluations
were always very positive. I was promoted in September. I had a very positive review by the board in June. So it was a bit of a shock. And it all happened so fast. You know, within twenty five twenty
four hours. You know, we found your dissertation. You know, the language is very concerning, and I think here's the part that I can understand why they said that you just can't do this job, because it sounded like I was being critical of the legislature in the in what I wrote, And the legislature is the largest donor, they're the funder of the project, and so I could see how we can't have someone running this project who sounds ungrateful or critical of the largest donor to the project.
So that part I understood. It just all happened so fast. So I really didn't have a lot of time to process what was happening because there was you know, we found your dissertation. The next morning. You know, we're going to you need to resign now it's on X, you know, and I really was just reeling from the whole experience because it was so sudden.
Yeah, at the beginning of the conversation, when we were talking about Indigenous people say posts, you mentioned something about how maybe you or others could have paid more attention to the federal government. You also mentioned, when I was about to read the pastes that perhaps you're too candidate.
Do you have regrets through any of this? Like, how how do you feel? Now?
That's a great question, and it probably changes a little bit every day.
You know.
I feel like this week, I'm just now kind.
Of getting my feet under me and starting to think about the future and what I'm going to do next and how I can still contribute and so forth. Of course, when this all came out, I thought, well, gosh, I wish I hadn't written that, But I went back read it and it probably was what was in my heart at the time. I didn't really know the Lieutenant Governor well before I took this project on, you know, never
had a you know, tense working relationship with him. I found him to be very supportive and his love of the I'll know to be quite genuine. So I, like I said, for me, it was mostly just a huge surprise and very upsetting.
Do you still believe some of the things you've written.
I do believe that teachers should be treated like professionals. I do. I mean how could I not.
I mean, my older sister, you know, is now an administration but one of the finest educator educators I've ever known, and given my background, I think it's one of the hardest jobs that anyone can possibly have because it requires so much patience and creativity and you know, how are you going to bring an individual topic to life to you know, spark curiosity and all these very diverse young people. And it's becoming a harder job in today's world.
So I obviously have.
A bias towards, you know, not over prescribing what teachers can and should do in the classroom. But that's a personal bias that I acknowledge, and not everyone feels that way.
And I mean you've sort of we've alluded to like things have changed, things are shifting, our political moment is changing all of that. I mean, as someone who was sort of inside the government to a certain extent, I mean, how do you feel like that shift in Texas has impacted things like, you know, who gets to keep their job, how we tell history. I mean, have you felt that shift even since you joined in twenty twenty one.
Yes, for sure I felt it, and I think, you know, moving forward over the evolution of the script and ultimately what goes on the text panels in the new museum,
there will be continued debate over that. As I mentioned, you know, there is a document that was created by what was called the Alamo Citizen's Advisory Committee, which was people appointed by city council members in San Antonio to create this document called the Vision and Guiding Principles, and it was a very high level document, but basically to maintain a commitment to telling all the stories of the Alamo, not shying away from those topics that can be uncomfortable,
like what was the role of slavery in the Texas Revolution? You know, how will they tackle that? I don't know the answer to that, obviously, but I strongly feel there will be continued debate over it. You know, I was having a conversation on the way up here. You know, like I said, I've just been floored by the number of people who have reached out and this was a person who's a major donor to many things in San Antonio and beyond, and they're very involved.
In higher education.
And you know, he was sort of saying like, it'll be interesting to see how all this happens, because while you know, you have politicians now wanting to sort of say what can and should be talked about on our college campuses, private donors don't necessarily feel that way. Now, whether they have enough a big enough voice with the dollars they contribute to actually make a difference, I don't know.
I also, I think people are scared. You know, I'm older obviously than the two of you, but I didn't live through the McCarthy era in this country.
This felt like a little bit of a witch hunt to me. That's scary.
You know, this is the United States of America. We're not supposed to do things like that. We read about things like that that happened in you know, in other places, but that's not supposed to happen here.
And were you ever scared during your tenure? Did you ever think like, I'm kind of overseeing this massive project. It's kind of like a mind field politically speaking, because a lot of people have strong feelings about it, Like did you did ever occur to you like I could be targeted one day?
Well, clearly I wrote it in my desperation, not really, because I always felt like I had the strong support of the board, so I really didn't see myself as that vulnerable.
But obviously I was wrong.
You talk about I mean the fear of you know, politicization, fear that people feel like they could lose their job over things like this. There's obviously some degree of fear on the other side right that the like, what do you think, what is your sense of why some of our elected officials are so fearful of other parts of this story being told or the battle not being centered, Like, what is your understanding of what the concern is there?
I think that's a very good question, because I in my job, I saw the extremes on both sides, and you know, I will say so so presentism is a very dangerous thing in my view. This is just Kate's opinion, but that means placing values of people living here in America in twenty twenty five on men who lived a couple hundred years ago. They were men of their time, they were flawed, We're all flawed, but doesn't diminish the contributions that they made. And I feel very strongly about that.
