Narrator: In 1982, a drunken Ozzy Osbourne, wearing his girlfriend's dress, urinated on a stone monument in San Antonio, Texas. He was promptly arrested and banned from the city for a decade. He had desecrated what he thought was just an old wall, but what locals knew to be the Cenotaph, a memorial to the fallen defenders of the Alamo. Decades later, another British rock star, Phil Collins, would be celebrated as a hero in Texas for donating his priceless collection of Alamo artifacts to the state. Collins, the ultimate believer, and Osbourne, the ultimate desecrator, represent two sides of a cultural war that has raged for nearly two hundred years. This war is not just about a single battle, but about the very soul of Texas and the stories America tells itself. In their book, Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, authors Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford dismantle the cherished legends to reveal a history far more complex, contentious, and relevant than the myth allows.

Narrator: The traditional story of the Alamo paints a picture of heroic men fighting for liberty against the tyrannical Mexican dictator, Santa Anna. However, the authors argue that the primary driver of the Texas Revolt was not a noble quest for freedom, but the pragmatic and brutal economics of cotton and slavery. In the early 1820s, American settlers like Moses and Stephen F. Austin were invited into Texas, then a sparsely populated Mexican province, to act as a buffer against Comanche raids. These settlers, overwhelmingly from the American South, saw Texas as a new frontier for a booming cotton industry.

This economic model was entirely dependent on enslaved labor. As Stephen F. Austin himself wrote, "Nothing is wanted but money, and negros are necessary to make it." The problem was that the newly independent Mexican government held liberal, anti-slavery ideals. Mexico’s 1829 decree abolishing slavery sent waves of panic through the Anglo colonies. Though Texas received a temporary exemption, the threat remained. Texan settlers devised elaborate schemes, such as reclassifying enslaved people as "indentured servants" with lifetime contracts, to circumvent Mexican law. The conflict, therefore, was not a clash over abstract principles of liberty, but a collision between a slave-based agricultural economy and a nation that had outlawed it.

Narrator: The men lionized in the Alamo myth—William Barret Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett—were far from the saintly figures of legend. The book portrays them as complex, often deeply flawed individuals driven by ambition, debt, and self-interest. Jim Bowie, for instance, was a notorious swindler before he ever came to Texas. He and his brothers ran a massive land fraud scheme in Arkansas, forging documents to claim thousands of acres. He was also a slave smuggler, working with pirates like Jean Lafitte to illegally bring enslaved people into the United States.

William Barret Travis, the 26-year-old commander at the Alamo, was a man on the run. He abandoned his wife, child, and massive debts in Alabama to start fresh in Texas. He quickly became a leader of the "War Dogs," a small, aggressive faction pushing for armed conflict with Mexico. In 1835, Travis led an unauthorized attack on a Mexican fort at Anahuac, an act so reckless that many Texan colonists initially condemned him. These were not men who came to Texas to die for liberty; they were ambitious, often desperate men who saw Texas as a land of opportunity, and they were willing to fight to protect their interests.

Narrator: The strategic value of defending the Alamo was questionable at best. The fort was large and difficult to defend, and the men inside were isolated and vastly outnumbered. Their defeat was a military catastrophe. However, leaders like Sam Houston immediately understood its potential as a propaganda tool. The narrative of a heroic last stand against overwhelming odds was far more valuable than the messy truth of the strategic blunder.

Houston and the provisional government carefully crafted the story that was released to the public. They relied on the testimony of survivors like Susanna Dickinson, whose accounts were shaped and disseminated to emphasize Mexican brutality and Texan valor. The story of Travis drawing a line in the sand, a now-famous legend, didn't appear until decades later and is based on a single, highly questionable source. The rallying cry "Remember the Alamo!" was born from this strategic mythmaking. It transformed a devastating loss into a symbol of sacrifice that fueled a desire for revenge, culminating in the Texian victory at the Battle of San Jacinto, where surrendering Mexican soldiers were massacred by men shouting the famous slogan.

Narrator: For more than a century after the revolution, the story of the Alamo was an exclusively Anglo-American one. The contributions of Tejanos—Texans of Mexican descent—who fought alongside the Anglos against Santa Anna's centralist government were almost entirely erased from the narrative. Figures like Juan Seguín, who led Tejano troops, fought at San Jacinto, and served as a senator of the Texas Republic, were later driven from their homes and forced into exile by the very Anglos they had helped.

This "Heroic Anglo Narrative" was solidified by amateur historians and later by popular culture, from D.W. Griffith's racist 1915 film Martyrs of the Alamo to Walt Disney's 1950s Davy Crockett series. This version of history served to justify Anglo dominance and portray Mexicans as treacherous, cowardly, and inferior. For generations of Mexican-American children in Texas, history class became a source of shame, as they were implicitly or explicitly blamed for the deaths of American heroes.

Narrator: Beginning in the 1970s, a revisionist movement, led primarily by Latino scholars and activists, began to challenge the traditional Alamo myth. This has led to a fierce cultural and political battle that continues today. The fight over whether to include the word "heroic" in the state's curriculum, the controversy over moving the Cenotaph, and the debates over how to represent slavery and Native American history at the site are all part of this larger struggle.

The book details the bizarre and often comical story of Phil Collins's artifact collection, which became the centerpiece of a new, state-led "reimagining" of the Alamo. However, experts have raised serious doubts about the authenticity of many of the collection's most prized items, such as a knife supposedly owned by Jim Bowie. This controversy over the artifacts serves as a perfect metaphor for the Alamo itself: a story built on a foundation of questionable provenance, where belief and myth often trump historical fact.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Forget the Alamo is that the Alamo story as most people know it is not history; it is a myth. It is a foundational narrative constructed to serve a political purpose—first to justify a war fought to preserve slavery, and later to cement a specific, Anglo-centric vision of Texas identity. The authors argue that to truly understand Texas and, by extension, a significant part of American history, one must be willing to let go of the comforting, heroic legend and confront a more complicated and often uncomfortable truth.

The real-world impact of this myth is not confined to the past. The battle over the Alamo's meaning is a proxy war for the future of a rapidly diversifying Texas. The challenge the book leaves us with is this: Are we brave enough to build our identity on a foundation of historical truth, with all its complexities and contradictions, or will we continue to cling to the myths that divide us? How we choose to remember the Alamo will ultimately define who we are.