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Emily D. West and the "Yellow Rose of Texas" Myth. By Phillip Thomas Tucker. (Jefferson, N.C., and London: McFarland and Company, 2014. Pp. [viii], 267. Paper, $45.00, ISBN 978-0-7864-7449-3.)
Readers will be disappointed by the end of Phillip Thomas Tucker's book Emily D. West and the " Yellow Rose of Texas" Myth that they have learned virtually nothing about the woman or the myth mentioned in the title. This is not entirely Tucker's fault. Virtually no evidence exists documenting the life of Emily D. West, who became a central character in a likely false story about Mexico's defeat in the Texas Revolution's decisive 1836 battle of San Jacinto. A free African American woman originally from New Haven, Connecticut, who spent a few months as a servant in Texas during the revolution, Emily West somehow transformed in public memory into the mythical Emily Morgan.
According to legend, Morgan was a mixed-race...