behindthetower.org - Behind the Tower: New Histories of the UT Tower Shooting – Behind the Tower

Description: Behind the Tower: New Histories of the UT Tower Shooting is a public history of the mass shooting that Charles Whitman carried out at UT Austin on August 1, 1966, the collective work of eleven graduate students and one History professor at The University of Texas at Austin.

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What happens to events that historians ignore, events that are recorded primarily as scattered patches of memory? What kind of history is told by novelists and journalists?

We all know what happened, right?

On August 1, 1966, a twenty-five year old University of Texas student named Charles Whitman went up to the observation deck of the UT tower armed with guns, ammunition, and canned food. For 96 minutes he held the campus in a state of terror. Whitman killed 14 people that day and wounded more than 30. One of the wounded died a week later and one died decades later of injuries connected with his bullet wounds. Austin Police officers Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez (and two other men) made their way to the t