Texas history is long and vast, and many books have been written about the different eras that have made the Lone Star State what it is today.
A new documentary looks at the influence of one particular group. “Grit and Grace: How Jewish Women Built a Better Texas” explores the stories of lesser-discussed figures in Texas history.
Film director Barbara Rosenthal said she grew interested in these stories when she moved to Texas in 2021.
“There’s not a lot of Jewish representation in Texas,” she said. “I started to read about one of the women. And then it was like, well what if we focused on women and telling the stories from that perspective because history is often told, always told, for the most part, by the accomplishments of white men. But they’re not the only people making history and impacting society through their actions.”
Rosenthal has a background in history. She used obituaries to find living relatives of the women she wanted to include in the film. One of them was Dr. Ray Karchmer Daily, the first Jewish woman to graduate from the University of Texas Medical School.
“Her family came from Lithuania and they settled in Denison, that’s way up there near the Oklahoma border,” Rosenthal said. “She knew only a little English when she came here, but she spoke six other languages by the time she got to the United States. And she graduated first in her class, she goes to college at 16, goes to medical school down in Galveston.”
Daily started an ophthalmology practice in Houston and got involved with the school board to combat the influence of the Ku Klux Klan in schools.
“The whole state was in league with the Ku Klux Klan, and she wanted to find someone to step up to fight this, and no one would do it. So she said, ‘Well, why don’t I do it?’” Rosenthal said. “I looked at her obit and there’s Evan Ray Daily. I reached out to him and he kindly flew into Austin, did an interview actually at my home, and he gave us so much insight into her character. And she’s really an inspiration. There’s an elementary school named after her in Houston.”
Many of the Jewish immigrants who came to Texas in the early 1900s came through the Port of Galveston. This marked a change from when a lot of European Jewish immigrants entered the country through the Port of New York at Ellis Island.
“There was thought that there might be a backlash because there were so many Jews coming in, they thought perhaps there would be limits on immigration,” Rosenthal said. “The theory was that if we brought Jews in through the Port of Galveston, the leaders who were behind this could disperse them through Texas to the Midwest and out West….One of the leaders of the movement, Dr. Henry Cohn, who was the rabbi of the synagogue in Galveston for, I mean, probably 60 years, he spoke 12 languages and he personally greeted the people coming off the ship.”
Rosenthal said the heart of the film is the stories of these women and the impact they had on the parts of Texas where they lived. She also features the story of Gussie Oscar, who was very active in Waco.
“She was born in Calvert, Texas. Her family came from Poland and settled there. Her father, Rudolf, built an opera house and a hotel,” Rosenthal said. “Apparently she was a very talented classical pianist and a ballet dancer. They sent her to a Catholic school in Austin, which was not uncommon for Jews to go to Catholic schools because it was just considered a better education.”
When Oscar was in her 30s she moved to Waco and became the manager of the theater there.
“She starts booking acts, bringing Pavlova, the dancer to Waco, bringing the Marx brothers to Waco. She brought Fred Astaire and his sister Adele to Waco,” Rosenthal said. “She’s quite a character. She brought a lot of interesting ideas, a lot of interesting entertainment to Waco.”
The film also highlights Olga Bernstein Kohlberg, who moved to El Paso in the 1870s and worked with an interfaith group of women to improve the city.
“They start to build institutions such as the first public library, the first hospital,” Rosenthal said. “She created the first kindergarten, the public kindergarten in the state of Texas. There’s also a school named after her. So she’s bringing education and culture and healthcare to El Paso.”
Grit and Grace has screenings scheduled in several Texas cities including Austin and Houston.
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