Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph 9780292768017

Citation preview

BLACK

TEXAS

WOMEN

BLACK

TEXAS

W Ο Μ ΕM

150 Years of Trial and Triumph

Ruthe Winegarten Janet G. Humphrey and Frieda Werden Consulting Editors

University of Texas Press

Austin

Copyright © 1995 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 1995 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819. © The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Winegarten, Ruthe. Black Texas women : 150 years of trial and triumph / Ruthe Winegarten ; Janet G. Humphrey and Frieda Werden, consulting editors — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 978-0-292-79089-6 1. Afro-American women—Texas—History. 2. Texas—History—1846-1950. 3. Texas—History— 1951- I. Humphrey, Janet G., date. II. Werden, Frieda. III. Title. E185.93.T4W55 1995 305.48'960730764—dc20 94-7418 Excerpts from Dorothy Robinson, "Interview with Juanita Craft," January 20, 1977, © 1991, Radcliffe College, reprinted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Volume 3, pages 12-15, with permission of K. G. Saur Verlag, A Reed Reference Publishing Company, and The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College. Excerpts from Dorothy Robinson, "Interview with Christia Adair," April 25, 1977, © 1991, Radcliffe College, reprinted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Volume 1, pages 50-89, with permission of K. G. Saur Verlag, A Reed Reference Publishing Company, and The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College.

CONTENTS

Preface

vii

Acknowledgments

xiii

"She Is My Sister" by Niobe

xvii

PART I The Antebellum Period 1 Free Women of Color "An honest, sober and industrious woman. "

1

2 Slavery 15 "Our slaves are the happiest . . . human beings on whom the sun shines. " PART II Reconstruction and Redemption 3 First Freedom "I belong to myself now. "

41

4 Resistance "Colored woman sues for damages. "

65

PART III Education and Culture 5 Freedmen's Bureau Schools and Public Schools "Send us teachers. "

85

6

Higher Education "Conduct becoming ladies is insisted upon. "

105

7

Culture and Social Life "Ifyou can sing gospel you can sing the blues. "

123

PART IV The New Century 8

Work "I would not take 'no' for an answer."

155

9

Clubs and Community Building "Lifting as we climb. "

185

10 The Fight for Suffrage and against Lynching "Are you saying that we can't vote because we're Negroes?"

207

PART V The Modern Period 11

World War II "A splendid opportunity for colored women. "

227

12 The Civil Rights Movement "The fight is on!"

241

13

Breaking the Glass Ceiling "This is our time. "

261

"Prelude to Ashe" by Hermine Pinson

291

vi

Appendix 1 Educators

293

Appendix 2 Officeholders

297

Notes

301

Selected Bibliography

355

Photo Credits

371

Index

378

Black Texas Women

PREFACE

Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph is a history focusing on the prolonged and still continuing struggle of black Texas women who have resisted oppressive institutions, people, and laws and built their families, communities, and careers from the ground up. Their story weaves two strands of history that are only now being told—black history and women's history. Because black women have been so largely left out of both these stories, a special focus is obviously needed. Brave Texas women have used violence, stealth, the legal system, and political strategies to protect themselves and their loved ones. While the private lives of most women occur within their family settings, those stories remain closed to the public eye. This book concentrates on the bold and creative initiatives women have taken primarily in the public sphere. Here you can read about the "ordinary" women and the headline-makers, the forgotten and the famous. But this is not just a compensatory or remedial history—it is history as viewed from the perspective of black women, in their own words, wherever possible, using their ideas, their writings, and their actions to illuminate their lives. Black Texas Women actually covers a bit more than 150 years. During the Spanish colonial period, free women of color lived, owned land, and worked in Texas. Their status changed radically when the antislavery Mexican regime gave way to the proslavery Republic of Texas. Some of the first and most poignant documents about black Texas women are their petitions to the Texas Congress and later the legislature for the right to remain and work in Texas

under laws that limited their freedom. The signatures of white citizens on their petitions show the importance of the work the women did as nurses, cooks, and laundresses—traditional women's jobs which have been so undervalued, so underpaid, so ignored by history. Domestic labor is a theme that recurs often in Black Texas Women. When other economic avenues have been closed to them, black women have fallen back on essential skills such as caring for children, washing, and cooking. Such work was parlayed into access to food and goods, into income for a move to town, into an independent small business, into a salary and perhaps benefits at an institution. It could even become the basis of labor organization— as in Galveston in 1877 or Nacogdoches in the 1970s and 1980s. The importance of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in ending job segregation can be gauged by a startling statistic: three-fourths of black Texas women worked at service jobs before the act; by 1980, that figure had fallen to one-third. The ways that black women have prepared themselves to break out of the domestic labor ghetto are also very important in this history. From female house slaves who learned to read and taught slave preachers to read the Bible, to the vast numbers of black women who founded and ran schools at all levels from emancipation to the present, to black cultural leaders and artists, black women have shaped a mass movement to lift their own communities by their bootstraps (or apron strings). The need for blacks to improve conditions for themselves and for their own communities has been very great. With few exceptions, white society not only gave the black citizens of Texas nothing during all this history, but also conspired to take everything from them—their freedom, the profits from their labor, their land, their civil rights, and their dignity and self-respect. At every turn, black women with their men and children have resisted in whatever ways came to hand. Free women of color who were forbidden to stay in Texas remained anyhow. Slave women sometimes ran away, sometimes killed their enslavers, and resisted by keeping as much of their culture and family together as they could. One of the great acts of resistance after emancipation was the refusal of freedwomen to return to work in the fields under an overseer; their insistence on spending time at home with their families led to transformation of the plantation system. Anyone who thinks government has done too much for black people in the United States need only examine this history to see that the reverse is true. Even during the brief flowering of Reconstruction, the federal agents whose job it was to protect freedpeople and negotiate labor contracts for them were very few and almost powerless. Most of the courts were so biased that a black woman could be sentenced to two years of forced labor for failing to return viii

Black Texas Women

a nightgown from a load of wash. When white supremacists conducted guerrilla warfare against blacks trying to exercise the franchise, government turned its back for a hundred years. During this long period of injustice, black women were far from passive. They protested Jim Crow by sitting in "whites only" railroad cars; they demonstrated against lynching; they worked for women's right to vote and against the all-white Democratic primary; they struggled to integrate public schools, colleges, and all public facilities; and they pressed for better jobs. Less dramatic than the wars beloved by male historians, the community-building contributions of women and women's organizations have been seriously underrated. They established institutions like churches, community centers, old folks' homes, nurseries, lodges, mutual insurance companies, mothers' clubs, civic and voters' leagues, and whatever others they recognized were needed. Their club movements paralleled the white women's club movements from which middle-class black women were barred, but with the added focus enshrined in the National Association of Colored Women's motto: "Lifting As We Climb." For black women, with few resources and little political clout, this very persistence toward their major goals has been heroic. I first came to appreciate in some detail this heroic quality of many black women's lives more than ten years ago. This book is the result of my growing commitment to including black women in the history of Texas. From 1978 to 1981,1 was research director for the Texas Women's History Project. When Ann Richards, now governor of Texas, visited the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio with her children, she noticed the near-total absence of women in the multimedia show projected on the ceiling. She tapped Mary Beth Rogers to remedy that gap in popular history. The result was Texas Women—A Celebration of History, a 500running-foot museum exhibit that toured the state for two years and is now permanently housed at Texas Woman's University's Mary Evelyn Blagg Huey Library. Portable versions of the exhibit are still available from the Institute of Texan Cultures. One of my primary concerns was to make sure the exhibit reflected the multiculturalism of Texas. I was especially aware of black women's history because of my experience writing an oral history with Mrs. Annie Mae Hunt of Dallas. Mrs. Hunt's recollections encompass not only her own varied life, but her parents' and grandparents' histories, dating back into slavery. Our collaborative work, / Am Annie Mae: The Personal Story of a Black Texas Woman, has taken on a life of its own, selling thousands of copies. Naomi Carrier, a black composer from Houston, and I began working together to fashion a musical from the book in 1984, and that, too, continues to be popular with audiences both in Texas and out of state. Preface # ix

The exhibit staff for Texas Women—A Celebration of History had such difficulty finding information about black women that I realized the need for a book and archives, too, and started collecting materials. We not only made a special effort to conserve and preserve information about black women but about Hispanic, Native American, and immigrant women, as well. Part of our organizing strategy included making a timeline of cards, so we could see the sweep and development of women's history as a process. Associate curator Frieda Werden and I began keeping a second set of the timeline cards relating to black history and black women's history, so we could make sense of that strand in the web. By the time the exhibit was completed, we realized we had a unique resource— the spine for a future publication on the history of black women in Texas. Some of our preliminary findings were included in my next book, Texas Women, a Pictorial History: From Indians to Astronauts (Austin: Eakin Press, 1986; rev. ed. Governor Ann Richards and Other Texas Women: From Indians to Astronauts, 1993). However, we thought there was enough material to begin a major history of black Texas women. In 1986, as curator for a sesquicentennial exhibit sponsored by the Museum of African-American Life and Culture in Dallas, I next had the opportunity to focus on the lives of black Texas women. That exhibit, They Showed the Way, featured some one hundred women from around the state and continues to travel throughout the area. Research for the exhibit indicated the need and the possibilities. One of the difficulties in compiling the research for this book has been the scarcity or unavailability of information on which to draw. The fragments are scattered and often difficult to obtain. Here is a challenge for today—to locate those records still hiding in attics, dresser drawers, antique chests, and musty suitcases, to preserve records of churches, clubs, and institutions, and to deposit these materials in accessible libraries. The life stories of many of the most significant women in our state's history cannot usually be found in public archives. It is also important to begin a systematic oral history program to interview the older members of the community before their stories are lost forever. This has been a labor of love. What black Texas women have wrought in their " 150 years of trial and triumph" is truly fascinating, and the job of piecing their story together has been uplifting. Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph is of necessity an incomplete document. No one book, certainly not the first, can include every significant woman or get everything right. My attempts to get beyond my own cultural framework can only go so far, as well. I hope that what follows may inspire some readers to recognize the richness and importance of black Texas women's history and to go forward with in-depth scholarship, as well as stories for χ

Black Texas Women

children, biographies, curriculum units, plays, films, television and radio programs, and more. There is a crying need for full-length scholarly (and popular) biographies of many of the women highlighted here, along with articles, theses, and dissertations about specific topics, such as the black women's club movement. There is enough work to keep dozens of graduate students occupied for decades. The materials I have collected over the past fifteen years are deposited at the Center for American History (formerly the Barker Texas History Center), part of the University of Texas at Austin library system. Major archival searches of black Texas women's records should be made at the headquarters of the National Association of Colored Women, the National Council of Negro Women, and the NAACP in Washington, D.C., and in the papers of Mary Church Terrell at the Library of Congress. All the historically black colleges in Texas have materials which are worth examining. Surveys could be made of records housed in community institutions like YWCAs, churches, and sorority houses. Black women represent a tremendous resource for this society. To neglect or downplay the significance of their history and the breadth and wealth of their talents is a luxury we can ill afford. They confronted one of the harshest systems the world has ever known and survived with their spirits intact, bringing others along with them and showing the way for still more to follow. They serve as role models for all of us. Ruthe Winegarten August 26, 1993

Preface

xi

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is the culmination of years of reflecting, researching, collecting, brainstorming, and writing. It has been a group project, built upon the scholarship of those who came before me and strengthened by those who assisted me. I want to acknowledge in particular the work of Gerda Lerner, whose groundbreaking book Black Women in White America: A Documentary History served as the first inspiration for a similar book about Texas. In addition, Darlene Clark Hine, author of When the Truth Is Told: A History of Black Women's Culture and Community in Indiana, 1875-1950 and director of the Black Women in the Middle West Project, showed me the value of examining one state or one region. My friend and colleague Frieda Werden was there at the genesis of this book more than ten years ago; she was there during the intervening years with her insights; and she was there at the conclusion, adding her own special touches to the final chapter. Her collaboration has not only enhanced the quality of the work, but has been stimulating and pleasurable. Helen Spencer helped shape the structure of Black Texas Women. She reviewed the manuscript for style, content, and sensitivity and was available for ongoing consultation. Her special talents and organizational skills turned ambiguity into clarity and immeasurably improved the final work. Janet G. Humphrey was my constant intellectual companion. Perhaps her finest hour was composing "Ruthe's New Motto" and taping it above my desk: "Just because I know something doesn't mean I have to put it in the book." Jan's mind brooked no nonsense when it came to reviewing my writing

for inconsistency of style, excess verbiage, and lack of organization. She skillfully plowed through mountains of materials, turning them into scholarly and readable paragraphs. Even though she is not from New England, I think of her as my personal Yankee schoolmarm complete with a merciless red pen. Many of the chapters show her fine hand. Without her, I would not have been able to complete the book in a reasonable length of time, and I am greatly in her debt. Sherilyn Brandenstein joined the project toward the end and made significant improvements. She did additional research, reorganized chapters, and added analyses based on feminist scholarship. My most faithful reader was W. Marvin Dulaney, whose assistance was of immeasurable value. He currycombed the manuscript with extensive comments, correcting facts, notes, and interpretations. Other colleagues who read parts of the manuscript and who deserve thanks include Alwyn Barr, Dorothea Brown, Randolph B. Campbell, Debbie Cottrell, Barry A. Crouch, Sharon Kahn, Cathy Schechter, Megan Seaholm, and James Smallwood. Regular breakfast meetings with my friend Olga Wise helped me sort out priorities and served as a wellspring of encouragement. The indefatigable Willie Lee Gay of Houston—no request for information was ignored—has generously shared her own research. Librarians and archivists searched for files and documents, birth and death dates, photographs, and more. I would like to express great appreciation to Tom Shelton, Institute of Texan Cultures; Georgia Bonatis and Dawn Letson, Texas Woman's University; Ellen Brown, Baylor University; Casey Greene, Rosenberg Library; Charles Schultz, Texas A&M University Archives; Victor Borgeson, Houston Public Library; Karen L. Jefferson, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University; Michael V. Hazel, Dallas Historical Society; Jimm Foster, Dallas Public Library; and Eric Key, Prairie View A&M University Library. Many thanks also to the fine staff at the University of Texas Perry Castañeda Library Reference Department and the Center for American History (formerly Barker Texas History Center). Dedicated professionals like Jeff Rowe and Peggy Wallace at Austin Prints for Publication handled most of the photographic reproduction. In many cases, their copies of tattered old photographs from books, magazines, newspapers, and private collections looked better than the originals. I would like to express special appreciation to Stanley Schneider, who supported this project financially, emotionally, and intellectually. My children, Debbie Winegarten, Marc Sanders, and Martha Wilson, loved me and helped me, and I think of this as their legacy. Accuracy was my goal, but errors have undoubtedly occurred. They are my responsibility alone. I hope that others after me will

xiv

Black Texas Women

write their own histories, correcting these mistakes and breaking new ground. Finally, I wish to pay tribute to the many women who opened their hearts and their homes to me, and whom I was privileged to interview. They include nationally known photographer Louise Martin of Houston; longtime publisher of the San Antonio Register Josephine Bellinger; the oldest WAC in World War II, Mary Anderson; distinguished Austin educator and librarian Olive Durden Brown; and honored Dallas YWCA leader Barbara James. During the writing of the book, special friends whose accomplishments are highlighted herein died—Dr. Connie Yerwood and Ada DeBlanc Simond, both of Austin. This book is dedicated to their memory and to those of the countless others whose lives remain anonymous, but whose contributions still benefit us all.

Acknowledgments

xv

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She Is My Sister

If she comes to me hungry I must feed her If she comes to me sad I must help her find the laughter within her soul If she comes to me angry I must help her find constructive ways to express it and keep it from turning inward If she comes to me full of stories I must listen If she comes to me praying I must kneel beside her If she comes to me lonely I must keep her company Weaving womanhood, the universal mother, gathered all the strings which hold the earth together and united us as sisters in her name. —Niobe

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# 1 FREE

WOMEN

OF

COLOR

"An honest, sober and industrious woman. "

Introduction

The laws of Texas under the Republic and during early statehood ordered free people of color to leave the state. Betsy filed this petition to remain in 1856. She was "over 65 years of age, is quiet, orderly and respectful, and has ample means for her support..."

Mary Madison's Galveston neighbors considered her "a very valuable citizen, in a variety of ways: especially in the capacity of a nurse." Eighty-two of them, many of whom had probably "experienced her kindness, her attention and watchfulness," signed a petition in 1850 for her to remain in the state and enjoy the "little property" which she had accumulated. Her request was one of the few granted by the Texas legislature.1 Mary Madison's petition is a sample of the rare documents that preserve scraps of information about the lives of free women of color in Texas before the Civil War. She was one of many courageous women who resisted the law and struggled to protect themselves and their families. They used a variety of strategies, including the right of petition and the judicial process, to avoid being sold into slavery or banished from their homes. Many defied the law; when their petitions were denied, they remained anyway. Some women purchased their own freedom; some were purchased by their black husbands. Others married or became the concubines of white men or served so loyally that they were emancipated by their owners. This theme of resistance by black women would resonate through the history of the state. Although the numbers of free blacks were much more significant in the Old South, Texas had enough to count. At the time of the Texas Declaration of Independence, an estimated 150 free blacks lived in the new republic. (Most antebellum African-Americans were, of course, slaves.) The 1850 census reported 394; ten years

later, the figure was 355, including 174 women living in forty counties. Historian Randolph Campbell believes that the actual number of free people of color was probably double that counted by the census.2 The rights of free women of color in Texas varied with the flag. Some free people of color were drawn to colonial Texas by the antislavery position of Mexico, the lure of the land, and the greater freedom of the frontier. The women employed their domestic skills as nurses, laundresses, cooks, house servants, seamstresses, boardinghouse keepers, stock farmers, and milk women. Some used their earnings to become prosperous business women, property owners, and even slaveholders. Since children took their legal status from their mothers, the children of free women were also free.3 Despite their contributions as pioneers, free people of color were legally unwelcome from the days of the Republic of Texas. Slaveholders were apprehensive because free people of color constituted a threat to some of their most cherished assumptions—that whites were racially superior and that blacks were incapable of selfgovernment. The Marshall Texas Republican editorialized that "free Negroes are certainly a most obnoxious and dangerous population/' 4 Whites feared that free people of color might entice slaves to run away or rebel, but scholars have found no evidence of this. Under Spanish and Mexican Rule Among the first Africans in Mexico were men who arrived with the Spaniards in the mid-1500s, like the famed Esteban, a slave who was the translator for an early expedition which included Cabeza de Vaca. They often married or took as mates Native American and Spanish women. As sovereignty over Texas passed from Spain and Mexico to the Anglos, some slave and free black Spaniards and mulattoes and their descendants lost their identity in the census records and were absorbed into history as persons with Spanish surnames. Among the earliest colonists were free women of color. An official Spanish census of Texas in 1792 counted 167 female mulattoes and nineteen female Negroes, a mixture of slaves and free citizens.5 Since Spain recognized free people of color, Mexican Texas became a haven for runaway and freed slaves from the nearby United States South. This kind of immigration was fueled by word of mouth and continued even after Texas independence. Felipe Elua, a Louisiana creole and slave, purchased himself and his wife, Mary Ortero, a mulatto, and their children. In 1807, they settled in San Antonio to become landowners and farmers, educating their children in Spanish and French. Another fifteen male and female Negroes were recorded in Nacogdoches in 1808, where they had fled from North American masters.6

2 # The Antebellum Period

Antislavery sentiment and equality for all people surfaced as major issues when the multiracial Mexican populace rebelled against Spain. In 1821, Mexico negotiated a treaty of independence that promised citizenship along with equal rights and opportunities for all Mexican people, even though it also made Catholicism the official and only tolerated religion. For the next fifteen years, Mexico (including the state of Coahuila and Texas) passed a number of ambiguous and contradictory measures relating to the legal status of slaves. Nevertheless, opportunity for free black immigrants from the United States in Texas reached its peak during Mexican sovereignty.7 The main attraction of Texas—cheap and good land—convinced many Anglo colonists to brave a few legal problems with regard to slaves. The new colonists were skillful in negotiating the everchanging legal system. In 1823, Stephen F. Austin received approval from the newly independent Mexican government to bring settlers and their slaves from the United States. The "Old 300" colonists included slaveholders and slaves, but also a few free people of color: Lewis B. and Sarah Jones, Samuel H. Hardin, and Greenbury Logan. Lewis and Sarah Jones emigrated to Texas in 1826 from Mississippi, along with their two daughters. The barber Samuel H. Hardin married Tamar Morgan in 1838. She came to Texas as a slave in 1832, but purchased her own freedom with the

MARY MADISON, A FREE NEGRO, ASKS THAT SHE MAY STAY IN TEXAS To the members of the Senate and House of Representatives of the Sute of Texas. The undersigned citizens of the City of Galveston . . . would respectfully represent to your Honorable body that Mary Madison, a free woman of color, aged about forty two years, has resided in said city for the last eight or ten years, and during the whole of that time has conducted herself with the strictest propriety and has always demeaned herself, as a good and orderly citizen She is an honest, sober and in-

dustrious woman, and by her labor and care she has accumulated a little property, which she is desirous of enjoying where she has made it:—that said Mary besides her many good qualities, is a very valuable citizen, in a variety of ways: especially in the capacity of a nurse in cases of sickness: and many citizens and strangers who have been afflicted with disease, have experienced her kindness, her attention and watchfulness, when such qualities are really needed.

They would further represent that the . . . said Mary In view of her good conduct, her excellent behaviour and her general usefulness, be allowed her time to remain . . . in the place where she has so long resided, rather than compel her, at her period of life, to seek a home in another land, and among strangers. —Memorial No. 251, File 64, Letter "M," Archives Division, Texas State Library, Austin

Free Women of Color

3

proceeds of her labor. By 1840, this industrious Brazoria County woman had accumulated four town lots, one hundred acres, and four slaves. Greenbury and Carolyn Logan were another Brazoria County couple. He came to Texas in 1831 and purchased Carolyn's freedom with earnings from his blacksmith shop. He was granted legal title to land in Brazoria County. After he was wounded fighting for Texas independence, the couple operated a tavern, boardinghouse, and retail store in Columbia, the first capital of the Republic.8 Some free women of color were married to whites. In 1828, David Towns moved from Louisiana to Nacogdoches with his wife, Sophia, and his family, who were also his slaves. He manumitted them, and they lived together in harmony, alongside their Mexican neighbors.9 Other white husbands manumitted their slave wives (or concubines) in their wills. Celia Allen sought the legal assistance of William B. Travis, later a hero of the Alamo, to help protect her status as a free woman in 1833. Her owner had emancipated her along with her four children, but a prominent pioneer, William H. Jack, claimed her as a slave. With Travis's help, she won the case and lived free until her death in 1841. Her estate at that time was valued at $214.65 and included two horses, seven head of cattle, several pigs, two feather beds, and kitchen utensils.10 Some single women came to Texas already free. The most famous, Emily D. West, is better known as Emily Morgan, "The Yellow Rose of Texas." A native of New York, she came to Texas with Mrs. Lorenzo de Zavala in 1835. When General Santa Anna met Sam Houston's forces in 1836, Emily took refuge with the de Zavalas at James Morgan's home. There she was captured. Texas myth credits her with ensuring Houston's victory during the Battle of San Jacinto by sending word of Santa Anna's whereabouts and "distracting" him while his enemies approached. Her passport application to return home stated that she had lost her freedom papers on the San Jacinto battlefield. She is said to have returned to New York in 1837. Few academic historians credit the myth, although there was an Emily D. West who applied for a passport back to New York.11 Under the Republic of Texas Free men of color fought in the Texas wars for independence, including the first Texan to shed blood, Samuel McCullough, Jr. In gratitude to those men, the Provisional Government recognized as citizens all free Negroes living in Texas in January 1836. But by March, a change of heart among the revolutionary leaders had taken place. Under the new constitution, they forbade free people of color from residing permanently in the Republic "without the consent of Congress." Those who could not obtain congressional 4

The Antebellum Period

"The Yellow Rose of Texas/' first published in 1858, may have been written about Emily D. West—also known as Emily Morgan—a heroine of the Battle of San Jacinto. consent were supposed to leave Texas. Those who remained lived in constant fear of banishment. In June 1837, President Sam Houston signed a joint congressional resolution permitting free blacks who had been in Texas on March 1, 1836, the day before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the privilege of remaining "as long as they choose." An estimated 150 free people of color qualified.12 Free people of color did not have full rights of citizenship. They could not vote, serve on juries, hold office, or be witnesses in criminal cases against whites. When Ann Tucker, a free woman of color in Houston, was stabbed by a white man, the case against him was dismissed because all the witnesses were Negroes. Free blacks were also barred by law from stealing slaves, enticing them away from their owners, or harboring runaways. In fact, some women of color, like Tamar Morgan and a woman named Rhoda, owned slaves. In 1837, Rhoda petitioned the Austin County sheriff to seize John F. Sapp, whom she accused of stealing her slave George.13 Free Women of Color

5

In some instances, slaveholders granted freedom to a favorite slave through deed or will. Many of these were white men wishing to free their slave concubines and children. But even these wills were often challenged. In 1837, Sylvia Routh received freedom through the will of James Routh, who left her and her six children 320 acres of land and money for the children's education, perhaps because he was their father. In 1838, the executor of the estate, Colonel James Morgan, had Sylvia jailed, claiming she had become unruly and refused to submit to his authority. The length of her stay in jail is not known; but in 1843, she petitioned the probate court, which granted her formal guardianship of her six children and title to the land.14 Aside from the laws, racist attitudes could be very punitive, as in the case of Puss and John Webber. Around 1839, Puss Webber lived near Austin in the area that became known as Webberville. Puss had a child by Dr. John Webber, a neighbor of her owner, so Webber bought her and the child, took them home, and acknowledged them before the world. They may not have married, but they lived as man and wife and apparently had more children. Puss befriended the sick and orphaned, neighbors and strangers alike, including local Tonkawa Indians.15 Noah Smithwick, an observer of the period, recalled that "the [white] ladies visited Puss sometimes, not as an equal, but because they appreciated her kindness. .. . she flew around and set out the best meal which her larder afforded; but neither herself or her children offered to sit down and eat with her guests, and when she returned the visit she was set down in the kitchen to eat alone." Since the Webber children were not allowed to attend school with the Anglo children, Dr. Webber hired an English tutor. The neighbors complained about the effect such an elite education would have on local slaves and threatened to mob the tutor. They also coveted Webber's prosperous land and improvements. They finally became so belligerent he was forced to sell out in 1851 and move his family to Mexico, "where there was no distinction of color."16 Occupations of Free Women of Color Most free women of color for whom records can be found worked respectably and gainfully in the cities and small towns of Texas. Charity Bird, the wife of John Bird of Jefferson County, supported herself "by baking cakes and vending them," competing successfully with another baker in 1839. Her business was so profitable that she treated herself to a vacation back to the United States. Fanny McFarland, a laundress, became wealthy through real estate transactions. Other women kept boardinghouses—for example, Margaret, the free concubine of a white man, Adam Smith.17

6 # The Antebellum Period

To maintain their free status, women of color had to be assets to their community. They rendered valuable services such as laundering in towns where women's traditional skills were in short supply.

Several free women of color who were emancipated managed their new estates. June inherited the entire estate of her late master, William Smallwood of Harris County, in 1844. In nearby Galveston, Betsy became an heiress following her emancipation and the inheritance provided in the last will of her Galveston owner, David Webster, in 1856. Other prosperous landowners included two widows—Harriet McCulIough Reynolds of Jackson County and the Widow Ashworth of Jefferson County. The 1860 census valued Reynolds's herd of 6,000 cattle at $3,300 and Ashworth's land at $11,444.'8 More Laws and Ordinances In December 1838, Sam Houston was succeeded by a new president of the Republic, Mirabeau B. Lamar, and Houston's moderate attitude was replaced by Lamar's racist antagonism toward Indians, Mexicans, and free blacks. In February 1840, the Texas Congress set a deadline to accompany the constitutional exclusion of free people of color: all "free persons of color" were to leave Texas by January 1, 1842, or be sold into slavery. This restrictive law was designed to "rid Texas of free Negroes forever."19 In May 1840, President Lamar instructed county sheriffs and constables to enforce the laws against people of color. Yet free Negroes continued coming to Texas, and many filed their emancipaFree Women of Color

7

tion papers with their county clerks. Most already in residence disregarded the law and remained undisturbed. There was a scarcity of women in nineteenth-century Texas, and those with skills like laundering and nursing were highly valued. Free people of color may have been legally condemned as a group, but they were welcomed as individuals by their neighbors and customers, who knew them best.20 One of Sam Houston's first acts when he became president again in December 1841 was to provide a breathing spell for free people of color. He postponed the effective date at which they had to leave, first to 1843, and then to 1845. During this period, they could request a postponement from the chief justice of their county. In 1843, Ann Tucker took advantage of this brief window of opportunity, obtained permission from the Harris County chief justice, and remained until her death in 1846.21 Legislative Petitions The Texas Congress usually ignored or rejected petitions for the right to remain in Texas, but these filings give interesting glimpses of the petitioners' lives. The earliest legislative petition by a free woman of color was probably filed in 1839. Citizens of Brazoria County signed a request that Tamar Morgan and her husband, Samuel H. Hardin, an original settler from Austin's colony, be exempt from the law and be allowed to remain in the Republic. Morgan had bought her own freedom in 1832, and the couple had married in 1838. The petitioners vouched for their industry and noted their property investments. That petition was granted.22 In 1840, five citizens of Rutersville, "well acquainted with the old Free Black Wooman Patsey," petitioned the Congress on her behalf, because "she is honest, and mindes hur own bisaisn [sic] . . . and we believe She will do no harm by being purmitted to remain in the Republic." The petition was ambiguously endorsed "inexpedient and unnecessary." If she came to Texas prior to the Declaration of Independence, the petition was unnecessary. If she came subsequently, Congress might have deemed any action inexpedient. In any case, these kinds of situations were confusing and kept free people of color in legal limbo.23 Three Houston washerwomen filed petitions in 1840, too, but all were unsuccessful. Congress refused to act on Diana Leonard's petition. Fanny McFarland claimed her right to stay because she had been living free in Texas during the exempt period. She had been freed by her master in 1835, but her four children were still slaves. Although Congress refused her petition, she remained in Houston anyway until her death in 1866.24 Zelia (Zylpha) Husk, a Houston laundress, whom historian George Woolfolk called "one of a number of extraordinary Negro women who found both freedom and opportunity in Texas," peti8 # The Antebellum Period

tioned twice. Her first petition in 1840 alleged that she had arrived before the Declaration of Independence, but it turned out that she had not. The second petition, in 1841, said that the Georgia native "emigrated to this country about five years hence. . . . [and] that the law requiring all of her condition to leave the country on or before the first of January [1842] next would bear heavily upon herself and her daughter Emily Husk about thirteen years of age, inasmuch as she would not know where to go if driven hence, having always been obedient and respectful of the laws for evidence of which she refers to the annexed certificate of the citizens of Houston/' Her fifty endorsers declared that they had known her for two or three years and that she "conducts herself well and earns her living by honest Industry in the capacity of Washerwoman." Husk's petition was denied, but she, too, stayed.25 Another law made it illegal for owners to free their slaves without Congress's permission. During the years of the Republic (18361845), slaveholders submitted fifty requests for the manumission of thirty-eight slaves. Congress refused all but two. However, many owners emancipated their slaves without regard to the law, apparently in the belief that free blacks who gave no trouble would be left alone to live in an ambiguous zone between slavery and freedom.26 The first of these petitions was presented in 1838 on behalf of Moriah and her two children. Slaveholder Joseph Walling petitioned to emancipate them because of "conscientious scruples" and also because "said woman has long since made to me full and ample satisfaction for her freedom." In 1841, a Montgomery County woman in her eighties, Peggy Rankin, petitioned the Congress to manumit her slave Sinez and her three children because of Sinez's lifetime of kindness to Rankin. Both of these petitions were refused, along with almost all subsequent ones. Sinclair D. Gervais, however, successfully emancipated his slave Peggy in 1838 "on account of her faithful behavior."27 Under the State of Texas After Texas became a state in 1845, the new Constitution granted the legislature the power to pass laws allowing owners to emancipate their slaves, a power which it never exercised. Nevertheless, slaves were still being freed. Colonel Philip Cuney manumitted his slave Adeline and moved her and their children from their Austin County plantation to Houston.28 A few free women continued to run afoul of the restrictions passed during the Republic, which remained in force after statehood. In 1846, Lovinia Mansell and her three children petitioned the legislature for the right to remain. She claimed that she was ignorant of the law when she immigrated to Texas in 1843 and that she could not now leave "without great expense and inconveFree Women of Color

9

Clara Anderson was captured on Christmas Day, 1843, at age six in Maryland and brought to Travis County, where she was badly mistreated and barely fed. Her owner hit her so hard that he permanently scarred her above the eye. When a kind neighbor bought her three years later, "I was so happy . , . that I grabbed my new Marster's coat-tail and followed him like a dog." nience." The bill covering her case was defeated, but she "continued her residence unmolested/' 29 In some cases, the existing law was used as a legal subterfuge. In several strange cases, slave women were sold to white men who acted as their trustees and protectors, allowing them to live freely. For example, in 1847, Cynthia Annie Meriwether Εwing sold a woman named Lyle to Thomas Bagby, a Houston cotton broker, and two other men, for four hundred dollars. The men permitted Lyle to go free while they tried without success to get legislative permission to emancipate her.30 City Ordinances Many free people of color lived in the towns and cities. Local lawmakers, most of whom owned slaves, passed local ordinances to prevent the growth of a free black population. Galveston passed a 10 # The Antebellum Period

law in 1846 requiring a five-hundred-dollar bond from free persons of color, supposedly to ensure that they would not break the peace or become vagrants. They were also required to live "under the protection of a respectable white man" or pay seventy-five dollars a month for the privilege of renting their own homes. In 1855, the Houston City Council passed an ordinance requiring free blacks to obtain permission from the board of aldermen to rent a house. Also required were a $1,000 bond and a $2.50 monthly permit fee. The laws were not always observed, and most were eventually repealed.31 Legal Victories A few free women of color won striking and unusual legal victories, both during the period of the Republic and during early statehood. In the fall of 1838, Sally Vince filed suit against Allen Vince in Harris County, charging him with holding her in slavery. Her owner, William Vince, Allen's brother, had executed a deed in 1834, granting her freedom at his death. Upon William's death, Allen claimed Sally, saying that William had owned only a onethird interest in her. The court ruled that Allen Vince had no right to Sally and ordered "that she go hence free and liberated from all custody or control by the said Allen Vince and recover of him all costs."32 While the political climate for free people of color was not much improved by statehood, a few women successfully defended their freedom during this period as well. In 1846, the legislature passed a law providing punishment for those who sold free persons into slavery. A woman named Emeline hired a Houston law firm in 1847 to file a petition, saying she was a "free Negress" who had been restrained and held as a slave, along with her two children. She and her children were freed by a jury composed mainly of slaveholders, who awarded her damages of one dollar.33 An Act to Establish "Voluntary" Slavery As the Civil War drew near, the Texas legislature came up with a novel approach to the anomaly of free people of color.34 In 1858, it passed an "Act to Permit Free Persons of African Descent to Select Their Own Masters and Become Slaves." The enslaved person would thus be legally allowed to remain in the state and would become free of debt and all liens or judgments made prior to the enslavement. Some chose this route—or had it forced upon them. In November 1858, two free women of color in Fort Belknap, Rachael and Anarcha, petitioned the district court of Young County, saying "they wish to be made slaves for life" and choosing as their master Major George H. Thomas, "a man of good character and a humane Master." The petition was granted, and Thomas was directed to pay court expenses of thirty dollars. Toward the end of 1860, the BasFree Women of Color # 11

trop Advertiser noted the voluntary enslavement of a free Negro woman and her family of six children in San Augustine, who preferred slavery to being banished to a free state. 'The whole . . . case was fully explained to her. She was told that she was liable to be sold for debt. She said she understood the case fully and her mind was settled/'35 In Travis County, Rachel Grumbles also voluntarily enslaved herself. The story was recalled by her son, James Grumbles, in the 1930s in a narrative transcribed in dialect. He said that when the new law was passed, his mother was put in jail at Austin in 1858 "until she would choose a guardeen [guardian]/' She chose Aaron Burleson, a local owner of about twenty-five slaves. "He wouldn't allow no patrols on his place and dey had better not whoop any of his slaves." Rachel worked for Burleson primarily as a nurse, caring for his daughter Maggie. James stayed with his mother, but his "uncle Henry Perry didn't choose nobody and he was allowed to leave the state, jus' got up and left."36 The Civil War According to the 1860 census, Texas had only 355 free people of color, of whom 174 were women and 181 were men. The free women lived in forty different counties. The slave population was 182,566. Cameron County (Brownsville) on the Texas-Mexican border reported the largest number of free women in the census—thirty-eight. Some of these may have been Mexicans or Native Americans who were mistakenly counted as blacks. The 1860 census for Harris County listed eight free people of color, six of them women—and none of the same names that appeared in the 1850 census when seven women were counted.37 Although the Texas law kept much of the language brought by slaveholders from the Old South, Texas was not strictly a southern state. Advantages enjoyed by free people of color included not being required to carry identification or work badges (for the most part) and paying no occupation taxes. Free blacks in the state benefited from residence in a region with certain characteristics of the frontier West. The frontier atmosphere, coupled with the LatinCatholic-Indian social tradition of egalitarianism and free association from Texas's Spanish and Mexican heritage, created a somewhat more benign atmosphere.38 In 1861, Texas joined the Confederacy, and the state's Constitution was amended to prohibit emancipation. After the Civil War, formerly free blacks fared somewhat better than former slaves. Some had acquired property, the ability to read and write (an estimated 65 to 70 percent of free Texas blacks were literate), an understanding of the law, and familial and friendly contacts in the white community.39

12

The Antebellum Period

Summary Texas had fewer free people of color than other slave states, yet a mythical idea of freedom attached itself to the region. This came in part from the rights people of color had held under Spain and Mexico and in part from a laissez-faire frontier citizenry who failed to enforce new laws and ordinances taking away those rights. While free women of color were a tiny minority, in some way they represent the spirit of Texas—strong individuals who carved out an independent life for themselves, despite the legal swords hanging over their heads.40 To maintain their free status, these women had to be assets to their community. They rendered valued services in towns where women's traditional skills were in short supply. Seamstresses, washerwomen, and cooks had an abundance of customers, and the wise could invest their earnings or inheritances in assets like boardinghouses or real estate. A few were literate, and when necessary they demonstrated that they could skillfully use the right of petition or present cases in court.41 When troubles threatened, the women's importance was shown by the allies they could martial. These included business customers and personal friends, white spouses and relatives, consciencestricken or admiring former masters and mistresses, and their own lawyers. The documents that have survived speak clearly of the indomitable spirits of the free women of color themselves, fighting to keep and enjoy freedom at a time when the horrible alternative of slavery was being suffered by hundreds of thousands of their cohorts in Texas and millions throughout the South. Many of their enslaved sisters would resist in their own way.

