LUNCH AND LEARN SPEAKER SERIES
Explore Houston’s History with a historical expert while enjoying your brown bag or ordered lunch from Tres Market Foods. This series of speakers is generously underwritten in part by The Summerlee Foundation.
Thursday, January 16, 2025: Andrew “Dru” Sanders, "Texas in the International Civil War"
February 20, 2025: Dr. Caleb McDaniel Black History Month: “Captain’s Story: Slavery and Freedom in the Archives of The Heritage Society and Rice University”
March 20, 2025: Dr. Karen Kossie-Chernyshev, Professor of History atTSU and Founding Director, SWATH “Women’s History Month: Black Women’s Empowerment through Education”
April 17, 2025: Suzanne Simpson, "Wild Houston: A Natural History of the City”
May 15, 2025: author Dr. Jeremy Pedigo for “The Life and Politics of United States Senator Sam Houston”.
May 16, 2025: Samuel Collins, The Birthplace of Juneteenth (Evening event, wine & cheese reception)
June 20, 2025: Bryanna Jenkins, LGBTQIA History Month (Evening event, wine & cheese reception)
August 21, 2025: Dr. Uzma Quaraishi, Topic TBA
September 18, 2025: Dr. Samantha Rodriguez, Hispanic Heritage Month- “Brown and Black Place-Making: Forging Race and Gender Power in Houston”
MAY
At noon, on May 15 with speaker and author Dr. Jeremy Pedigo for “The Life and Politics of United States Senator Sam Houston”.
The “The Life and Politics of United States Senator Sam Houston” explores Sam Houston’s life events and developed ideology, and examined their impact on his actions and decisions as a U.S. Senator on four major issues: the acquisition and organization of Oregon, the Mexican American War, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The findings showed that Houston’s actions and decisions supported the Union, opposed Texas secession, embraced compromise to settle political disputes, recognized the rights and contributions of Native Americans. Furthermore, Houston directly confronted people in which he disagreed with.
Speaker’s Biography
Jeremy Pedigo is a full-time Professor of Government and History at San Jacinto College, teaching both face-to-face and online classes. His primary teaching and research interests are American and Texas politics, public policy, the bureaucracy, early American history, and the Antebellum period. In 2023, Jeremy received the Silver Award from San Jacinto College and a scholarship from the Katy Heritage Society for an original paper titled, “John W. Balliger: Railroad Pioneer and M-K-T Executive.” Here is also a member of the East Texas Historical Association, having presented at their 2024 and 2023 Fall Conferences in Nacogdoches.
Prior to joining San Jacinto College full-time in 2018, Jeremy was employed for twenty years with the Harris County Domestic Relations Office in Houston, co-founding the agency’s Community Supervision Unit and later serving as its Director. Also, since 2013 Jeremy has served as an adjunct political science professor (online) at Southern New Hampshire University. In 2023, he was named the SNHU Social Sciences Adjunct Instructor of the Year.
Jeremy is from Livingston, and he attended college at Baylor University, earning a B.A in Political Science in 1996, and Sam Houston State University, earning an M.A. in Political Science in 1997. While in graduate school at Sam Houston State, he served as a congressional intern for former Congressman Jim Turner. In March, Jeremy earned a Ph.D. in History from Liberty University after successfully defending his dissertation “The Life and Politics of United States Senator Sam Houston.”
Jeremy and his wife Joanna live in Katy. He also has two wonderful stepsons, Nicholas and Matthew Giacometto. His hobbies include golfing, swimming, cooking, reading, and traveling.
PAST EVENTS
Description: This presentation places Civil War–era Texas in an international perspective. Arguing that trade was the central point of contention in Civil War Texas, the presentation looks to the nexus of that trade, Matamoros, where merchants from Mexico, the US, and Europe competed and collaborated to reap the benefits of wartime border commerce. While distant federal governments found it difficult to exercise their goals on the border, wealthy merchant capitalists successfully juggled the realities of war to profitably participate in the Atlantic trade in cotton grown by enslaved people. For these merchants, loyalty and identity were fluid and contingent on circumstance, and they took advantage of their evolving postures toward different governments. While capitalism generally rests on trust, this one was built on precariousness. The merchant class of Matamoros learned how to thrive in the space between competing legal systems by engaging in shady commerce and seeking state compensation when their bets failed. o About the Speaker: Dru Sanders is a PhD candidate at Rice University. He completed a bachelor’s degree at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and a master’s degree at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. Before coming to Rice, he taught at the Windward School in White Plains, New York. His research interests include the nineteenth century US, slavery and capitalism, the US-Mexico borderlands, and the Civil War in an international context.
1100 Bagby Street, Museum Gallery. Free Parking at 212 Dallas
Members attend Lunch and Learns for free! Lunches from Tres Market Foods are additional. Membership information here- https://www.heritagesociety.org/membership-join