I mean, I think, you know, we can embrace Thomas Jefferson, for example, on all of his complexity. The same with George Washington, you know, he We don't have to take away one person's history in order to bring forward the stories of people that are lesser known. So one big flash point that I think you know speaks to that is around the role of slavery in the Texas Revolution. I think it was a factor in Texas in eighteen
thirty six. The truth is is slavery was a pretty small, especially chattel slavery a pretty small institution in Texas at the time of the revolution. It grew exponentially after the revolution. Were all one hundred and eighty nine men inside the Alamo fighting for exactly the same thing. I don't know how you could possibly say that, because you don't know
what was in their hearts and minds. And there were known abolitionists inside the Alamo as well as William B. Travis who brought a slave with him, so it's it was more complicated. What I find troubling is that there seems to be no room for nuance in history.
It's either this or that, right, you're good or you're bad.
And that's problematic because even at that time in Texas and Mexico, views about slavery were changing dramatically about you know, how these men ended up here and how they were going to make a viable economy in this in this state that both Spain and men Mexico had been unsuccessful in settling prior to the arrival of the Texans.
Yeah, that's I mean, that's I think the lack of nuance. And I think you could argue that is happening on both sides, Like that's not right.
My Greetical Party does not own lack of nuances. Yeah, for sure.
But it is sort of at the root of a lot of this, it seems like, and and.
I agree with you one hundred percent that history is you know, Winston Churchill said it.
History is messy.
It's complicated, but he also said you have to know it in order to lead, in order to ensure a brighter future for any country.
But it is messy, right.
But I think what people are afraid of is that you're somehow going to suggest that the men who who who laid it all on the line, they lost their lives for what they believed in. They're going to somehow suggest that they didn't have courage or they weren't brave in that moment. I don't think you have to do that to also talk about, you know, what was happening
around views on slavery at that time. You see what I'm saying, you can still be brave in eighteen thirty six in Texas and a proud Alamo defender and also think that in order to develop Texas, cotton has got to be a part of it.
And it sounds like you're like you're saying like people who come to the Almo can sit with that. You sort of believe that people who come here can sit with that reality that these people did these you know, very noble thing and also had a complicated backstory for the time or not even for the time.
I think people can. I think people can. And you know that's the role of museums. Museums are considered a very credible institution in this country more than elected officials or politicians. They are trusted more than the government. So you have huge responsibility. But your responsibility is not to
judge or to tell the visitor what to think. Your responsibility is to present the information in a very factual and compelling way and let the visitor make their own decisions, because every visitor brings to the Alamo their own set of values, their own past experiences, their own personal history, and all that is going to play into how they
experience it. What we wanted, what I wanted was for everybody to be able to see themselves in the story of the Alamo, and I think a lot of museums try to accomplish that.
Do you think anything accomplishing your ten year got closer to that.
I'm very proud of the work that we did, especially around our education.
Programming Blundee Center, the new.
Education Center, which by the way, wasn't even paid for by the state. That was all private dollars that were raised. And yes, the state is the largest and most generous donor. None of this would be happening without that, without the Lieutenant governor, without the legislature.
But my team and I did raise ninety million.
Dollars privately to support the project as well, and the ED Center is one hundred percent funded privately, and I you know, hope that it remains a place where school children, you know, have a place to call their own if the Alamo teachers can participate in robust programming. Social studies is such an important subject, but it's often overlooked because it's not tested in the early grades in our schools. But it's the subject where you're supposed to learn how to participate in a democracy.
So what comes next for you? What's sort of the next chapter?
Great question?
Like I said, I think I've just you know, I sort of feel like I got you know, punched in the stomach. Took me a little while to get my breath back. I'm starting this week to kind of turn that corner and think about what's next. Obviously, you know, I hope to continue my passion for serving the community, for making a difference, for leaving you know, the world a better place than it was when I when I
when I got there. I like to build things. The complexity of this project did not scare me, and so who knows, hopefully, hopefully there's God has a path for me out there.
Might you build a lawsuit related to your.
I don't know about that. I don't know about that.
I would I would like to look to the future rather than dwelling on the past or what happened to me other than you know, I think that people would be happier if I didn't talk about all of this. But I think it's important that we do talk about it because if we don't, I think there's great risk there and.
Kind of like to peel back to current. Maybe we could end on this.
You know, it was interesting, but when he texted me, we had been communicating trying to set this up, and the first interview fell apart, but then the second time.
Both times he texted me, I'm ready to speak out.
What On a final note, what does Kate Rogers want to say?
What do I want to say? I want to say. You know that I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the ALMO.
I learned a lot. I'm deep in my own knowledge of Texas history. I got to work.
Alongside a great team accomplishing great things together.
That's kind of a unique thing.
You don't always get that in your professional life, where you just really have this team that jives and works well together and you're taking on this big project. So that was very rewarding to me. Secondly, I you know, I do think that we all should not.
Look the other way. That this is the US.
And this is not China or Russia or any place else, and we're supposed to be able to say what we think, We're supposed to be able to disagree.
With one another.
And I think it's important that we all pay attention to that, because I think, you know, some big shifts in world history have happened when people chose to stay silent or to look the other way.
Kate Rogers, formerly of the Alamo Trust, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Alejandro, thank you as well. That is it for this week's episode of the trib Cast. You can get all episodes wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube, except as a reminder next week's episode, because we'll be later this week at trib Fest. Make sure you can still get tickets if you're interested. Open Congress on Saturday is open to the public and free.
Our producers are Rob and Chris, and we will see you next week.