Free Women of Color

13

# 2 SLAVERY Our slaves are the happiest. . . human beings on whom the sun shines. "

Introduction Most black women in antebellum Texas were slaves. Despite the findings of the Committee on Slaves and Slavery of the Texas House of Representatives, it is doubtful that they were "the happiest . . . human beings on whom the sun shines." ' At the time of this glowing report, Lavinia Bell was being tortured on a Galveston plantation. When she finally escaped to Canada, a Montreal newspaper described her torments as "fiendish cruelty/' 2 Her story and similar incidents reported by former Texas slaves interviewed in the late 1930s provide a grim indictment of the system. Former slave Mary Gaffney said, "Slavery time was hell!" 3 Slave women suffered under the double burden of racial and sexual oppression, being exploited both for their labor and for their reproductive ability. As blacks, they were valued for their skills and physical strength; as women, they were valued as producers of slave babies for sale or labor. They worked their entire lives without pay or hope of freedom. Yet thousands survived by resisting their enslavement. Most participated in family life and benefited from membership in a female network. They perfected their ability to exist under great difficulties and developed the strength to endure. Their humanity influenced their masters, and the culture they created helped shape the history of the South and the nation.4 Lidia, a nursemaid, and her charges, Sophia and Maria LaCoste, were photographed in Brownsville about 1865.

The Setting In 1836, when Texas won its independence from Mexico, the slave population was estimated at 5,000. Slavery had a relatively brief history in Texas as an Anglo-American institution; but by the time

the Civil War broke out, it was as strongly established as in Virginia, the Union's oldest slave state. By 1860, the state's slave population had grown to 186,000. Its agricultural system was built upon the slave labor of men, women, and children, who produced almost all the marketable crops. Slavery was highly profitable, and—contrary to popular belief—the institution in Texas was neither kinder nor gentler than in other parts of the South.5 Slaveowners were the wealthiest Texans, occupied the highest ranks of the social structure, and held most of the political offices. They represented only 21 percent of all households, yet they held 68 percent of all government offices and 73 percent of all wealth.6 Life on the Texas Frontier Just getting to Texas was an ordeal. Slaves were forcibly brought in ships or overland in wagons and on foot, sometimes walking hundreds of miles roped or chained together. Most came with their owners or traders from the deep South; others came from Africa by way of the West Indies. Lu Lee's mother gave birth to her in a covered wagon on the road to Texas. Elvira Boles buried her baby "somewhere on dat road" from Mississippi. In one of the worst cases among the slave narratives, Ben Simpson remembered how his mother "gave out on the way. Then massa, he just took out-his gun and shot her." 7 Silvia King, born in Morocco, was happily married with three children when she was stolen from her family, drugged, and thrown into the bottom of a boat with many other slaves. They landed in New Orleans, where she was sold on the auction block and brought to Texas.8 Slaves and their owners faced conditions of frontier life in Texas. Pioneer women, whether slaves, white mistresses, poor whites, Hispanics, or Native Americans, all endured the hazards of wars between Anglos and Native Americans, extreme weather, wild animals, primitive housing, inadequate medical facilities, lawlessness, and isolation. In her diary, Mary Maverick praised the bravery of her slave Jinny, who defended her own children and the Maverick children from an attack by Comanches in San Antonio.9 Sales of Slaves Slaves were most often sold during hard times or following an owner's death. Lee Pierce was sold away from his mother because "Marse Spencer done got in debt." At slave auctions in Houston and Galveston, infants were wrenched from their mothers on the auction block. Parents sometimes fought desperately to prevent the sale of their children. One mother prevented the sale by screaming hysterically when her daughter was placed on the auction block, "I'll cut my throat if my daughter is sold." Another mother killed her fourth child after seeing her first three children sold away as 16

The Antebellum Period

FOR SALE—A LIKELY Negro Woman, Cook, Washer and Ironer, aged 28 years and accustomed to the field. Terms Moderate. Apply to SAMPSON & CO. —Houston Telegraph and Texas Register, January 18, 1849

This ad appeared in the (Austin) Texas Almanac Extra, Christmas Day, 1862.

infants. Lulu Wilson's siblings were sold while her mother was at work in the fields. "She said, Oh, Lord, let me see the end of it 'fore I die/" 10 Work Plantation life for female slaves meant never-ending labor beginning in childhood. Adeline Marshall recalled that "you went out to the field almost as soon as you could walk." Special cotton sacks were even made shorter for slave children, many of whom also gatheredfirewoodand cared for white infants. W. Steinert observed a small six-year-old Negro girl "working a large American horse quite skillfully." As young girls became teenagers, they were integrated into the work force by assignment to "trash gangs," along with pregnant women, nursing mothers, and elderly slaves. These gangs did "lighter" work such as raking stubble, pulling weeds, and hoeing.11 Everyone—male and female alike—worked in the fields. Particularly on larger farms, women often worked in female "gangs" offieldhands. Slaves who worked in the house, however, typically performed gender-specific chores. For women, this meant cooking, laundry, sewing, weaving, and waiting on tables.12 Some slave women alsofilledjobs in thefieldtraditionally done by men, like mending fences and digging ditches. Elvira Boles "cut lumber and plowed." Mary was an overseer, as well as the top cotton picker on the McCormick plantation, with an "intelligence and the bossing-faculty equal to her brother Joe." Minerva served as the overseer in the absence of her owner, John Thomas of Brazoria.13 On the John B. Webster plantation in Harris County, slave women shoveled manure, planted corn, nursed the mistress's baby, and even hauled railroad ties. Josie Brown's mother "suckled her thirteen children and old mistress's seven." But a slave's own children had to be neglected while she cared for white children, all the while maintaining an image of friendliness.14 After a long day offieldwork,women returned to their cabins to do their own cooking and laundry, and sometimes additional chores for their owners. Julia Malone said that it was the making Slavery # 17

of the clothes at night that caused so much trouble "twix de overseer an' de niggers." The slaves often fell asleep, and then "would come de whuppin." ,5 Doing the laundry was another never-ending chore. Women hauled tubs down to the river, built fires, washed clothes, hung them out to dry, and ironed them. The hard work was made easier when women could work together. Fannie Driver recalled the women singing original songs while they washed on the banks of the Guadalupe River.16 But those with the highest status were "mammies, nursemaids, cooks, personal maids, house girls, dairy women, weavers, outstanding pickers, prolific breeders, and personal concubines." The life of house servants was not as desirable as sometimes portrayed. They, too, had backbreaking chores and long hours, lacked privacy, and were often punished for the most trivial offenses. However, they enjoyed certain advantages. One Liberty County slave was addressed as "Miss Josephine," because she had "such highfalutin manners." Cooks often had better food for themselves and their children and could sneak food out to the other slaves. They also worked indoors, had better clothing, were sometimes treated more kindly, and were occasionally exposed to reading. Perhaps most important, they had access to information which they shared in the "quarters."17 Hiring slaves out for wages was common. In urban areas, where about 6 percent of Texas slaves lived, slave women worked as domestics, laundresses, and cooks and could attend church, visit friends, and live separately from their owners. Some women who were hired out resisted with negligence or violence. A teenaged Galveston slave, Ann, almost burned down the house of her employers, the Browns, while they were out. After Mr. Brown broke his switch trying to whip her, Ann left immediately to complain to her owner.18 Basic Needs Slave diets were generally adequate to sustain the strength to work, but hunger was a recurrent problem. Annie Row was so hungry that she took food away from a dog. Clara Anderson of Austin said that half the time she "was almost starved to death," but two Jewish girls, Kate and Nellie, hid buttered bread, cakes, and other food for her in a tree stump.19 Slave women usually received new clothes twice a year—two dresses, two chemises, and sometimes a pair of shoes, but no underwear or socks. They washed and reused rags for their menstrual cycles. A very few served as well-clothed status symbols for their owners. W. Steinert remembered a slave woman who shared his stagecoach wearing a lace-trimmed blue dress and a black veil, carrying a white parasol.20 18 # The Antebellum Period

Some women picked three or four hundred pounds of cotton a day, as much as any man. A slave child's cotton sack held fifty pounds.

Katie Darling, at age eightyeight, recalled that "Massa have six chillen . . . and I nursed all of 'em. I stays in the house with 'em and slept on a pallet on the floor." She and another slave also milked one hundred cows at five o'clock every morning. Quotation from Norman Yetman, ed., Voices from Slavery, p. 69. Slavery #

19

This slave cabin is in Mount Pleasant. Twelve or fourteen people might have lived here.

Slave houses were overcrowded, dilapidated, and ill-furnished, bitterly cold in winter and sweltering in summer. Most had a fireplace for heating and cooking, but no windows. Cracks in the walls were barely chinked. On Louise Mathews's plantation, "Weuns sleeps in bunks wid straw ticks."21 Slaves were susceptible to the same life-threatening illnesses as other Texans—pneumonia, cholera, diarrhea, and smallpox. Plantation owner James F. Perry noted in the fall of 1833 that "we have done very little since the middle of June as the Blacks were all sick as well as ourselves."22 Women also contracted ailments connected with the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, stillbirths, miscarriage, childbirth, and abortions. Unsanitary practices of both midwives and physicians caused great suffering and even death to women of all ethnic groups. Slave mothers and children probably died at higher rates than their white counterparts because of work-related accidents, poorer diets, and substandard living conditions.23 Culture Slaves incorporated many of the important features of African culture into their newly forming American culture. The Africans brought skills, talents, and beliefs which, when combined with their creative imagination, enabled them to cope with their new reality, while simultaneously creating new African-American art forms. The historian John Blassingame says that these unique cultural forms "lightened their burden of oppression, promoted group solidarity, provided ways for verbalizing aggression, sustaining hope, building self-esteem, and often represented areas of life 20 # The Antebellum Period

largely free from the control of whites." Slave culture also "provided a network of individual and group relationships and values," a status system, and a group identification.24 African-inspired features in the cultural life of slaves included musical instruments, healing practices, dances, folk tales, and even the use of poisons. Some slaves were conjurers and folk healers. Silvia King said that if you chew on a powerful shoestring root and spit a ring around a person from whom you want something, "you goin' get it. You can get more money or a job or most anythin' dat way."25 Quilts made by slave women fused African ethnic traditions with American ones. The string quilt with its strip pattern linked to West African textile designs had the most cultural significance. Women also used old clothes and men's pants to make "dresstail" and "britches" quilts. "Stomach" quilts were made from the unworn parts of dresses protected by aprons.26 Religion

This iron used by a slave woman had a bell in the handle. When the bell stopped ringing, the mistress knew her slave had stopped ironing. The iron is part of the collection of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon.

Perhaps the mixing of Western and African cultural qualities can most clearly be seen in the way in which the slaves practiced Christianity. Since the division between the sacred and the secular did not exist in black Africa before Christianity, religion was of great importance to the African in slavery. Religion could be supportive of slavery or subversive. White ministers told slaves to work hard and obey their masters. Black preachers, whose words were being monitored, often gave the same message: "Obey your missis and marster, an' don' steal the chickens." But on the sly, blacks preached that the Lord created all men and women equal.27 Some masters forbade religion on their plantations. Rosie Williams said, "If they even caught them a-praying, they'd get a whipping." Other masters took their slaves to church, where they sat in special pews or sections—one of the earliest examples of racial segregation in public places. Some planters and their wives encouraged slave preachers and plantation services. Mrs. Emily Perry of the Peach Point plantation conducted Sunday School classes for her slaves, as did many white Baptist women.28 Some slaves realized the importance of having their own place of worship and began organizing their own congregations. In the all-black congregations, women were often in the majority. At the Colored Church meeting (part of the First Baptist Church) in Galveston in 1846, eleven of the nineteen members were women. By the end of the Civil War, white Methodist and Baptist churches in Texas had thousands of slave members, as well as all-black congregations. Catholic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Disciples of Christ churches also had black members, but in far fewer numbers.29

Slavery # 21

Slaves celebrated holidays and special events such as the Fourth of July, Christmas, and corn shuckings. The ring shout was a principal means by which physical, spiritual, and emotional needs were fulfilled. Silvia King recalled ring dances in the bottoms near LaGrange, where the black folk "shouts and sings and prays," with the dancing getting faster and faster. Through dance slaves distanced themselves from the daily drudgery of work and enjoyed spiritual and artistic rewards.30 Literacy There were no laws in Texas prohibiting the teaching of reading and writing to slaves, and many learned from their mistresses or from white children. In Houston, for example, a white woman, Mrs. M. L. Capshaw, ran a school for blacks in the African Methodist Church in 1858. By 1860, an estimated 5 percent of the 186,000 Texas slaves were literate. A few planters even allowed slave children to attend plantation schools.31 Slaves wanted to learn to read and write primarily because of their desire to read the Bible. Some also wanted to read to be more like their white counterparts and to have access to information that could protect them (for example, reading newspapers or forging passes). Hattie Rooney said that some slaves learned to read from white children and would then teach the others. "So that's how they was some that could read the Bible a little at the church services."32 J. Mason Brewer, the Texas folklorist, comments that "many a slave girl, living in the 'Big House/" would "learn to read and would smuggle a Bible from the house and in the privacy of a slave cabin, teach the Negro preacher to read." He cited as an example the case of Sister Milly Hicks, who stole one of her mistress's Bibles and gave it to an aspiring slave preacher. Sallie Wroe's master allowed his children to teach the slave children from their blue back spellers in the big house at night. Other owners objected to book learning for their slaves. When her young mistress tried to teach Susan Merritt the alphabet, old "Mistress Jane" hit Susan over the head with the butt of a cowhide whip. "Niggers don't need to know anythin'," she said.33 Marriage and Family Life Most slave women enjoyed courtship, marriage, and motherhood and could count on the love and support of their families and the slave community. Female slaves, however, were often torn between concern for their children, loyalty to their husbands, and fear of their masters.34 Since slaves were not considered citizens, their marriages had no legal standing. They had to receive permission from their owners to marry, and without fail owners suggested and sometimes in22 # The Antebellum Period

sisted that slaves marry other slaves on the same plantation. Marrying a slave on another plantation could lead to truancy, grief, or split families. In any case, children born of slaves were the property of the mother's master.35 Even though slave families had no legal existence, slave communities enforced moral codes. Marriage, fidelity, and an organized family life were important values which combined the ethics of the U.S. society, African mores, and resistance to slavery. There were strong rules against incest, for example, prohibiting marriages between first cousins.36 Within the family, men and women could develop self-esteem and nurture each other. Children received love, support, and discipline from both parents, who helped socialize them and created an identity separate from that assigned by whites. They remembered fathers visiting from neighboring plantations bringing "goodies" and recalled with great fondness the tasty meals made by their mothers. Amelia Barnett reminisced about the delicious ash cakes and roasted ribs her mother cooked at night in their cabin.37 Even when based on mutual love and respect, marriages were fraught with frustration and constant insecurity. Sales, involuntary migration from their families of origin, gift-transfers, and division of estates severed families. Slave husbands were frequently hired out for years or sold, leaving mothers to raise their children without their husbands' help.38 Most masters encouraged the formation of families because of their value in enhancing the well-being of their slaves and in making them more controllable. The majority of Texas slaves lived at least part of their lives within a traditional family setting. In a sample of 181 slave narratives studied by historian Randolph Campbell, 60 percent of slave children lived with both parents, and another 9 percent had fathers living nearby. Women often had a first child in their late teens and then another child every two years until their forties. Slave women normally married the father of their first child. Even with high infant mortality rates, many had four or five living children by age thirty, and some had very large families. At age forty-five, China had fourteen children, the youngest an infant, the oldest twenty-eight.39 In slave marriages, neither sex wielded economic power over the other. Hence property relations did not affect the partners' interaction as they did in most other societies. The requirement by owners that slave women work as hard as their men could be turned into a positive egalitarian role within the slave family. Slave couples usually divided family responsibilities along traditional gender lines, however.40 The mother-child relationship was the primary one in the slave family, although some fathers went to great lengths to remain with their families. When Tempe Elgin, her mother, and her sister were Slavery # 2 3

moved from Arkansas to Texas, her father chased them for sixty miles, urging his wife to run away with him. She refused to leave her children, and they never saw him again. Millie Ann Smith's family was reunited: when she and her mother and sisters were brought to Texas, her father, who belonged to another master, followed them and persuaded their owner to buy him.41 Despite the proscription against seeing their families except on Saturdays and holidays, husbands living on nearby plantations frequently visited the "wife house" without a pass. Louise Mathews's owner allowed his slaves to work one acre of land each. Her father raised cotton, which the owner sold for him. With the proceeds, her father bought a horse and saddle for himself and tasty treats and toys for his family.42 Being part of a family could mean unbearable pain: mates could not protect each other from abuse, nor could they ultimately prevent family disintegration. One boy was hired away from his mother and served four masters before he was ten. Former slave Steve Jones recalled that one Anderson County man committed suicide after his wife "had been sold two or three times and I'se guess that slave took it as long as he could."43 However, by dint of sacrifice and perseverance, the great majority of slaves survived, drawing strength from their families and their communities. The slave family as a transmitter of culture and values was a remarkably stable institution and a haven of security. Female Networks within the Quarters Slave women developed a female culture which enhanced their sense of womanhood and their bonds to each other. From adolescence, when they became part of the "work gangs," they joined an important female network.44 The organization of women's work and social life often separated them from the men, while generating female cooperation and interdependence. Historian Jacqueline Jones has said that the threads of cotton and wool bound slave women together "in both bondage and sisterhood." The textile crafts were a central feature of many female slaves' daily routine. Martin Ruffin's "massa had fifteen or twenty women carding and weaving and spinning most all the time." Laura Cornish's mother was so skilled that she was excused from fieldwork to specialize in weaving: "You could hear the bump, bump of that loom at night." Julia Banks's grandmother and other women went from one plantation to another for quilting bees, an enjoyable way to socialize as well as to produce useful and beautiful artifacts.45 A separate female culture also had roots in West Africa, where women and men maintain separate households even after marriage. Slave women depended on each other for health care, child care, and emotional support. When Julia Malone's mother was 24 # The Antebellum Period

killed, she stayed with her mother's longtime female companion. Women often treated each other as kin even in the absence of blood relationships; unrelated women called each other "Sister." Older women, who are honored and have influence in West African tradition, were called "Aunt" and "Granny." Such titles showed respect and invested the relationships with mutual obligations and caring.46 Relationships with Mistresses The relationship of slave women with their mistresses was complicated. As Paula Giddings explains, "White Southern women found themselves enmeshed in an interracial web in which wives, children, and slaves were all expected to obey the patriarchal head of the household."47 The privileged status of some mistresses rested squarely on the labor of their female slaves. But slavery also highlighted the subordination of both black and white women to masters and husbands. This arrangement could create a web of conflicting emotions in the minds of mistresses. On the one hand, white women benefited economically and socially from the system; on the other, slavery added greatly to their responsibilities.48 Emily Perry, mistress of the luxuriously furnished Peach Point plantation, complained how overtaxed her strength was from supervising the cooking, cleaning, vegetable garden, and orchard. Rutherford B. Hayes described her as "the nurse, physician, and spiritual advisor of a whole settlement of careless slaves." When Jack Cauthern's mistress heard a slave baby crying in the night, "she'd put on boots and take her lantern to go see about it."49 Black and white women were both confined within plantation households, sharing a world of physical and emotional intimacy. The two groups of women shared a common life cycle—puberty, pregnancy, childbirth, child care, menopause—with their attendant illnesses and mortality. An insightful mistress might have identified her subjugation as a woman without rights, subject to the whims of her husband, with that of the slaves. A less sensitive mistress could and did displace her anger at her husband by beating her slaves.50 Although some mistresses resented or hated their slaves, others wanted to be friends. Mary Maverick wrote, "I have owned many slaves, yet I can't see that one loves me or cares consistently to please me." Despite these contradictions, black and white women often lived in close quarters where fondness could develop. But the strongest expressions of affection could not mask the fact that most white women believed in the morality of slavery.51 Ann Patton Malone looks at this complex relationship from the standpoint of the important role slave women played as companions to other women on the Texas frontier, most often when neiSlavery # 2 5

The great-grandmother of these women, Kian (Kiamatia) Long, was both slave and companion to Jane Long, sometimes known as the Mother of Texas. Kian Long married and had four children.

ther had their own support groups. Mariah Robinson accompanied Miss Josephine, her mistress's daughter, to Texas from Georgia ''to keep her from the lonely hours and being sad so far from home." Jane Long and her slave Kian (or Kiamatia) were lifelong companions who survived a bitter winter in 1821-1822 together on Bolivar Island. Kian helped Jane give birth, and later the two women ran inns in Brazoria and Richmond.52 Childbirth and Child Care Childbirth, nursing, child care, and midwifery added to the burdens of fieldwork and housework for slave women. Yet giving birth was an important rite of passage, a life-affirming activity, and for some an act of defiance. Masters were also less likely to sell women who had proved their fertility. Slaveowners hired doctors or midwives to tend their slaves during illness or childbirth. The slave community respected experienced nurses, midwives, herbalists, and ''granny women." The granny woman was sometimes a combination midwife, medicine woman, advisor, and dispenser of love potions. Hannah Mullins's mother was the midwife for the whole plantation, black and white.53 Childbirth was dangerous for all Texas women in the nineteenth century, and an estimated one out of every three babies died before their first birthdays. Slave women were sometimes bribed into pregnancy with the prospect of lighter workloads, cash bonuses, or special clothing. Harriet Robinson, who was considered an "excellent breeder," was sold several times, each time at a handsome price. Although well cared for, she "was with a broken heart constantly" because she was "constantly separated from her children."54 Pregnant women were often punished because they could not keep up with the pace of fieldwork. Lydia Jefferson's mother died 26

The Antebellum Period

The story of how Louisa Picquet, a free woman in Ohio, purchased her mother, Elizabeth Ramsey, a Texas slave, was dramatized in a book written by an abolitionist preacher, the Reverend H. Mattison, in 1861. The book includes letters exchanged between the women and with Ramsey's owner, A. C. Horton.

TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD.

RAN AWAY from the subscriber, a little negro girl, about 8 or 9 years old light black complexion, etc. A. Evving.

in childbirth while delivering Lydia and her twin sister. Premature labor was brought on by a vicious beating because she was too ill to keep up with the field gang. Cassie Middleton's five sisters died as babies because their mother in Jasper County was overworked.55 Some slave women avoided pregnancy by practicing birth control and even performing abortions. They used herbs of tansy and rue, cotton roots and seeds, cedar berries, and camphor. Cotton root was apparently a popular contraceptive. On Dave Byrd's plantation, "All the negro womens . . . would chew that and they would not give birth to a baby."56 Some owners gave nursing mothers lighter work assignments and extra food. On the Tait plantation, lying-in women received one quart of coffee and two pounds of sugar and were fed from the overseer's kitchen for two weeks. They were not required to do fieldwork for "four weeks after confinement" and then could go home to nurse their babies until they were weaned.57 Slave women too old for other work often provided child care. Hannah Mullins was raised in the plantation nursery, where the children ate from a common trough filled with milk and "corn bread crumblings." Her master even provided slides and sand boxes. On smaller farms, child care was a problem. Hiram Mayes's mother tied him to a chair while she worked, so he would not run off to the Bayou and be eaten by alligators.58 Forced Reproduction and Sexual Abuse While slave wives and mothers were dedicated to families created by choice, they were, at the same time, unwilling participants in relationships by virtue of their status as property. Although the extent of forced breeding on Texas plantations is not known, there were certainly planters who engaged in these activities. On Betty Powers's plantation, men and women were "just put together." Hannah Jameson, a Harrison County slave, watched a new man being forced on her mother after her father was sold. Owners tried to have the best of both worlds: they encouraged frequent reproduction while also expecting pregnant and nursing women to meet substantial work quotas.59 Former slaves spoke of "breeding" or "stud" slaves who went from plantation to plantation. Sam Meredith Mason explained that "a good, well-built man was hired out among a bunch of wimmen, so as to produce good, healthy chillun."60 The sexual vulnerability of teenagers was a source of anxiety for slave parents, who tried to protect their daughters. Despite their parents' best efforts, young slaves usually had their first child at age nineteen, two years earlier than southern white women. Owners pressured adolescent girls to have children. When Lulu Wilson was about thirteen, her mistress promised her a white dress and a wedding supper if she would marry. Soon afterward, the doctor told Slavery

27

her "that lessen I had a baby, old as I was and married, I'd start in on spasms. So it weren't long till I had a baby."61 Slave women were often raped by the master, the overseer, the master's son, or the neighbors. This system produced a class of mulatto children who were frequently scorned. Betty Powers recalled that "the overseer and white men took advantage of the women," who risked a whipping if they complained. Harriet Robinson's sister, for example, had three children by "Master Colonel Sims's son." Many owners had no qualms about selling their own children for the right price.62 Female slaves were the most vulnerable segment of antebellum society. Some historians consider the frequent rape of slave women as one means of retarding resistance by slave men and rendering the females powerless. Many teenagers were raped, like Matilda Boozie Randon of Washington County. When she was thirteen, "Young Mawster" seduced her behind the barn. When "Old Mistress" found out, she crammed a pair of socks in Matilda's mouth and told her she'd skin her alive if she ever told anybody.63 These devastating forced relationships sometimes also bred hatred in the planters' wives toward their female slaves. Although some of the wives may have been secretly relieved to delegate sex and childbearing to slave women, others were jealous and even divorced their husbands. Williford Cartwright divorced her husband because he had abandoned her bed and "lived in improper intimacy with the negress Jane," who had borne him four children.64 Concubinage and Emancipation Black female concubinage was common in Texas, according to historian Ann Patton Malone. Concubine slaves had privileged positions in the owner's household based on their sexual relationship with the master. This status could mean favored treatment and even emancipation for the slave and her children. Some of these relationships undoubtedly began by force but developed into affection.65 A sexual relationship with a slave woman or parenthood of her children was the most common source of emotional ties that led masters to emancipate slaves, either legally or de facto in spite of the laws. A few owners emancipated slave women in order to marry them or to live with a free companion. Some emancipated the women without acknowledging the relationship. Others dared not risk exposure by emancipating a slave concubine or a beloved servant in their lifetime, but provided for emancipation through their wills and even bequeathed them property. Heirs often attempted to frustrate such posthumous acts of conscience. Upon his death, David Webster of Galveston emancipated his longtime companion, Betsy Webster, and left her horses, household goods, and 28 # The Antebellum Period

The Sampson July family, pictured ca. 1870 near Eagle Pass, were Seminole Negroes. The Seminole colony on the Texas/ Mexico border provided a destination for Texas fugitive slaves.

twenty-one town lots. When the will was contested by his cousin, Betsy hired a prestigious law firm that successfully defended her manumission and inheritance.66 According to Ann Patton Malone, Rachel Bartlett was "one of the most remarkable slave concubines in Texas history." For twenty years, Bartlett was mistress of Columbus Patton's plantation in Brazoria County. Though stable, the interracial union was challenged by Columbus's relatives, who had him declared insane and sent to an asylum in South Carolina. Rachel was banished to the fields until Columbus died. But his will provided that she be allowed to live freely and receive a lifetime allowance. Although the heirs challenged the will, the parts concerning Rachel were honored. She was set up in her own house on the plantation and even allowed to charge clothes at a local store. By 1859, she had won the confidence of the other slaves; the executor wrote that "her presence near the plantation and slaves . . . was believed to have become exceedingly injurious . . . and perhaps dangerous" and therefore "the negro woman Rachel has been induced to remove to Cincinnati, Ohio," where the estate promised her an annual allowance.67 There were other routes to individual emancipation besides intimate relations with the owner. Some slaves were able to earn and save enough money to buy their own freedom. A few were bought and freed by their spouses or relatives. One of the most celebrated women freed in this way was Elizabeth Ramsey. Elizabeth Ramsey was sold away from her daughter, Louisa Picquet, in Georgia in 1839 and taken to Texas by her new owner. After a twenty-year separation, the daughter, who had attained her freedom and moved to Ohio, located her mother on a Matagorda plantation. Picquet negotiated for her mother's purchase with the Slavery

29

owner, Colonel A. C. Horton, a former Texas lieutenant governor and one of the state's largest slaveholders. He began by demanding one thousand dollars, but agreed to accept nine hundred after his wife interceded. Picquet finally obtained the purchase price after two years of fundraising in the North. Horton resolutely refused to sell Ramsey's husband and son (Picquet's half-brother). Mother and daughter were finally reunited in Cincinnati in 1860.68 Runaways The only other road to freedom besides emancipation was running away. Many slaves attempted this, especially young men; but children, females traveling alone, and couples also escaped. Advertisements for runaways abounded in the press. A. Ewing offered a reward of twenty dollars for the return of Eliza, "a little negro girl, about 8 or nine years old." Emily, twenty-five years old, ran away from C. W. Buckley, taking only a "dark colored, coarse blanket."69 A few slaves ran off to live with the Native Americans. Sam and Betty, a husband and wife, escaped on horseback from their Robertson County owner in 1860. Most Texas runaways fled to Mexico, where "you could be free." It is estimated that about 10 percent of the approximately four thousand runaways to Mexico by 1855 were women.70 Running away was an agonizing ordeal. Those women most physically fit to flee were also likely to be pregnant or the mothers of young children. Truancy and short-term absences were more common. One mulatto who escaped and registered in a nearby Brenham hotel as a white woman was soon recaptured.71 A slave named Rhodie discovered a successful recipe for keeping the hounds "from following you. . . . take black pepper and put it in your socks and run without your shoes. It made the hounds sneeze."72 Punishments Molly Harrell remembered "the little whip they used on the women." Runaways were commonly hunted down by fierce dogs and beaten with switches, leather whips, or wooden clubs. Many slaves lived on isolated farms far from the eyes of potential witnesses to such abuse.73 Cruel punishment—a major incitement to running away—was also the greatest risk if the runaways were caught. The right of masters to punish slaves was guaranteed by the legal code and the Texas Constitution. Some cities passed ordinances as well. In Austin, for example, any slave caught out after ten at night without a pass "shall receive 10 lashes on the bare back."74 The laws preventing cruel treatment were rarely enforced. Neither blacks nor mulattoes could file complaints or testify against whites. On occasion, authorities were forced to take action against 30

The Antebellum Period

abusive owners. In an unusual case, J. D. Nix of Harris County was convicted of assault and battery for cutting a slave woman with a knife. He was fined twenty-five dollars and given ten days in jail. After Texas became a state, the legislature passed laws permitting owners to punish their slaves, but stipulating fines for cruel treatment or unreasonable abuse. From 1845 to 1860, the Texas Supreme Court ruled on only four such complaints.75 Resistance Historian Randolph Campbell has said that "far more slaves rebelled against bondage than surrendered or acted as if they had given in to it." Slave women resisted the ideology that held them to be mindless workers and sex objects. Some endured on the best terms possible, while trying to preserve dignity and self-respect; others challenged the institution with covert or overt acts of resistance.76 Many women resisted enslavement by running away, working more slowly, feigning illness and pregnancy, secretly learning to read, refusing to be whipped, aborting pregnancies, injuring themselves, committing suicide, and even murdering their owners. Perhaps the most common form of resistance was breaking tools or destroying property. Ferdinand Roemer heard one mistress scold a female slave "for having left articles outside which had been spoiled by the wet, after repeated orders to bring them in." Singer Sewing Machines advertised a three-year warranty on their product, "even in the charge of negroes."77 The number of suicides among slaves is not known. The Houston Telegraph reported in 1855 that "Mrs. Ewing's negro woman" drowned herself. One Texas planter was shocked when his slave woman hanged herself after he locked her in the smokehouse for running away twice. Some historians believe that a significant number of slave mothers killed their children to keep them from slavery.78 Birth control and abortion were other forms of resistance. Mary Gaffney bragged that she "cheated Maser. I never did have any slaves. . . . I kept cotton roots and chewed them all the time but I was careful not to let Maser know or catch me. . . . Yes, after freedom we had five children."79 Being unruly and insubordinate was another common form of resistance. Jacob Burleson's "Aunt Angeline sure would fight anybody that tried to whip her." Louie Mayberry's great-grandmother, Celia Cook, "was the independent type, from Africa." Her owners "could not subjugate her as she never did bow to their will She didn't want to be a slave and she resented it, and they had to force her to do most anything." Mary Armstrong "busted" her mistress's eyeball with a rock, saying, "That's for whippin' my baby sister to death."80 Slavery # 31

A number of slave women, driven to desperation, resorted to murder. Possibly the first woman legally hanged in Texas was Jane Elkins, a Dallas slave, executed on May 27, 1853, for having murdered a Mr. Wisdom. The Sabine County sheriff offered a $200 reward for the return of Nancy and Isabella, a mother and daughter who escaped from his custody after being jailed for the alleged murder of their master. In Fannin County, a mob hanged a "negro woman that killed her mistress with an axe, and her two little ones." In Nacogdoches, "the whole Family of Hyde's got Poisoned this morning by having the seeds of Jameson weed [jimsonweed] thrown into Coffee, supposed to be done by the negro woman Frances." Margaret, the longtime mistress of Solomon Barrow, of Liberty County, murdered him after he made a will emancipating her and bequeathing her five hundred dollars. A week-long hearing resulted in a hung jury, and Barrow's heirs sold her to an unsuspecting buyer. In Marshall, a slave woman poisoned her employer with strychnine, explaining that he had offended her. Lucy Dougherty murdered her Galveston mistress with a hatchet, following an argument. She was jailed on suspicion; when the body was found, she confessed, "Yes, and I would do it again." After expressing a perfect willingness to die, she was executed on March 5, 1858.8' Not all slaves charged with offenses against whites were found guilty. Elizabeth, a Robertson County slave, was beaten until she confessed to having killed the young son of her owner. She was tried and convicted, but she was found not guilty on appeal before the Texas Supreme Court.82 Suppression of White Abolitionists Unlike northern states, where media and public speaking roused antislavery activism, abolitionist sentiment in Texas was a minority view under heavy attack. Most white Texas politicians, newspaper editors, and preachers defended slavery as the natural state of affairs. They argued that only slave labor could profitably produce cotton; slavery was morally correct; slaves were inferior and without a history; and finally, the institution was a blessing because it Christianized and civilized the slaves. Although there was no publicly organized abolition movement in Texas, a number of slaveowners manumitted their slaves, and some paid heavily for their actions. After Joseph and Helena Landa, a Jewish couple from New Braunfels, freed their slaves, he was tried in a kangaroo court, convicted of abolitionism, and forced to flee to Mexico.83 A few white women were vocal opponents of slavery. Melinda Rankin, a Presbyterian missionary, had to relinquish her position as director of the Rio Grande Female Seminary and was forced from Brownsville for harboring Unionist sympathies. Elise Waer32

The Antebellum Period

Melinda Rankin, a white Presbyterian missionary, was fired from her job as director of the Rio Grande Female Seminary in Brownsville for Unionist sympathies.

This slave woman lived in Colorado County ca. 1852. In 1856, a newspaper reported that two hundred Colorado County slaves had organized a revolt.

enskjold, a Norwegian immigrant and community leader in Four Mile Prairie east of Dallas, considered slavery an "abomination" contrary to the will of God: "I believe to the fullest degree that human beings are born with equal rights."84 Slave Revolts In the years before the Civil War, newspapers suppressed reports of insurrections because slaveholders feared that such news might encourage further rebellion. As the presidential election of 1860 approached, Texas newspapers went to the other extreme and ran grossly exaggerated stories. Thus, it is difficult to document the extent of abolitionist activity, slave revolts, or the involvement of slave women. However, the numerous examples of slave women who resisted by individual acts of defiance suggest that women were also involved in planning some of the mass runaways and revolts.85

Slavery # 3 3

The first Texas insurrection occurred in 1835 when approximately one hundred slaves on the Brazos River reportedly plotted to rise up, divide the cotton farms, make the whites work for them, and ship cotton to New Orleans. They were arrested, many whipped, and a few executed. The following year, twenty-five armed slaves "ran away from Bastrop" on horseback. Reports of these incidents did not indicate whether women were involved.86 In the decade before the Civil War, Texas slaves began to run away with greater frequency. In 1850, three slaves armed with a musket and a rifle—John, Rye, and Rachel, a pregnant woman— led an escape from Smith County into Indian territory. Rachel brought along her five young children. In 1856, a well-organized uprising in Colorado County involved over two hundred armed slaves. During the same period, slaves in Lavaca, Dewitt, and Victoria counties plotted to seize arms, kill their masters, and flee to Mexico. On January 4, 1860, three Fannin County slaves on the Oklahoma border—Emma, Jess, and Ruben—were hanged for killing their masters.87 In July and August of 1860, a series of destructive fires across North and Northeast Texas along with reports of arson and murder marked the beginning of "the Texas Troubles." Dr. W. W. Stell's house in Paris was set on fire by one of his female slaves, and a slave woman in nearby Bonham killed a boy. In Austin, an elevenyear-old girl setfireto a residence, seeking revenge for the burning of her father in Missouri.88 Most historians today agree with the conclusions of an observer at the time, Lucadia N. Pease: "the stories offiresand murders are all exaggerated." Many whites, however, were sufficiently frightened by the stories to react violently. Historian Alwyn Barr believes that as many as eighty slaves and thirty-seven whites were executed during this turbulent period.89 Secession and the Civil War Although Texans were still divided over slavery on the eve of the Civil War, they voted for the Ordinance of Secession by a 3 to 1 majority. Even so, Lucille, a sixteen-year-old "passionate Unionist," leaned over the balcony of the state capítol and spat onto the Ordinance of Secession as the lieutenant governor stepped up to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. "There was a little soft laughter from the women sympathizers who saw the action." Governor Sam Houston refused to swear allegiance to the Confederacy and was forced from office.90 Whippings increased, with the most severe lashings reserved for those who spoke favorably about Abraham Lincoln and the Union cause. Maria Thompson remembered many discussions in which "de scared slaves would git together and talk about dere freedom" and "polish up dere huntin' guns."91 34 # The Antebellum Period

The party consisted of three men and a woman, the men were armed with guns. —•Texas State Times (Austin), July 21, 1855

Some slave men accompanied their masters to the battlefronts as body servants and aides. Norflet went with his master. Theophilus Perry of Harrison County. This letter from his wife, Fannie, is one of the few such documents to survive. Dec. 28th, 1862. My dear Husband, I would be mighty glad to see you and I wish you would write back here and let me know how you're getting on. I am doing tolerable well and have enjoyed very good health since you left. I haven't forgot you nor, 1 never will forget you as long as the world stands even If you forget me. My love is just as great as the first night I married you and I hope it will be so with you. My heart and love is pinned to your breast, and I hope yours is to mine. If I never see you again, I hope to meet you in heaven. There is no time night or day but what 1 am studying about you. I haven't had a letter from you in some time. I am very anxious to hear from you. I heard once that you were sick but I heard afterwards that you had got well. I hope your health will be good hereafter. Mistress gave us 3 days Christmas. I wish you could have been here to enjoy it with me. I did not enjoy myself much because you were not there. 1 went up to Miss Ock's to a candy stew last Friday night. I wish you could have been here to have gone with me. I know I would have enjoyed myself so much better. Mother, Father, Grandmama, brothers and sisters say Howdy and they hope you will do well. Be sure to answer this soon, for I am always glad to hear from you. I hope It will not be long before you can come home. Your loving wife, Fannie If you love me like I love you no knife Can cut our love into. —Person Family Papers, N. C. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Slavery

#35

Former slave Mariah Carr recalled that during the Civil War "I spun thread to make clothes for the Confederate soldiers." This photograph originally appeared in the Marshall NewsMessenger, September 29, 1929.

