coverage by showing you the most relevant congressional hearings and public events. on weekends c-span 3 is the home to american history tv with programs that tell our nation's story, including six unique series. visiting battlefields and key events, american artifacts, touring museums and historic sites. history bookshelf, the best known american history writers, the presidency, looking at the policies and legacies of our nation's commanders in chief. lectures and history, with top college professors delving into america's past. our new series real america, featuring our government and educational films from the 1930s through the 70s. c-span 3 created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. tonight on q&a, filmmaker thomas allen harris explores how

african-americans have been portrayed in photo graphic images from the time of slavery up through today. >> the firm is based in many ways on the work of debra willies, reflections in black her groundbreaking book. i was also very much aware that there was kind of other narrative that was going on, as well, in which black people were constructed post slavery and before the end of slavery as something other than human. and it was part of the marketing of photographs and memorabilia, and stereotypes that now would be considered declassy. but they are still haunting us in terms of the way in which we might see ourselves, in terms of ways in which we might see others. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span's q&a. this year c-span is touring

cities across the country exploring american history. next a look at our recent visit to corpus christi, texas. you're watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend, on c-span 3. >> 70 miles of a barrier island with beach, bay, coastal prairie. we're located just about 25 minutes from the city of corpus christi, texas. this island traditionally started out being used by native-american tribes seasonally, and they would come here during nice weather. there was a bounty of fish in the area. there was lots of plants they would use on the island and leave when the weather was bad in the winter. what happened next was when the spanish arrow was happening, there was a man up the river last name obali who became a priest. and they called him padre, and the island is named after him.

what happened is he got a spanish land grant and he got padre island split it with his nephew. they started doing over 200 years ago was cattle ran muching and that's how it started out with his name and it actually did very well for him and his nephew. once he passed away the land that was his was split between his other relatives. so his nephew and other relatives would have most of the island to ranch on and eventually they would sell it bit by bit by bit. and over time the island when through many hands, stayed mostly a cattle ranch. here i am at a huge prairie. you wouldn't know it by looking at it but over the dunes there is the gulf of mexico. but we got all these great grasslands here. eventually the land ended up mostly in the hands of the man named patrick dunn in the 1870s when that really got started. the story of patrick dunn is an

amazing one. he was born in corpus trustee. he started being a cowboy. he was working for different cattle ranches and he loved it. he knew it was his way of life. there was something that was invented and started taking off in the 1870s that revolutionized cattle ranching in the western united states. that was barbed wire. what you used to have is the open cattle ranches that you would have somebody who could get cattle have them go all over the place, and eventually take them to market. with barbed wire all the people who actually had land claims would put fences around their land. and that almost was the end of the open cattle range. but there is a few people who really, really loved cattle ranching and who didn't want to let them stop them. and they didn't have the huge ranches like we see in southern texas. and what they did is they came out to padre island.

what made it ideal for cattle ranching was that you didn't need a fence for most of it. you had water on most of the sides of the eye lend. patrick dunn came out here and he was so successful he ended up owning most of the northern part of padre island and he would have his cattle out here he would have cowboys out here. and he would have his cattle all over the land. you think about how do you get the cattle to market? so around 1900 into the teens, into the '20s what would happen is he would have these three stations, and they're called line camps. they would actually certain times of year they would bring the cattle starting in the south, bring them to those line camps, and the cattle could be if you went from sun up to sundown you could get those cattle to go about 15 miles. so there are three line camps, and they're all about 15 miles

apart. how were these line camps built? if you look around me you'll see there's no trees. there's almost no trees on this island. it's amazing. there's like one forest, the size of about a car and the trees are about this tall. without any wood to build a line camp to build a bunkhouse, a place where you can get shelter for the cooking and eating what they did is they used driftwood. and so these line camps were just made out of whatever materials they could find on the beach, they came in from ship wrecks. there was actually driftwood of. it's called nova line camp located at the north end of the park. so what originally happened was the cowboys would take the cattle from one line camp to another, and then eventually they take them up to the north end of the island where there's now a cause way, and the water was so shallow in the bay between the island and the

continent they would actually just drive the cows through the water. now, eventually things would change so much is that actually after patrick dunn passed away and his son took over he would actually get the cow boys to bring the cows to the line camps and they would load the cows into trucks, into old army vehicles, and actually go to the north end of the island and take a ferry across the water. so things changed a lot. we had two years of great history of rattle ranching. after that 200 years the land was tired. eventually in early 1960s, the park service bought this land and it became a national sea shore. things really got rolling in the early 1970s. and that's when the last contracts for cattle ranching ended on the island and that was the last open cattle ranch in america, right here on this

island. we're at the north end of padre island national sea shore. speaking of national sea shore, which is a type of national park unit, the idea of a national parks, as you know preservation and providing for the enjoyment of the people. when national parks were first created, the big ones like the first one, yellowstone, it's a place you're like yeah let's set this aside. we can all enjoy it and preserve it. but as time went on there's different types of national park units that were added for different reasons. so if we think about the idea of the national sea shore, what happened is on the east coast as cities start to expand the population got bigger, people started looking forward in the 1930s and said hey, we're going to need places out here that we can correct relate where we can go to decompress be with nature even though cities are getting bigger. starting in the '50s that idea really took off of near some population areas to have national sea shores where we

can conserve the wildlife, the scenery, protect things and provide for the enjoyment of the people. so corpus christi is a city of 300,000 today, and what they did is back in the early '60s they state let's take this area where the cattle ranching on the island is kind of coming to a close, the park service bought the land and created another national sea shore unit. so there would be a place where everybody could come out fishing, go swimming where we could also have a great place for birds, place for badgers, raccoons coyotes, and so that idea of preserving and protecting the natural landscape and a great place to recreate go and swim surfing, wind surfing, all those things, you can do in a place like the national sea shore. that's why we're on the beach right now. it's important, say like the big

famous ones grand canyon, is that in the national park service there's so many different types of ecosystems in the united states of america, and a barrier island and prairie barrier island is very unique place. think about all the barrier islands along thest comal bed, along texas here, a lot of them have been developed. to preserve an ecosystem intact is what we're trying to do. and so what i have to say is since the '60s the place has blossomed again. 200 years of anything will have an impact on the land. and i have to say that being a national sea shore the land has been able to take a break to relax and restore itself and so now it's this great natural place. ..

>> the korean war veterans digital memorial is an online archives of the memories and experiences of the soldiers who thought what is sometimes called the forgotten war. the archive includes a collection of oral history interviews that provide eyewitness accounts of the korean war. this month on sundays at 10: