Kay C. Goldman, Ph.D.

Kay C. Goldman, Ph.D.

Kay C. Goldman’s fascination with history began in the eighth grade when her teacher took the class to the oldest cemetery in Shreveport, Louisiana. Kay learned to scour the tombstones for information and became hooked on not only visiting cemeteries but also on historical research. While raising her two daughters, she began documenting her family history in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas and read all the books she could find on Southern Jewish history. Because historians had written little about that topic during the 1970s and 1980s, the list was short.  Thus, when she returned to college to earn a master’s degree, she knew exactly what she wanted to write about: the Jews of Texas. Her master’s thesis documented nineteenth century Jews who lived along a trading route between Indianola, Texas, and San Antonio.  After completing that work at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, she earned a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in College Station. Her dissertation discussed how nineteenth century Texas Jews –primarily businessmen—merged into Texas society. In 2013, Texas Tech University Press published her book, Dressing Modern Maternity: The Frankfurt Sisters of Dallas and the Page Boy Label, which relates the story of three Texas Jewish women who began manufacturing maternity dresses in Dallas during the depression and continued their business through the early 1990s.  That manuscript won the initial Lou Halsall Rodenberger Prize in Texas History and Literature. Kay’s chapter “On Becoming Texans: Nineteenth-Century Jewish Immigrants Claim Their German Identity” was included in Texan Identities: Moving Beyond Myth, Memory, and Fallacy in Texas History published by The University of North Texas Press. Although retired, Kay is currently working on another manuscript about nineteenth century Jews who lived in the Texas and the Southwest.  She hopes to document how the Jewish holiday of Purim was celebrated in the Southwest and how their celebrations differed from those in larger cities. She and her husband live in Houston, Texas.