During the Civil War, slave women worked even harder; they assumed more of the men's work and also helped produce clothing for the war effort. In Harrison County, a Mrs. Murrah made "her negroes spin until ten or twelve o'clock at night." Others took out their frustrations on the slaves. Harriet Robinson's mistress "beat us so terrible," saying, "Your master's out fighting and losing blood trying to save you from them Yankees, so you can get yourn here."92 Meanwhile, thousands of slaveholders from the deep South brought their slaves to Texas to escape the advancing federal army, and prices remained high. Only a few months before the end of the war, a Dallas slave woman named Ann was sold for 1,500 pounds of sugar.93 By war's end, the state's slave population had increased from 186,000 to 250,000. Juneteenth: Emancipation Day After the Confederate armies surrendered, General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston on June 19, 1865, and declared that Texas slaves were free. Molly Harrell remembered that "we all walked down the road singing and shouting to beat the band." 94 36 # The Antebellum Period

Tempie Cummins's mother outsmarted their master by hiding in the chimney corner. When she overheard him say that he was going to keep his slaves until "he had made another crop or two," she "cracked her heels together four times," shouted, "I's free," and told the other slaves to quit work. The master chased her and shot at her, "but she ran down the ravine" and escaped with Tempie.95 As of Juneteenth, as June 19 became known, Molly Harrell, Tempie Cummins, and one quarter of a million former slaves in Texas were free. Their lives, which had been somewhat predictable under slavery, were now fraught with uncertainties. The responses of the newly freed women were as varied as their lives had been in bondage. For most, the dream of uniting their families was uppermost.

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* 3 FIRST

FREEDOM

"/ belong to myself now. "

Introduction

Charlie Brown bought 900 acres of land from the Dance family and married one of their former slaves, Isabella Dance. The couple moved into the luxurious Dance home. They eventually owned 3,000 acres of land, a gin, a grist mill, and a syrup mill in West Columbia. In 1920, he left an estate valued at $2 million. A school for which he donated the land is named for him. Matilda Boozie Randon, an exslave and midwife, and her husband, the Reverend Eli Randon, a Washington County preacher, pose with their grandson George. The Randons owned 1,500 acres of land given them by her former owner. They were successful farmers and landlords.

"Mrs. Dellie kain't whoope me no mo're" was Betty Robertson's first response to emancipation. But Juneteenth of 1865 marked only the first step in a long and perilous process. Freedom brought not only rejoicing but also heartbreaking moments as slaves cried "for sold husbands and children." l Absolute equality of rights was simple to declare but difficult to achieve. During the early period of Reconstruction, women's first priority was to reunite their families by locating lost children, husbands, and parents. Their second was to find a source of income. Emancipation meant opportunities for increased geographic and occupational mobility. With sharecropping, freedwomen asserted more control over their work routine. Some managed to buy land, start small businesses, or become teachers. They also helped found schools, churches, and welfare organizations. It was clearly a time of momentous changes.2 Many women thought first of their children. Harriet threw her child into the air, shrieking, "Tamar, you'se free!" Her employer, Austin writer Amelia Barr, observed that "freedom was for her child . . . a new baby to her—a free baby."3 William Moore's "Mammy" was the "head runner"; as soon as she heard the news, she led her family and the other slaves away from the plantation.4 When Rachel Whitfield and the other slaves on her plantation heard the master read the proclamation of freedom, they "stood in shock, fearing to move or to whisper." Rachel and her six children "quietly slipped away" and settled along the San Gabriel River in a

log cabin. With only a few household possessions, the family survived by collecting wild fruit, trapping fowl and possums, and ironing for white people.5 A few freedpeople remained behind in loyalty to ex-masters. "Margaret and Uncle Rance stayed on" with the Butlers in Goliad, "doing just like they'd always done." Ellen Burnham, once a runaway slave, stayed with her adopted owners in Kyle, David and Fannie Young. When David died, Burnham kept the widow and children alive by raising fruits and vegetables, chickens and pigs. The family affectionately nicknamed her "Mockmom." 6 Migration of Freed Slaves Despite the government's advice to "remain at their present homes and work for wages," most former slaves were eager to leave the scenes of their enslavement. Nancy Hardeman's owner told his slaves they would starve to death if they left. Nancy's mother replied, "By God, Masa Rutherford, I'm takin' my chillun and leavin'. If we starve, we'll starve together." The family moved to a nearby community, where Nancy's father supported them by making and selling charcoal. His income enabled his wife to remain at home and care for the children. Harriet Caulfield's owner told his slaves that they could stay if they wanted, "but they would have to mind like they always had and get whippings if they didn't." Harriet and her new husband declined this dubious offer and moved to Waco.7 Uniting severed families became an important motive for migration. Louise Mathews's mother took her children to the plantation where her husband lived. Van Moore was pleased that his "Mamma an' papa live together again." The search for relatives went on for over a decade as freedpeople traveled from state to state, tracked down rumors, and advertised for information. Lucinda Ott, who had been taken illegally from Louisiana to California after the war, returned to Columbus, Texas, in a vain search for her three children. After a two-year search, Mary Armstrong finally tracked her mother down in Wharton. She remembered "cryin' and singin' and cryin' some more." 8 Freedom Delayed, Freedom Denied Many slaveholders tried to keep their slaves ignorant of their freedom, hold them until the crops were harvested, or prevent them from leaving altogether. Lulu Wilson's owner claimed that "growed-up niggers is free, but chillen has to stay with they marsters till they's of age." Lucy Thomas of Harrison County was chained to a loom for more than a year. Katie Darling, finally rescued by her brother after six years, was "happy to get away from that old devil Missy."9

42

Reconstruction and Redemption

Freedwomen's Agricultural Work In March 1865, the U.S. Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. The bureau's responsibilities included furnishing supplies and medical services, supervising labor contracts between freedpeople and their employers, and establishing schools. The first bureau agent arrived in Texas in September. Both the bureau and former owners faced the immediate challenge of keeping ex-slaves, including women, working in the fields to harvest the cotton crop. This policy brought them into immediate conflict with freedpeople. Black women preferred to quit exhaustingfieldworkand be fulltime wives and homemakers. Their husbands, who were eager to support their families, also wanted them to do so. Some freedwomen refused altogether to work outside the home. Cassie Middleton's mother remained at home on the Jasper County farm which she and her husband owned. She "didn' wuk in de fiel's.... now she cook' for de fambly an' spun an' knit."10 The withdrawal of black women from fieldwork antagonized planters, who complained bitterly to the Freedmen's Bureau. The state legislature even enacted laws stipulating that labor contracts "shall embrace the labor of all members of the family able to work." Bureau agents responded that women had the right not to work. However, that right was largely an ideal. With low wages, discrimination, and an uncertain job market, freedmen could rarely support a family alone. Economic necessity drove most black women back to the hoe and the cotton sack or to work as domes-

Freedwomen and their children washed clothes on the McFadden plantation in Circleville. First Freedom # 43

tics, cooks, midwives, and vendors of farm produce. Kate Smith not only "helped to sow cotton by hand," but also "used to help drive de hosses fo' de gins." Even so, women often refused to work on Saturdays and Sundays regardless of contract provisions. They took time off for household chores and gardening, and they further resisted previous work patterns by arriving late in the field. Planters complained when black workers took off to attend school closings and religious camp meetings.11 The pattern of agricultural work shifted radically within a few years. By 1868-1869, sharecropping, a system by which a plantation was divided into small units farmed by individual families, had largely replaced the gang labor system used under slavery. By embracing family-based sharecropping, the freedpeople demonstrated a preference for the work patterns of traditional white rural society. Married couples could exercise some control over their time and energy so that women could be wives and mothers first and cotton pickers second. Women could also escape from the reach of white overseers. Black men, women, and children all worked fewer hours than they had as slaves.12 In truth, the crops still belonged mainly to the landowner under the sharecropping system. For John Mosley's family, the only difference from slavery was that "us negroes could go and come when we wanted to except on work days." In the fall, his master "hauled off all our crop, paid our debts and if they were any left he gave us that, but most of the time . . . when our crop was gathered we would still be in debt."13 By 1880, with whites having regained economic dominance, about half of black Texas women and their families in the cottongrowing counties were sharecroppers locked into a state of peonage. Since most freedpeople had no property, the landowners and/ or local merchants provided housing, seed, tools, animals, fuel, and sometimes food as an advance against the crop. The whole family, including women, children, and extended kin, worked to harvest enough crops to meet their obligations. Landowners and merchants often overcharged and cheated their largely illiterate tenants.14 Only those who were paid up could leave voluntarily for a better situation, although they could be put off the land. Among the early labor abuses, a Tyler employer placed a freed girl under contract without her parents' consent and refused to pay or release her when it expired. In Harrison and Grayson counties, women who had worked for a share of a crop were whipped and forced from the land at the end of the harvest season; a few who refused to leave were murdered. The pattern of landlords dismissing sharecroppers without pay was widespread. A Lamar County white woman, Mrs. L. E. Potts, was so appalled at the sight of starving freedpeople that she petitioned President Andrew Johnson to send troops to assist.15 44

Reconstruction and Redemption

Freedpeople often continued working for white families. Easter (second from right) cooked, cleaned, and cared for the children of W. C. and Fanny Crunk (left), while her husband (far right) picked cotton, tended stock, did odd jobs, and cared for his prized horse and dogs.

Freedmen could sign sharecropper contracts that obligated all family members and had the right to spend any cash received at the end of the year. However, historian Doris Pemberton claims that freedwomen were often the contract negotiators and that "most ex-Slave owners and landowners elected to negotiate contracts for work only with Negro women." Pemberton gives one example of a contract signed between L. A. Stroud and the 'Treed woman Elizabeth," the wife of Merritt Trammell, in Limestone County. Elizabeth agreed to work for five dollars per month, "one half to be paid in money and the other half in cotton cloth."16 Lawrence Rice also writes that "sharecropping arrangements with black women seem not to be unusual." Black female contractors, like the men, were sometimes charged exorbitant expenses. Dolly Lang had to pay her first three 500-pound bales of cotton to Mrs. V. C. Billingsley as rent on forty-eight acres. Another woman was charged one 500-pound bale of cotton as rental for a mule.17 Along with their housework, sharecropper wives spent a lifetime of labor as field hands, gardeners, and animal caretakers, as well as periodic marketers of produce and laundresses. Although they spent much of their lives around cotton, they rarely had a new cotton dress. Women's Wage Labor At first, most workers received only food and clothes as wages; then they started earning money. Lizzie Hughes's mother received one of the better offers when two white men from a lumber mill First Freedom # 45

came to her plantation, handed her a "piece of paper" proving she was free, and offered her twelve dollars a month to cook for the mill hands. More typically, freedwomen earned an average of three dollars a month compared to five for men. One magnanimous Travis County planter paid a freedwoman ten dollars a month plus housing and deducted only two dollars a month for food. When Amelia Barr offered Harriet the chance to work as a free woman for six dollars a month, she replied, "Six dollars too little. . . . I long to myself now. I want eight dollars now. When a nigger free, they worth more."18 For fifty years after slavery, black women had to work outside the home to help support their families in disproportionate numbers compared to white women. Often this was a third job in addition to their duties as homemaker and sharecropper. For example, after working in the field all day, Mrs. Gennie V. Smith of Harrison County "sewed for other folks til midnight." Using the Freedmen's Bureau model, some women negotiated written service contracts like that between Louisa Nash and W. H. Hardin. Hardin agreed to furnish Nash and her child "good quarters and rations,

Rural black families often ended the year with debts to the local merchant. 46

Reconstruction and Redemption

A well-disposed colored girl large enough to nurse crawling baby and tote a few buckets of water per day can hear of a good and permanent home by applying at the Dallas Herald. —Dallas Herald, November 5, 1870

and medicines," and she agreed "to work diligently at all necessary work such as cooking, ironing, and milking and all such work as servants are required to do about a house and yard," She was to receive five dollars per month in money or clothing.19 In the absence of child labor laws, even very young girls could work. The 1880 Dallas census listed black girls as young as seven helping their mothers take in washing, working as servants in private homes, or working as hotel chambermaids. Six girls, one only six years old, were listed as "nurse" (probably nursemaid).20 Mary Dodson of Travis County said, "I had to take in washin' so dat we could live." Many single mothers, widows, and unmarried daughters left the farms to seek their fortunes in the cities. Women migrated in larger numbers than their male relatives; they could usually get jobs in the growing market for domestics, cooks, and laundresses, while the men had a harder time finding work. At the turn of the century, 30.2 percent of all black married women in Dallas worked for wages, compared to 25 percent nationally. In 1880, one black Dallas woman age twenty-nine managed a household of twelve persons: Ellen Fullbright not only took in laundry, but cared for her husband, their five children, four nieces and nephews, and a boarder.21 Domestic Workers The growth of urban areas, especially the large migration of single white men after the Civil War, created a huge demand for domestic and laundry workers. Few white women were willing to hire out for this type of backbreaking work. The labor of black women enabled middle-class white women to shun physical labor and freed them for leisure, culture, and voluntary activities. The 1870 census for Texas listed 10,603 paid domestic workers, most of whom were black. In Dallas, there were 130 domestic servants, of whom 104 were black women. By 1880, the number had increased to 527 Dallas female domestics, again mostly blacks. The demand was so great that an employment agency opened there, specializing in the placement of domestics.22 Some white women preferred to hire white domestics, apparently wishing to avoid all semblance of equality between the races. Amelia Barr of Austin wrote, "The Negroes are becoming insufferable. They demand a bedroom in the house and a seat at the table." She preferred paying a white domestic twenty dollars a month— three times the amount she had offered her newly freed slave Harriet.23 Working as domestics placed black women in a relationship reminiscent of the mistress/slave situation. Just as in slavery, blacks had to neglect their own children while caring for the homes and children of whites. Blacks sometimes retaliated in small ways— arriving late, leaving early, staying away for special events or alFirst Freedom

47

This anonymous woman was a nursemaid to Harry Halff in San Antonio around 1907.

leged illnesses, and "being sassy." They carried off as much food as they could, rationalizing that "toting" was their right in such a lowpaying job. The "service pan" (left-over food given to servants by their mistresses) became a major source of nourishment for many black families.24 Laundresses The 1870 Texas census listed 1,107 laundresses, most of them black. By 1880, the number of laundresses had quadrupled to 4,643, still mainly black; and the numbers were probably undercounted. Historian Janelle Scott found that in 1880 about 70 percent of black wives in Dallas were laundresses.25 Laundry work became an essential service in very high demand. It was hard work and underpaid, but washerwomen could be more independent than domestics. The business required little investment for equipment. Some women worked in employers' homes, but many washed at home, where they could control their own time and combine the job with household duties and child care. More black wives than white did laundry work in their homes, and 48 # Reconstruction and Redemption

more of the black laundresses were mothers. In 1880, about twothirds of black Dallas working wives had children, compared to one-third of white working wives.26 One of the most successful laundresses was Dallasite Hope Thompson. A former slave, she spent her days like others "leaning over a simmering washtub on a hot fire," washing for some of the city's most prominent businessmen. In the early 1870s, when her family wanted to buy a small piece of property at the corner of Live Oak and Elm streets for fifty dollars, she negotiated a loan from Captain W. H. Gaston, a client who was also a banker. He agreed to let her repay the debt by washing his clothes. Thompson's investment paid off handsomely when she sold the land in the 1880s for the then princely sum of $25,000.27 Laundering began to change around 1870, due to competition from Chinese immigrants and the introduction of steam laundries in cities. The Houston Weekly Times of November 19, 1870, editorialized that "Chinese household servants . . . if available in large numbers would force the Negro women back to the field work." In the 1870s, black female laundresses developed solidarity and started demanding better pay. A few incidents made the newspapers. In 1870, the Dallas Herald reported that the local washerwomen were "plotting against the whites" and planned to strike for "six bits a dozen all roun'—little en' big—bachelor's socks five cents extra" (presumably because they were dirtier). The editor suggested that a "few washing-machines would soon squelch this attempt of the ebony to extort" and claimed that "one white woman with one good machine could with ease do more work in a day than half a dozen nigger women."28 A washerwomen's strike seems not to have occurred in Dallas that year.

Black Working Wives, Dallas, 1900 (based on a 10 percent sample of the 1900 census) Number

Percent

Laundress

20

42.6

Servant

12

25.5

Cook

10

21.3

Boardinghouse operator

3

6.4

Schoolteacher

2

€2

47

100.0

Total

Source: Janelle Scott, "Dressmakers, Washwomen and Factory Workers," Table 5.

First Freedom

49

The earliest recorded strike by Texas women took place during the summer of 1877, when about twenty-five black laundresses marched through downtown Galveston demanding $1.50 a day and shutting down steam and Chinese laundries. They cried, "We will starve no longer" and insisted that other laundresses stay away from work. When a Miss Murphy insisted on going to work anyway, the women "rushed in, caught her and carried her into the street." In another case, they tore off the clothes of Alice, thinking that she had "gone back on them." They locked up the laundry of a Mr. Harding and demanded that Chinese owners "close up and leave this city within fifteen days, or they would be driven away."29 Subsequent issues of the newspaper reported no further activity by the women. Professionals and Entrepreneurs Though black women's labor was especially concentrated in the areas of laundry and domestic service in the late nineteenth century, there were many interesting exceptions. Being a teacher, a very important and respected job, was the major professional opportunity available for black women at the time. They began teaching in the Freedmen's Bureau schools soon after the Civil War. When public education began in the 1870s, they taught in segregated public schools. There were private academies as well— Eunice Smothers, for instance, taught in the Dallas Institute, a private school for black children. By 1891, Dallas had eight black female teachers, some married and some single.30 Mary A. Warren of Houston may have been the first black female photographer in the United States. An 1866 Houston directory listed her as a photograph printer with a downtown address. Austin's first female photographer was Emma Jones Hodge. She learned to use a camera at the age of eighteen in 1878. For the next forty years, she traveled in her husband's wagoh, taking wedding pictures and portraits. She lived to be 119!31 Seamstress was another skilled occupation. In the 1890s, Delia Jones and Mary Waters were self-employed Dallas dressmakers, while Bettie White made costumes for Thompson's Theater.32 Some black women followed the traditional professions of midwifery and healing, and others became trained nurses. The Marshall city directory for 1893 listed two black nurses—Sarah Evans and Mary Scott. During this period, concerned blacks around the country began to found small hospitals. In Houston, a trained nurse established the Feagan Hospital to care for black patients at small cost.33 Jane (Mrs. Mose) Johnson Calloway, a widowed former slave with nine children, opened one of Dallas County's largest and most profitable coal businesses. Some black women were early recyclers.

50

Reconstruction and Redemption

Dela (or Delia) Jones, a freedwoman, was a seamstress who lived in the Little Egypt section of Dallas County.

They collected cast-off clothes and cloth from garbage cans and sewers and dried and cleaned them for resale.34 As in most places where there is poverty, Texas had its share of prostitution. Red-light districts populated by women from all ethnic groups flourished in most cities. Prostitutes risked violence, arrest, disease, and an early death—but they earned more than farm workers or domestics. Prostitution was generally segregated, but not always. One Dallas newspaper complained that "white prostitutes were living in negro dens." Celia Miller was said to have kept a nondiscriminatory "disorderly house" in Galveston in 1867, where white and black women lived and worked. Around 1880, 40 percent of Austin's prostitutes were young black single women whose incomes were lower than Anglos' and who were more likely to be jailed in lieu of a fine than white or Hispanic women.35 Frontierswomen Black women were rare on the Texas frontier, but a few found their way west, along with "the buffalo soldiers, the Black cowboys, and the Black scouts." Again, their skills were in demand. Cindy Carter of Mobeetie "did the entire town's laundry." Aunt 'Melia, an experienced nurse and midwife, migrated with the Watkins family to Haskell County.36 Mrs. Dennis Murphy brought her ex-slave Martha to the J-A Ranch in the Panhandle to help with the housekeeping and ranch chores. Their children played together, while the two women worked together. On Sundays, ranch owner Molly Ann Goodnight read stories from the Bible to all the hands, and gifts for Martha's children hung from the Goodnights' Christmas tree.37

Gertrude Ross Rydolph married into a prosperous South Texas ranching family near Victoria. In 1911, she and her husband, Pete, began a ranch near Bloomington, where she worked as secretary, bookkeeper, and horsewoman. First Freedom # 51

Mrs. Ellen Lynch (seated), whose ancestry included Cherokee Indian and white antecedents, was the wife of a Negro soldier stationed at Fort Concho in the late 1870s. She later moved to Fort Gibson in Indian Territory, where her son Cherokee Bill (standing) became a famous outlaw.

The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry regiments composed of black soldiers were stationed at Forts Concho and Davis from 1867 to 1885 to make the area safe for Anglo settlements by eliminating native peoples. Black women accompanied the soldiers as wives, cooks, maids, laundresses, and camp followers. The laundresses were paid by the army. White army officers and their wives often brought black personal servants to the frontier. Elizabeth Custer, the wife of General George Custer, relied on her maid, Eliza Brown, for companionship during their year in Texas.38 Land Ownership Property ownership often became a passion for blacks, who perceived land as the key to economic independence, security, and respectability. Obtaining financing and locating willing sellers were major obstacles, but by hard work and sacrifice many did acquire small parcels. Betty Powers's family pitched in to build a cabin on their new land and worked "like beavers puttin' de crop in." She 52

Reconstruction and Redemption

bragged, "Was we 'uns proud? There 'twas, our place to do as we pleases."39 A few formerly enslaved women became landowners in their own right. Hannah Perryman, a freedwoman, homesteaded, although the Texas Homestead Act granted free land to whites only. As the head of a family, she claimed an eighty-acre homestead in Polk County and had her land surveyed in 1874.40 A small minority of blacks received property from their former owners. John Sneed's mother received two cows, a pair of horses, a wagon, and seventy acres of land near Austin. Hattie Roonie's grandmama was given 125 acres in Goliad by the Butlers, who said, "Here, Hattie, we're giving you this land and it's yours. You don't owe a thing for it, because you've always been so good." Often gifts of land and property reflected blood ties between exowner and ex-slave. After emancipation, Matilda Boozie married the Reverend Eli Randon. Her former owners gave the couple 1,500 acres of land in Washington County "on account of this illegitimate baby" that "young mawster" had fathered on Matilda as a teenager.41 Female property owners became part of a small but elite stratum in black society, an emerging middle class which included artisans, shopkeepers, teachers and school principals, government officials, ministers, and their families. Wives and daughters of this group could acquire their status from their husbands or fathers. Family The African-American family emerged from slavery already established as a significant institution but under stress from a number of sources. To be free meant to restructure the details of one's most intimate life in a period of upheaval. Freedwomen took great pride in their roles as wives and mothers as they also found independent roles for themselves. For them, freedom had its most precious meaning in a family context. They placed the welfare of their children and the security of their family above all other considerations.42 Legalizing and Sundering Marriages After emancipation, there was a massive rush by thousands of couples to sanctify their unions. Jesse McElroy was proud that he and his second wife, Mariah, had the first marriage license "that was issued to colored people in Henderson, Texas."43 The U.S. Congress legalized slave marriages in March 1865; a year later, the Texas Freedmen's Bureau recognized as married any black couples who had previously lived together. Unfortunately, they remained in legal limbo because many county clerks still refused to issue marriage licenses to them. The Rusk County clerk denied licenses because he "did not wish to set the example." The First Freedom

53

refusal to recognize these marriages was in hypocritical contrast to slanderous attacks on alleged black immorality. Finally, in 1869, the state Constitution legitimized the unions of those who had previously lived together under bondage and declared that their children should now be deemed legitimate.44 Not all marriages survived. Many former slave unions broke up because they had been forced in the first place or were unhappy. There were also numerous complications stemming from multiple spouses acquired during bondage. Which union should take precedence? Emancipation served as a convenient time for some couples to separate or get a divorce. After freedom, C. B. McRay's father left to become a sailor in New Orleans, while his mother "kep' all de chillen an' mek a good libin' for dem on de farm." She eventually remarried. Louise Mathews separated a year after her marriage because her husband "was lazy an' no 'count" and a "Buck Passer. Ise did washin' and ironin', and he passes de bucks Ise made away." The next year, she married an industrious man, Bill Mathews, who took good care of his family.45 Mary Hall used emancipation to sever a bad marriage and change husbands, "believing that it only came within the limits of what is meant by freedom." After she married Cleyborne Dyer in 1865, her first husband, James Hall, filed suit charging her with adultery and Dyer with stealing her affections. The Galveston judge dismissed the case.46 Black women sought divorces more often than men, particularly in the early years of freedom. Barry A. Crouch reviewed all the Texas ex-slave narratives and concluded that freedpeople had a very difficult time in reconstituting families because of long separations. He estimated that about 40 percent of marriages ended in separation or divorce; black women simply would not tolerate some of the patterns emanating from slavery, such as abusive behavior or "running around." 47 Poverty, urbanization, and restrictions on the earning power of black males placed major stresses on the family. Domestic conflict, alcoholism, and violence were rooted in part in cramped living quarters and unexpected economic setbacks.48 Young children were frequently left unattended in rural cabins because all members of the family had to work in the fields. In 1877, the Marshall Tri-Weekly Herald reported that fourteen cabins in the area had burned in one year and claimed the lives of twenty black children who had been locked in while their parents picked cotton.49 Family Composition and Stability Using census figures to study the stability of black Texas families, James Smallwood concluded that their family structure mirrored trends in white society. By 1870, the black family had achieved 54

Reconstruction and Redemption

This frontier family lived in Brewster County. A few blacks accompanied white families to new homes in West Texas.

a remarkable degree of stability. For example, in rural Fayette County, males headed 89.67 percent of the black families, as compared to 95.9 percent of the Anglo households. Similar statistics held true for urban Galveston. In three sample counties that Smallwood selected for comparison—Matagorda, Smith, and Grayson— census figures dispel the myth that females headed considerably more black than white families. Those percentages again were only slightly higher in the black community than in the white community—16.87 percent in comparison with 15.80 percent femaleheaded households. Surprisingly, the average number of children per couple was slightly lower for blacks than for whites.50 However, some families were still quite large; children were an asset in sharecropper families. Jim and Lou Mayberry of Lincolnville had nineteen. Their grandson remembered, "Everytime you looked up Grandma had a baby."51 Barry A. Crouch has said that "the struggle for family stability was a transitional process that emerged through the interaction of the Freedmen's Bureau, the legal system, and, most important, the responses of black men and women." By 1870, the Texas black family was a two-parent family, statistically comparable to the white family. The 1880 federal census revealed that former slaves had retained powerful familial connections. The typical southern black household was headed by a male who was a farm laborer, a tenant farmer, a sharecropper, an urban service worker, or a day First Freedom # 55

worker. Most southern black women headed neither households nor subfamilies but lived in extended households, including two parents, their children, and often other relatives. This extended family was a useful adaptation for group survival which extended beyond Reconstruction.52 One of the best examples of a stable extended family was that of the Carters in Harrison County. Susan ("Grandma Sue") and Major Carter built a multigenerational family on their prosperous farm. After marrying, their five children were given land on which they built homes. All the Carter grandchildren grew to maturity on the property. The grandparents' farm was the centerpiece, with its large fruit orchard, a deep well, a green pasture, a large vegetable garden, acres of cotton and corn, and a family graveyard." The position of the black male was strengthened by the labor contract laws which required his signature on sharecropper contracts. Landowners, merchants, and Freedmen's Bureau agents acknowledged the black husband as head of the household. Husbands usually purchased the family's provisions and received payment for children hired out. Until the end of Reconstruction, black Texas men also had legal rights denied to all women—they could vote, serve on juries, hold public office, and join the state militia.54

Many former slaves settled in kinship clusters like this family. Several generations often shared the same home.

56

Reconstruction and Redemption

Jacqueline Jones believes that black working women had a more equal relationship with their husbands than white women. Although black men headed the vast majority of rural families, wives who worked derived some power from their economic contribution.55 Patterns of familial life which had developed during slavery persisted. Census figures of 1880 and 1900 disclose that prenuptial intercourse, bridal pregnancy, and the birth of a child prior to marriage were as frequent among blacks after slavery as before. Many former slaves did not consider it wrong to have a child before marriage, but were critical of infidelity after marriage.56 Complaints to the Freedmeris Bureau Black women flooded the Freedmen's Bureau with marital problems—beatings, infidelity, lack of child support, and breaches of promise. Conscientious bureau agents tried to mediate these disputes as best as they could. The bureau ordered men to support their children and made males responsible for breach of promise and support of children born out of wedlock.57 Battered wives also sought relief from bureau agents. When Sally King of Richmond requested a divorce because of cruel treatment, the agent ordered that the crop be equally divided between the two since both had "made it." Wade Hampton of Liberty County settled a quarrel with his wife by shooting her. Milly Leonard complained that her husband whipped her and "treated her badly." After counseling with a bureau agent, Joe agreed not "to use violence against her," and she promised to "behave better."58 Men sometimes complained of being abused. David Fry of Gonzales accused his wife, Louisa, of beating him, refusing to sleep in the same bed with him, and denying him all "matrimonial connections." She contended he was a "good for nothing negroe" whom she had never loved; besides, she preferred white men. According to the 1870 census, they continued to live together and had two children.59 Adultery was also a major grievance. Lottie Packer complained that her husband had taken up with her sister. He was ordered to give up the sister and "treat his wife better." One agent in Cotton Gin reported a decline in adultery after he fined one man $196.50. In Columbia, the bureau assessed fines of five hundred to one thousand dollars against white men and black women for cohabiting.60 In a number of cases, women brought suits against men for child support. After Celia Horn sued Reese Horn for child support, he was ordered to pay twelve dollars down and two dollars a month for two years. Mary Ann Smith complained that Armstead Clark had lived with her as a husband, gotten her pregnant, and then tried to leave. The bureau ordered Clark to support her "if she conFirst Freedom

57

ducts herself [properly] and helps with mutual support." He promised to take her to Houston within a month and marry her and apparently did so.61 Henry Goaldsby was found guilty of breach of promise to marry Amanda Moore and fined one hundred fifty dollars. After Ann Marshall of Galveston lived with a man named Simmons as his wife and gave him her savings of almost four hundred dollars, he refused to marry her. He was heavily fined for using the prospect of marriage to defraud her.62 Wives complained of desertions as husbands "ran off" to marry other women. The bureau forced George Washington Holmes to support Louisa Whiting and their children, whom he had deserted. Emily Fowler and Dan had been together during slavery for fifteen years, and she had given birth to his children. After the war, he deserted her to marry a girl the "same age as [their] eldest daughter." His second marriage was declared bigamous.63 Black women filed complaints against white men as well. Emma Hartsfield claimed that a white man, Lacy McKenzie, had "induced her to live with him by a promise . . . [of] a house and a lot." They had lived together for a year in Austin. When she became pregnant, he "proposed to have her procure an abortion & because she would not do it, is about to sell the house and go away." After the local agent attached his land, McKenzie "executed a deed to her of Lot No. 8 in Austin with two houses."64 Building Communities and Churches The next institution after the family to receive the attention of black women was the community. Over one hundred all-black communities founded in Texas after the Civil War have been identified. In addition, black neighborhoods or "freedmen's towns" sprang up in the cities. Women put tremendous effort into the life of these new communities—organizing churches, Sunday Schools, schools, and public and private events. The church, along with the family, was the center of a great deal of the post-Civil War black community's social life, as well as its moral underpinnings. At church, friends saw neighbors, sang and prayed together, and worked on common projects. Indeed, in the immediate postwar years, the line between church and lay activities was extremely blurred. Churches were closely linked to schools and later took on a political flavor as well. Women were among the more numerous and energetic members; without their active support, the black churches would have had difficulty surviving.65 As churches matured, women assumed a larger share of the leadership. In one of J. Mason Brewer's folktales, "Sistuh Milly Hicks" was known as "the bestes' Christian in de whole Bottoms. She had dat talent to work in de church. She been doin' Gawd's work for many a yeah." A fundraiser par excellence, Milly Hicks organized 58

Reconstruction and Redemption

The congregation of the Mount Zion First Baptist Church in San Antonio, on Santos Street, is shown here in 1879.

Women played a major role in the founding of many churches and were often in the majority of members. Charter members of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Austin included, left to right, standing: Mrs. Martha Carrington, Mrs. M. M. Buckner, the Reverend L. L. Campbell, Mrs. Eliza Hawkins, and Mrs. Isabella Johnson. Seated: Mrs. Betsy Johnson, Mr. Bob Burditt, and Mrs. Betsy Madison.

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Chloe Stevens (1794-1901) nursed her master, Philip Dever, at the Battle of San Jacinto. In the mid-1800s, she was the only black member of the Oak Island Methodist Church in San Antonio, where she looked after six motherless children.

the other church women to sell barbecued hens to whites in Calvert. Under her leadership the "sistuhs" raised the first one hundred dollars for the church in Wild Hoss Slew, which they called "Hicks Chapel" in her honor.66 The fictional folk heroine Sister Milly exemplifies a legion of women whose concern for their families and their futures led them to the doors of the church. After the Civil War, the churches were the first social bases of operation for women. If no church existed, they helped to start one. They supported the churches by giving and raising funds, teaching Sunday School, forming missionary societies, and becoming missionaries. Mariah Robinson came to Waco as a slave in 1857. After emancipation, she and her husband bought a small farm near Meridian, where they organized the Colored Cumberland Presbyterian Church.67 60

Reconstruction and Redemption

There are instances of African-American women remaining dedicated to the white churches to which they previously belonged. As a slave, Hannah Carr was brought up in her mistress's Methodist Church in Matagorda. While her health allowed, Hannah Carr "kept the interior of the church in perfect order and was a familiar figure at services." At her death in 1917, she willed her house to the church.68 The Baptist denomination claimed the largest number of churchgoers. This may be partly because that church had little central control, particularly white control, over individual churches. Blacks also enjoyed its evangelical style. By 1880, 509 Baptist churches in Texas had about 50,000 members. During the next decade, membership doubled. Second to the Baptists in attracting congregants were the Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) and African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches. There were about 23,000 black Texas Methodists by 1890. Presbyterian and Episcopal churches appeared in fewer communities.69 Preachers and deacons in the new churches were universally men, frequently former slaves. Most members of the congregation, however, were female in many cases. Six of the seven charter members of New Hope Baptist Church of Dallas were women. Eleven women and two men met in 1867 to form Austin's First Baptist Church. Among early members of the African Congregational Church in Paris, founded in 1868, were 52 men and 122 women.70 It was often difficult for the fledgling churches to provide a house of worship, and they worked out a variety of novel arrangements. The Third Baptist Church of Austin was organized in the home of Mrs. Eliza Hawkins in 1875. Dallas's New Hope Baptist Church held its 1873 prayer meetings in Sister Mattie Rainey's log cabin at the corner of what is now Fairmount and Munger streets. Matilda Lewis helped organize Georgetown's Macedonia Baptist Church in her backyard in 1881.71 Individuals, including many women, gave financially or more commonly donated land for church construction. Former slave Aunt Delilah Harris gave land for the Smith Chapel African Methodist Church in Bethlehem. St. Paul's United Methodist Church at Double Bayou received its site from Martha Godfrey in 1877, and Emily Brown donated land for the St. Emily United Methodist Church in Chambers County. In 1868, Mrs. Annie Blackley gave a large sum and a church bell to the First Colored Baptist Church (renamed the Palestine Missionary Baptist Church) in Victoria.72 Although they did not serve as ministers, elders, or deacons in the early churches, women provided a different kind of leadership. They organized fundraising events and social activities, cooked for the church suppers, and put on the fairs. They planned the Juneteenth celebrations and cheered at the baseball games, and they First Freedom # 61

made sure there was a good crowd on hand for both. For some rural Texans, going to church was the only form of recreation available. In the spring of 1889, Laura W. Ward went to the Baptist Church on Sunday morning and the Methodist Episcopal Church in the afternoon.73 Women assumed leadership duties in the Sunday Schools which were formed in the early years of many churches. Josie Briggs Hall recalled that at age ten, in about 1879, she went "to different houses" in Waxahachie to "get old people to attend Sunday School."74 Older women, better versed in the Bible, taught many of the classes, often using Bibles supplied by the American Missionary Society. Social Welfare

As churches grew in size and developed into more complex institutions, women carved out new roles that extended their influence into the broader community. After the departure of the Freedmen's Bureau and a decline in northern philanthropy, black women continued organizing to address community needs, such as homes for the aged, orphanages, feeding the hungry, and nursing the sick. Sometimes they did this work as individuals, sometimes through their churches. In the 1880s and 1890s, church women founded benevolent aid societies to nurse the sick and care for orphans and the elderly. In Gilmer (Upshur County), Mrs. W. L. Dickson was matron of an orphanage for black children, headed by her minister husband in 1889. Missionary societies, composed primarily of women, were common. The women visited elderly or home-bound church members to offer prayers, religious instruction, food, and clothing and collected funds for the needy at home and abroad. Mrs. Lillian Viola Sutton was an early missionary for San Antonio's Second Baptist Church in the 1890s. In Harrison County, Mrs. Mary Hankins Jones served as president of the Women's Home Mission Society for nineteen years, beginning in 1891. About 1885, two white woman missionaries came to Houston's Antioch Baptist Church to organize the Antioch Missionary Society. Black women soon assumed leadership of the society—Sister Kizzie Miller was its first president, and the pastor's daughter, Sister Marie Sharkie, served as its first secretary. Austin freedpeople taxed themselves to establish a fund for the needy and the orphaned. Most orphans were simply taken in by kin, like Hal Mason and his sister Frances, who were "farmed out to first one kinfolk and then the other." Black Houston women formed several benevolent associations, including the Orphan Society. Galveston blacks obtained a state charter around 1880 for a Widows' and Orphans' Home, but lack of funds prevented its creation. African-Americans lobbied unsuccessfully for a state-supported orphans' home.75 62

Reconstruction and Redemption

Summary Emancipation proved to be a long-term process. In economic terms, freedwomen emerged from under the near-total control of former owners and began trying to provide for themselves and each other. Most started out with nothing but a bundle they could carry on their backs. They developed new ways of working and new economic opportunities. Some bought land and were successful farmers. Most were sharecroppers who usually ended the year in debt. A few became professionals, primarily teachers. Others earned money as midwives, sellers of farm produce, domestics, and seamstresses. But jobs and land formed only one part of the picture. Freedwomen also had to reconstruct divided families or form new ones, educate themselves for wider opportunities, and build new community institutions to support their spiritual and social lives. Drawing on inner sources of strength and community spirit, they utilized the same resourcefulness and determination which had enabled them to withstand slavery. Women were coequal with men in the liberation process; their skills, courage, and hard work provided the essential margin for survival. Historians John Hope Franklin and Jacqueline Jones agree that the greatest failure of Reconstruction was economic. The failure of the federal government to institute a comprehensive land distribution program, combined with widespread refusal to sell property to former slaves, ensured their continued dependency on white elites. Years of protracted struggle lay ahead.76

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#4 RESISTANCE "Colored woman sues for damages."

