Robert A. Calvert


 * For the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, see Robert S. Calvert.

Robert Arnold Calvert, Jr., known as Bob Calvert (October 18, 1933 – November 30, 2000), was a historian and professor at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, best known for his standard textbook, The History of Texas, co-authored with Arnoldo De Leon and Gregg Cantrell.

Calvert was born in Stephenville, the seat of Erath County, located southeast of Abilene, Texas. He attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and the University of North Texas at Denton prior to entering the United States Army in 1954. He procured both his Bachelor of Arts (1957) and Master of Arts (1960) in history from North Texas. He taught history in the Denton public schools and at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana. He taught at the University of North Texas, his alma mater, from 1967–1973, when he resigned to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, from which he graduated in 1975. He then joined the TAMU faculty, of which he had also been a member from 1965-1966. There he specialized in the history of Texas and the American South since 1877, with emphasis on the civil rights movement. He also wrote textbooks on ethnic and labor history, 20th century Texas, and the Progressive movement in the South.

In 1970, Calvert co-authored with Donald E. Chipman and Randolph B. Campbell The Dallas Cowboys and the NFL, an inside study of the organization and financing of the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, a vital cog of "an industry that occupies an important segment of American time and attention . . . a sophisticated industry that has worked out complex statistics to select the best thrower of a forward pass. . . . [and] has reformed television habits . . . "

In 1981, Calvert and Alwyn Barr, a retired historian from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, co-authored Black Leaders: Texans for Their Times. In 1991, he co-authored with his friend and TAMU colleague, Walter L. Buenger, the book entitled Texas Through Time: Evolving Interpretations. One of the chapters in Texas Through Time is oddly titled "The Shelf Life of Truth in Texas," also co-authored by Calvert and Buenger. In 1982, Calvert co-authored with his friend and TAMU colleague, Larry D. Hill, the article entitled "The University of Texas Extension Services and Progressivism" in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly.

Calvert spent years studying and chronicling the civil rights movement. By 1982, he had concluded that the movement had died because the American public grew skeptical that "the national government could play a positive role in erasing social and economic injustice," a view much at odds with his own liberal thinking in that regard.

In 1993, Calvert co-authored with Maury B. Forman, Cartooning Texas: One Hundred Years of Cartoon Art in the Lone Star State, which focuses on political cartoons.

Calvert was the coordinator of TAMU history graduate studies at the time of his death. He was a member of the TAMU Press faculty advisory committee and was the co-editor of the TAMU Southwestern Studies series. He was a contributor to the Handbook of Texas, much of which is now on-line. He was a past president of the Texas State Historical Association. He was a co-editor of Texas Vistas: Selections from the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, an anthology of TSHA scholarly articles.

Calvert died at his home in College Station and was survived by his wife, Donna Hannah-Calvert, two sons, Don and Jeff Calvert, and daughter Patrice Lewis.