Introduction Seventy-three years before Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, a black Texas woman took similar action. In 1882, Mrs. Walter Burton, the wife of a state senator from Fort Bend County, would not vacate the "white ladies' " railroad coach. She was thrown head first from a slowly moving train.1 Mrs. Burton joined other black women in rejecting second-class citizenship. Although emancipation and Reconstruction brought hopes of new freedom to black Texans, their political rights went through dramatic shifts in the next three decades. Black women mobilized to defend themselves, their families, and their communities. They became informed about the issues of the day, attended political rallies, influenced their male relatives and friends to vote, and even organized Republican Loyal League clubs. They used the offices of the Freedmen's Bureau, challenged segregation through civil disobedience and lawsuits, and formed women's auxiliaries of the Farmers Alliance and chapters of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.2 Women's Political Clubs Lucy Gonzales Parsons from Waco was a leader of the Chicago working-class movement, a writer, an editor, an orator, and a founder of the Industrial Workers of the World.

The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1870, was a step forward for black men and a step backward for women. It said, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged . . . on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Because the amendment did not extend the franchise to women, many abolitionists, including Sojourner

Truth, opposed its passage, as did many suffragists like Susan B. Anthony. It would take fifty more years for women's right to vote to be included in the Constitution. After freedom, black women and men throughout the South began to organize. They gathered in churches, in schoolhouses, and in town meetings to express their concerns and act upon their grievances. In Millican, for example, in July 1867, most of the work of the Union League "was done among Negro women," who turned to politics "after being urged not to do menial work for whites." In August 1868, Houston black women formed two clubs: a Grant and Colfax Club and a Thaddeus Stevens Republican Club. Black women apparently attended political meetings in considerable numbers. In June 1869, the Houston press reported that "80 negro women and 150 negro men were present" at a meeting of Radical Republicans.3 Black women could not vote, but they ardently encouraged their men to exercise that right. The legendary Aunt Dicy of Lee County, immortalized by the folklorist J. Mason Brewer, "made Uncle June pay his poll tax and go to the polls and cast his vote." 4 Black Politicians and Women's Interests During Reconstruction, a number of black Texas men were elected delegates to state constitutional conventions and served in state and local governments. Between 1869 and 1901, two blacks served in the U.S. Senate and twenty in the House of Representatives, but none from Texas. Texas had large congressional districts geographically, but no district with a black population close enough to a majority to elect a congressman.5 Fifteen black men helped draft two Reconstruction constitutions for the state of Texas. These delegates proposed and helped pass important articles of the Constitution of 1869. One article extended the right to hold office to all men regardless of race, color, or creed, but not to women. To their credit, six of the ten black delegates supported a resolution introduced by a white man, T. H. Mundine, granting the vote to women. Unfortunately, the suffrage article which was finally adopted classified women with idiots, imbeciles, the insane, and felons—categories also denied the vote. Black delegates initiated other articles of importance to women. For example, James McWashington proposed an article to protect the real and personal property of a married woman as separate property. It also protected that property from being liable for any of her husband's debts. The resolution became Article XII, Section 14, of the 1869 Constitution.6 Between 1870 and 1899, forty-two black men served in the Texas legislature. Following in the footsteps of their predecessors in the constitutional conventions, they continued to address the needs of women and blacks. The two black state senators, George Ruby 66

Reconstruction and Redemption

Norris Wright Cuney, the son of a former white plantation owner and a slave woman, became a leader of the Republican Party. He was sergeant-at-arms of the Texas House of Representatives, served on the Galveston School Board, and was appointed customs collector in 1884, then the highest federal post in the state. He owned a prosperous stevedoring firm employing dozens of blacks.

The marriage license of Stephen Curtis and Adaline Curtis recognized the "rites of matrimony" celebrated in Brazos County on June 19, 1867. He was the oldest black member of the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1868-1869 and a respected founder of the Texas Republican Party.

from Galveston and the Reverend Matt Gaines from Washington County, played leading roles in the passage of bills creating a free public school system, tax exemptions for educational and religious organizations, and the prohibition of liquor stores within six miles of a college. In 1879, Thomas Beck offered an amendment to a bill specifying that half of all state workers hired for extra clerical work "may be females." In 1895, Nathan Haller proposed adding the words "colored and white" to a Senate act "to establish an industrial home for fallen women and young women in danger of falling."7 Senator Matthew Gaines from Washington County was the legislature's most vigilant guardian of black rights. A forceful advocate of a free public integrated school system, he reasoned that "if a white man has a right to crawl into a colored woman's cabin at night and have children by her, that child has a right to sit beside [a white sister or brother]." 8 The wives and daughters of the black legislators and local elected officials became part of a small but growing middle-class elite. Unfortunately, little is known about these women; more research is needed.9 W. H. Holland, elected state representative from Wharton County in 1875, married Miss Ε. Η. James, an Austin public school teacher. He sponsored a bill creating Prairie View State College and co-sponsored a bill creating the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Institute Resistance

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Following emancipation, Hal and Jane Mason, formerly slaves near Hornsby's Bend, moved to Austin. They are pictured here around 1885 when he was assistant jailer at the Travis County jail Hal's son Sam recalled that during slavery, "Pappy used to swim that river... 'cause he loved a girl over there, by the name of Jane." Quotation from George P. Rawick,ed.,The American Slave, Suppl., ser. 2, VII, p. 2599.

for Colored Youth in Austin. In the 1880s, he served as the institute's first superintendent in Austin, where the couple lived. Ralph Long was an able Republican leader and legislator from Limestone County. His wife, Kate, may have been a teacher; there is a Kate Long High School in Springfield in that county. The couple dedicated ten acres of land for a church and parsonage for blacks.10 By 1873, white Democrats had regained control of state government. Despite the loyalty of its black constituency, the Republican Party became increasingly dominated by its Lily White faction, which gained control by 1906. Other white Republicans joined the Democrats.11 Conventions of "Colored" Men Although there are no recorded conventions of black women during Reconstruction, several such meetings of black men highlighted 68

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issues of importance to their women. In 1883, a Texas State Convention of Negroes addressed social and legal inequality, penalties for intermarriage between the races, unequal public schools, the treatment of convicts, and equal accommodations. The convention protested a state "miscegenation" law which forbade all interracial sexual relations, pointing out that the authorities generally enforced it only with regard to marriage. The law winked at white men who frequented black prostitutes or kept black mistresses, but prevented interracial couples from marrying and by so doing victimized "colored females."12 Intimidation and Violence The years immediately after the Civil War were the most violent in Texas history. Violence against black women and men permeated the work place, political activities, and family life. Schools and churches were particular targets. Blacks were assaulted and murdered for leaving plantations, challenging contract settlements, resisting long work hours, trying to buy land, and voting. They were beaten for being too sick to work, working too slowly, speaking disrespectfully, or disobeying a command. Even children were whipped,flogged,and castrated.13 Former slave Louise Mathews said that the Ku Klux Klan was so Women as well as men attended bad in Shelby County that the "men folks" was "'fraid to sleep in early political gatherings in de house."14 When Hannah Mullins's family rode the train through Texas and throughout the Bowie, they had to "lean way back in de chair wid de blinds pulled South. In Houston, they had down or de Bowie folks shoots de cullud folks."15 their own Republican clubs in

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Violence was so widespread that the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1868 appointed a special committee to collect evidence. The "frightful story of blood" for the previous three-year period revealed 939 homicides. Of that total, whites murdered 373 blacks, primarily black males ages fifteen to forty-nine. Historian Barry A. Crouch has estimated that about 1 percent of the total black male population in that age group was murdered. The Texas Freedmen's Bureau also compiled a violence register so massive that it filled three volumes. Because many incidents went unreported, the documents are incomplete, but startling nonetheless.16 Freedwomen defended themselves in a number of ways. One woman in Village Creek, angered at repeated raids by the Ku Klux Klan, drove away a band of vigilantes by throwing hot embers from her fireplace on them. Many filed grievances with the Freedmen's Bureau. After Josephine Wesley of Millican was forced to sign a contract by her employer, he cut her ribs with a leather strap and then tried to kill her with a knife. He threatened to shoot her if she ran away. Displaying great courage, she escaped to the nearest bureau agent for protection. William H. Horton, the bureau agent in Dallas, found that Rachel was "knocked down & whipt" because her employer was displeased with the bread she had made. A freedwoman, Ann Doomis, testified in court that she witnessed the rape of another freedwoman by John Crumb, a white man. He was acquitted after his attorney implored the jury "not to take the testimony of a negro, one of a race proverbial for dishonesty and lies."17 From 1865 to 1868, 183 major crimes against black women by whites were reported. A number of white men were imprisoned for whipping, shooting, and burning freedwomen, including perpetrators of fifteen murders and seventy-six assault and battery cases. James Wise of Houston was charged with "whipping and gouging eye of Emily Graves"; "no action" was taken against John Fogarty of Limestone County, who was accused of "cutting off the ears and burning arms to a crisp of Minerva[, a] Maid." A Mr. Jones was accused of "assault with intent to rape Jenny Goodfellow whom he had met coming from a wedding. Assault not successful."18 The Criminal Justice System From 1875 to 1900, blacks constituted only one-quarter of the state's population, but one-half of its penitentiary inmates. The criminal justice system, in the hands of whites, was used to control and harass freedpeople. Although black men served on juries in some counties until 1884, they found it difficult to initiate indictments of white violence. Blacks not only received long prison terms for minor offenses such as petty theft, but were hired out for cheap wages under the convict labor system. In Robertson County, men were hired out for six dollars a month, women for two. Prisons made no provision for black female offenders. In 1883, the Texas 70

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Emma was born in slavery and buried in freedom in the Freedman's Cemetery just north of downtown Dallas at Lemmon Avenue and Central Expressway. A freedpeople's town of about three hundred grew up around the old cemetery.

State Convention of Negroes condemned the "practice of yoking or chaining male and female convicts together." On different occasions, a black man and a black woman were both convicted of bigamy. He was sentenced to fifteen minutes; she was sentenced to two years.19 Resistance Black women resisted segregation and racism in a number of ways, including complaints to the Freedmen's Bureau.20 They sought relief when employers failed to pay them or their children their due wages. Kizzie and her sister Miranda King, who worked on a plantation near Houston, won a court suit for unpaid wages of twentyfive dollars. Julia Heard hauled a white man into court demanding four dollars for work performed by her son. A Houston woman named Margaret brought charges against the vice-consul of Russia for attempting to defraud her of her "just wages." The bureau advised him not to "violate with impunity the laws of the United States."21 White heirs continued trying to cheat black women out of their inheritances. Phyllis Oldham had cohabited with her owner, Major William Oldham, on his farm in Burleson County both before and after the war, and they had several children. After his death in 1868, his white relatives laid claim to the property. Phyllis petitioned for and won homestead rights to the house and farm.22 One of the more successful bureau interventions took place in the case of Mary Hall, who received a bequest of two hundred acres from Isham N. Smith of Marshall, the father of her daughter. Heirs from his white family convinced the sheriff to attempt to evict the Halls. The sheriff was arrested and forced to obey the order of the Freedmen's Bureau to grant the bequest.23 In many cases, employers beat women for trying to protect their children. When Lucy Grimes refused to whip her small child for playing with a small sum of money her employer had left around the house, two white men stripped and beat Lucy to death in a wooded area near Marshall. They were not punished.24 Court Cases

Soon after emancipation, black and white Texans were segregated in churches, theaters, and hotels. Black women could sit on streetcars or railroad trains with white children or if they were accompanying white employers, but not when they traveled alone or with their own families. Black women began pressing harder for equal accommodations after the passage of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1875. Mary Miller, Milly Anderson, and Isabella Mabson made history when they filed suit in federal district court. After Mary (Mrs. Henry) Miller was forcibly ejected from her seat in the parquet "white ladies' circle" of the Treemont Opera Resistance

71

William Ν. Sinclair, an inspector for the Freedmen's Bureau, interviewed the fourteen freedwomcn incarcerated in the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville in Walker County in February 1867 and found most had been convicted of stealing. Twelve were serving sentences of two years; Polly Jennings, three years for stealing $80; and Carnie Petty, five years for stealing three dresses. Believing that in most cases the women were innocent, he appealed to the governor for executive clemency. Name and county

Accusation, Sentence, Remarks

1

Jane Grisham, Brazos

Stealing $10.00. Has small babe.

2

Carnie Petty, Smith

Stealing 3 dresses. Has babe. Accuser took her dresses

No.

and then Carnie took accusers. 3

Rose Moore, Upshur

Stealing hog. Husband stole hog—Rose knew nothing of it—meat was found in her house and she made party—her husband is in prison.

4

Georgia Swanson, Harrison

Stealing night gown. Took its wash but did not return it—This girl is probably white but was a slave.

5

Elvira Mays, Harrison

Helping prisoner to escape. Gave her husband a pick axe to get out of jail.

6

Elex Milstead, Goliad

Stealing 2 dresses and a ring.

7

Polly Ann Jennings, Harris

Stealing $80.00. Mistress owed her and would not pay her.

8

Judy Hammer, Coryall

Burglary. White woman Jane Haynes persuaded her to break into store and accompanied her. White not arrested.

9

Fanny Tilsen, McLennan

Stealing $1.00. Found it upon table of lady for whom she was working.

10

Carolyn Williams, Cherokee

Stealing. Moving Appl. Val. $10. Taken from mistress.

11

Amanda Hawkins, Fayette

Stealing $2.50. Taken from freewoman.

12

Caroline Johnson, Galveston

Stealing one petticoat. Taken from Mistress.

13

Mary Chamlin, DeWitt

Stealing Shirt pr of stockings and 7 yards of domestic.

14

Mary Burns, Gonzales

Stealing box containing 30.00 was taken from em-

Admits it. ployer—She accused of it—denied it. She and her daughter both hung up by neck (2nd conviction?) daughter admitted it—convicted on daughter's evidence—denied it. Source: Reel 32, Letter of William Sinclair to J. T. Kirkman, February 26, 1867, Record Group 105, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, Texas, National Archives.

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Charity (left) and Willis Bohman of Schulenburg.

House in Galveston, she sued for damages in federal court. The court ruled that the owner, Henry Greenwall, was guilty of depriving her of her civil rights and fined him $500. The judge said that he wished it could be but one cent and later dismissed the fine altogether. An outraged black Galveston community held a mass meeting to denounce the judge's actions. The audience included a "large number of women, who were doubtless drawn out from sympathy with one of their race."25 One of the most galling indignities for black women was the railroads' policy of reserving first-class cars and the new Pullman sleeping cars for whites, while blacks were shunted into dirty and crowded smoking cars. In 1886, for example, a Galveston woman, Mrs. Morris, was forced into a second-class coach while holding a first-class ticket.26 Milly Anderson won a suit in U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas, on April 26, 1875, against the Houston and Texas Central Railroad for denying her admission to a railroad car. The Resistance # 7 3

judge ruled that a railway employee who denies a female passenger a right to ride in the only car for ladies alone, solely because she is a person of African descent, is guilty under the Civil Rights Law of March 1,1875, and that a female passenger who had a firstclass ticket could not be denied access to the ladies' car solely because she was of African descent. However, in a foreshadowing of Plessy v. Ferguson, he ruled that "if there are 2 equally fit cars for the use of white females and colored females, then there is no offense." According to historian Lawrence Rice, this case "affirmed the legal right of a Negro woman to sit in the only car designated for the use of ladies."27 In 1883, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional. Texas and the other southern states began passing a series of restrictive Jim Crow state laws and local ordinances. In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court gave judicial approval to segregated public accommodations in Plessy v. Ferguson; "separate but equal" became legalized segregation.28 In 1898, a Galveston woman, Isabella E. Mabson, "a femme sole," filed a suit in federal court against the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railway company following her ejection from their palace (Pullman) car. The disposition of her case is not known, but the story was featured in the Galveston News of November 19, 1898, with the headline, "EJECTED FROM A PALACE CAR / COLORED WOMAN WHO BOUGHT A TICKET IN KANSAS CITY SUES FOR DAMAGES." Mabson claimed that on August 25, 1898, she bought 74

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Mrs. Annie A. Green and her husband, the Reverend C. R. Green, an AME minister, left Grayson County as part of the Exoduster movement and settled in Baxter Springs, Kansas, She supported herself by teaching needlework and hair braiding.

The Dickson Colored Orphanage in Gilmer was incorporated in 1900 and dedicated in 1901. Mrs. W. L. Dickson was the matron. The school cared for hundreds of children, including many girls who "are occupying prominent parts in life and are making an honest living." It urged members of the Women's Missionary Society to donate "meat, meal, soap," and clothing for the youth, who "must be educated back to the farms," which, it claimed, "were lying idle."

two first-class tickets for herself and her three small children from Kansas City to Galveston, as well as engaging passage from the Wagner company "in one of their palace cars, paying $11 for the berths." When she reached Denison (on the Texas-Oklahoma border), she and her children were ejected from the palace car because they "were negroes." They were then "offered seats in a dirty, common coach provided for negroes, and which was filled with filth of person and language." Since Mabson "was sick and in need of the comforts of the palace car," "she left the train and purchased tickets for the Houston and Texas Central railway. She claims that she was ejected from the palace car in the presence of the passengers who had ridden in that car with her all the way from Kansas City and that she was greatly humiliated." The disposition of her case is not known. Civil Disobedience Civil disobedience was another strategy employed. In 1877, black women tried to integrate the ladies' circle of the opera house in Sherman. The manager refunded their money instead of granting them equal accommodations. When two Negro women protested their removal from the "dress circle" for white ladies in the Garland House in Waco in 1885, they were arrested for creating a disturbance. In 1886, Adelina Dowdie Cuney tricked the conductor of a train bound from Galveston to Houston. After he locked the door of the first-class coach to prevent her entrance, she climbed in through a window. When the conductor entered the coach to collect tickets, he was "greatly chagrined and bewildered" to see Cuney "sitting there quite contented and with perfect ease and indifference."29 Exodusters Another form of resistance was leaving the state. As conditions worsened in the South, black farmers increasingly turned to migration. In the late 1870s, crop failures, depressed prices, debt financing, exorbitant rents, widespread disfranchisement, and the abuse of black women precipitated a crisis. Hundreds if not thousands of blacks from Texas (and other southern states), attracted by prospects of free land, struck out for Kansas. They were known as the Exodusters. Most of the claims of available free land were spurious; within a year, many returned home, disillusioned and destitute.30 One of the black speakers traveling around the area discussing the pros and cons of the exodus was a "noted lecturer" from Haiti, a Madam Walker. After a trip to Kansas, she returned to advise Texans to stay away. The Denison Daily News described her speech "On the political destiny of the colored race in the U.S" as "eloquent and interesting." The paper noted that "the hall was packed to overflowing," including "a sprinkling of whites."31 Resistance # 7 5

Farmers' Alliances In the post-Reconstruction years, thousands of black farmers joined with whites in agrarian radical movements like the Greenback Party, farmers' alliances, and the People's or Populist Party. Their radical dream was a farmer-labor interracial coalition of "plain people." Women were active in their own auxiliaries in some of these groups, and others were full members of the Colored Farmers' Alliance of Texas. Black and white men worked together in their separate farmers' alliances, and it is reasonable to assume the same of the women.32 The Colored Farmers' Alliance originated in Huntsville in December 1886. Within a few years, it had spread throughout the South and claimed a membership of 1,200,000, about one-quarter women. The estimate of Texas members for 1890 was about 90,000, of whom 25,000 were said to have been women. Even if the latter figures were highly exaggerated, as historian Lawrence Goodwyn believes, it is probable that thousands of women participated.33 In 1889, Robert L. Smith, a state legislator from Colorado County, and his wife, Isabelle Smith, founded the Farmers Improvement Society (FIS). Membership was open to men and women who "feel dissatisfied with their present condition." The FIS, associated with Booker T. Washington and his Negro Farmers' Congress, soon spread across Texas and into neighboring states. Within twenty years, it had over 20,000 members. The FIS encouraged its members to purchase land and homes, buy cooperatively, practice crop diversification, and avoid credit purchasing. It sponsored mutual benefit insurance—for female members wishing $100 of coverage: "18 to 35 years, $1.05; 35 to 45 years, $2.00; 45 to 55 years, $3.00." The FIS also sponsored a women's auxiliary, founded a bank in Waco (where the Smiths later settled) and an agricultural college at Ladonia, and held annual exhibitions.34 Isabelle Smith was a key figure in the organization and an effective and articulate public speaker. As president of the FIS's Ladies' Auxiliary, she addressed the organization's five hundred male and female delegates in Hempstead around 1900. She stressed the need for a practical education for boys and girls and declared that "the negro woman had much to do with fixing the status of the negro in this country."35 The Woman's Christian Temperance Union Intemperance Some men drink to such an excess They delight in sin and wickedness.

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They not only abuse their children, but beat their wives, And crush the ambition out of their lives. —Josie Briggs Hall, Waxahachie36 Men had the vote but women employed other means to express their concerns about alcoholism and wife abuse. The first political movement of Texas women was the organization of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). After the Civil War, alcoholism exacerbated poverty and disorder in Texas families, both black and white. Desiring more harmony and control over domestic and community affairs, thousands of women (and men as well) from all walks of life and ethnic groups joined the temperance movement, which worked to eliminate drinking and the sale of alcohol. Black women became part of this organized protest movement at the grassroots level. During the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century, the WCTU was the largest and most significant women's organization in the state. Through the WCTU, women gained the courage and experience to speak in public, collect petitions, and publish newspapers.37 The WCTU could be considered Texas's first female biracial group. In 1882, national president Frances Willard toured the state and established the first two Texas chapters in Paris, one for whites and one for blacks. The black union met in a black church and was presided over by the pastor's wife. The organizers for "colored work" were initially white women, however, until black organizers could be recruited. Black and white unions were affiliated with the same state and national bodies and heard the same traveling missionary speakers.38 By 1886, there were six black temperance unions in Texas, probably all in East Texas, and the first black organizer had been appointed. The black and white groups worked together by holding public demonstrations and lobbying for local-option elections to vote on banning alcohol. The WCTU was the first women's organization to endorse women's suffrage, because women wanted to vote for Prohibition. The WCTU also supported female education and raising the age of consent for sexual relations from age ten to twelve.39 In June 1887, at the state WCTU convention in Waco, Mrs. Jennie Bland Beauchamp, a white woman, reported on "Prohibition at Work for the Colored People of Texas." Mrs. Caroline Poe, a former slave and schoolteacher in Marshall, was elected "state organizer for colored work." In May 1888, after a state WCTU convention in Fort Worth, the Union Signal (national WCTU magazine) reported, "The leaven is working among our colored people." That year, Harriet Murphy received national recognition for her work with the "colored" churches in Northeast Texas, where she had "stirred up" seven churches in ten days.40 Resistance

77

In 1897, Lucy Simpson Thurman, president of the Colored Division of the National WCTU and national superintendent of Colored Work, undertook organizing in the South. She called the temperance unions "the greatest training school for the development of women." On her 1897 trip to Texas, she organized fifteen unions. The state organization was formed in Dallas that December; it became known as the Thurman Union or Number 2 (the term "colored" was usually avoided to deflect racists' attention from the biracial composition of the WCTU). Membership in Number 2 was still small until the end of the century, however. By 1899, it reported sixty-two active and thirty honorary members, while the white union claimed more than a thousand.41 In 1901, the National WCTU met in Fort Worth. After Mrs. Eliza Peterson, a black music teacher from Texarkana, was elected president of the Thurman Union in 1898, it began to grow rapidly. The WCTU provided the first respectable opportunities for Texas women to speak in public, and Mrs. Peterson's talents shone. The Dallas News reported she was "an educated Christian woman" who "commands the respect of both white and black." She organized children into Little Temperance Leagues and was especially successful with college students, speaking at seven of the state's thirteen black colleges that year.42 By 1907, Mrs. Peterson's oratorical powers were at their peak. On one occasion, she recruited two hundred pledges in Waco. In January 1909, Peterson held the first convention of the Thurman WCTU in San Antonio. Large crowds were present, including whites. Over 6,000 pages of literature were distributed, many written by Mrs. Peterson. Later in the year, she was elected national superintendent and began traveling throughout the South. In the following months, she wrote articles for the black Texas newspapers describing her work. She received invitations to speak from "every state with Negroes." Peterson continued her work through 1918, when the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (Prohibition) was adopted. On May 18, her Mothers' Day speech at the St. Paul M. E. Church was reported on the front page of the Galveston City Times, a black newspaper. Four years later, she was still at work: the Austin American praised her as a woman "who has the confidence and respect of all who know her."43 Women Who Achieved Prominence Lucy Gonzales Parsons

A few black women who left Texas during this period achieved national prominence—and in one case notoriety. Lucy Gonzales Parsons from Waco was one woman of possible slave origin who became radicalized in part because of the violence she had witnessed as an adolescent. "I have seen the Ku Klux in the South

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Mrs. Eliza Peterson, president of the Negro WCTU, is in the city and will organize a branch of the WCTU among the colored women of this place at the African Methodist Episcopal church on Wall Street. —Houston Post, April 5, 1900

Mrs. Eliza E. Peterson, a Texarkana music teacher, became the leading light of the "colored" branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union around 1900. A brilliant lecturer, she became state president and national superintendent of Colored Work.

myself," she recalled. During her formative years, the Klan committed major atrocities in the Waco/McLennan County area. In 1867 and 1868, among other crimes reported, an eight-year-old black girl was raped and murdered, a black man was murdered in the Waco town square, and the Klan severely beat and mass raped twenty black women.44 Parsons, whose forty-year career spanned the era of the robber barons through the Great Depression, was unique in American history. She became a leading spokesperson for socialist revolution, traveled widely in defense of free speech and labor causes, and helped found the Industrial Workers of the World.45 In the early 1870s, Lucy Parsons married or began living with Albert Parsons, also of Waco, a white ex-Confederate Scout turned Radical Republican and an advocate of civil rights for blacks. Antipathy toward mixed couples caused them to leave Texas for Chicago in 1873, where they became leaders of the working-class movement. She wrote articles and poems for the Alarm, an anarchist journal, and the Socialist.46 In 1886, Albert Parsons and seven other anarchists were arrested after the Haymarket demonstrations for an eight-hour work day in Chicago. The Waco Daily Examiner reported from Chicago that "when visited last night, Mrs. Parsons was reticent and defiant." The paper called her "a self-possessed speaker and fluent, and her socialistic harangues are the most violent and vindictive of all the orators of that persuasion." The legal battle fought by Lucy Parsons and hundreds of others to free her husband and his fellow prisoners failed. He and three of the men were hanged in 1886. In 1893, Governor Peter Altgeld of Illinois pardoned those still in prison and condemned the judicial errors and prejudicial evidence which had convicted them all.47 The mother of two children, Lucy was a strong believer in marriage, but she also believed that "it is woman's economical dependence which makes her enslavement to man possible." She favored birth control, women's right to divorce, and the right to prevent legalized rape in marriage. She opposed the Spanish-American War and said, "When woman is admitted into the Council of Nations war will come to an end, for woman more than man knows the value of life."48 Maud Cuney Hare Maud Cuney Hare of Galveston, the daughter of Republican leader Norris Wright Cuney and Adelina Dowdie Cuney, followed in her parents' footsteps in defying segregation. Like her father, who had been sent North to study by his white father/owner before the Civil War, Maud was sent out of the state. She enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1890, but could not escape racism even there. Resistance

79

Maud Cuney Hare of Galveston wrote a biography of her father, Norris Wright Cuney: A Tribune of the Black People, in addition to her career as a noted music historian, folklorist, pianist, and playwright.

Maud and the only other black student in the school ''occupied a room in the Conservatory home, and for a short while there was no unpleasantness on account of color." After a few months, however, her father received a letter from the school, saying that a large number of pupils were "affected by race prejudices/' Parents of the black pupils were asked to "provide them homes outside the Conservatory." Norris Wright Cuney responded with an eloquent but firm letter in which he absolutely refused to remove his daughter from the dormitory. Maud also "refused to leave the dormitory, and because of this, was subjected to many petty indignities." "I insisted upon proper treatment," she said. The directors "later publicly declared that the whole matter arose from a 'misunderstanding' and that there was no color bar in the institution."49 Maud Cuney Hare continued to defy segregation upon her brief return to Texas in 1897. While teaching at the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Institute for Colored Youth in Austin, she studied piano with Edmund Ludwig, formerly of the Conservatory for Royal Ladies at 80

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St. Petersburg. After he arranged for her piano recital at the Opera House, the management decided that "it would not do to allow seating of white and colored patrons together" and that "colored patrons" would have to sit in the balcony. Maud and her teacher "indignantly canceled the contract" and held the recital at the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Institute.50 Hare later settled in Boston, where she launched a career as a playwright, music historian, and performer. Summary From 1865 to 1900, the nation struggled to rebuild its social, political, and economic life. Black men exercised a measure of political power in Texas; they held elective and appointive positions and were leaders in the Republican Party. Although the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments gave legal recognition to the citizenship rights of blacks and outlawed denial of the right to vote for racial reasons, it was not long before force and fraud were used to deny these rights.51 After the Democrats and former Confederate sympathizers regained control of the state government in 1873, whites used brutality to seize county governments, and the number of blacks in the legislature declined.52 The last nineteenth-century black legislator, Robert L. Smith, completed his second term in 1899. In 1902, whites solidified their control of the political structure with the legislature's passage of the poll tax as a requirement for voting. Despite economic, political, and social oppression, black women resisted in a number of ways. They joined the Loyal Leagues, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and farmers' alliances. They spoke publicly, attended meetings, and convinced the men in their families to vote and how to vote. They took their grievances to the Freedmen's Bureau. When attacked, some responded. They defied segregation with lawsuits and civil disobedience. From a time of hope to a time of despair, blacks faced an uphill battle for education, jobs, land, and civil and political rights during Reconstruction and afterward. As the new century neared, blacks faced a steadily worsening climate of segregation and disfranchisement. New strategies would be required.53

Mrs. Norris Wright (Adelina) Cuney defied segregation by climbing through a window into the "white ladies'" coach of a railroad car headed from Galveston to Houston when the conductor was away from his post.

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# 5 FREEDMEM'S

BUREAU

AMD

SCHOOLS

PUBLIC

SCHOOLS

"Send us teachers. "

Introduction

Julia Smith Green was principal of a two-room school in Schulenburg, ca. 1900. Children from kindergarten age through high school attended the one-room Rock Spring School in Bosque County in 1908.

In 1867, a white teacher in a Freedmen's Bureau school in Hempstead praised the enthusiasm of her black pupils: "They love their school as white children do not." They were so dedicated, she noted, that they rode to school on horseback from plantations three and four miles away. Just two years earlier, Texas had no school buildings, teachers, books, or money to educate blacks. Only about 5 percent of the newly freed slaves had even a rudimentary knowledge of reading and writing. These men and women were hungry for an education; even before the Freedmen's Bureau began operations, they organized private schools, paid teachers, and bought writing slates and primers; parents, along with their children, thronged to the new schools.1 With their appetites for learning barely whetted when the Freedmen's Bureau left the state, blacks were eager to be part of the public school system. Black women have always been an integral part of education. Unlike white women, they experienced no discrimination in education because of their sex. Education was viewed as equally important to women and men.2 Black women taught in dusty oneroom schools in towns and cities. They sustained rural schools under the most impoverished conditions, served as school principals, college teachers, and officers in professional associations, and organized nursery schools and kindergartens, Mothers' Clubs, libraries, and sororities. They struggled diligently to provide quality education for black youth.

Freedmen's Bureau Schools The most significant accomplishment of the Freedmen's Bureau was in education. One of its primary goals was to prepare the former slaves for citizenship. Within four months after emancipation, sixteen day and night schools were established throughout the state, with 1,000 pupils. Bureau policy called for the "colored schools" to be self-supporting, with building rentals and teachers' salaries to be paid by tuition from black parents. Tuition was fifty cents a month for one child and one dollar for two or more from the same family. Teachers were paid in part by the Freedmen's Bureau and the rest by contributions of freedpeople.3 Major problems included the massive illiteracy and poverty of the former slaves, along with hostility by some whites who feared that education would make blacks arrogant, resentful, and difficult to keep "in their place." In addition, white opponents claimed that blacks were uneducable and opposed visits of white teachers, most of them women, to the homes of blacks, which they feared might lead to social relations.4 Despite opposition, the bureau, assisted by northern missionary societies, the American Bible Society, the African Methodist Church, and some white Texans, opened schools and brought teachers and books into the state. In the beginning, the schools were taught primarily by blacks who had learned to read while enslaved and who could "penetrate the country where white teachers cannot go." 5 The first bureau school in Texas, founded in Galveston, soon enrolled over three hundred students. Yankee teachers could find room and board there, mainly with German families. In nearby Houston, African Methodists recruited the first teachers. Miss Hattie C. Daggett, a Congregational missionary, wrote in 1867 that the city had several large and flourishing schools, some controlled by blacks. Dozens of schools in small communities were included among the approximately one hundred Freedmen's Bureau schools established in Texas between 1865 and 1870.6 Classes were held during the day and evening, with some religious schools on the weekends. The curriculum included alphabet, reading, geography, arithmetic, writing, rhetoric, singing, and Bible.7 Among the bureau teachers were not only native black Texans, but white female missionaries and a handful of black educators recruited from the North. They were soon joined by white southerners, both male and female, other native-born Texans, and blacks from the deep South who migrated after the war. Most of the northern teachers were members of the American Missionary Association (AMA) of the Congregational Church. The contacts between these white teachers and freedpeople were some of the first

86 # Education and Culture

This treasured book and indeed all books were in short supply in Freedmen's Bureau schools in Texas.

examples of social equality and mutual respect in Texas. By April 1867, the AMA had about twenty teachers in Texas, of whom fifteen were women. Two of the schools for freedpeople in Galveston were sponsored by the AMA and run by Misses Sarah Skinner and Sarah Barnes. Such "schoolmarms," recruited for their missionary spirit, taught children by day and adults by night, organized Sabbath schools, and made home visits with the goal of uplifting the former slaves and indoctrinating them with moral values.8 Many African-Americans preferred educators of their own race. In Marlin, former slaves were "disposed to distrust" any white who would teach a freedmen's school. A few local black women taught in the Texas schools, although exact numbers are not available. Jephtha Choice taught school in Henderson, while helping her husband farm. A freedwoman named Elizabeth Granger enrolled sixty students in a school in Paris in January 1868. Caroline W. Poe, a former slave, began instructing a class of thirty-five pupils in 1867 in one of the two bureau schools in Marshall and continued for two years without a salary. Her monthly enrollment averaged about one hundred students. Matagorda African-Americans hired a freedwoman as an instructor and opened their own school with twenty students in 1867.9 Economic necessity forced some white women to take up teaching, and many chose to educate black children. When a teacher from the North complained about the employment of "a bitter rebel" woman in a school at Victoria, the bureau superintendent ignored the complaint. Teachers were too scarce to fire.10 The Dallas bureau agent found that freedpeople were eager to educate their children, but he had great difficulty finding teachers. Most local white women interested in the position were afraid to accept due to "deep bitter prejudice" in the community. Finally, he hired Mrs. L. N. Capell, a widow, who opened the school in October 1867, with forty-six girls and twenty-five boys. It was supported solely by freedpeople, but their meager funds were insufficient; unfortunately, it was soon forced to close. The following February, Mattie Davlin, "a tough but not well educated lady," reopened the school for over a year. The freedpeople paid her seventynine dollars. She said, "They [the freedmen and women] are not able to clothe and feed their children and send them to school. . . . The government has never paid one dollar to the black scholastic population." She asked for help; but when none was forthcoming, the school again closed.11 Wherever they could, freedpeople took responsibility for school construction. In Austin, they raised money to build a school on a lot furnished by the City Council. More than one hundred black schoolchildren and their teachers marched proudly down Congress Avenue to inaugurate the new structure. In Houston, blacks owned the lot but depended upon the bureau for building funds. Freedmen's Bureau Schools and Public Schools # 87

By 1870, two-thirds of the Texas schools were owned by freedmen and women.12 Freedpeople, despite their limited income, were responsible for tuition and the cost of books. Miss Fannie Campbell, an AMA teacher with a day school of eighty-seven pupils and an evening school of forty pupils in Austin, wrote in 1866 that the schools there were self-supporting, but "we greatly need a book of useful information for adult minds—told in simple language/' 13 Some young black women who desired an education, like Vinnie Brunson, faced family opposition. Her parents were afraid "dat book larnin' might put big notion into our heads an we be too good to work." Other girls like Maria Tilden Thompson "didn't get to go to school after freedom 'cause dere wasn't no school to go to." 14 Both white and black teachers faced hostility from the Ku Klux Klan and other irate whites who burned down schoolhouses and beat or even murdered teachers. The school of a black female teacher in Circle ville was burned less than six months after it opened, and she was forced to return to the North. A white teacher in nearby Georgetown, who received insulting letters, applied to the bureau for protection. After being expelled from her boardinghouse, she was unable to obtain other accommodations. Black schoolhouses in Cotton Gin, Waco, and Brenham were burned by Anglos, with "respectable" citizens leading the way. There were never enough bureau agents or federal troops to protect the schools adequately.15 Northern white "lady teachers" were resented as "Yankee intruders." Some newspapers even said they were no better than "common prostitutes." Visits of white teachers to the homes of blacks upset many whites. First the white residents refused to house or befriend white teachers; then they accused them of socializing with blacks.16 A number of white Texans supported efforts to educate freedpeople. Some planters offered buildings on their plantations as schools and recruited teachers, possibly out of a desire to retain their workers. At Gonzales, Seguin, and Liberty, for example, planters donated land. Sometimes white churches helped by lending classroom space.17 The Texas report for 1865-1866 was one of the most impressive in the South. The state led in the number of bureau schools, with ninety, although almost half were Sunday Schools and night schools.18 Although only a disappointing 4,590 of the 74,000 school-aged blacks were in school, this was a better record than in neighboring states. In 1867, there were more female than male pupils: 1,627 to 1,348. Within two years, there were seventy schools with an attendance of almost 3,000 (1,653 females and 1,335 males). Almost 250 pupils were doing "higher" academic

88 # Education and Culture

Sarah Barnes, from Connecticut, belonged to the American Missionary Society and ran a Freedmen's Bureau school in Galveston in 1867-1868.

Sarah Barnes kept roll in this book for her Freedmen's Bureau school in Galveston, ca. 1868. Freedmen's Bureau Schools and Public Schools # 89

It didn't matter how the teacher got to her school in Africa (Shelby County), each morning in 1924 as long as she arrived on time.

work. They were taught by twenty-four black and forty-one white teachers. Nearly half the students were paying their own fees.19 Students and Parents In May 1867, an unidentified teacher wrote to the American Missionary praising the intense interest of "Negroes'' in education and stating that she "never knew a class of white children with the same advantages, make more rapid progress than one of the arithmetic classes has." She was pleased that her Sunday School enrollment numbered over two hundred "and grows more and more interesting." An Austin "schoolmarm," Fannie Campbell, an AMA teacher, held classes for freed boys and girls in a white Methodist church until the "colored methodists" could build a church of their own which would also serve as a school. The local newspaper compared her school and her pupils favorably with those of the whites.20 Accomplishments of the Freedmen's Bureau Schools Despite all the obstacles placed in their path, from 1865 through 1870, approximately twenty thousand of the state's black adults and children achieved some degree of literacy. More than half were females. The proportion of black teachers increased steadily; they would serve as the teacher corps for the black public schools. By the time the bureau concluded its Texas operations, the schools were enjoying one of their best periods. There were sixty-six schools, of which forty-three were owned by freedpeople, with an enrollment of 3,248 (1,770 females and 1,478 males). The state 90

Education and Culture

superintendent reported that "the burning of school-houses and the maltreatment of teachers... have almost entirely ceased."21 The Freedmen's Bureau carved out a distinguished record in the history of Texas education. It made enormous inroads in reducing illiteracy and raising the aspirations of its students while laying the foundation for the public school system. Public Schools Former slaves considered education to be their avenue to a better life and expected the state to provide facilities equal to those for white children. As delegates to the Texas constitutional conventions of 1868-1869 and 1875 and the Reconstruction legislatures, blacks helped lay the foundation for the public school system. They fought valiantly for free public education for black and white children alike, but were unable to prevent the development of a segregated system.22 With the close of the Freedmen's Bureau schools, teacher Caroline Poe simply transferred to Harrison County public schools. But women of her kind were rare. In the 1870s, few black teachers were qualified to handle the large influx of black students into the new public school system, and few whites were willing to teach them. The situation was so grave that a Houston County school board president, W. V. Tunstall, sent an urgent letter to a national journal: "Send us teachers." Whether he received any response to his plea is not known. However, with the growth of the public schools, black colleges, and normal schools, more women turned to teaching. By 1900, the profession was largely feminized; by 1910, black female teachers, mostly young single women, outnumbered their male colleagues nationally 3 to 1.23 Thousands of women devoted their lives and careers to the education of children. Educational attainment and professional training were a young black woman's best hopes to avoid a lifetime of unskilled jobs. Education was a means of escaping poverty, a highway to a better life, and a vehicle by which to rise above field, laundry, and domestic work. A career in education also provided a relatively secure position with status and leadership, as well as access to the world of ideas, interesting friends, the excitement of urban centers, continuing training, and often travel.24 One of the best measures of the benefits of public education is the enormous reduction in illiteracy. In Texas, the black illiteracy rate dropped from 75.4 percent in 1880 to 38.2 percent in 1900, the lowest in the South. By 1920, it had taken another drop—to 17.8 percent!25 Segregation was institutionalized from the beginning in the public schools and colleges. It would be eighty-five years before segregated education was finally struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Freedmen's Bureau Schools and Public Schools # 91

The First Years of Public Education As the bureau closed down its operations in Texas in 1870, some of its schools were absorbed into the public system. Although the Texas Constitution of 1869 provided for a system of free public schools, the necessary monies were never appropriated to fund them adequately, nor were the funds equitably distributed.26 According to the Galveston Daily News of February 1, 1871, "Colored children are not sufficiently advanced in civilization to be fit companions for white children." These sentiments reflected those of the state's white majority, who feared that education would give blacks "foolish notions about equality" and make them dissatisfied with field labor. Violence continued. Five East Texas black schools were burned in 1871; a black teacher in Bastrop was tortured; and the state superintendent removed one board of education that attempted to establish an integrated school.27 Despite opposition, a good number of schools were in operation by 1872. Scant information exists about the role of black women as teachers or how the curriculum was received by female students. Rural Washington County with a large black population had twenty-one schools. Houston (Harris County) soon established one black school for each of its five wards. Harris County claimed the state's highest black enrollment, with 760 girls and 734 boys. When the public schools opened in Marshall in the fall of 1871, Caroline Poe was one of the twelve teachers employed. She earned two hundred dollars for the period from October 1871 through February 1872 and about thirty-five dollars a month for the next four months.28 When the Democrats regained control of the Texas legislature in 1873, they ceded authority over education to the counties; by 1877, more than three-quarters of Texas school-age blacks were enrolled—more than in any other southern state. These community-operated systems proliferated, despite the fact that local taxes could not be used for education and state funds could not be used for construction. From 1878 to the 1890s, the number of black students doubled, and the number of black teachers increased from 675 to over 1,000.29 Unequal Funding and Rapid Growth An 1881 law permitting cities and towns to levy taxes for public education gave urban areas an enormous boost. The law effectively turned control of these urban schools over to all-white trustees, who generally distributed the county's share of state funds differentially to black and white schools. In Harrison County, for example, black schools received only about half the funds to which they were entitled.30

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The Class of 1893 at Galveston's Central High School appears serious and industrious. The gentleman seated in the center may be their principal.

Over the next twenty years, city schools gradually outdistanced rural ones. By 1882, thirteen cities and towns had thirty-two schools with nearly four thousand black pupils. Houston still led the way with eleven schools and 786 students. Austin and Galveston both incorporated functioning black schools into their systems at this time. The Barnes Institute and East Broadway Colored School in Galveston had all-black faculties, including Mrs. J. E. Cuney, sister-in-law of Norris Wright Cuney; Miss Fannie Harding; Mrs. Jennie Patterson; Miss Sadie Patton; and Misses Gertrude and Virginia Potts.31 Although Galveston was one of the more progressive public school systems, one-third of the children of scholastic age, white and black, were still unable to attend day schools because they worked. Older blacks, too, wanted an education. Maud Cuney Hare, daughter of the Republican leader Norris Wright Cuney, described to her father the night schools she had visited in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Upon his initiative, three free night schools were soon established in Galveston, two white schools and one black school.32 Rural schools grew more slowly; after the turn of the century, however, they got a shot in the arm from several northern philanthropic funds. The Anna T. Jeanes fund, for example, established in 1907 from the estate of a white Philadelphia Quaker, sponsored Freedmen's Bureau Schools and Public Schools # 93

a network of rural agents, supervisors, and black teachers (mostly women) to do educational, social, and vocational work in oneroom rural southern schools. By 1930, Texas had twenty such supervisors.33 The academic year was brief, particularly in rural areas, often lasting only three or four months. Parents needed their children to help with planting and harvesting. Girls could be spared from their chores for longer periods than boys, resulting in slightly higher school attendance by females. State funding did not meet the expenses of most schools, so monthly tuition was required by most schools. White students generally paid more than blacks, but the cost was still prohibitive. In Navasota, whites paid $1.40 per month, but blacks' tuition was only $0.80.34 Beginning in the 1880s, black educators received lower salaries. Women of both races had traditionally been paid less than men. Now black women teachers found themselves at the bottom of the scale.35 Inequitable funding continued virtually unchallenged into the twentieth century. Of the 270 schools built in 1889-1890, only 94

Education and Culture

Students in the graduating class of Dallas Colored High School in 1919 wore theirfineryfor this portrait.

13 percent were for blacks, although they made up 22 percent of the state's population. The ten county schools with libraries were for whites, and even black city schools had no libraries until after 1900. Although the state law of 1907 provided for "impartial provisions" for both races, it also specified that "white and colored children shall not be taught in the same schools." In 1910, Texas school districts spent an average of over ten dollars annually on white students versus $5.74 on black pupils. By 1930, black students received 85 percent of the per student expenditure for whites. Yet white classrooms averaged thirty students; black, thirty-nine. Black teachers' salaries amounted to only 60 percent of whites'.56 During the Roaring Twenties, black teachers may have bobbed their hair and shortened their skirts in keeping with the times, but they still received smaller salaries than their white counterparts and taught in segregated schools with inferior textbooks and facilities. Despite the Free Textbook Amendment of 1918, 38 percent of those schools had no textbooks, and three-quarters had neither librarians nor playground equipment. Some had no indoor toilets. The 1930s were no better. In Lavaca County, for example, Texas spent $13.08 for each black child and $21.45 for each white child. The average annual salary of that county's black teachers in 19351936 was $366 in comparison with $694 for whites. Over 86 percent of black teachers were female, compared with 71 percent in the white schools.37 An all-white State Department of Education supervised the Division of Negro Education. The division tolerated salary differentials between black and female teachers. The disparity in pay discriminated against black teachers not only in their working years but also in their retirement years: black teachers were not eligible to receive maximum pensions.38

Average Teachers' Salaries 1882-1884 School

1892-1893

Year Average Monthly Salary Harris County (Houston)

School Year Average Annual Salary Texas

White males

$72.00

$292

White females

$47.80

$260

Black males

$42.00

$252

Black females

$35.00

$205

Source: Jones, Red Diary, p. 49.

Freedmen's Bureau Schools and Public Schools # 9 5

The One-Room School

As late as 1929, three-quarters of Texas's black schools had only one teacher. The one-room school, often "lacking both in architectural beauty and utilitarian aspects/' was the typical setting for most black Texas students in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the majority lived in rural areas.39 Teachers were hired by the local superintendent, but largely left on their own to make the best of whatever students and materials they found on the scene. A teacher was an important member of her community, serving as a combination social worker, public health nurse, role model, and chief motivator of the young. The commitment and dedication of these teachers, many of whom stayed on for decades, would be warmly remembered by their students. As the students became teachers themselves, or ministers, or business people, they often traced their earliest inspiration to these devoted individuals. The stories of two women, Christine Benton Cash and Dorothy Redus Robinson, illustrate the obstacles rural teachers faced. When Robinson began her career as a teacher in the small South Texas town of Markham in 1929, a school trustee gave her "a zinc water bucket, a dipper, and a box of chalk." A promise of firewood concluded the trustee's list of supplies he would provide. "That was it."40 Both women fought to keep decent salaries. In 1912, Cash requested a salary of seventy dollars a month for herself and thirty and thirty-five dollars a month for two assistants. One of the district's trustees replied, "I only pay $1.00 per day for farm work!" When the position was offered to a black male for ninety dollars, out of which he was to pay his assistant, the community petitioned a county judge, who ordered the replacement teacher not to appear and rehired Mrs. Cash. Robinson organized a Parent-Teacher Association, which raised funds, a nickel at a time, to pay her salary for an additional month.41 Even in urban areas, black children were often shortchanged. Children in the west San Antonio community of Pleasant Cove had to walk twelve miles to get to Dunbar Elementary in 1931. This situation bothered twenty-one-year-old teacher Dolores Burton Linton. She got permission to use the Paradise Cove Dance Hall as a school during the day. Using leftover textbooks, she taught all twelve grades during the day while she attended night school, finally earning a master's degree in education from Our Lady of the Lake College.42 A major event occurred at the end of each school year in many communities. For weeks, students practiced orations, skits, and songs for the school closing. The program provided the basis for judging the success of the teacher, who highlighted the progress of 96

Education and Culture

her students before audiences of parents, local white leaders, and sometimes the press. Children often got new clothes for the occasion, and it became a showcase for a family's economic status. Most important, school closings gave students the chance to improve their self-esteem—to become "the best in the country." Annie Mae Hunt recalled proudly the year her father came to the closing in Washington County. "We had good school closings," she observed. "People loved their school."43 Parents Black parents, especially mothers, lent ardent support to their children's schooling. Sociologist Merle Miles Adams found in a study of three generations of black Texas females that a strong commitment to education was passed on from one generation to the next. One woman recalled, "My grandmother had sent my mother off to college . . . and she sent five more of my mother's younger brothers and sisters off to college."44 As in the days of the Freedmen's Bureau schools, more black females than males attended school in rural and urban areas. Black girls attended school in greater numbers than boys because migration patterns resulted in larger numbers of black females in the towns and cities. On the farms, parents were more willing to excuse daughters than sons from field labor. By 1890, more girls than boys (black and white) were graduating from high school nationally; by 1900, only seven black males attended school for every ten females. By 1910, girls had surpassed boys in literacy rates.45 Verna Arnold's grandfather sent all his children to elementary school, but only the girls went to high school and college. Rural families often sent their oldest daughter away to college, while the younger children, especially her brothers, helped to pay expenses. A woman who grew up on the Texas coastal bend said, "Women were more aggressive about gettin' an education than the men. Men provided the money for the women to go to school. . . . Men depended on the women to do the readin' and takin' care of business matters in the family."46 Parents in the twentieth century supported schools through Mothers' Clubs. Houston's Mothers' Clubs raised nearly four thousand dollars in their first six years (1909-1915) to hire a sewing teacher, build cisterns and bookcases, provide lunches, and buy playground equipment and pianos. Some parent groups centered on more serious issues. Christia Adair helped organize black and white Kingsville women to close down a gambling house that distracted the teenaged boys from high school attendance.47 High Schools and Libraries High schools for black students appeared twenty years after the end of the Civil War. Texas'sfirsthigh school for black students, Central Freedmen's Bureau Schools and Public Schools # 97

High in Galveston, which opened in 1885, had three tracks: classical, service, and English. The first high school for Dallas blacks, Colored High, opened in 1888. One of its three faculty members was Fannie Chase Harris, a former slave. Houston's Colored High School opened in 1892. A high school department was added to Austin's Robertson Hill School in 1889. When it outgrew this space, trustees built a separate school and named it after the second principal of Prairie View, Ε. Η. Anderson.48 Many first-generation black female college graduates became secondary school teachers, like Mattie E. Holman (Mrs. George) Durden. "It is something within that leads me on," she said. That inner something was a determination to devote her life to teaching and to improving her own mind. She earned a second grade teaching certificate and taught in Refugio from 1899 until 1901, but she only had the equivalent of a tenth-grade education. When she enrolled at Austin's Tillotson College in 1907, she was a married woman and mother. The president agreed to her admission with the caveat, "Let her attend. She will not be here long, with two children to care for." He made no recorded comment when she finished the high school course two years later as valedictorian. She went on to receive her A.B. at Tillotson in 1915, while she taught sewing and high school subjects there, and a B.S. degree from Samuel Huston College. For more than thirty years, she was a stal- Houston'sfirstfemale school wart of the Home Economics Department at Anderson High School principal was Mrs. S. G. Kay, who served in that position at in Austin.49 Harrisburg School beginning High schools became central institutions in the black community. about 1913. By 1900, Texas led the South in the number of black high schools with nineteen and within five years had thirty-six—more than any other southern state. Carver High School in Houston (also known as White Oaks School) opened in 1915, with Mrs. A. J. Smith as the first teacher and principal. She was followed by five female principals in that school.50 Soon after Booker T. Washington High School opened in Dallas in 1922, replacing the old Colored High School, Priscilla L. Tyler joined the faculty as a Spanish teacher. With a diploma from the Teacher's College of Howard University and a B.A. from Colorado State Teachers College, she was one of thefirstblack Texas women to receive an out-of-state college education. She also founded the first scholastic organization in the city's black schools at Booker T.51 By 1925, there were 150 high schools for blacks in the state, although only 7 were accredited. Many high schools offered only a three-year curriculum, which made them ineligible for accreditation. In 1932, survey results showed that high school teaching was increasingly a female occupation. By 1940, secondary education had become distinctly urbanized. The number of Texas high schools for blacks had grown to 400, but all 69 accredited by the

98 # Education and Culture

For many years Ethelyn Taylor Chisum, shown soon after her graduation from Prairie View College, was a dean at Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas.

state were in cities and towns. Students in urban areas received a higher-quality education than those in the country.52 Libraries appeared first in urban schools. Eighty-two black schools had libraries in 1905, where none had existed five years previously. More than nine hundred white schools had libraries, containing eighteen times more books than were available to blacks. In Galveston and San Antonio, public libraries helped fill the gap.53 Teachers The 1932 Prairie View Bulletin remarked that "women are crowding men out of the high schools as they have long since done in the elementary schools." Fortunately, opportunities for women to receive the necessary education and to find jobs expanded rapidly. Freedmen's Bureau Schools and Public Schools

99

Black teachers increasingly replaced whites in black schools. Yet, in the early years, too few blacks qualified for teacher certification. Texas required training from an approved college, but there were no such institutions open to blacks in the state until after 1900. Beginning in 1883, summer normal schools helped pick up the slack. They proved popular, and 171 teachers earned certificates. The largest number of black female college graduates went into teaching. Prairie View trained most of the black high school teachers in the state after 1900, followed by Wiley College and Bishop College.54 Few details of the lives of these first black female teachers have survived. In some cases, we know nothing more than a teacher's name. Among the earliest black public school teachers were Mrs. Sarah Red, a former slave from Virginia, in Houston and Galveston. Black women known to have been teaching in Travis County before 1881 include Lizzie Pollard and Mrs. Ε. Μ. Ε. Garland, who later became an Austin principal.55 The black teacher was often the most influential person in the lives of black youths, besides their parents. Mae Belle Hill of Austin recalled that her teachers at Anderson High School instilled students with a determination to excel, "to try and be somebody.. . . They wanted us to get an education, to get good grades and to go further."56 These early teachers labored in appalling conditions: makeshift, overcrowded classrooms, equipped with old or home-made furniture and insufficient, used, and often inappropriate books. Their salaries did not adequately reflect their value to the community. Yet

100 # Education and Culture

In 1892, Mrs. Thomas J. (Mattie B.) White opened a short-lived private school for black girls in Austin before assuming duties as the art teacher at the state Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Institute for Colored Youth. She was also a state leader in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

Teachers could improve their certification by attending the summer institutes sponsored by the Bryan Public School for Colored in the early 1900s.

they sacrificed in order to enrich the lives of their students. Armed with a sense of mission, they believed that education provided the keys to the future. By the 1880s, the number of black teachers in Texas had grown to the extent that they could attempt to influence public policy. In 1880, 20 percent were women (274 of the 1,379). Four years later, black educators founded the Colored Teachers State Association of Texas (CTSA) in 1884. The CTSA promoted fair distribution of state funds and equal professional status. With only two blacks still in the legislature and Republican power all but vanished, the group had a gigantic task. Women played a major role in CTSA. In 1898, three were vice-presidents; another was assistant secretary; and Julia Caldwell of Dallas served as treasurer. In 1904, the CTSA recommended that the state create an industrial school for black girls, perhaps modeled after the school for white females which opened in Denton in 1903.57 Increasingly, black women turned to teaching as the profession became feminized. At a time when well-educated women found doors to other professions closed to them, more normal schools and teacher training institutions opened. Opportunities for teachers expanded rapidly during the 1890s, as more students clamored for education. Photographs of the faculties of black public schools around 1900 include numerous women.58 The Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Institute for Colored Youth (DDBI) began operations in Austin in 1887. One of itsfirstwoman teachers was Mattie B. (Mrs. Thomas J.) White, a graduate of Walden University in Nashville. She had founded Austin's first school for black girls in 1892 before accepting a position at the DDBI, a job she held, without missing a single day, from 1900 to 1940. A gifted artist herself, White taught students to knit, crochet, weave, and paint.59 Verna Arnold's decades-long struggle to achieve her goal of becoming a teacher typifies the experience of many black women of her era. The granddaughter of slaves, she attended Samuel Huston College in Austin in 1928-1929, earning a high school diploma. The next year, she lived with a local beautician while studying for her teacher certification. After her marriage in 1933, she taught all seven grades to fifteen students in a one-room school at Kimbro. She earned a bachelor's degree from Huston College in 1940 and went on to teach English in the Austin high schools for thirty-four years.60 During the Depression, many Texas school systems prohibited married women from teaching in order to preserve jobs for men. The San Antonio School Board voted to dismiss all married teachers with husbands earning $2,000 or more in 1932. The San Antonio Register, a black newspaper, objected, saying that the burden would fall disproportionately upon black families, whose women were compelled to work far more frequently than white wives. The Freedmen's Bureau Schools and Public Schools

101

paper observed that at least 75 percent of black women finishing college found the teaching profession to be "the most lucrative, and, in a measure, the only avenue of employment open to them." Some women outsmarted the system. By keeping her marriage a secret, Dallas teacher Alvernon King also kept her job.61 Music teachers were in high demand in Texas. Eulalia Abner Randle became supervisor of music education in the Fort Worth black schools in 1925 and later a music teacher in the Austin school district.62 It was not long before some women advanced beyond classroom teaching. The first black principal in Austin was a woman, Mrs. L. E. Morton, who headed Brackenridge School in 1905. Mrs. Dagmar Ferrell became the Houston school district's first black visiting teacher in 1914. A year earlier, Mrs. S. G. Kay had been promoted as principal of a school in Harrisburg (now a part of Houston). Mrs. Mabel Wesley became principal of Crawford Elementary School in Houston in 1917. At the time, it was the state's largest public school headed by a woman, with a nineteen-woman faculty. ThefirstDallas female high school principal was Julia Caldwell Frazier. She was forced to resign after one year, 1917-1918, because this job was thought to be ''man's work."63 Teaching was the most acceptable profession for a female and less risky than others. But for some, teaching became a stepping stone to another career. Frederica Chase Dodd wasfirsta substitute teacher then a high school English teacher before beginning her career in social work in Dallas in the 1930s. Olive Durden Brown accepted duties as an English teacher in Austin before she was able to secure a job suited to her training as a librarian. Lucille WilliamsLane moved from teaching second grade to using her training in home economics to open a lunch room in the Colored High School in Dallas in the 1920s.64

Priscilla Tyler obtained her teacher training at Howard University and Colorado State Teachers College in 1904. In 1906, she began teaching elementary students in Dallas and later taught Spanish at Booker T. Washington High School.

Early Childhood Education Educators and club women, like Mrs. Booker T. Washington, gradually became aware of the value of preschools. With five times as many black mothers as whites in the work force in 1900, child care and preschools had a practical side as well. Kindergarten classes first appeared in the North in the mid-nineteenth century. The Colored Institute of Houston, predominantly a women's group, focused on the needs of young children at its 1906 meeting. The group stressed the importance of music and drawing, field trips, and rudimentary manual training.65 Preschools were held in homes and churches and attracted workers from a variety of fields. Among the earliest was Mrs. Pearl Augusta Lights's kindergarten for black children at Houston's Antioch Baptist Church in 1910. Albertine Yeager's kindergarten in Galveston began enrolling children during World War I so that 102 # Education and Culture

Mattie E. Durden of Austin devoted her life to teaching and serving her community. She was thefirstmarried woman to graduate from Tillotson College in 1909 and was on the staff of Anderson High School for thirty years.

their mothers could work. "Sometimes I'd take care of five children for fifty cents a week," she remembered. "That was all 1 could charge because the mother was making $2.50 a week," By 1931, she had a daily attendance of 108. Mrs. Ella Duckenfield started the Colored Day Nursery in Wichita Falls in 1924 with the help of white nursery directors and black churches. Her colleague Zenobia Trimble, a nurse, teacher, and social worker, became the mainstay of the school for the next thirty-eight years.66 Summary

Dolores Burton Linton struggled during her entire career to obtain adequate facilities and equipment for students in the San Antonio schools where she taught from 1931 to 1971. A school was later named in her honor.

In the period after the Civil War, education made a vast difference in the lives of black Texans, contributing to their aspirations, their self-esteem, the breadth of their experiences, their acquisition of literacy, and their livelihoods. By the close of the nineteenth century, for women in particular, it was a powerful tool to improve not only their own lives and those of their families but also their communities. Many went on to become officers and standardbearers of the new women's club movement. Impressive numbers of black woman teachers have influenced generations of students. Their skills, their ability to inspire and motivate, and their perseverance under often nearly impossible conditions are evidence of their dedication. Some taught in one-room rural schools, others in small towns and major cities. Wherever their classroom or school, these teachers "made do" with less than their white counterparts. Despite segregation and discrimination, black women have played key roles in providing education at all levels. Even today the teaching profession continues to be the most significant one for black women.

Freedmen's Bureau Schools and Public Schools # 103

#6 HIGHER

EDUCATION

"Conduct becoming ladies is insisted upon. "

Introduction

Women students at Houston College, Houston, in 1914 earned credits in physical education for this class in calisthenics. Students in a cooking class at Samuel Huston College in 1902 prepared for careers in domestic service, as well as learning how to manage their own homes.

When Tillotson College opened in Austin in 1877, female students were advised to bring "one sheet, pillow slip, dress, skirt, pair drawers, under vest, under waist, nightgown, apron, two towels, pair hose, shirtwaist, four handkerchiefs." They were told to "save your money," discouraged from traveling on the Sabbath, and prohibited from wearing "elaborately trimmed dresses" of silk, lace, velvet, or satin.1 Tillotson was one of the first institutions of higher education established for black Texans. Higher education for Texas blacks began in the 1870s when first private colleges then a state school appeared. The institutions were sources of pride for their communities, and many graduates achieved prominence. The private schools, primarily founded by religious groups, struggled to overcome their extremely modest beginnings. The quality of their instruction gradually improved, as did the caliber of their faculty and the richness of student life. The state-supported school, Prairie View Normal Institute, opened in 1879. The institute and the private colleges continued to produce teachers and educated citizens in their normal and collegiate departments. Most significantly, black female college graduates returned to their communities in greater numbers to teach, to lead, and to serve as role models in churches, clubs, community organizations, and institutions. Schoolteachers were members of the black elite who combined their paid positions with social activism and racial pride. Barred from careers in most other professions, they channeled their

energies and talents into serving the children and parents in their neighborhoods and communities. Private Colleges With the founding of private black colleges between 1870 and 1900, higher education became an attainable goal for black women. Sarah Barnes, a white missionary, founded the first normal school or teacher training institution for blacks in Texas, the Barnes Institute in Galveston, which opened in 1871. She struggled unsuccessfully to obtain sufficient funds and materials; when whites sacked the school in 1875, she closed it down.2 Largely in response to the need for public school teachers, many black colleges were established throughout the South from 1870 to 1912, including eleven enduring ones in Texas. College education for Texas blacks began in the early 1870s, when the African Methodist Episcopal Church established Paul Quinn College and Wiley College. Black state legislator Shack Roberts was proud that Wiley would be "open to both sexes and all races." Bishop College, established in Marshall by the American Baptist Home Missionary Society, opened in 1881.3 Although referred to optimistically as colleges, most of these schools offered few, if any, college-level courses when they began. The earliest public high school for blacks opened in 1885, and most major Texas cities had no college preparatory education until the 1890s. The "colleges" initially focused on the basics of elementaryand secondary-level instruction. As students progressed, college divisions were added. Most of the state's black colleges and universities were founded as coeducational institutions. Those founded by white denominational groups had primarily white and largely male faculty. Gradually, blacks replaced them; the first black female college presidents took office in 1926 and 1930. Nine smaller and shorter-lived colleges came into existence during this same period, educating students at primary and secondary levels. One of these colleges whose name is not known was said to have been founded by a black woman, Josie Briggs Hall, around 1900 in Doyle, Limestone County.4 Women participated in the private colleges from the outset, learning domestic skills or earning teaching certificates, and sometimes becoming instructors. A young black woman whose maiden name is not known was part of the first graduating class of Wiley College normal department in 1888. She married math professor Henry B. Pemberton the same year and became his teaching assistant in Wiley's elementary department in 1892.5 The founders of black colleges ranged from white philanthropists to former slaves to northern religious missionary societies. Mary E. Allen, a white Presbyterian from Philadelphia who visited Texas 106 # Education and Culture

and saw the dire conditions of black women, provided the inspiration and much of the funding for the seminary named for her in Crockett.6 The original goal of the private colleges was to train missionaries and teachers who would, in turn, spread the Christian message or educate others. This aspiration brought them into the national debate over the type of education most appropriate for black youth: the vocational training espoused by Booker T. Washington or the classical education favored by W. Ε. Β. Du Bois.7 In reality, most students were ill-prepared for a classical education. Because students lacked a sound foundation in the basics, most of the institutions could not advance beyond the secondary level during the earliest period; only a few had college divisions. Although they stressed a classical curriculum at first, many soon added vocational courses.8 College women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries received a double message about their role in society—to be useful and to be womanly. The new profession of home economics was coming into its own around 1900. Many women married and became mothers, but also worked. Vocational classes for female students both fitted them for the limited available jobs and suited the widespread ideology that women should acquire skills to enhance their homes and their roles as wives and mothers. Vocational courses for women varied. Wiley College in the late 1880s offered typing and shorthand, along with cooking, sewing, and gardening.9 By the 1920s, black women were entering undergraduate schools in larger numbers, mainly in predominantly black southern colleges. More black women than men received a college education; consequently, potential husbands equal to them in formal training were scarce. Juanita Craft commented that a college education sometimes made marrying "a little difficult because a girl who has spent four years in college . . . has to marry a man who has been on the other end of a saw or a hammer." 10 The difficulty of financing a college education is demonstrated in the life of Carrie Sykes Willie, a Dallas resident and the daughter of former slaves. She earned a bachelor's degree from Wiley College in 1921 after eleven years' work. Her father was an employee of the school; when the college could not pay his salary, he had the balance credited to his daughter's tuition. Carrie and her mother did laundry and cleaned teachers' houses to pay the tuition. ' ' As students progressed and expectations rose, the curriculum balance shifted somewhat from elementary toward secondary and college-level courses.12 In the years before the adoption of state certification standards, prospective teachers simply took college-level courses for two years.

Higher Education # 107

The private black colleges at the turn of the century served several needs: remediation, college preparation, and college-level education. Teacher training was especially important to young women. Black women played a variety of roles in these fledgling institutions, and their presence increased by 1900. Miss Phebe B. Parsons started the music department at Tillotson College in 1885. One of the three students in Paul Quinn College's first graduating class (1889) was Mrs. Emma E. Joshua of Dallas, and the Class of 1892 consisted of five women. The only school which was not coeducational was Mary Allen Seminary, established solely for women. Except for its male principal, its staff was entirely female, including at least two blacks. Students there studied cooking, dressmaking, and millinery, among other subjects.13 The colleges founded by black missionary societies had black faculties and administrators from the start. Several black women taught at Tillotson in 1912: Misses Regina Crawford, Eloise Charlotte Young, and Anna Naomi Donaldson. Schools established by white religious groups were slow to hire black teachers or administrators. Matthew W. Dogan, the second black president of Wiley, began his term in 1896. His wife, Mrs. Fannie Forrest Faulkner Dogan, later joined the faculty after earning her B.S. degree from the school in 1908.14 Enrollment at Samuel Huston College rose from 8 to 377 between 1901, its first year, and 1916. The school flourished under the presidency of Dr. Reuben S. Lovinggood. It opened the Eliza Dee Industrial Home for Girls in 1904 across the street from the campus; its purpose was to "develop Christian character and to teach economy, energy and neatness in domestic science." Fourteen Huston students lived and worked under the supervision of a white woman, Miss Clara I. King. Local black women gave "Chair Socials," "Pillow Case Entertainments," and "Laundry Equipment Fairs" to help furnish the college. Dr. Lovinggood's wife, Mattie Alice Lovinggood, a very light-skinned black woman, attended the University of Texas School of Library Science in the early 1900s, although her race was not known to the administration.15 Although many woman students were drawn to a teaching career, Nannie Helen Burroughs and other national black leaders were encouraging the study of home economics as a separate discipline during this period. A number of colleges established such independent departments. The sewing and cooking curricula shifted toward college-level studies. Bishop and Tillotson added commercial courses in typing, shorthand, and bookkeeping, although few clerical jobs existed for black women. In 1930, the Wide Awake Stenos Club was very popular at Tillotson.16 Bishop College granted eight bachelor's degrees and twenty-two diplomas, presumably for teachers, in 1916. Enrollment in black colleges boomed in the 1920s for a variety of reasons. Black high 108

Education and Culture

Maggie Roberts was one of two women in Paul Quinn's threemember graduating class in 1889.

Vocational education included printing at Paul Quinn College, a class open to women as well as men in the 1920s.

schools in Texas were preparing more students for higher education. An agricultural depression forced many families off farms, and education was one of the few opportunities available to young people. For women, more than for men, a college education meant a job teaching, albeit in a segregated school. By 1935, the Crisis magazine was able to report that Wiley and Prairie View both had over seven hundred students. Wiley awarded forty-two A.B. or B.S. degrees and Prairie View, sixty-four.17 The Slater Fund established county training schools in Texas and other states to train rural elementary teachers. By 1930, there were thirty such institutions in Texas. Large numbers of rural women took advantage of Paul Quinn College's job training program to escape a life of sharecropping and find better work as seamstresses or housekeepers.18 State-Supported Higher Education When the University of Texas at Austin opened its doors exclusively to white students in 1883, blacks expected that Texas would soon grant them "a university of the first class." The legislature was constitutionally bound to create such an institution when it was "deemed practicable." In fact, the legislature failed to do so until 1947, when Houston College was reorganized as Texas State University for Negroes.19 Higher Education # 109

TheBishop College YWCA sported a basketball team in 1912. (Top row) Blanche Crow, Comora Waring, Mayme Browning, Beatrice Wesley, Clotiel Fearonce, and Miss Cotton, coach; (bottom) Nannie Perpener, Emma Richardson, Ida Wade, Effie Jones, Beatrice Coleman, and Miss Chaplin, coach.

For sixty-four years, Prairie View was the only school available for Texas blacks wanting public higher education. Black taxpayers helped to support the University of Texas and other state schools, but they could not attend. By one delaying tactic or another, by one half-filled promise after another, the legislature refused to honor its mandate for a branch university for blacks. Prairie View could not take everyone who wanted to attend, and very few blacks could afford to go out of state. Although the school's identity shifted during its early years, its graduate and professional training programs are of recent origin. Prairie View Prairie View was a multipurpose institution which served as the state's agricultural college, normal school, college of industrial arts, and the university for blacks.20 Several changes in identity and focus preceded its emergence as Prairie View A&M University in 1945. Through the efforts of black state senator Walter H. Burton, Alta Vista Agricultural College near Hempstead came into existence in 1878, the first state-supported college for blacks. After this false start, the school opened as a coeducational normal school under the control of the (white) Texas A&M regents. Miss E. V Ewing was hired as "Preceptress, Matron, etc." The regents also hired a "wash woman" and a cook at salaries of fifteen dollars a month. By the end of winter, enrollment totaled sixty. The girls lived in the old plantation house, which had been renamed for its former owner, Helen Marr Kirby. Courses included geography, arithmetic, grammar, and reading, but few students were ready for advanced study.21 Prairie View's enrollment grew steadily but modestly before 1900. Course offerings expanded to include geometry, drawing, music, history, rhetoric, and philosophy. The vocational depart110 # Education and Culture

ments were subordinate to the teacher training program. Between 1885 and 1888, sixty-two graduates obtained teaching jobs.22 President L. C. Anderson, who took over as principal after the death of his brother Ε. Η. Anderson in 1885, believed that girls needed to know how to "take care of the home," to make it "pleasant and attractive." Girls worked and learned in the school's laundry and kitchen and studied nursing and hygiene suited to "the duties and responsibilities of home and social life, as well as for those of the school room." In 1888, Miss Sallie Εwell's classroom was outfitted with "sewing machines, tables, charts, and the necessary appliances for the proper instruction in measuring, cutting, fitting, making and mending garments and household linen." The students learned darning techniques and how to make buttonholes, gathers, tucks, and ruffles. Cooking classes took place in a model kitchen and dining room. The emphasis on homemaking was reinforced in extracurricular activities, such as Prairie View's Royal Art Club.23 Other women filled important faculty positions. Miss Harriet F. Kimbro began a long tenure as preceptress of the Girls' Industrial Department in 1889. In the 1890s, Miss Leora Aray taught grammar, rhetoric, reading, music, and cooking. Miss M. J. Isabelle of the Music Department led an all-girl Mandolin Club. After 1900, the faculty included a number of women. Miss A. L. Evans, a former student at Oberlin and the University of Chicago, taught English and was dean of the Women's Department, associate professor, and head preceptress. Native Texan Mrs. Saphronia McCall, a graduate of the Provident Hospital in Chicago, served as head nurse in 1912.24 Under increasing pressure to add more vocational courses, the school became Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College in 1899. The legislature authorized a "four year course of classical and

Little Household Helps * Pared apples and bananas will not darken if lemon juice is sprinkled on them. * Cut flowers will keep fresh longer if slice of mild soap is put in water with them. •To remove dirt from furniture, rub briskly with corn meal and gasoline. •To remove fresh ink, pour on boiling water from a height. —Royal Art Club program, Prairie View Scrapbook, ca. 1913

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scientific studies" there in 1901. The training of teachers, however, remained its most important function, although the school continued to offer practical skills. The sole commencement during these years when A.B. degrees were granted occurred in 1904. Among the three graduates was Mrs. Ruth King, perhaps the earliest black female recipient of a bachelor's degree from a Texas institution.25 Young women constituted one-half of the total 136 graduates of Prairie View in 1913. Their major subjects were sewing, millinery, cooking, dairying, and normal school courses, but they also studied Latin, Greek, civics, and geometry.26 The historian of the Prairie View Class of 1913 was Ethelyn Chisum, later a teacher and school counselor in Dallas. During her thirty-two-year tenure as dean at Booker T. Washington High School, her duties varied from monitoring attendance to involvement in the health and social welfare of the students.27 Mary E. V. Hunter, who became a nationally known leader in the field of home economics, was also a Prairie View student at this time. Her appointment as the state's first female home demonstration agent in 1915 interrupted her pursuit of a degree, which she finally obtained in 1926. The home demonstration program blossomed under her supervision and made a lasting impact on the lives of many rural women by teaching them nutrition, sanitation, gardening, budgeting, and canning.28 With students like Chisum and Hunter, Prairie View clearly was attracting talented undergraduates. Its stature increased in 1926, when it earned accreditation. During the period from 1927 to 1930, the Bachelor of Arts degree for women became common. The school achieved a class A rating in 1934. The legislature approved graduate courses in home economics in the late 1930s, perhaps in response to increasingly strident discussions of integrating state-supported graduate education, where Texas did not provide separate facilities. Prairie View was also one of the few places in the state where black women could study nursing (other than black hospitals in a few of the larger cities). In 1930-1931, seventy-eight women chose this major; within a year, the number had increased to 128.29 Over the years, Prairie View has continued to supply many of the state's black teachers and leaders. The Branch University Adherents of the agricultural college for blacks were hopeful that, as the University of Texas became a reality in 1883, they, too, would soon have a state-supported "university of the first class." In 1882, the year before UT opened, Texas voters by a 2 to 1 majority authorized a state Negro university in Austin. The victory was hollow, however; the legislature postponed the establishment of such a branch indefinitely. The Democrats' platform of 1896 called for the gradual expansion of Prairie View into a university. Black edu112

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Ethelyn Taylor Chisum studied science, English, history, math, bookkeeping, and dairying at Prairie View ca. 1913. After graduation, she had a distinguished career as an educator with the Dallas Independent School District.

Both hand and machine sewing were taught at Prairie View in 1899.

cators eventually came to support the idea as the only plan likely to prove acceptable to the legislature, although it was hardly an equitable settlement.30 Prairie View was unable to sustain enrollments in the so-called university course. The failure of the state to establish a branch university for blacks was a source of resentment among the black community for decades. It was not until the 1940s that the climate had changed sufficiently that the Colored Teachers State Association, its allies, and the threat of legal action could sway the legislature. In 1947, the legislature created Texas State University for Negroes. What had been Houston Junior College, and Houston College for Negroes in 1934, a branch of the University of Houston, was to become the university of the first class for blacks, Texas Southern University.31

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The Depression During the Depression, the black colleges, always hard-pressed financially, suffered even more. Buildings could not be properly maintained, and libraries could not purchase books. Enrollments dropped as students were unable to pay tuition (with the significant exception of Tillotson). Wiley College, for example, went from 715 students in 1930 to 420 in 1940.32 One of the most important New Deal programs was the National Youth Administration (NYA), part of the Works Progress Administration, which provided financial assistance to high school- and college-age students. Students received fifteen dollars a month for part-time jobs on campus. Artemisia Bowden, president of St. Philip's College, noted in 1936 that NYA aid "has been an important factor in maintaining the enrollment."33 The NYA established a vocational department at Prairie View in 1936, with an enrollment of over one hundred boys and girls. In 1937-1938, female students worked as hospital assistants and in cafeterias through the College Aid Fund. Although it discontinued the enrollment of girls in 1941, female students took courses in radio communication, radio engineering, internal combustion engines, drafting, and industrial mechanics.34 College Presidents: Bowden and Branch St. Philip's College and Tillotson College were fortunate enough to have outstanding women presidents to guide them prudently through the Depression. Artemisia Bowden, the newly appointed head of St. Philip's, stepped off a train in San Antonio in 1902, wearing a red ribbon bow so she could be recognized. Born in Georgia and educated at a North Carolina normal school, Bowden had just completed two years of teaching when the bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church asked her to lead St. Philip's. St. Philip's was little more than an elementary school, but later added a normal department and other courses. It became a junior college in the 1920s. In 1926, Bowden was appointed president, the first woman to head a college in Texas.35 President Bowden's single-minded determination to make St. Philip's a success motivated her to be the school's mainstay for fifty-two years. She was not only president, but principal, teacher, business manager, spokesperson, moving spirit, and chief fundraiser.36 Mary Elizabeth Branch's arrival on the campus of Austin's Tillotson College in 1930 was comparatively inauspicious. She passed through "the pitiful remnants of a fence and made her way" up a path so overgrown that she disturbed a fox whose home was nearby. An experienced educator by the time she took over the helm at Tillotson, Miss Branch was born in Virginia to a former slave and began her education there. She received her undergradu-

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Artemisia Bowden, longtime president of St. Philip's College in San Antonio, proudly wore her Delta Sigma Theta pin in the 1920s.

Dr. Mary Elizabeth Branch was president of Tillotson College (later Huston-Tillotson) in Austin from 1930 to 1944, greatly increasing its enrollment and its status.

ate degree and M.A. from the University of Chicago and began work on a doctorate. Twenty years of teaching English at her alma mater, Virginia State College, prepared her for a position as dean of Vashon High School in St. Louis, the country's largest school for black women.37 The conditions Branch found at Tillotson might have shocked her, but she quickly took charge. She instituted a five-year plan to renovate buildings and erect new ones, attract more and better students, improve the library, increase the size and advance the credentials of the faculty, and alleviate the stodgy, humorless atmosphere. Branch was a great believer in home economics training: "We do our best to keep our girls scientifically domestic for it helps them both to get a job and keep a husband." 18 Under Branch's guidance, enrollment increased, and the school earned an A rating from the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools in 1943. Although most black Texas colleges experienced a decrease in enrollment during the Depression, the enrollment of Tillotson soared—from 140 to 502. Like Artemisia Bowden, Mary Branch wore many hats—from admissions to choosing reading materials for students to serving as an active member of the Texas Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation. At her death in 1944, she was the only black female president of a senior college accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. Her work ensured the survival of the school until its merger with Samuel Huston College in 1952.39 Black women also served in other administrative positions. For example, Miss Lewis Tindall was dean of the College of Education in 1935 at Paul Quinn College in Waco.40 Black Sororities Black sororities developed nationally in the early 1900s; Alpha Kappa Alpha in 1908, Delta Sigma Theta in 1913, and Zeta Phi Beta in 1920. As the number of black women attending historically black colleges in Texas increased and a growing number of out-ofstate black women settled in Texas, more sorority chapters appeared. Sororities were not only centers of social activities; they also provided leadership roles, support systems, a sense of empowerment, status, and networking opportunities. Frederica Chase Dodd graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas in 1910 and headed for Howard University. She and a group of friends, including fellow Texans Myra Davis Hemmings, Jessie McGuire Dent, Zephyr Chisom Carter, and Wertie Blackwell Weaver chartered Delta Sigma Theta, a group which split off from the Alpha Kappa Alphas in 1913. The sorority provided support for ambitious young women away from home, who shared common goals. Chapters of the sisterhood arose on hundreds of college campuses in the following decades. When FrederHigher Education # 115

ica Chase Dodd returned to Dallas in 1924, she brought sisterhood along, organizing an alumnae chapter of DST. After teaching for several years, she attended the Atlanta University School of Social Work and began running a city social welfare office for blacks during the Depression.41 Veteran schoolteacher, dramatist, and church and civic leader Myra Davis Hemmings, a native of Gonzales who grew up in San Antonio, made important contributions to two sororities. She had the distinction of being the president of both Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta sororities at Howard University in 19121913. She was president of AKA when its members broke off to form DST. She then became founding president of Alpha Chapter and, in 1950, vice-president of the national organization. After graduating from Howard in 1913, she taught high school English for fifty-one years in San Antonio, where she and her husband founded the Negro Little Theater.42 In 1935, Delta's national secretary was Edna M. Kincheon from Belton. She had held prior positions as Southwest regional director and grand journalist. With only an old-fashioned Royal typewriter, a stapler, a hole puncher, and stamp pads, she wrote over two thousand letters in 1938 and 1939.45 The first chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) west of the Mississippi owes its existence at Wiley College to Olive Durden Brown, who helped organize it in 1924. Within the next fifteen years, nine additional AKA chapters (including graduate chapters) were formed. The San Antonio chapter, the first black women's Greek letter organization in the city, was founded in 1930 by Bettie S. Browne, thefirstbasileus (chair).44 Local chapters like those of Zeta Phi Beta (ZPB) addressed local and state needs, as well as national issues. Houstonian Lullelia Walker Harrison joined the group at Wiley College. She served as a regional director of ZPB in the 1930s and as its national president in the 1940s. From 1943 to 1961, she was national executive secretary. The program of the Zeta chapter at Prairie View in 1938 provides a glimpse of the range of activities in sororities: a women's meeting, girls' days in grade school and high school, and discussions of the problems of working women and of domestic workers.45 These sororities and others like Sigma Gamma Rho have taken an active position on many issues. In the 1930s, Deltas nationally petitioned Congress to increase aid to black land grant colleges in the South. They began a National Library Project in 1937 to bring books to southern black rural areas. The Depression gave special poignancy to the groups' concerns about poverty in the South, and the sororities supported various New Deal measures. All the sororities lent support to the Scottsboro boys (nine Alabama teenagers accused of raping a white woman), the Costigan-Wagner Anti116 # Education and Culture

Frederica Chase Dodd was a founder of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority at Howard University and later helped found the Maria Morgan Branch of the YWCA in Dallas.

Texas founders of Delta Sigma Theta at Howard University in 1913 included Frederica Chase Dodd (bottom row, far right), Myra Davis Hemmings (top row, far left), Jessie McGuire Dent (top row, third from right), and Wertie Blackwell Weaver (bottom row, third from left).

Myra Davis Hemmings was president of both Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta sororities at Howard University in 1913. She returned to Texas to become a distinguished educator in San Antonio and founder of the Negro Little Theatre Guild. Lynching Bill, and federal employment opportunities for blacks. They also opposed segregation in interstate travel, particularly irksome for sorority and club women traveling throughout the country.46 At Texas schools or out-of-state institutions, many purposeful young women equipped themselves for professional careers. Their sororities gave them one forum for developing leadership and expanding self-confidence. As they entered the classroom as educators or the community as social workers, the circle of their influence widened, and they became the role models for the next generation. Higher Education

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Student Life Sororities were only one aspect of college life. The coeds' lives were well regulated according to the prevailing morality of the day at both private and public colleges. The clockrigidlycontrolled school days, and the calendar prescribed mandatory religious services several times per week. Colleges forbade the use of liquor, tobacco, and firearms and prohibited loud or boisterous behavior. Officials limited contact between the sexes to approved school functions, and some colleges required uniforms and censored mail.47 Prairie View girls under the chaperonage of Miss Harriet F. Kimbro were "encouraged to do right from principle. They are placed on their honor, and conduct becoming ladies is insisted upon." Young women were expected to maintain the dormitories, since "a knowledge of the details of household economy is essential to the education of every woman." "Man" territory was separated from "Woman" territory by lines on the campus which could not be Jessie McGuire Dent was a crossed without special permission. On one occasion, female stu- founder of the Delta Sigma dents were criticized for "dancing on the front porch" of their dor- Theta Sorority and later a mitory, and students carried out a two-day "insurrection" in 1905 teacher in the Galveston public schools. She won a pay equalbecause of the faculty's refusal to allow a "sociable."48 ization suit for teachers in the As a counterbalance to the severity of social rules, extracurricu- 1940s. lar activities for women accelerated during the early 1900s. Women participated in music of all sorts, along with intramural basketball and Softball. Mary Allen, Tillotson, and St. Philip's had intercollegiate women's basketball and tennis, with participants wearing bloomers and middy blouses. Membership in religious organizations was also important, and YWCA chapters existed at Wiley and Bishop.49 Professional Training outside Texas Since Texas universities were still segregated, black women desiring a graduate or professional education had to leave the state until the 1950s. Only the most ambitious and determined students undertook the expense and the personal sacrifice of leaving their families. As early as 1901, some black Texas women were attending colleges out of state. Sarah Ellis of San Antonio entered Northwestern University as a music student that year. As the first black to live in a campus dormitory, she was the only student assigned a room on the first floor and reportedly was "thrown into contact with the other students only at mealtime."50 Several women distinguished themselves after pursuing graduate studies beyond state borders. Ellie Alma Walls Montgomery of Houston was an educational leader for forty years, both a college professor and a public school teacher. She earned an A.B. at Fisk University in 1911, a master's degree from Columbia University, and a certificate from the New York School of Philanthropy (later 118 # Education and Culture

Ellie Walls Montgomery had to leave the state to obtain a professional education. She was the first black woman in the United States to get a degree in social work, taught in Houston schools for forty-five years, and was the first female president of the Colored Teachers State Association in 1948.

New York School of Social Work) about 1913, the first black to do so. She returned to her home in Houston about 1915 to begin a teaching career which lasted until her retirement in 1960. Walls's scholarly writings included a study of juvenile delinquency among Houston Negroes and methods of improving Negro businesses. She promoted programs to integrate the state teachers associations and, as the first female president of the Teachers State Association of Texas (1948-1949), was instrumental in the successful effort to equalize salaries of black and white Texas teachers.51 After earning a B.A. from Samuel Huston College in 1925 and an M.A. from the University of Colorado in 1927, Inez Prosser of Yoakum became one of the first black women to earn a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Cincinnati (1933). Texas College alumna Mildred Jefferson was the first woman graduate of Harvard Medical School. Olive Durden Brown of Austin graduated with a degree in library science from Hampton, Virginia, in 1930. Mary Yerwood Thompson earned a master's degree in social work from Atlanta University in 1943 and went on to a distinguished career as the first black psychiatric social worker at the Waco Veterans Hospital.52 During the late 1930s, pressure on the legislature to provide additional funding for out-of-state education for black students increased. Limited funds were finally provided for a few dozen students, but they were applied in a discriminatory fashion. The Texas Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation (TCIC) protested the state's denial of some applications on the grounds that Prairie View offered graduate work in certain fields. The TCIC maintained that Prairie View's courses were not equal to those in long-established northern graduate schools. In 1939-1940, sixty-four students were approved for out-of-state schooling to study nursing, medicine, dentistry, law, art, music, social service, and library science, among other fields. In 1940-1941, the number of black women receiving aid totaled forty-six; men, fifty-eight.53 Summary Through the vehicle of higher education, generations of black women have trained for careers in home economics, teaching, social work, the business world, and the professions. They have contributed their incomes and culture to their families, formed clubs and civic associations, and improved their standing in their communities. Those young women who could not afford tuition fees have often been left behind working in the fields or toiling over the laundry tub, mired in unskilled occupations. Private colleges in Texas initially filled the breach created by the state's delay in supporting higher education for blacks. These schools at first were largely remedial, providing the equivalent of primary and secondary curricula. Standards rose consistently, Higher Education # 119

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The faculty led the 1927 commencement procession at the all-female Mary Allen Seminary in Crockett, followed by the graduating class, wearing caps and gowns, and the student body in their uniforms.

however, and women played an increasingly larger role as the colleges became full-fledged institutions of higher education. State-funded Prairie View A&M University surmounted its modest beginnings as an agricultural school by adding a normal school curriculum, industrial courses, a "classical and scientific" program, and finally graduate studies. Its major value to female students clearly has been in teacher preparation. The Texas legislature delayed the establishment of a branch university for blacks until 1947. Particularly in urban centers, a new generation of outspoken black leaders began challenging the racist structure of society, violence, and Jim Crow legislation.54 Only when the threat of integrating the University of Texas loomed large did the legislature create Texas State University for Negroes in Houston, now Texas Southern University. Although Prairie View and Texas Southern both belong to the state university system, their share of the financial pie has not compensated for decades of delay and inattention. Nevertheless, the opportunities for advancement which these two institutions have offered to young black women have been substantial. In the final decade of the twentieth century, Governor Ann Richards recognized the five surviving historically black private colleges for their contributions: Huston-Tillotson College, Jarvis Christian College, Paul Quinn College, Texas College, and Wiley College.55

Dr. Maud A. B. Fuller, president of the Women's Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention for forty years, addressed a National Sunday School Congress at Munger Avenue Baptist Church in Dallas in the 1940s. She transferred her considerable skills as a public school teacher to thefieldof religious education.

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# 7 CULTURE

AMD

SOCIAL

LIFE

"If you can sing gospel you can sing the blues. . . . Where you say 'Lord' in a gospel in blues you say 'daddy. ' "

The wedding of Dr. Carrie Jane Sutton and Dr. John Hunter Brooks at 430 N. Cherry in San Antonio was one of the highlights of the social season in 1924. (Front row, left to right) Julia Aycock, Carrie Jane Sutton, John Brooks, Essie Sutton; (back row) Lillian Sutton, Bettye Brown, Josie Macklin, Dr. Thelma Patten (Law), S. J. Sutton, Mr. Whitter. Dr. Sutton and Dr. Patten were among Texas's first black women physicians. The Ladies Symphony Orchestra, organized in Houston in 1915, featured (standing, left to right) Miss Jessie Covington, Mrs. Virgie S. Cornish, Mrs. E. M. Johnson, Mrs. B. F. Barlow, Mrs. Milton Griffin, Miss M. E. Isaac, Mrs. Frank Martinere, Miss Corine Wright; (seated, left to right) Mrs. A. E. Butler, Mrs. Daisy McGee, Mrs. B. J. Covington, Madam Corilla Rochon (director), Mrs. J. L. Blunt, and Mrs. R. O. Smith.

Introduction Numerous Texas musicians and singers like Beulah "Sippie" Wallace and Etta Moten got their start in the church. Wallace was organist at her Houston church at age seven in 1905. Moten remembered that "if you were a minister's daughter like I was, then you were in theater. Being born in a church is almost being born in theater, because there were church theatricals." Moten sang in the choir. ' The church has held a dominant position in black communities as an institution from which black social and cultural life emerged or solidified after emancipation. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women were able to expand their roles in some denominations. Outside the church, individual women's creative roles as hostesses, cooks, gardeners, and seamstresses enriched the social culture of many communities. Later in the twentieth century, black women have had more choices in contributing to black-identified social and cultural communal efforts as well as racially integrated ones. In larger cities, blacks developed public parks and libraries for their own benefit in the early 1900s. After World War II, desegregation rulings and activism gradually opened public spaces and broadened intercultural events for all Texans. Texas schools and churches before desegregation and afterward have become spawning grounds for female Texas artists in music, theater, dance, literature, and fine arts. Whether voicing personal and family concerns or calling on entire communities to mobilize,

black women have employed diverse media, from the dawn of the century to the present. Year-Round Social Culture The cultural life of blacks, as well as other Texans, includes both year-round and seasonal activities. The variety is sometimes determined by social class and geography—isolated black communities often have maintained their own distinct cultural traditions more consistently than urban blacks. Family and religion have dominated most black women's extravocational activities. Family visits, reunions, birthdays, and weddings—enhanced by women's creative decorating, cooking, sewing, and hair styling—have served as the basis for black Texas community life. Remembering Depression-era socializing, Beatrice Clay of San Antonio recalled that she and her neighbors entertained themselves inexpensively by going to dances and picture shows; sometimes "we had people gather in the yard."2 Church members typically enjoyed socializing at religious gatherings. One South Texas woman recalled that church "was especially important to the women." Even as youngsters, girls "played a lot of church," while "the boys were playin' cowboy." Women traditionally have supported educational and missionary endeavors by holding church suppers, offering their best fare for sale.3 Achieving status in black communities in the early decades of the century depended on property ownership, education, and circumscribed behavior. Women dutifully entered into community life through church, club, and neighborhood activities.4 Weddings and graduations also presented opportunities for socializing. Because of segregation, most social activities of upper-middleclass young people took place in homes until the 1940s. Mothers, grandmothers, and aunts worked for weeks planning guest lists, menus, decorations, and attire for special parties. Young women also participated in their parents' social life, helping to entertain black notables. "Within our home, there was the constant flow of educational materials and living personalities," wrote Constance Houston Thompson of Houston. "This exposure opened our eyes to a larger world that demanded skills and creative talent. We were introduced to achievers like Marian Anderson, the great opera singer. . . . There were Dr. R. Nathaniel Dett, who directed the choir at Hampton Institute, and Carter G. Woodson, the great historian."5 As in the past, twentieth-century black Texans of various classes have entertained themselves informally with domino and card games, story-telling, fishing, quilting bees, and house parties, like white Texans. In rural areas, recreational activities and facilities beyond the churches and county fairgrounds usually were privately sponsored and in some cases only available seasonally. 124 # Education and Culture

Last evening at 8 o'clock the Wesley Chapel on East Ninth Street was crowded with representative colored people, augmented by quite a number of white friends of the contract parties to witness the marriage of Mr. Lewis (Louis] D. Lyons and Miss Eva A. Carrington, two prominent young people in Austin colored society. The wedding party arrived . . . to the steps of the lively wedding march as played by Ru birth's Orchestra

Upon

the conclusion of the wedding, the bridal party and friends repaired to the home of the bride, where a reception was enjoyed until 11 o'clock. —Austin Daily Statesman. January 23, 1896

Before World War II, blacks in larger cities had a few recreation centers. Houston's ten-acre Emancipation Park, purchased by blacks, was turned over to the city in 1916. Austin's Rosewood Park, with two baseball fields, tennis courts, and a swimming pool, was operating before 1930. By 1934, the park's recreation center provided a kindergarten, games, and a sewing club. When increasing numbers of blacks moved to Texas towns and cities between the 1920s and the 1950s, they found private entertainment venues open year-round, such as theaters, dance halls, and amusement parks, some owned by black entrepreneurs.6 Jessie Thomas's 1929 study of Houston's recreational facilities noted that two of the seven theaters which admitted blacks were black-owned, as were most of the city's seven dance halls for blacks. Thomas found that more than 650 young women participated in the YWCA's Girl Reserves. The Colored Branch of the Houston Public Library served more than three thousand patrons.7 Many of these first urban libraries owed their existence to black women's organizations, which contributed to their funding and later maintenance. The Dunbar Branch Library for blacks in Dallas opened in 1931. Houston's Colored Carnegie Library opened the following year and soon became a community arts center. Mrs. Willie Mae Kirk spearheaded a drive for a permanent Carver Branch Library in Austin, which opened in 1933 under librarian Hattie Henson's management. Eventually, these libraries were integrated.8 In recent decades, women have supported black Texas history and culture as staff or board members of institutions like the Carver Museum in Austin; the Museum of African-American Life and Culture in Dallas, which has established a Friends of the Texas Black Women's History Archives; the Texas Association of African American Heritage Organization; and the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio. Women have had a key role in keeping historical records alive—both physically and in the public memory. They have also served on county historical commissions, promoting the preservation or marking of historically black homes, businesses, and institutional sites or structures. Willie Lee Gay of Houston was thefirstblack member of the Texas Historical Commission, appointed in 1991 by Governor Ann Richards.9 In 1975, under the leadership of Algerene Craig, Ada Simond, and Janie Harrison, members of Delta Sigma Theta sorority compiled an exhibit of 1,000 photographs and documents on black history in Travis County, with funding from the National American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. These Austin women and others around the state contributed their expertise to the touring exhibit Texas Women—A Celebration of History (1981-1982), now permanently housed at Texas Woman's University. Black history also received special attention in Dallas in 1986, when the Dallas Culture and Social Life #

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MY FAVORITE DESSERT My fondest food memories go back to my childhood. Growing up in a small East Texas town and coming from a large family, times were hard. But the holidays seemed to bring our family even closer. Thanksgiving and Christmas were special times and my mom would begin her cooking several days in advance. There were always so many different aromas coming from her kitchen. But my favorite was the smell of her fresh baked Black Walnut Pound Cake because as children we had a part in preparing it by hand-shelling the nuts. Black Walnut Pound Cake 2/3 cup butter or margarine 11/4cups sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla 1/2 cup milk 2 cups all-purpose flour 13/4teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon baking powder 3 eggs 1 cup finely chopped black walnuts Confectioners sugar 1. Heat oven to 300 degrees F. Grease 9x5x3-inch loaf pan. 2. Beat butter at medium speed of electric mixer in large bowl until creamy. Add sugar slowly. Beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in vanilla. Add milk. Beat until well blended. 3. Sift together flour, salt and baking powder. Add to creamed mixture at low speed. Beat until smooth, about 2 minutes. Scrape sides of bowl as needed. 4. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, at low speed. Scrape bowl as needed. Add chopped nuts, mixing well. Transfer to 9-inch loaf pan. 5. Bake at 300 degrees F for 1 hour and 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool on cooking rack 10 minutes before removing from pan. Cool completely. Dust with confectioners sugar. One 9-inch loaf

—Loretta S. McCullough, Jacksonville, Texas

(Reprinted by permission of the publisher, from The Black Family Reunion Cookbook: Recipes and Food Memories from the National Council of Negro Women (Memphis: Wimmer Companies, 19911, p. 181.)

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Museum of African-American Life and Culture created and toured They Showed the Way, an exhibit profiling significant black Texas women.10 Some women have passed down family or community crafts as well as pictures and documents. Many learned from relatives or neighbors how to fashion clothing, blankets, quilts, baskets, or furniture or carried on heirloom designs or techniques. Members of Houston's Ethel Ransom Club recorded in 1927 that they took embroidery lessons. San Antonio's Sodality of Mary Immaculate worked on a quilt in 1936. Quilting at Saint Emanuel Baptist Church in Hearne continues to the present; but after mid-century, fewer young women have participated in this needlecraft." Seasonal Cultural Activities Black Texans, predominantly rural until the 1940s, have had three major types of seasonal cultural events. They have celebrated religious and national holidays simultaneously with other Americans. They have participated in county and state agricultural fairs, albeit separately from whites until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enforced. Finally, Juneteenth celebrations and Black History Week or Month have been significant in the twentieth century. As in the nineteenth century, Christmas and Easter are important seasonal holidays for blacks. Both days are celebrated with feasting and seasonal music, especially in religious services. The semifictional character Mae Dee Lewis recalled months of preparation for Christmas celebrations in turn-of-the-century Austin. Each winter, her family and community rehearsed music, sewed or bought clothes, and wrapped gifts for family members and for neighbors of modest means or frail health. Friends also exchanged cakes, pies, and candies.12 Dr. Connie Yerwood of Austin marveled at a doll she received as a child at Christmas around the time of World War I. "It was the first Negro doll I had ever seen," she said, "[a] pretty doll that was my own color and just for me." 13 Easter has warranted special foods, pageants, and church concerts. Since the 1970s, some urban Texas blacks have marked Ramadan, an annual Islamic devotional period marked by daytime fasting, and others have celebrated Kwanzaa, a midwinter week of ceremonies to honor pan-African heritage and unity to commemorate the African Harvest of the First Fruit. Many black Texans traditionally have celebrated U.S. holidays, such as Memorial Day and Veterans Day, acknowledging all Americans' participation in military engagements.14 Black women have participated in county fair activities since about 1915, when the Texas Agricultural Extension Service created an extension service by and for blacks. It was parallel to, but distinct from, the white extension service until the two merged in Culture and Social Life # 127

1965. Women have competed for prizes in cooking, sewing, interior design, art, crafts, and produce contests.15 Decades before the State Fair of Texas in Dallas desegregated, blacks developed their own fairs. Joseph Wiley organized one of the largest, the Colored Fair and Tri-Centennial Exposition, in 1901 at Dallas to showcase black Americans' inventions and industry. Women worked with the men to ensure the success of the twomonth fair, notably Julia Q. Caldwell, a schoolteacher, who headed the Ladies Department.16 Ethnic Holidays In 1904, the Galveston City Times highlighted the activities of the "Women's Nineteenth of June Committee," which planned a "magnificent parade." Blacks have developed several celebrations based on their distinctive experiences, including Juneteenth in the Southwest. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger officially proclaimed emancipation for Texas slaves. Since then, many communities have celebrated the day with parades, picnics, and pyrotechnics. In 1980, it became an official state holiday. Lorece Williams recalled that in Caldwell County "Juneteenth was the high point of the summer. We always got a new dress and some shoes to go with it... . There'd be barbecue, watermelon, soda water and a baseball game." l7 Festivities have varied through the years, with speech-making often a prominent part. Initially, former slaves recounted their ordeals. In some programs, women made speeches. For example, during the 1904 celebration in Galveston, Miss Laura Austin read the Emancipation Proclamation, and Miss H. A. Richards presented a paper entitled "Solving the Negro Problem." In 1909, Mattie (Mrs. Thomas J.) White spoke at Austin's celebration on "Opportunities and Responsibilities of the Negro."18 During the 1940s and 1950s, Juneteenth celebrations waned. Former slaves and their testimony were now less numerous and, before the civil rights movement, many younger blacks preferred to downplay slavery. The Black Pride movement of the 1960s and 1970s renewed interest in this Texas holiday, however. One contemporary attitude toward Juneteenth is summarized by Jewell McGowan: "I feel patriotic on the Fourth of July. . . . It's a part of my heritage, too. I'd like to have whites feel that way about Juneteenth, and I know some do." Women's traditional contributions to Juneteenth celebrations focused on food: they baked pies, cakes, and breads and made salads and casseroles. Mae Dee Lewis, Ada Simond's semiautobiographical character, remembered selling homemade ice cream and soda water one year at Austin's Emancipation Park, where the gala took place. "We made lemon, pecan, and sweet potato pies, a big peach cobbler, and plain pound, coconut, jelly, and caramel layer cakes." Black Texans took June128 # Education and Culture

Former slaves celebrated Juneteenth (Emancipation Day) in Austin in 1900.

teenth celebrations with them when they migrated to other western and northern states. Today, Juneteenth is celebrated by blacks far from Texas.19 Black History Month began as a weeklong event during the New Negro Movement or Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, which produced a flowering of literary and artistic expression. Educator Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week in February 1926 as an effort to institutionalize the study of black history. He inspired other organizations to sponsor annual programs about black culture. Cameron High School offered the first "Negro History" class in Texas in 1925. In 1935, Mrs. Louisa Walker made a presentation on Frederick Douglass in El Paso. Mrs. M. J. Davis of Houston was among the first teachers of black history in Texas, followed by numerous contemporary women such as Ada DeBlanc Simond of Austin, who compiled the Mae Dee stories for children and published them in the 1970s. As Annie Ward Pearce, a San Antonio descendant of black and Seminole military scouts, says, "If we forget our history, we will lose our identity/' 20 During the twentieth century, rich cultural practices derived from African and African-American forebears have been preserved most intensely in religious and public entertainment settings. Religion Women have figured prominently in the black church, particularly in Protestant denominations.21 Historically, the church has afforded black communities some autonomy and, simultaneously, opportuCulture and Social Life # 129

nities for service and influence. From their rudimentary beginnings after the Civil War, black Texas churches evolved in the twentieth century into complex social and political institutions. Members organized into groups for Bible study, music, missionary work, and community service. For many Texas blacks, the church has maintained its central importance, even as thousands moved from rural to urban settings. Camp meetings and revivals were major religious and social events in smaller communities, particularly in July and August. Black churches also played a crucial role in the civil rights movement, beginning in the 1940s.22 In 1936, Baptists claimed the majority of church members, with more than 388,000 statewide. Second in numbers were the Methodists—the Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church and the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Pentecostal, Spiritual, or Holiness churches—together categorized as Sanctified churches—also experienced growth in the first half of the century, especially in cities. Other denominations have numbered comparatively fewer among Texas blacks.23 In 1990, Texas had an estimated 815,000 adherents of black Baptist churches, excluding counties with fewer than five hundred blacks. The AME Zion denomination, a historically black group, reported nine Texas churches serving a total of 2,200. By 1984, black Catholics in the state numbered 71,400, or about 4 percent of the Texas black population.24 Through the decades, black church women have deepened their collective strength and broadened their influence in the church generally, even beyond religious settings. Protestant women have emphasized religious education, missions, community service, and progressive politics. Individually, many have taken leadership roles in what Cheryl Townsend Gilkes calls the four pillars of the AfroChristian tradition—prayer, music, testimony, and preaching. The most venerated of these often are known as "church mothers." Where women have been discouraged from gaining ordination, "'teaching' and 'speaking' have been discriminatory euphemisms for women's preaching."25 Black women's ability to extend their individual sense of spiritual liberation to entire communities has fueled resistance and struggle. "Black women have mobilized to eliminate their own suffering as well as the suffering of their men and children," according to historians Jualyne Dodson and Cheryl Townsend Gilkes.26 In the late nineteenth century, black Baptist women in Texas followed their sisters in other southern and border states in forming a state women's convention (Baptists' broad denominational organizations are called conventions). Women's state conventions were initially devoted to education, specifically black colleges, such as Guadalupe College in Seguin and Bishop College in Marshall. Women within the Missionary Baptist General Convention sup130 # Education and Culture

ported Bishop College and individual students there into the twentieth century. In the 1920s, the Second Baptist Church women from San Antonio collected money, bedding, clothing, and Bibles for Conroe Normal and Industrial College and Guadalupe College, a pattern of giving duplicated across the South.27 Black teachers and ministers' wives provided leadership in both Christian education and missionary work. In turn, their leadership experiences among church women prepared them for enhanced community and club leadership roles. Austinite Maud A. B. Fuller represented a widespread phenomenon of women training for a secular teaching career and applying their knowledge of teaching and curriculum to church women's and youth programs and materials. In 1926, she rose to leadership in the National Baptist Convention's Women Auxiliary, where she emphasized children's organizations. As president of the national auxiliary from 1928 to 1948, she raised thousands of dollars, wrote missionary literature, and edited the Woman's Helper magazine. Baptist teacher Eliza Davis, originally from Taylor, adapted her educational skills to Liberian mission schools, one of which she helped found in 1912, stepping down after fifty-six years at age eighty-nine.28 Black Methodist and Methodist Episcopal women had three arenas of service before the merger of the black Texan conferences (regional organizations headed by bishops) in 1939: local, U.S., and foreign projects. Texas Methodists combined these organizations to form the Women's Society of Christian Service in 1940. Wiley College graduate Vivian Newton Gray was among those who relied on Texas Methodist women's support for her mission endeavors at mid-century, first with migrant laborers in Florida, then for several decades at African mission sites with her husband, Ulysses Gray.29 Some girls began coordinating religious education and community service programs as youths, so that as adults they were already adept at organizing, public speaking, and fundraising. Christia Daniels Adair became superintendent of a Methodist Sunday School in Edna at sixteen. Later, when she found no Sunday School for children operating at either the black Baptist or Methodist Church in nearby Kingsville, she started one. Her success there led to the rejuvenation of the Baptist Church. "If you could get the children, you had their parents," she said. When she was an adult, comparable skills led to her appointment to the national board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, representing the Christian Social Relations Department.30 Along the way, Christia Daniels Adair became prominent in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Texas. She exemplified the many young women groomed to become organizers in church women's associations, religious education, or community service who then applied their Culture and Social Life

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insights and experience to secular campaigns for racial equality. Black church women also allied with white Christian women in Texas to work for temperance and against lynchings; they joined with black men to further black political rights.31 The Sisters of the Holy Family, a black Catholic order founded in New Orleans in 1842, sent four sisters to Texas in 1898, when they acquired the Holy Rosary and Industrial School in Galveston. Nurturing African-American self-respect and offering education regardless of financial status, the Holy Family's teaching nuns added schools in Houston in 1905 and 1931, in San Antonio in 1911, in Ames in 1914, and in Marshall in 1945. When desegregation spread through the state's Catholic diocesan schools in the 1960s, all the order's schools except the one in Houston closed or merged with white-supervised schools.32 While Catholic nuns train for their profession of spiritual devotion and leadership, generations of black Protestant women have led devotional worship, prayer, and testimonial sessions without requirements of formal education or ordination. Some Protestant women have sought more explicit pastoral or preaching leadership, complete with titles and authority. Until recently, this phenomenon typically involved women leaving the mainline Baptist or Methodist denominations to form Spiritual, Holiness, or Pentecostal congregations. Except for the Church of God in Christ, these denominations have accepted female pastors and bishops.33 A notable example of influential women ministers in the Sanctified realm was Bishop Eddie Mae Dupree, originally from Marshall. In the 1930s, when she was in her thirties, Dupree left the Baptist Church, which did not condone her preaching ministry. During the next forty years, she established four congregations of Mount Zion Spiritual Churches, two in the Marshall area, one in Chicago, and a fourth in Kilgore. She was a prophet, healer, and spiritual advisor, who counted professional boxer George Foreman among her devotees.34 Dupree followed in the female spiritual lineage of such Texas women as Elderess O. A. Laws, who preached at Texas revivals in the 1920s, faith healer Annie Webb Buchanan, known as the "Seer of Corsicana," and Sadie Baylor of Caldwell County. Like most spiritual healers, Baylor's ministry issued from an intense revelation of the divine. "If you want to learn the spiritual things, God's way," she said, "you've got to center your life on spiritual things."35 In the wake of twentieth-century civil rights activism, greater numbers of Protestant women have sought formal theological education and ordination. In Texas, their acceptance as ordained ministers in the Methodist (UMC, AME, and CME), United Church of Christ, and Disciples of Christ denominations has spread gradually since the late 1950s. In 1957, Galveston native the Reverend Perry Joy Jackson was the first black woman appointed as an itinerant 132

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This home at 2219 Dowling Street in Houston was the scene of a gala social life when Dr. and Mrs. B. J. Covington and their daughter Ernestine Jessie occupied it in thefirsthalf of the twentieth century.

minister among the Texas United Methodist Church conferences. She rose through the ranks of deacon and elder before taking a fulltime student ministry assignment at Prairie View A&M University in 1970. By 1993, four assignments later, she was serving her original home parish, Tabernacle United Methodist Church in Galveston. Texas Methodist bishops outside the Gulf Coast area have been slower to appoint black female ministers.36 Black Texas Methodists have produced female leaders in missions and education work for decades, however. In the 1940s, Mrs. Eddie Hayes McDonald, a Houston mathematics teacher, was a summer leader for her Methodist denomination's national Board of Education. She became president of the Adult Commission of the National Conference on Christian Education, the first female and first black to hold that interdenominational post. Dallasite Delia Matthison was appointed to the United Methodist Church's national board of "global ministries" during the 1980s, one of several Texans who have served internationally. Since Baptist records are maintained in a decentralized manner, scholars have yet to document black Texas Baptist women's state and national leadership. Generally, in the dominant sects, black women have moved up more easily in the arenas of Christian education and missions, organizations parallel to those of men, than they have obtained pastoral roles. Yet more and more contemporary women are pushing back the barriers to service in pulpits and parishes.37 Culture and Social Life # 133

Pianist Jessie Covington Dent of Houston received her musical training from Oberlin and Juilliard conservatories. She toured the South before her marriage to Albert Dent, who became president of Dillard University in New Orleans.

Hundreds of black Protestant women have gained prominence in ministries of music as well. While most have served primarily in their local churches, some pianists, soloists, and choir directors have toured, recorded, and published music. For both women and men reared in church music traditions, their sacred musical training and development often provided performance and improvisational skills easily adapted to secular music. This interplay between black secular and sacred music stretches back to the turn of the century, and women have made significant contributions across the decades.38 Music Black musicians have used traditional Afro-American musical forms like spirituals, blues, jazz, gospel, and rhythm and blues to "take control of moments, situations and social environments" and to increase "life possibilities for self, kin and kind," according to George Houston Bass. For black women, music has been an easily portable and adaptable art form. They have carried their own songs from the fields to the employer's house, to their own house, and from the country to the city. The diverse music they created mirrored the places where they sang or played—the kitchen, the nursery, the church, the schoolroom, the dance hall, or the concert hall.39 134 # Education and Culture

Portia Washington Pittman, daughter of Booker T. Washington, lived in Dallas from 1913 until the late 1920s, teaching private piano lessons and music at the high school named for her father.

During the late nineteenth century, rural blacks developed secular songs called the blues, combining musical forms from Africa with personal lyrical themes typical of Anglo-American songs. By the early 1900s, southern blacks had carried the blues songs to the nation's cities. By 1920, the General Phonograph Company had begun recording blues artists, especially women, and distributing these "race records" on the Okeh label.40 Most female Texas blues artists performed first in cities, where they contributed "powerful vocals and sensitive interpretations" to the early blues culture. These pioneers eroded the barriers that had prevented women from attaining featured solo careers on Texas stages and recordings.41 One woman who learned to perform in church then caught the "blues bug" was Beulah "Sippie" Wallace of Houston, who recorded scores of blues hits during the 1920s, including "I'm a Mighty Tight Woman" and "Women Be Wise." Wallace's younger cousin, Victoria Spivey, made the transition from church to secular performance as a teenager. She eventually gravitated to the New York musical scene, where she created "moaning" blues through the 1940s. Spivey established her own record company and music publishing business.42 Numerous other female Texas blues artists also had enduring careers. In Dallas's Central Tracks district (Deep Ellum), a blues hub during the 1920s, Emma Wright, Jewell Nelson, Hociel Thomas, and Maggie Jones (née Fae Barnes) of Hillsboro worked the Ella B. Moore Park Theatre there, as did Spivey and Wallace. Gertrude Perkins also attracted Dallas audiences. Hattie Burleson, another local blues vocalist, contracted with many of the musicians at Moore's venue to run a Texas touring circuit, which she maintained into the 1950s.43 Gainesville native Monette Moore, a pianist, recorded with the Choo Choo Jazzers in New York in 1924-1925. For fifty years, she performed blues, jazz, and popular music on both coasts. Except for Moore, few Texas women performed outright jazz music until the late 1930s. By then, blacks were appearing at Houston's Majestic Theater before segregated audiences. Singer/dancer Daisy Richards launched a stage career there in 1939, toured for several years, then sang in New York with Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.44 Wartime Houston supported a lively jazz community, centered in the Fourth Ward. The teenaged Ernestine Anderson, raised in the Baptist Church, sang jazzy popular music and appeared at the El Dorado Ballroom in the 1940s. With World War II drawing young men into the military, women found new opportunities. Prairie View A&M College, a historically black Texas school, developed a women's band, the Prairie View College Co-Eds, during the war. Touring with this group prepared two Texas women for long-term careers. Saxophonist Bert Etta Davis of San Antonio went on to an Culture and Social Life # 135

active career in Chicago, while Denison native Clora Bryant took her trumpet to Los Angeles. She appeared with the Sepia Tones quintet, the first all-black women's jazz group to perform on television in the early 1950s.45 In 1952, Florence "Bu" Pleasant began playing piano in San Antonio clubs, then toured with Texas tenor sax man Arnett Cobb for several years. She worked in the New York City area until 1978, when she returned to Texas. Another jazz artist of the 1950s and 1960s was Jewel Brown of Houston, who shuttled between Texas and Los Angeles engagements before touring worldwide with Louis Armstrong.46 While jazz developed along the secular track, gospel music took a parallel route in the late 1920s. Both were urban creations, and each nurtured the other as performers circulated in clubs, churches, and concert halls. Like blues and jazz, gospel singing (the sacred offspring of the blues) involved improvisation, syncopated rhythms, and a style of bending or "worrying" pitch. Gospel musicians added instrumental accompaniment.47 Arizona J. Dranes was probably the earliest Texas female gospel artist to earn wide recognition. Recorded by Okeh records in Chicago in the late 1920s, she was among thefirstwomen to tour and sing gospel professionally. Her piano style showed influences from boogie-woogie or "fast western" music, exemplifying the transparent boundaries between black sacred and secular music.48 Through the 1930s and 1940s, black gospel song matured, as its proponents borrowed instrumentation, musical ideas, and even audiences from the secular realm. In Austin, E. M. Franklin, a male quartet member, nurtured a female spin-off group called the Char-

Singer Osceola Mays performed songs her mother and grandmother sang in thefields:"All they had to make music with was their mouths."

Estella Maxey of Waco was the leader of Stella and Her Boys, which entertained at local white socials and nearby military posts. 136 # Education and Culture

Barbara Lynn began her musical career at age fourteen in Beaumont and later became known for her left-handed guitar playing. iottes, including his teenaged sisters, Evelyn Franklin Martin and Dorothy Franklin Henderson, in 1950. They initially sang in Texas then expanded to five members and, beginning in 1953, worked for Houston's Duke Records for a few years. Barbara Franklin, E. M. Franklin's daughter, made the transition from gospel to secular music when she toured with rhythm and blues vocalist Ray Charles starting in 1968. Other noted gospel artists who progressed from the local to the national level included powerhouse vocalist and composer Emily Bram of Dallas. Sarah Jordan Powell, formerly a Houston teacher, became a full-time Christian music minister in 1974. She has recorded eight gospel albums and steadily broadened her audience via radio and television programs.49 Whereas Bram and Jordan Powell came out of the Sanctified religious tradition, Austin produced a Baptist religious musical queen. Composer and choral director Virginia Carrington DeWitty directed the Bright and Early Broadcasting Choir, a black group, on Austin's KVET radio station in the 1930s and 1940s. A teacher and composer of more than sixty pieces, she rose to prominence as music director for Austin's Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Missionary Baptist General Convention of Texas. During the 1950s and 1960s, she also conducted choirs for the National Baptist Convention of America, one of the largest U.S. Protestant denominations.50 While popular music influenced sacred music, the gospel quartet tradition returned the favor at mid-century. During the 1940s, male Culture and Social Life # 137

quartets inspired a new secular music, called rhythm and blues or R&B. Houston attracted and "grew" R&B performers, thanks to entrepreneur Don Robey. He operated the Bronze Peacock nightclub and a record company which issued the Peacock and Duke labels. Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton recorded one of the label's biggest hits, "Hound Dog." Robey's assistant, Evelyn Johnson, a significant figure in blues, soul, and R&B, began managing his Buffalo Booking Agency in 1950.51 Two young Gulf Coast women kept the blues/gospel traditions going. Katie Webster of Houston performed on keyboards, harmonica, and vocals in the late 1950s and 1960s, directed bands for several Louisiana record labels, and toured with Otis Redding and James Brown. Guitarist Barbara Lynn of Beaumont wrote much of her own material while performing in Texas and Oklahoma. In the early 1960s, Atlantic Records produced her blues-tinged rock tunes, including the hit "You'll Lose a Good Thing." Both women were still actively performing in the 1990s.52 Many twentieth-century black performers have migrated between gospel and blues, but some moved beyond the church to pursue careers on Broadway or classical concert stages. Etta Moten Barnett, a native of Weimar, was among these. She performed on Broadway and later in the Hollywood feature films Flying Down to Rio and The Gold Diggers of 1933. Moten played the female lead in George Gershwin's popular opera Porgy and Bess from 1942 to 1945, longer than any other professional actress.53 Early in the twentieth century, several black Texas women created outlets for classical music. Dallas teacher Priscilla Tyler Etta Moten, a native of Weimar, encouraged her students to attend operas at Fair Park around found success in New York and 1900 and helped organize the Civic Music Guild to showcase tour- Hollywood singing the role Bess ing black concert artists. In 1915, Jennie B. Covington initiated in the Gershwin musical Porgy the Ladies Symphony Orchestra in Houston, composed of black and Bess. women and girls. Madame Corilla Rochon conducted the fledgling ensemble, which included Covington's teenaged daughter, Jessie, a violinist. After graduating from Oberlin Music Conservatory and the Juilliard School of Music, Jessie Covington developed a piano concert career.54 The 1920s brought a flurry of activity among musicians and music educators. In 1925, Nanette Harrison Fowler became editor of the Negro Musician, the journal of the newly formed Texas Association of Negro Musicians (TANM). The association held district con- The Hall of Negro Life at the ferences with music competitions and organized summer music Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas in 1936 housed an exschools. Portia Washington Pittman, daughter of Booker T. Washhibit of blacks' achievements in ington and a Dallas music teacher, supervised TANM education music, art, industry, and busiprograms. In 1927, she conducted Dallas's Booker T. Washington ness. It was the only building High School choir for the visiting convention of the National Edu- torn down after the fair. cation Association.55

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The "Seer of Corsicana/' Annie Buchanan West, was a spiritual healer and fortuneteller of great influence in the 1930s.

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During the 1920s, contralto Roberta Dodd Crawford of Bonham made her Chicago debut, then set out on concert tours of the United States and Europe. Hearne native Zelma Watson George also studied voice in Chicago in 1926-1927. With a dual interest in sociology and music, she chose community service and education positions over music for twenty years. Upon her return to music professionally in 1949, she starred in two Gian-Carlo Menotti operas, The Medium and The Consul, in New York.56 In Texas, most white classical concert organizations still made only token performance opportunities accessible to blacks. Pianist Viola Dixon-Cole not only became the first black member of the Dallas Music Teachers Association, but was the first black female artist to join a white professional concert orchestra in Texas when she began performing with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 1950. Pianist Lois Towles, a graduate of Wiley College in Marshall, pursued piano performance and pedagogy training in Iowa, New York, and Los Angeles, and gave concerts in Europe during the 1950s.57 Speaking for numerous black musicians, Etta Moten said that "when you were good enough, you would get money to go to Europe. If Europe said you were great, you could come back and the American audience would say you were great." For Texans, conditions varied, depending on location and contacts. In 1957, black vocal music student Barbara Conrad of Cass County was forced from a leading role in a University of Texas opera production when her casting opposite a blond male student raised political ire in the Texas legislature. Her performances would be acclaimed later in London, Vienna, Hamburg, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.58 By the early 1960s, violinist and violist Carlottia Washington Scott had joined El Paso's symphony. Comparable openings for black women in Texas Gulf Coast cities came in the 1970s, when flutist Thelma K. Elliott joined the Corpus Christi Orchestra and bassoonist Anguenette Simmien gained a chair in the Beaumont Symphony Orchestra. Other Texas orchestras followed suit in the late 1970s and 1980s. The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra promoted Jackie Johnson Banks within its management in 1979.59 Although Dallas native Barbara Ann "Bobbi" Humphrey was trained on the flute in classical and jazz technique, she concentrated on jazz bookings. By 1972, she was recording for the Blue Note jazz label, the first female instrumentalist to do so. She recorded fourteen solo albums and developed a music production company.60 Houstonian Faye Robinson debuted in Carmen with the New York City Opera in 1972 and later performed major roles in Opera/South productions. In 1974, she wonfirstprize at the International Music Competition.61

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Metropolitan Opera star Barbara Conrad, a native of Pittsburg, faced discrimination as an opera student at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1950s.

From the 1970s on, scores of young black women have built on church and school musical experiences to launch part- or fulltime careers in music. Whether singing in gospel choirs, performing R&B, jazz, rock, reggae, or blues, creating raps, or interpreting popular and classical music in concert halls, black Texas women continue to contribute to musical culture regionally and nationally. They may be onstage, in technical crews, and/or in music management. Wherever opportunities emerge, creative black women share interpretations based on their distinctive experiences.62 Drama and Dance In addition to formally staged presentations, black Texans take advantage of numerous contexts to express themselves in imaginative dramatic form, such as everyday conversation, social dance and religious services. The following overview, however, is concerned only with twentieth-century women's contributions to staged performance art.65 The earliest dramatic productions in Texas probably were religious and historical pageants. Besides the touring performers in circuses, vaudeville, or minstrel shows, local drama companies typically emerged where the urban black population increased sufficiently to support a substantial black middle class or a black

Many families enjoy music in their homes, like the King family in Austin in the 1960s. (Left to right) Clinton King, Stuart King, Marcet King, Marjon King, and John Q. Taylor King.

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college. Although Texans lagged behind the 1920s Little Negro Theatre Movement in the East, West, and Great Lakes coastal cities, they apparently shared the goal of presenting drama for black audiences in churches, lodge halls, or schools. (Galveston native Maud Cuney Hare was part of the New Negro Theatre Movement; she directed her own play Antar of Araby in Boston in 1929.) Texas productions have given voice to black playwrights and offered black actors a fuller range of dramatic roles than white theaters or vaudeville acts allowed them in the early decades.64 Myra and J. W. Hemmings launched community theater productions at Second Baptist Church in San Antonio, beginning in 1931. Their annual play drew large houses. The company flourished under her direction and, thirty years later, took the name Myra A. Hemmings Memorial Theatre Guild to honor her. Soon after the San Antonio group's founding, its players traveled to perform at the fledgling Houston Negro Little Theatre, begun in May 1931. Among the dramas the Little Theatre presented that first year was Texan Elizabeth Yates's play The Slave. The company endured through the Great Depression, directed by Mary E. Ben Isaacs, playwright and Booker T. Washington High School English teacher. World War II interrupted its activities, but it resurfaced in 1947.65 Coming of age in 1950s Houston, writer/director J. e Franklin accumulated experiences later evoked in her award-winning play Black Girl, produced at New York's New Federal Theater. In 1972, it was adapted for a feature film. Two years later, the same theater premiered her musical The Prodigal Sister. She continued as director of the New Federal Theater and won a Eugene O'Neill Fellowship in 1981.66 Houston native Debbie Allen graduated from Howard University in 1971, then performed in the chorus of Purlie and had a leading role in Raisin (a musical adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun), both New York productions. She gained favorable reviews in 1980 for a performance of West Side Story on Broadway and a small part in the movie Fame. This led to her extended role in the television series Fame, for which she directed, choreographed, and produced episodes, winning two Emmys in J. e Franklin of Houston became the process.67 a well-known playwright and a In 1976, the U.S. bicentennial encouraged a renewed interest in director at the New Federal Thecultural heritage. This government-sponsored cultural surge fol- atre in New York City. lowed on the heels of the 1960s Black Arts Movement. Anne Williams, a Prairie View A&M University graduate, founded the Dallas Black Theatre in 1976. That same year, Lubbock native Jo Long transferred from San Antonio's Community Cultural Center for the Arts to direct the Carver Community Cultural Center there. Over the next fifteen years, she guided its development into a national model for multicultural centers. Soon after, Lindi Yeni, a South 142 # Education and Culture

Debbie Allen of Houston, winner of two Emmys, has reached the top of her profession as an actress, singer, dancer, choreographer, and director on stage, in television, and in film.

African native, founded Houston's Kuumba House to feature black playwrights and talent.68 The 1980s brought cracks in the barriers against black Texas women creating dramatic characters and stories. Houston women who came to the fore included playwright Celeste Bedford Walker, author of Sister, Sister, Camp Logan, and Over Forty, and poet and musical dramatist Naomi Carrier, who adapted the oral history / Am Annie Mae for the stage in 1987. Tony and Grammy awardwinning musical actress Jennifer Holliday (Dreamgirls) and stage and television actress Regina Taylor (77/ Fly Away) have brought convincing life to several playwrights' characters.69 Writers Perhaps the first black female to publish a book in Texas was Josie Briggs Hall of Mexia, whose work Halls Moral and Mental Capsule for the Economic and Domestic Life of the Negro . . . appeared in 1905. She stated that the "solution to the Negro problem" depended on increased education and more widespread financial security. Hall's Culture and Social Life # 143

emphasis on education and self-help echoed the mood among African-American female leaders, some of whom, like herself, founded colleges for young blacks.70 Educated and versatile, Galveston native Maud Cuney Hare began her writing career with a biography of her father, Norris Wright Cuney, a prominent Republican. This 1913 publication preceded her writings on music and theater. During an influential career in music performance, composition, and scholarship, Cuney Hare contributed articles to Musical Quarterly, Musical Observer, and the Crisis, an NAACP publication, tracing intercultural relationships through music. Her most influential work, Negro Musicians and Their Music, was published just before her death in 1936.71 African-American music, art, and literature took a great leap forward during the 1920s and early 1930s, as many talented people gravitated to Harlem. They met in clubs, salons, and parties to share their creative work and to celebrate their African heritage. For the most part, Texas was insulated from the Harlem Renaissance, by distance and by an orientation which favored traditional homegrown cultural expression. Yet at least one young woman with Texas roots contributed to the creative flowering there. Born in Giddings, Gwendolyn Bennett left the state at a young age. She was educated on the East Coast, but her Texas girlhood influenced aspects of her writing. Bennett's art graced the covers of several Harlem Renaissance literary magazines, while her prose and poetry Marian E. Barnes specializes in sparkled within, rich with sensory impressions. A trailblazer, she oral traditions as the official stowas the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for her ryteller for the City of Austin. achievements. One of Bennett's poems combines sensuality, panAfrican pride, and womanist sentiment. "To a Dark Girl" conveys her sense of black pride and independence, speaking as it does to "the sisterhood that retains aspects of 'old forgotten queens/ " Bennett was among the black Texans included in Heralding Dawn, a poetry anthology which Austin folklorist J. Mason Brewer compiled for publication in 1936. Some poems published there reflected Harlem Renaissance influences and emphasized the New Negro ideology; other pieces contained social criticism.72 Bernice Love Wiggins, born in Austin but raised in El Paso, was a prominent writer of her day who published her own collected poetry, Tuneful Tales, in 1925. Many of her best writings, seen in the Houston Defender and Chicago Defender, explored relations between parents and children. She also addressed poverty, racism, and lynching. In the poem "The Vampire," Wiggins condemned the injustice of laws against prostitution. J. Mason Brewer was particularly fond of Wiggins's "Church Folks," in which she criticized hypocrites who attend services but lack a true Christian spirit. In her poem "The Poetical Farmwife," Wiggins explains why it is difficult to write while doing housework:73

144 # Education and Culture

I think about all those sweet nothings I read, that the magazines buy, I know I can write some that's better And so I sit down just to try. I hear Billy call from the barnyard, "Ma! One of them hens got away," . . . You can't mix the cook pots and poetry, They don't go together, no, nay.

Phylicia Rashad of Houston is widely known for her role as Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show.

Meanwhile, San Antonio-born novelist and poet Willie Young Richardson was producing work as a member of the River Art Group. She wrote such pieces as "Echoes from the Negro Soul" and "The Black Madonna." 74 The Depression and the stresses of World War II created conditions which allowed few women time for contemplative pursuits, such as creative writing. Still, several amateur Texas writers, such as Beatrice Gildersleeve, Bettye D. Wilson, and Lily Hall Chase, pursued their craft with satisfaction. Some women found opportunities for publication during the postwar period in a new blackowned pulp magazine, the World's Messenger, based in Fort Worth.75 Though not a native Texan, Vivian Ayers Allen produced several works after moving to Houston. At the age of twenty-seven, in 1952, she received a Pulitzer award nomination. She published an anthology of poems, Spice of Dawns, in 1953 in New York, and her poetry appeared in Langston Hughes's collection titled New Negro Poets, USA in 1964. After moving to Mount Vernon, New York, in 1984, she founded and is director of the Adept New American Museum. Perhaps her most famous products were noted performing artist children—actress Phylicia Rashad of the televised Cosby Show, and actress/singer/dancer/choreographer/director Debbie Allen, both of whom credit their mother for their creative drive. Debbie Allen said, "My mother just made the Museum of Fine Arts our playground. We grew up loving music and art and dance." 76 The 1960s Black Power and pan-African culture movements encouraged a younger generation of black writers to promote African-Americans' heritage and self-determination in their poetry, fiction, and drama. In the late 1970s, a steady stream of black women's work, first read for friends or seen in periodicals, began to reach a broader audience through anthologies, plays, and novels. Among these, Texans Harryette Mullen, Sunny Nash, Hermine Pinson, and Njoki McElroy have contributed notable writings. They represent scores of contemporary black Texas women affirmed by having their work published or performed. Often women's creative writing has been as attentive to intimate personal themes as to broader social and political ones.77

Culture and Social Life # 145

Harryette Mullen's work has been inspired in part by the black women in her community "who had no interest whatsoever in ladylikeness. They were absent from the piano recitals, club meetings, teas, and fashion shows that my sister and I were required to attend, but we caught glimpses of them on shady porches, in corner groceries where they purchased small tins of snuff, or at work in their modestly impressive gardens/' Mullen's poem "Tree Tall Woman" praises the woman "who made herself from wind and earth," whose feet "keep the soil together," whose "arms surround the sky," as she combs her hair with a cloud. "This woman who hears secrets / whispered among the leaves / walking with the butterflies / fluttering at her fingertips."78 Whatever her time and topic, each writer begins the process alone. As Houston writer Naomi Carrier put it in her 1980 poem "Moonbeams": The creation is solitary, the result is solitary, the success is one's own, by herself, and like the moonshine, gathers itself at dawn and waits to be blinded by the overshadowing sunlight. Carrier ends by saying that when she recreates the day's emotions and images in her writing, she exorcises the pain she has endured.79 Visual Artists "Throughout the twentieth century, black artists have reflected both a public pride of heritage and private expression of deep spiritual belief systems," African-American curator Alvia Wardlaw has written. In Texas, black women who have taught art or nurtured it as patrons or administrators also have emphasized their ethnic heritage. Whether avocational or full-time artists, black women have interpreted various aspects of African-American life in their art, accentuating the spiritual in everyday practices and counteracting the dearth of black images in the mainstream media.80 Like most American women artists, Texas black women rarely have received encouragement for pursuing the fine arts as a career until late in this century. Rather, those with formal art training generally have been directed into teaching careers. Even the noted Harlem Renaissance artist and poet Gwendolyn Bennett found herself teaching several times before permanently rejecting that vocation. Untrained women artists created art before or after completing their "practical" tasks and negotiated time around homemaking responsibilities, if necessary.81

146 # Education and Culture

Naomi Polk mixed her own paints and worked on found materials. Pictured is her selfportrait Now where do I go from here?

Rezolia C. Grissom Thrash taught art in the Dallas public schools for forty-five years, beginning in the 1920s. In 1935, she was the only black artist included in the seventh annual Dallas Allied Arts Exhibition. She also encouraged youngsters by forming a student art club.82 Houston native Jewel Woodard Simon studied at Atlanta University, graduating in 1931. Her career as a painter, sculptor, and, more recently, printmaker developed over several decades. Her art had been exhibited in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Moscow by the time she began teaching at Spelman College in Atlanta in recent years. Like Simon, Houstonian Fannie Holman taught college art as a second career. Holman, a textile artist, supervised

Night Migration by Jean Lacy, a Dallas artist.

Alma Gunter's paintings depict daily life in East Texas. Dinner on the Ground recalls a church picnic.

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weaving courses at Texas Southern University in Houston in the 1970s, after retirement from public school teaching. She took over the weaving courses from noted artist and educator Theresa Pratt Allen, a Dallas native who previously had taught at Prairie View A&M University. For forty years, Athene Watson has offered TSU courses in art education and aesthetics.83 Middle- and upper-class urban African-American women sponsored exhibits of their art as early as the 1920s and 1930s in Texas. They supported each other's creativity in culture clubs, such as the Priscilla Art Club in Dallas and the Ethel Ransom Art and Literary Club of Houston, organizations which continue to the present.84 Untutored Texas women artists could work for years, however, without having their paintings gain recognition beyond their circle of relatives and neighbors. Naomi Howard Polk and Alma Gunter were among these. As the youngest of ten children, Naomi Howard Polk started school before the turn of the century, but was forced to drop out early. Twice widowed as an adult, she survived the Depression in Houston with the assistance of meager welfare checks supplemented by selling cosmetics. No one outside Polk's family saw her paintings until after her death in 1984. Her children remember her rising early in the morning to write poetry and painting late in the evenings. The images are wonderfully expressive, and many reflect a deep interest in religion. In 1989, curator Alvia Wardlaw honored Polk's aesthetic by including her work in the touring exhibit Black History, Black Vision.85

Art was also an avocation for Alma Gunter of Palestine, who attended Prairie View State College School of Nursing. Not until 1978, after her retirement from a nursing career, did she begin painting in earnest: ''I paint what my mind photographed and recorded over all the years of my life." Her paintings feature delightful scenes from childhood: washday, kitchen activities, and waiting for the ice man in summer. The religious works depict a baptism, a funeral, and a church dinner. Gunter has become nationally known through exhibits of these vivid images, which imbue black Texas history with vitality and specificity.86 Black Texas women also have developed talents in the applied arts, such as needlework and interior, fashion, and hair design. In her memoir, Annie Mae Hunt described the pivotal realization in 1955 that she could choose to support herself with dressmaking, rather than cleaning houses. She opened her business the same week. Cara Warren Black of San Antonio studied in New York and Paris to prepare for her long and notable career in fashion design. From the 1940s into the 1960s, she sold her designs out of the Julia Anne Shoppe in San Antonio, then moved the operation to New York, where she developed an international clientele from 1964 to 1978.87 148 # Education and Culture

Collaborative Voices, a multiracial choral group in Austin, performed In Mary's House for Women and Their Work in 1985. (Left to right) Sabrina Cummings, Elouise Burrell, Susie Stern, Donna Menthol, Tina Marsh, and Chris Crawford.

Anne Lundy is music director and founder of the Scott Joplin Chamber Orchestra in Houston, founded in 1983, the first chamber orchestra in the country specializing in works by black composers.

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Naomi Carrier (left), a Houston composer and lyricist, is coauthor of the musical / Am Annie Mae, about the life of Mrs. Annie Mae Hunt of Dallas (right).

By the late 1970s, scores of trained African-American fine artists had gained access to Texas gallery and museum exhibitions. Two Central Texas black women became catalysts for greater opportunities. In 1980, Aaronetta H. Pierce, an art patron and civic leader, became a San Antonio Art Museum docent. Her interest grew into co-creating the Southwest Ethnic Arts Society in San Antonio and later service on the Texas Commission on the Arts and as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts.88 Austin's Ruby Williams, a graphic artist and actress, applied her board experience at the Women and Their Work arts organization to co-found the Black Arts Alliance in 1980. This coalition sponsors exhibits and performing arts concerts specifically showcasing African-American talent. In itsfirstdecade, much of the alliance's leadership has been female.89 These women's visions made possible the necessary resources to increase recognition for a new generation of black artists, clustered in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin during the 1980s and 1990s. Complementing and promoting their development, the young Houston art historian Alvia Wardlaw came to the fore to curate and interpret black art for exhibits and publications seen by thousands.90 150 # Education and Culture

Aaronetta Pierce, San Antonio's "Arts Diplomat," has been a board member of the Texas Commission on the Arts and a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Summary In J. e Franklin's drama Black Girl the high-school dropout Billie Jean reveals an artistic spirit floundering within the constraints of a poor and contentious family. Only after an old friend and peer encourages the heroine does she break away from her mother and siblings to pursue the education and artistic achievement she imagines for herself.91 Observing this example of African-American creative struggle, we might focus on aesthetic opportunity grasped—or forged— from desperate circumstances. That would be too incomplete a characterization, however, because it disregards privileged female artists of color, such as Maud Cuney Hare or Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad, three Texas women who have testified to the rich opportunities and family support they enjoyed as youngsters. It would be too narrow, as well, to accentuate the barriers to Billie Jean's creative fulfillment and overlook the friend who urged her over them. What we learn from testimonies of black women artists in Texas during this century is that their creative gifts generally have been nurtured by others. Black women creators have found affirmation in a teacher or friend, grandparent, parent, aunt, or sibling, in clubs, schools, or sanctuaries, or in dialogue with the divine. Even the solitary painter Naomi Polk received her due, first from family, then posthumously from a wider audience. In turn, black women have given voice and form to whole communities' experiences and aspirations, generation upon generation. They have made and are still making cultural contributions to enrich their lives and those of their families, communities, and the broader society, often receiving national and international acclaim for their achievements.

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# 8 WORK "I would not take 'no' for an answer.

Introduction

Until 1910, over half of all black Texas women worked in agriculture, most planting, chopping, and picking cotton.

In a day when black Texans could not ride alongside whites in trains, buses, or streetcars, Bessie Coleman blazed across the skies. A 1920s Jazz Age woman, Bessie, a native of Atlanta, Texas, was one of the first licensed female pilots in the world and the first black woman aviator and barnstormer in the United States. Coleman, born in a dirt-floor shack in 1892, grew up in Waxahachie, picking cotton and doing laundry. Her mother, an illiterate former slave, borrowed books from a traveling library for the twelfth of her thirteen children so that young Bessie could teach herself to read. She studied briefly at Langston Industrial College in Oklahoma before moving in with her brother in Chicago in 1915. The air war in Europe during World War I caught her attention; she became intrigued with flying by watching local barnstormers and stunt pilots. But few flight schools accepted women.1 "I decided I would not take 'no' for an answer," she recalled. "My mother's words [to become somebody] always seemed to give me strength to overcome obstacles." After failing to locate a flying school in the United States> Coleman traveled to France and secured a pilot's license from the Fedération Aéronautique Internationale in 1921. She returned to Chicago with the dream of opening a flying school for aspiring black female pilots and earned seed money for the project through exhibition flights on the airshow circuit. She performed widely throughout the South, where she attracted large interracial crowds of admirers. In 1926, on the verge of opening her own flying school, her hopes came to a tragic end.

She died instantly in a crash while performing for the Negro Welfare League in Jacksonville, Florida. Black aviators named their flying clubs and even their magazine after her. Today Bessie Coleman Drive is one of the main avenues leading to Chicago's O'Hare Airport.2 Labor Force Profile Black Texas women at the time might well have envied Bessie Coleman. Most were grounded in the same kinds of jobs they had always held—agricultural and domestic work. In 1910, over half of black Texas female wage earners worked in agriculture and another third in domestic and laundry work. They now faced increased competition even for low-paying domestic jobs from European immigrant women and Mexicans fleeing the 1910 Revolution.3 Black women who received a high school or college education still had limited opportunities. Whereas a growing number of white females were entering pink-collar jobs as sales clerks and secretaries, few such positions were available to blacks, except in blackowned businesses. A sprinkling of black women began making a name for themselves as physicians, nurses, home demonstration agents, and entrepreneurs. A handful in each community were white-collar workers, beauticians, and seamstresses, and others had unusual occupations—a cement block manufacturer, a photographer, and a notary public.4 As the teaching profession became increasingly feminized, it continued to be the major professional opportunity for women, both black and white. The large and growing number of black women compared to white women in the Texas work force was striking. By 1910, black women numbered 42.4 percent of all employed Texas women, although they represented about 18 percent of the adult female population. A high proportion of black wives and mothers were the primary breadwinners for their families or contributed earnings vital to their family's survival. This resulted primarily from the high rate of unemployment or low earnings among black men in Texas. By 1920, most of those not working on farms were laundresses or domestic servants.5 The rising employment rate of black Texas women coincided with growing rates of black migration. From 1900 to 1930, the number of black Texans living in larger towns and cities increased from 19 percent to 39 percent. Typically, black women could get jobs as domestics when they relocated to larger communities. By 1930, almost 77 percent of black Texas female workers had nonfarm jobs as compared to 49 percent of black males. From 1930 to 1940, the number of African-American female domestic servants and semiskilled workers increased significantly, while the number in the professions increased only slightly. The percentage of black Texas women in agriculture dropped dramatically, while 156

The New Century

Bessie Coleman of Atlanta, Texas, was one of the first women in the United States to receive a certified pilot's license. Her license was issued in France by the Fedération Aéronautique Internationale on June 15, 1921.

Bessie Coleman standing by her plane.

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semiskilled workers' numbers increased by 50 percent and service workers by about 10 percent.6 Between the world wars, black Texas women were still concentrated in segregated jobs—for the most part underpaid and overworked. A discriminatory system of public education prepared ambitious women for few jobs other than teaching; those seeking professional careers had to leave the state to obtain graduate education. Because black women were denied advanced education longer than white women, they moved into the professions at a much slower rate. Most who went to college graduated from historically black institutions. Internships and established white professional associations also excluded blacks, leading them to form their own groups.7 Despite these obstacles, many achieved distinction in their chosen fields. Doctors and Dentists As early as 1896, Martha Jordan established a dental practice in Dallas—the first known African-American woman in the state to do so. A few other black female dentists and physicians moved to Texas. Dr. Ollie L. Bryan was the first black woman to graduate from Meharry Dental College in Nashville, Tennessee, and the first degreed black female dentist to work in the South. She practiced in Dallas from about 1906 to 1915. Dr. Sarah Howland Shelton, a ''good, gentle" dentist, practiced in Austin from 1913 to 1920. Dr. Mary Susan Smith Moore was one of the first black women in the United States to earn a medical degree. Born in North Carolina in 1881, she graduated from Meharry Medical College at the age of seventeen. She and her husband ran the Hubbard Sanitarium in Galveston from around 1909 until her death in 1925.8 A small number of native-born black Texas women became physicians as well. The first was probably Dr. Carrie Jane Sutton Brooks, from a prominent San Antonio family. A graduate of Howard University, she was the first "colored" female intern at Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C. She practiced obstetrics, gynecology, and pediatrics briefly in her hometown in the 1920s before leaving the state. Dr. Thelma Patten Law began a long-term medical practice in Houston in 1923, where she was active in the Lone Star State Medical Association (for black physicians).9 The early-twentieth-century Austin physician Dr. Charles Yerwood expected his daughters Connie and Joyce to pursue careers in music. But they preferred following in his footsteps. The women were forced to leave the state for a professional education. They earned medical degrees from Meharry Medical College in 1933. From 1936 to 1977, Dr. Connie Yerwood Conner served on the staff of the Texas Department of Health. Initially passed over for advancement, she was finally promoted in the 1960s as the first black director of Maternal and Child Health Services in Texas and 158 # The New Century

Dr. Ollie L. Bryan, one of the first African-American women to practice dentistry in the South, was also the first female graduate of the Meharry Dental College. She had offices in Dallas from around 1906 to 1915.

later the first black chief of the Bureau of Personal Health Services. Dr. Joyce Yerwood Carwin devoted her fifty-year medical practice in New York and Connecticut to helping low-income women and children.10 Nurses and Other Health Care Workers

Dr. Connie Yerwood Conner was the first black physician on the staff of the Texas Department of Health; she was appointed in 1936 and became director of Maternal and Child Health Services after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, retiring in 1977.

Women have traditionally tended their families, friends, and neighbors, but around 1900 nursing became professionalized. Mrs. Mary Keys Gibson, the wife of a Fort Worth minister, was among the first southern blacks to receive a nursing certificate from an accredited school—the Chautauqua School of Nursing in Jamestown, New York—in 1907. The following year, the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses organized. One of its major goals, breaking down discrimination, was finally achieved in 1948 when the American Nurses' Association was integrated.11 Nursing was not taken seriously as a profession in Texas until 1909, when the Texas Graduate Nurses Association persuaded the legislature to pass licensing standards and procedures. By 1912, approximately sixty-five black hospitals existed in the United States, including six in Texas. The Wright Cuney Memorial Nurse Training School was located in Dallas. Mrs. C. H. (Lena Hamilton) Graves opened her home to the sick in Temple in 1916. Later, as a nurse, she founded the Memorial Colored Hospital, which operated until the 1950s.12 More opportunities for graduate nursing opened up in Texas in the 1920s. In 1920, the first class of registered nurses graduated from Prairie View; the following year, a class graduated from the "colored hospital" in Galveston, part of the University of Texas at Galveston Medical Branch. In 1924, Booker T. Washington Sanitarium in Fort Worth had a nursing school. During the 1930s and

WHY REMAIN AT HOME SICK? WHEN YOU CAN GO AWAY AND BE RELIEVED OR CURED AT THE HUBBARD SANITARIUM No. 4015 Ν St.

Galveston. Texas.

Dr. M. S. Moore, Physician and Surgeon in Charge Office hours: 8 to 9 a.m.

2 to 4 p.m.

8 t o 9 p.m.

Terms—$ 1.00 to $4.00 per day. Denver Beach car, half block from door. Phone 962, E. D. —Galveston City Times, April 17, 1909

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Mrs. Mary Keys Gibson of Fort Worth is shown at age ninetyeight with her 1907 nursing certificate from the Chautauqua School of Nursing in Jamestown, New York—perhaps the first issued to a southern black woman.

Dr. Thelma Patten Law (left) and her friend Rosa Mosely (shown ca. 1940s) were two of Houston's most respected professional women. Law was one of the state's first black female physicians. Mosely was a longtime school principal.

160 # The New Century

Georgia Williams was one of thefirstblack female Texans to receive a degree in pharmacy. She graduated from Meharry Medical College in 1922 and opened Williams' Pharmacy in Tyler in 1926.

1940s, a few black women had jobs as dental assistants. In Amarillo, for example, Sentelle H. Hardin Lyons worked with her husband, Dr. C. H. Lyons, from 1934 to 1948.'3 Black Texas women were more likely to die in childbirth and black infants more likely to die than their white counterparts. Shortly before World War I, the public health nurse became a lifesaving professional. In 1915, Mrs. Annie Hagen, a trained nurse and midwife, organized the first nurses' training club in Houston. In 1918, Sarah Harris, a Galveston native and a graduate of Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., was "making a splendid record of useful service as a trained nurse" in San Antonio's health department.14 Miss Annie Maie Mathis of Austin was possibly the first AfricanAmerican on the staff of the Texas State Board of Health. Hired in 1922, she was the first black maternity and infancy nurse in the Bureau of Child Hygiene. Over the next few years, she addressed thousands of white women at Methodist conferences, published an article on "Negro Public Health Nursing in Texas," and surveyed five hundred homes in Houston County in 1934. This study uncovered major problems of malnutrition, decayed teeth, defective tonsils, respiratory problems, and intestinal disorders. She recruited black schoolteachers and midwives from Crockett to try to improve conditions. In other communities, she organized adult health classes, clinics, and instruction for midwives.15 Some black women left the state to obtain training. Estelle Massey Riddle Osborne of Palestine graduated from Columbia University in 1930, the first black nurse in the United States to earn a master of arts degree in nursing education. President of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses from 1934 to 1939,

This is the 1921 class of graduate nurses at the Colored Hospital in Galveston, part of the University of Texas Medical Branch. The inscription beneath the photo reads, "Old general soldiers."

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she led the fight to integrate blacks into the American Nurses' Association. Ollie Lee McMillan Mason, the daughter of a pioneer black physician, became the first black nurse employed at Dallas's Parkland Hospital in 1937. This graduate of the Freedmen's Hospital School of Nursing became night supervisor in the Obstetrics Division.16 Midwives "were the female heroes" in one South Texas community. Midwives not only delivered babies: they counseled women on prenatal care and sometimes stayed with the new mother and her baby for days or weeks. They used home remedies, herbs, teas, and roots, and some assisted doctors who delivered babies at home. Nellie Brown was a popular midwife or "granny woman" in the Victoria area. Once faced with a difficult delivery, she brewed tea from a baby wasp's nest for a woman who reportedly drank it and "birthed her baby without no trouble a-tall."17

Mrs. Mary Evelyn V. Hunter was the state'sfirstblack extension agent when she was appointed in 1915. Over the next sixteen years, she supervised twenty-three agents serving over 30,000 black women in home demonstration clubs.

Estelle Massey Riddle Osborne of Palestine was thefirstblack nurse to earn a master of arts degree in nursing education, graduating from Columbia University in 1930. She was president of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses from 1934 to 1939. 162 # The New Century

Brazos County posed with a county public health nurse ca. 1922.

By 1935, midwives were still delivering over half the Negro babies born in the United States. In Waco, Dr. George Conner, a black physician, complained that "the midwives have a monopoly on the baby cases recently." In 1939, an estimated 4,000 midwives, mostly older black women, practiced in Texas. Dr. Connie Yerwood recalled that most of the midwives with whom she worked "really deserved more credit than what they got."18 Social Workers Like nursing, social work became professionalized around the turn of the century. Unlike aspiring nurses, however, social work students found no Texas schools available. Ellie A. Walls Montgomery from Houston was one of the first two fellows of the Urban League, graduating from the New York School of Philanthropy (later part of Columbia University) around 1913. After returning to Houston, she became a prominent educator and social scientist. During the Depression, Marzelle Cooper-Hill was Dallas County's first black probation officer, and Mary Yerwood Thompson ran a WPA-funded nursery school in Austin.19 Home Demonstration Workers Homemaking was one occupation in which virtually all women participated. A national movement to professionalize the homemaker's role got underway around 1900 as domestic science, home economics, and child psychology began to be taught in colleges. In 1914, the U.S. Congress passed the Smith-Lever bill, authorizing Work # 163

the establishment of Agricultural Extension Services. Texas was the first state to address the economic and health problems suffered by numerous farm families. The new movement came to rural Texas about 1915 with the appointment of both black and white female home demonstration agents.20 Prairie View College served as the center of programs for blacks. Over the decades, the agents worked with women through visits to their homes and home demonstration clubs. They taught women to plant gardens, cook nutritious foods, make mattresses, landscape their property, and protect themselves from diseases at a time when indoor plumbing was rare. Many rural women tended gardens up to an acre in size, growing dozens of varieties of fruits and vegetables. By the mid-1930s, many were canning over a thousand quarts of food annually. Some owned their own pressure cookers and sealers, and others worked cooperatively in community canning houses. Many, especially during the Depression, made clothing from feedbag sacks, known as "chicken and barnyard linen."21 In 1915, Mrs. Mary Evelyn V. Hunter was appointed as the first extension agent in Texas to work with "colored people." By 1919, she had organized almost 250 home demonstration clubs with 11,605 members in twenty-three counties and over 100 Girls' Canning Clubs with some 2,700 members. By 1931, the program had almost tripled. One of Hunter's most successful campaigns en164 # The New Century

Mrs. E. G. Jones, a home demonstration agent in Riesel, McLennan County, taught club women to make and sell hooked rugs. One woman made ten and earned nine dollars in profits.

Dr. Jeffie O. A. Conner of Waco was a home demonstration supervisor and educator whose professional career spanned almostfiftyyears. She was president of the Texas Association of Colored Women's Clubs from 1956 to 1958.

couraged families to purchase their homes and land, rather than remaining as tenants. In 1931, Iola Rowan of Dallas succeeded Hunter. Under Rowan's administration, 33 black agents had given over 1,000 demonstrations to some 15,000 women by 1937.22 Reports from home demonstration agents around the state during the 1930s and 1940s reflect the varied activities and accomplishments of the agents and the women's and girls' clubs they supervised. For example, Miss M. A. Brown taught girls in Limestone County how to convert such materials "as the gunny sack, the flour or bran sack into useful and beautiful articles of wear and home decoration." She also taught them to cook "criplin, which is made from the hog's head and the liver of both the beef and hog." Waller County women canned and preserved "815 cans of corn, 218 cans of okra, 150 jars of tomato preserves, 9 gallons of chow chow, 114 jars of canned peaches, 75 jars of peach preserves, and 50 jars of jelly made from peach peels."23 Jeffie O. A. Conner made a name for herself as a home demonstration agent for McLennan County and later became district supervisor during a career spanning over twenty-five years (19221948). Conner helped children make 1,700 sanitary drinking cups from used tin cans instead of drinking from a common dipper. One of herfirstsuccess stories was that of a Mrs. Holloway, who barely existed on a rented farm with her family. After seven years in a home demonstration club, Mrs. Holloway learned to raise poultry and can produce, allowing her to save a little money. She convinced her husband to buy a hog and cow, and they eventually bought twenty acres of land on which they built a nice five-room bungalow with a barn and poultry house.24

Mrs. Hallie Runnels, a home food supply demonstrator in Washington County, displays the foods she canned and preserved in 1947. Work # 165

Even in the city, milking cows was a part of daily life. Marguerite, Emmaressa, and Mae Dee Lewis are shown with their cows in Austin, ca. 1900.

In 1932, Jeffie Conner was promoted from county agent to supervisor of seventeen East Texas county districts. She wore out more than one automobile in her travels and stayed with different families in the course of her work.25 Business Women Few black women could afford to become professionals. Instead, many ambitious women launched businesses in a variety of fields, sometimes in addition to a full-time job. Due to the lack of demographic sources on black business women before World War II, most evidence for that period is anecdotal. According to the 1940 Texas census, black women made up slightly less than 1 percent of 166

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The majority of rural black women canned in community canning houses with cooperatively owned equipment. In 1931, the Anderson County home demonstration club dismantled an old church which it had bought for seventy-five dollars and used the lumber to build the canning house shown here. The women are probably canning black-eyed peas.

Mrs. A. W. Rysinger was the proprietor of Rysinger's Central Millinery Emporium in Austin from around 1900 to 1919. She sold custom dresses, hats, notions, and cosmetics.

all workers in managerial and proprietary occupations and about the same percentage of clerical workers.26 Whether small or large, these businesses operated by black women typically were service businesses which required little start-up capital, similar to those operated by white women. Women sometimes used their domestic skills: they opened restaurants and ice cream parlors, laundries and grocery stores, rooming-houses and boardinghouses, and became milliners and seamstresses. Some engaged in illegal businesses such as numbers running and prostitution. Though their numbers historically were low compared to whites, black business women and men have formed the backbone of educational and philanthropic agencies which benefited thousands of other blacks.27 Lucille Bishop Smith of Fort Worth was one of the most successful business women to emerge from the home demonstration movement. As a faculty member at Prairie View A&M University, she established the country's first college-level Commercial Foods and Technology Department, developed thefirstHot roll mix in the United States, published a cookbook, and at eighty-two, in 1974, founded and became president of her family corporation, Lucille B. Smith's Fine Foods, Inc.28 Mr. and Mrs. A. W. Rysinger developed one of the early blackowned businesses in Austin around the turn of the century. Stylish women began their fashion search downtown on East Sixth Street at Rysinger's Central Millinery Emporium. Starting with only a bonnet and a few boxes, Mrs. Rysinger built a custom dressmaking department and carried a complete line of sewing goods. She made hair braids and hats to sell, along with hair preparations, rouge, and face powder.29 Around 1900, black women began straightening their hair with hot combs and chemicals. Skin bleaches were popular, too; some black women tried to look more white or attempted to approximate the glamorous images they had seen and read about.30 The new profession of beautician attracted many women, as they saw the enormous popularity of the beauty products manufactured by the millionaire businesswoman Madam C. J. Walker, who revolutionized the hair-dressing industry with a line of beauty products for African-Americans. She employed thousands of sales agents nationwide, like Miss Gertrude P. Love of Houston, who advertised herself as an "Agent for Madam C. J. Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower" in 1922. From 1910 to 1920, the number of black Texas women employed as beauticians, barbers, or manicurists increased fourfold. Hair grooming epitomized the service trades, which allowed a practitioner to move from apprentice to employee to independent entrepreneur/mentor, with or without formal schooling. Walker's activities were emulated by other women who adopted the title "Madam." After Madam R. P. Walls of Livingston corn-

Work # 167

Black Houston beauticians (ca. 1914) went to the homes of their wealthy white clients in River Oaks. They were eventually enjoined from continuing their independent employment by a white beauticians' protective organization.

pleted the studies in Walker's system in 1919, she established the Walls Beauty School in Houston.31 Beauty shop owners such as Walls and Anna Dupree of Houston represented a business category combining product sales with service delivery. Dupree worked as a beautician in River Oaks, an elegant white neighborhood. She made house calls in the late 1920s until she earned enough money to begin her own business. She and other black beauticians were eventually enjoined from continuing their independent employment by a white beauticians' protective association. In 1936, Dupree opened Anna's Institution of Health and Beauty, which featured an electric cabinet sweatbox, a Turkish bath, and trained masseuses.32 Jeweline Crow and her sister, Cecile Crow Long, operated the Crow Beauty Salon in Amarillo for many years.33 The Galveston City Times of May 1, 1909, listed a host of businesses run by women. Mrs. W. D. Lewis had five employees in her Lone Star restaurant; Mrs. James Blair employed three in her furniture store; Miss Gertrude Shirley had a successful barbershop; Mrs. M. E. Webb owned an ice cream parlor; and Miss G. H. Freeman was a milliner. 168 # The New Century

Miss Pauline Atkinson and her mother are now in business with a First Class Restaurant on 25th between Post Office and Market Streets. —Galveston New Idea,

July 30, 1904

Madam N. A. Franklin opened her Franklin School of Beauty Culture in Houston in the late 1920s or early 1930s, as well as beauty shops in other cities.

Offering traditional women's skills to a stable clientele of government workers was a path to success for several Austin restaurant owners. Kitty House Pollard was almost fifty years old when she opened her own restaurant in Austin's downtown Sixth Street area in 1916. A few doors down, Elizabeth Glasco, the mother of eleven children and the wife of a minister, opened a series of restaurants, each progressively larger, over a twenty-year period.34 In Fort Worth, Mrs. J. C. Scott ran a real estate business with her husband in 1907. In the retail category, Dallas grocers included Nannie Rawlins in 1910 and Pearl Anderson in 1918. Mrs. L. C. Kirven was owner and manager of the Kirven Drug Company, Mexia's only drugstore. In Tyler, Mrs. Georgia Blakemore Williams, a Meharry Medical School graduate, was one of the few black pharmacists in the 1920s. She opened the Williams' Pharmacy in 1926, a "well equipped and up to date place of business." By 1915, Houston business women included a clothes cleaner, two manicurists, and nineteen owners of restaurants. Alice Lee, who had opened a catering service in the 1890s, was still in business. Rebecca Brown owned boardinghouses, and Hattie McGowan was a cement block manufacturer.35 A few women ran nightclubs. In the 1920s, Ella B. Moore's Park Theatre on Deep Ellum (the east section of Elm Street) in downtown Dallas was open to blacks during regular hours and to whites for the midnight shows. The bawdy shows featured blues singers and scantily clad "hoochie-koochie" dancers. Another popular Deep Ellum nightspot was Ma's place. "Ma's apron was so slick that even the flies slid off."36

Work #

169

Mrs. W. A. Flewellen and Mrs. Willie Gardner, who made mattresses under the Cotton Mattress Demonstration Program at the Goodwill High School in Washington County, congratulated each other in 1940. Note the mattresses on top of the cars.

Lucille Bishop Smith, a Prairie View A&M home economics professor, set up the first Commercial Foods Department at the college level, developed the first hot roll mix in the United States, and founded a family corporation at the age of eightytwo in 1974. 170 # The New Century

Because white mortuaries often refused to handle funerals for black families, the black community established its own. A number of women ran such businesses, either alone or with their husbands. Mrs. Isabell H. Williams was the first to conduct a school of embalming for blacks in Texas—the Hampton Williams School of Embalming in 1925—and later established the Dallas Mortuary and Funeral Home and the Floral Home. Arizona Fleming was elected secretary-manager of the Fort Bend (County) Undertaking Company in 1927. Mrs. Alice Taylor King and her husband, Charles B. King, established the King Funeral Home (now King-Tears Mortuary) in Austin in 1933. A graduate of Fisk University, Mrs. King earned a funeral license in Texas by passing a state examination in 1935. After her husband's death in 1941, she continued to operate the very successful family business into her seventies and even played the organ for all the chapel funerals.37 As early as 1905, Fellman Dry Goods Store in Galveston city hired "colored women in the waiting room," in "substantial recognition of the firm's largest colored trade." In response to protests by blacks, the Galveston Evening Tribune, a white paper with a racist editorial policy, began hiring black women in 1905 to solicit subscriptions in their own community. The following year, Mrs. Charles Etta Jones began as a clerk for the Excelsior Life Insurance Company in Dallas and worked her way up to secretary-treasurer. Estella B. Jackson was Houston's first black and first female notary public and executive manager of the A. G. Perkins and Company, a law, land, and loan business. During the late 1920s, several dozen black women in Houston were bookkeepers and cashiers, saleswomen, clerks, stenographers, and typists, probably for blackowned businesses.38

Lillian Richard William of Dallas promoted Aunt Jemima products in the late 1920s and early 1930s, giving demonstrations in stores across the state. Her niece, Jewel R. McCalla, says that William was the model for the Aunt Jemima image on the pancake mix. Work # 171

Mrs. Alice Taylor King, owner of the King Funeral Home in Austin, is shown with her children, John Q. Taylor King and Edwina King Murphy, in 1933.

The demand for business education in the 1930s and 1940s grew out of the development of urban businesses hiring clerks and secretaries to serve a growing African-American clientele. Miss Erma Jewell Hughes founded the Hughes Business College in Houston in 1932 while waiting for a teaching job in the public schools. Another kind of school flourished in Amarillo—the Kathlyn A. Oliver Hines School of Music.39 Publishers Black entrepreneurs have always promoted their products and services by advertising in black-owned publications. The black press has also had a key role in articulating and crystallizing opinions on issues vital to blacks. Between 1900 and 1930, the black press highlighted stories of racial injustices, heralding demands for equal rights and opportunities. It also heightened blacks' cultural pride and sense of community by emphasizing social and religious activities, businesses, and political action.40

172 # The New Century

Miss Esteila B. Jackson was the first female notary public in Harris County (ca. 1916) and became executive manager of A. G. Perkins and Company, which handled land, loan, and legal business. Jackson's grandmother had been a major property owner in Columbus.

Women journalists and editors had a hand in several Texas enterprises. As early as 1901, Mary (Mrs. Melvin) Wade, the wife of a prominent Republican politician and orator, was printing the Dal· las Express, a black newspaper. Mrs. S. E. Moore wrote a column for the Galveston New Idea which included items about the weather, crime, schools, and religion. Around 1915, Mrs. Desdemona W. Burgess edited the Independent Herald, a weekly newspaper serving Independent Heights near Houston.41 Doris Wooten Wesley married into the newspaper business. At the time of her marriage in 1932, her husband, Carter Wesley, was general manager and treasurer of the Houston Informer, one of the South's oldest black newspapers. When an accident disabled him, Doris Wesley assumed his duties. Josephine Bellinger co-published the San Antonio Register with her husband, Valmo Bellinger, from the early 1930s until its sale in the late 1970s. When the photoJosephine Bellinger may have engraver quit suddenly, she took over that task enthusiastically delooked like a flapper but she spite her husband's skepticism, promising "I can do it." She said handled most of the tasks as co- that at times she did "anything that had to be done, except for the publisher of the San Antonio Reglinotyping." By the 1940s, the newspaper had become the largest ister with her husband, Valmo, employer of blacks in the city.42 for forty years. The Good Publishing Company of Fort Worth had a remarkable record of employing and promoting black women. Between 1943 and 1982, the company produced a family of magazines targeted for black readers. Under several publishers, both black and white, black women consistently held important editorial positions, and Black women were active in business associations like the the contents of the magazines paid significant attention to women. Black Chamber of Commerce of Dallas, ca. 1936.

Work # 173

Adele Jackson Martin advanced from stenographer to acting publisher. When, by default, she alone held the company together, she felt "I was trying to save our jobs, because if we'd lose this, we'd go back to cooking or sweeping floors." During the early 1950s, the company's Sepia magazine focused primarily on the role of women as workers rather than women's roles as wives and mothers. In so doing, it reflected the reality of the experiences of black women, as a majority had jobs. Ahead of its time, the magazine portrayed women as able, intelligent, ambitious, and strong, as well as sensual.43 Before the Civil Rights Act, black journalists were confined to working in black media. Julia Scott Reed was "the first person to give the voice of the black community to mainstream Dallas," according to one Dallas editor. Reed had been editor of the blackowned Dallas Express before she wrote a regular column for the Dallas Morning News from 1967 to 1979.44 Farm Workers Meanwhile, despite increasing urban black migration, a modest number of black women continued to acquire land and manage their own farms. Meddie Lillian (Mrs. Jeff) Allen ran her 106-acre farm in Harrison County with the help of her children. Most black families, however, worked for wages on the farms of others or were sharecroppers or share tenants. In 1920, almost half of all black working Texans were in agriculture. As the plantation system was transformed into wage labor, the number of black Texans earning their living from the land declined rapidly. During the Depression, tenant farmers were particularly hard-hit; some became farm wage laborers and others headed west. Those who stayed behind struggled to survive.45 Shortly before the Depression struck, Ruth Allen, a professor of economics at the University of Texas, interviewed 207 black women in a survey of female cotton workers in five Central Texas counties. Allen found that although all family members worked, the men typically collected and controlled the wages of the entire group. Numerous women complained bitterly because the men monopolized their family's income, and some younger women refused to hire out unless allowed to keep their own earnings.46 Most of the women had no labor-saving devices. Only one woman had water piped into her home. Others hauled it from a creek, a mud tank, or a well. The only black woman surveyed who had a washing machine was a widow with eleven children. She was determined to buy one, even if "the children do have to do without." She earned the $207 purchase price by doing farm labor and taking in washing.47 Of the black women Allen interviewed, 87 percent were field workers. Over half worked with their families as sharecroppers. 174 # The New Century

Julia Scott Reed's column "Open Line" in the Dallas Morning News from 1967 to 1979 was probably the first by a black woman in a major daily in the Southwest.

Since purchasing the Houston Defender in 1981, Sonceria Messiah-Jiles has tripled its circulation and made it one of the leading papers in the Southwest.

Some black couples were prosperous enough to own land as well as a horse and cart (1920s)

Roxanne Evans joined the editorial board of the Austin American-Statesman in 1988 and was promoted to chief editorial writer in 1991.

They averaged about ten hours of field work a day. Those who hired out earned about $1.25 a day for chopping and hoeing and $ 1.15 per one hundred pounds for picking cotton. Allen concluded that if the women in her study would abandon the cotton fields and switch to raising and selling produce and poultry, they could earn more and have a higher standard of living.48 Domestic Workers From the days of emancipation, black women could always find work in that sector of traditional women's labor reserved for them— domestic service. Between 1890 and 1920, the proportion of black female private domestics increased nationally by 43 percent. By 1930, the figure rose to 60 percent. Domestic service remained their most important source of work until World War II. Women preferred day work to "living in," so they could spend more time with their families. Day workers were terribly exploited: employers typically expected them to do all the family's laundry, plus heavy cleaning, in one day.49 Work

175

This woman waiting for a ride on U.S. 80 near EI Paso in June 1938 said, "The country's in an uproar now—it's in bad shape. The people's all leaving the farm. You can't get anything for your work, and everything you buy costs high. Do you reckon I'd be out on the highway if I had it good at home?"

176 # The New Century

These domestic workers had jobs in San Antonio, ca. 1900.

Many black women entered the job market because of low family income and limited job opportunities for black males. In 1930, the vast majority of women (77 percent) worked as domestics, personal servants, and seamstresses or in other nonfarm employment as compared to 69 percent in 1910. During the Depression, black unemployment doubled, while wages fell. About one-third of all blacks receiving public assistance in 1933 were domestics.50 New Deal legislation regulating wages, hours, and working conA Wharton County family in the Depression (1930). Lacey Henry ditions in other occupations left domestic work unprotected. Many of Fayette County recalled the women had to use all their skills to survive. Leodia Ward, a Mcsuffering of the fanners: "Some Lennan County widow, supported her family by doing field work years we made only six bales for fifty cents a day, but supplemented this meager wage by sewand give half to the Trefnys. We ing quilts, cooking, and making dolls. During hard times, black traded on credit, everything. women had one reliable asset—they were used to "making do"; Paid at the end of the year, at they could cook tasty and nutritious meals from beans and rice and one time, and then . . . nothin' left." Quotation from Patsy make clothes from flour sacks and feed bags. Families doubled up, Cravens, photographer and cupatched clothes, grew their own food, and survived through their rator, Colorado County Collection:networks of kin and neighbors. Women like Annie Mae Hunt, a Everyone Has a Story to Tell, Dallas domestic, depended on her neighbor, "Big Mama," to get exhibit narrative, an exhibit her children off to school in the morning and to keep a watchful co-sponsored by the Houston eye on them until she returned home late at night after "doing four Center for Photography, 1991. washings in one day."51 Work # 177

In the 1930s, cooking schools, adult vocational education classes, New Deal relief-work projects, and public school home economics courses operated as training programs for domestic servants. The Houston public schools claimed to train "Perfect Domestic Servants" in a program which taught black women to be "happy and contented workers . . . doing superior jobs for satisfied customers."52 In the wake of the West Texas oil boom of the 1930s and 1940s, many blacks settled in the Midland-Odessa area, where they could earn money after the farm season as domestics, service workers, and laundresses in office buildings and boardinghouses. They could make more there than by picking cotton in East Texas. Willie Lee McKinney made the same in one day (ten dollars) as she did for a whole week's work back in East Texas. Not all blacks living in West Texas prospered. After being stranded near the town of Morton in the winter of 1938, one sick young mother was found living in a dugout with her baby.53 Sometimes an education failed to guarantee a woman a good job, and she had to fall back on domestic work. Juanita Craft arrived in Dallas in 1925 with a certificate in dressmaking and millinery from Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College and a year's teaching experience. The only job she could get was as a bell maid at the Adolphus Hotel: "You depended on your tips." Craft eventually had to quit because she didn't have streetcar fare to get to work.54 Factory Workers In Texas, women's work—in domestic service, as well as in industry—meant long hours for low pay, doing the least desirable jobs, which were not always available. The Depression aggravated conditions, and black women often took seasonal, part-time, or marginal jobs at below a living wage. They also were paid less than men for both unskilled and skilled work in the same industry or occupation. In a survey of black, Hispanic, and white women in Texas industries taken by the Women's Bureau in 1932, black women numbered 1,235 (8 percent), although they constituted about 15 percent of the state's population. The largest proportions of black female industrial workers were in laundries (48.7 percent) and in hotels and restaurants (27.8 percent). Black women made up onethird (32.6 percent) of all hotel and restaurant women workers and one-fourth of the laundry workers. Median weekly earnings of black and Hispanic women factory workers were $5.95 and $5.85, far below the $8.75 earned by white women. Although the Texas garment industry provided better-paying jobs for women than most, it hired few black women until World War II.55 One-half of all the black women (599) surveyed by the Women's 178 # The New Century

Thyra Edwards of Houston moved to Chicago (ca. 1920s), where she later became director of the Abraham Lincoln Center and a nationally recognized social worker, lecturer, and author on labor issues.

Bureau in 1932 were concentrated in commercial laundries. Both black and white laundry workers employed by the City of Houston discussed striking in 1937-1938; but when black workers walked off, they were not supported by whites. Working conditions in the laundries generally were poor—constant standing, often on cement floors, inadequate toilet facilities, high temperatures with poor ventilation, and no lunch rooms, rest areas, drinking cups, or safety equipment. One black press operator with only one leg operated a foot-press by leaning on her crutch.56 The Depression and New Deal Remedies Even before the Depression, unemployment and underemployment for blacks had reached crisis proportions. In 1929, women's wages from domestic sources often constituted the family's total income, especially during the winter months when black men were hit by winter layoffs. Carrie Handcock-Spencer of Austin remembered crops being destroyed and "cattle being killed and buried Carrie P. Hines, an Amarillo while some people were starving."57 club leader, wrote The Surmounters, a history of Amarillo and The 1930 census indicated that three of every five black women Panhandle leaders. nationally worked in domestic and personal service. Their financial situation became so critical that Delta Sigma Theta sorority pressed for public works and other federal programs to promote economic security for them. In 1933, many national black organizations, including the sororities, the National Association of Colored Women, and the YWCA, joined under the umbrella of the Joint Committee of the National Recovery Association to promote the rights of blacks.58 High black unemployment and fierce competition for the few available jobs prevailed in the mid-1930s. In San Antonio, for example, black and Hispanic women were driven from the work force when increasing numbers of white women managed to get hired. Lulu Gordon, writing to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, offered "to do any kind of work because I have to support myself and my children." High unemployment of black women resulted from a shrinking job market for domestic workers and racial prejudice which kept them from other occupations. Clearly, New Deal relief and other programs, like the Works Progress Administration ( WPA) and National Youth Administration (NYA), were discriminatory. Blacks were the last to receive relief, the first to be cut off, and the last to be hired for work relief. In Houston, for example, the Lenora Rolla, founder of the monthly relief benefit for blacks averaged $12.67, while whites reTarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society, has ceived $16.86.59 Although some programs did trickle down to black been a political and civil rights Texas women, administrators assumed that as a permanent underleader in Fort Worth. class they should be trained primarily as household workers.60 The Works Progress Administration assisted thousands of blacks, but in a discriminatory fashion. The Women's and Professional Division in Texas employed some 4,500 black women by November Work # 179

1936 in sewing projects, food canning, recreation, home demonstration, music education, and library work. In the period 19351941, fewer than 20 percent of all WPA workers were female and only about 3 percent of the total were black women. Nor were black women hired for administrative positions in the WPA or NYA. Over one-half of all WPA jobs for women were on sewing projects, many of which excluded black women. In San Antonio, only white and Hispanic women could enroll in the Household Training Center.61 The WPA Sewing Project in San Antonio, one of only three work projects employing black women, was a source of constant complaint. The San Antonio Register ran numerous articles alleging maltreatment of black women by sewing room officials. In one instance, black workers were so outraged by official claims that the segregated sewing room had no space to accommodate additional workers that they themselves cleared space and purchased equipment so that more women could be hired. "Work and food are what we are asking for, for our children," wrote two female leaders of the San Antonio Workers Alliance, S. E. Boone and I. M. Howard, who complained that "they treat us very bad at the W.P.A. offices." Conditions had not improved two years later when Ruth Wallace and Emma Hutchinson wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt: "We are poll tax and tax payers as well as the other races.... Then why are we not given our shares of the W.P.A."62

Willie Lee Gay, a retired Houston teacher, sponsored the award-winning Woodson Junior Historians and was the first African-American board member of the Texas Historical Commission. She has collected and preserved the records of activist Christia Adair.

This quilt being held by two Junior Historians (Jackie Swindle, right) in Houston was made in 1915 by Mrs. Ella Chumbley from the scraps left over from her mother's casket lining. 180 # The New Century

Some black women in San Antonio trained as seamstresses on WPA projects as part of the New Deal.

National Negro Health Week Poster.

Work *

181

Ada DeBlanc Simond was an Austin historian of the black experience and the author of a series of children's books, Let's Pretend: Mae Dee and Her Family.

The NYA was created partially in response to pressure from Eleanor Roosevelt, who pointed out that since the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was open only to boys, young women needed employment, too. The NYA, which lasted until 1944, was the most beneficial part of the WPA for black Texans. In 1935, national club leader Mary McLeod Bethune was appointed as Negro Affairs director for the NYA. It provided part-time jobs and vocational training for needy high school and college students ages sixteen to twenty-four. After much pressure, Lyndon B. Johnson, then NYA director for Texas, finally created a separate Texas Negro State Advisory Committee. It included two women—Mary Elizabeth Branch, president of Tillotson College in Austin, and Jeffie O. A. Conner, a home demonstration agent in McLennan County (Waco). Mary Branch wrote to Johnson, complaining of the many difficulties in getting the vocational projects in operation. She her182 # The New Century

Dr. Mamie L. McKnight is a Dallas educator and founder of the historical society Black Dallas Remembered.

self established two Freshman College Centers in Taylor and Cameron under the auspices of her college. She concluded that helping unemployed youth go to college "bolstered up the self-respect of those young folks."65 Although black Texas students took advantage of the student-aid program in greater percentages than whites, their numbers were still small. In Houston, an NYA Sewing Project began in 1937 with 135 white and black girls. The Harris County Welfare Board distributed the garments they produced. The Welfare Board also sponsored a Domestic Service Project for fifty "Negro Girls" at the De Pelchin Faith Home for homeless children, where trainees received on-the-job training in child care. A course for black girls leading to a state beautician's license was developed in cooperation with a black beauty culture school.64 Summary

Iola Johnson was one of the first television anchorwomen in Texas. She appeared on WFAATV, Channel 8, the ABC affiliate in Dallas, from 1973 to 1985.

Black women's positions in the work force from the turn of the century to World War II included agricultural labor, domestic service, and, for a minority, professional and business careers. Despite the achievements of a few, most black women were frozen into low-paying, dead-end, and uncertain employment. Discrimination and racism, along with hard economic times, were major factors, along with educational segregation and the denial of professional training within the state. The New Deal programs provided a measure of support for thousands, but reached far fewer than the number in need. Discrimination in these programs led black women to protest. In the words of Mary McLeod Bethune, "We have been eating the feet and head of the chicken long enough. The time has come when we want some red meat."65 African-American women were discouraged from relying on the federal government as a safety net in bad economic times. Many became active politically—in the NAACP and in Progressive Voters Leagues—and continued protest activities in their clubs and sororities. On the eve of World War II, they and their husbands, sons, and brothers "came to identify their rights as workers with their rights as American citizens and to reaffirm at home those democratic principles so integral to the war effort abroad." Indeed, World War II initiated a quickening in African-American activism. Although the war created a temporary economic catalyst for Americans generally, it benefited blacks less than whites.66

Work # 183

# 9 CLUBS AMD BUILDING

COMMUNITY

"Lifting as we climb. "

Call to Women

Many of the founders of the Douglass Club of Austin in 1906 were teachers. Left to right: Mmes. Alberta Majors; Clara Jackson Brown, pianist; L. C. (Fannie) Anderson, reporter; Maud Craig; Estella M. Abbington; Morris (Julia E.) Givens, treasurer; L. M. (Annie E.) Mitchell vicepresident; Lillie C. Rhambo; J. W. (Laura A.) Frazier, chaplain; R. S. Lovinggood, soloist; Lizzie E. Lee, secretary; Laura Pierce, organizer; and D. R. (Cora L.) Woodard, president. Not shown: Maggie M. Washington. Harrieddie N. Swann was president of the YWCA at Samuel Huston College in Austin in 1929.

Arise, ye Colored Women, There is work for you to do; Oh, how can you be so idle When the race is calling you? Calling now for noble women Who will ever dare and do, As time goes marching on. Come and join the Federation, Bravely you must take your station, Win the whole world's admiration As we go marching on. . . . —Mrs. Leana L. Parks, Marlin, Texas, 1935' Introduction When they were not working, many women invested themselves in community life through club activities. Opportunities as well as challenges lay in fostering education, in moral uplift, in encouraging charity and mutual assistance, and in freely enjoying and sharing a social and cultural life. Churches continued to be a major base for black community activities. Often, the local church was the training ground which prepared black women for public life.2 But the new century was especially characterized by the growth of national organizations.

Some, like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, developed local chapters. Some, like secret societies and lodges, attracted new chapters by networking and example. Others, like the National Association of Colored Women, grew by linking autonomous local clubs for a broader agenda. Groups like the Young Women's Christian Association attracted members by institutionalizing services available to the public. And after World War II, the National Council of Negro Women and other new organizations came to Texas. Lodges and Secret Societies In 1899, Texas had some of the 509 U.S. lodges of the Invincible Sons and Daughters of Commerce, a national society of black merchants and consumers who pledged to buy from "colored merchants" and start stores. Their motto was "Business, Wealth, and Race Unity." The groups spawned family leagues, housewives' and daughters' circles, and mothers' lodges. Economic solidarity was one theme of the lodge movement, and mutual benefit insurance programs were especially popular.3 Many black Texans joined secret societies that paralleled white lodges of the same or similar name. The Grand Order of Odd Fellows was organized in Houston in 1881 with many women among its early workers. Female Masons, the Order of the Eastern Star, came to Texas around 1891, with chapters under many poetical names. In 1893, for instance, the Heroines of Jericho elected Sister J. W. Alexander as their first grand matron and assessed the members ten cents for relief (life insurance benefits). By 1910, they had 173 active courts and 3,417 "Heroines."4 In 1901, thirty-two of Texas's thirty-three black Eastern Star chapters sent representatives to Austin for the tenth annual meeting of the Masonic Grand Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star (OES), State of Texas and Jurisdiction, with grand matron J. V. Terrell presiding. The Grand Chapter reported 635 members, 18 officers, and total revenues of $582.24. The OES contributed thirty dollars toward its official publication, the American Signet, which was printed in Fort Worth. The women decided not to permit male members to participate in the women's relief fund, and premiums paid by the brethren were returned to them. Rules governing relief required an equal division among beneficiaries, including husbands, children, parents, sisters, and brothers. Fifty dollars was the maximum benefit, a substantial payment at the time.5 The queen of insurance funds was the Grand Court, Order of Calanthe, the richest black women's fraternal organization in the country, founded in Texas in 1897. In 1899, death benefits to members totaled one hundred dollars. The organization grew rapidly. Most of the major Texas cities had courts by 1900; by 1902, there were forty-five; by 1925, 395; and by 1934, 461. In the 1930s, they lent $46,000 to Paul Quinn College in Waco to pay for the con186 # The New Century

In 1901, thirty-two Eastern Star chapters from around the state met in Austin and published their proceedings.

Mrs. S. H. Norris of Dallas organized the Grand Court, Order of Calanthe in 1897, the only fraternal insurance organization owned and controlled by black women.

struction of its main building. By 1933, when most insurance companies were bankrupt, the Grand Court had an income of $611,540 and lent thousands of members money to pay their taxes. Over the years, the organization received steady revenues from municipal bonds, Liberty Bonds, and World War II bonds. One of the state leaders of the Grand Court, Order of Calanthe, was Mrs. A. D. Key, grand worthy counselor for twenty-three years from 1902 to 1925. She added the Juvenile Department and the Burial Department, increased the allowed amounts of policies, and recruited many members.6 The growth of the lodge movement continued. In 1913, the Galveston City Times reported that the Knights and Daughters of Tabor had 45,000 Texas members. In 1917, the Masonic Grand Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star, State of Texas and Jurisdiction, held its twenty-seventh annual session in Fort Worth. Mrs. W. E. Thompson of San Antonio, grand matron, challenged the women to "serve your church, your home, your country" for the benefit of both the race and society.7 Women's Clubs Social uplift, the pervasive call of American progressivism, assumed optimistically that the American social order could be reformed to become as efficient as the new machinery in the nation's industries. Women played a key role in the progressive movement generally; Clubs and Community Building # 187

Developing pride in young children was a goal of club work.

188 # The New Century

The Women's Progressive Club of San Antonio was founded ca. 1910. Left to right, standing: Essie Whitfield, Clara Ellis, Reese, Ethel Selky, Taylor, Mrs. Frank Lewis, Bertha Moses, Celestine Willis, Willie Thompson. Seated: Griffin, Myrtle Hill, Molly Brown, Lillian Sutton-Taylor, Brown.

but for black women, the need for change was more urgent and the commitment to organize even more compelling in the face of pervasive racism. Black women's clubs and sororities proved to be as effective as their white counterparts in training a generation of progressivist leaders. More often than whites, black women had to collaborate to assist the neediest in their own communities because local and state officials would not.8 Black women insisted on assuming responsibility for social change. Their club movement represented the best-educated, most prominent, and highly capable women of color, who worked to combat growing racism, build a female reform network, and address critical community needs.9 Club leaders came from the middle and upper classes, only one or two generations removed from slavery. Some were housewives married to ministers, doctors, and tradesmen, but many had gone to college or trained for a profession of their own—especially teaching. Travel was a major problem for club women, who created a private hospitality network so they might have a place to stay at night. Unable to use bathrooms, water fountains, and roadside restaurants, they brought along their own food or went without. For Jeffie Conner, the wife of a Waco physician and president of the Texas Association of Colored Women's Clubs, traveling by train meant going without food. She chose to drive. Other blacks traveled in inferior segregated railroad cars without access to diners. Waiting rooms in Texas cities were also segregated, with inadequate toilets and eating accommodations. Club women traveled thousands of miles on behalf of their organizations despite these insults.10 Many of the state's earliest clubs concentrated on literary and cultural programs. Club women were eager for self-education, cultural improvement, mutual support, and "racial uplift." The Priscilla Art Club, Dallas's oldest black women's federated club, founded in 1911, adopted as its motto "Art and Beauty, Home and Duty."11 The frequent exclusion of blacks by community institutions led women to take action. They organized first at the local level to found educational, philanthropic, and welfare projects. One of the first efforts in Texas was the establishment of a home for elderly black women by the Heart's Ease Circle of King's Daughters, organized in Austin in 1894. The group rented a large house and later bought a site for a more substantial building. Alice Meroney donated lumber and building materials. The home served the community for nearly a century before its closing.12 By 1910, black women had developed as many voluntary associations nationally as their white counterparts, if not more. Health, education, morality, and the role of mothers were among their most urgent concerns. In addition to their work and family duties, club women undertook a vast array of voluntary projects large and Clubs and Community Building

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small: support of schools and mothers' clubs, organizing and fundraising for community projects like nursery schools and old folks' homes, college scholarships and vocational training, and promoting moral and cultural standards for the community.13 With an elite corps of upper-middle-class women traveling, meeting, and corresponding, it was inevitable that a nationwide organization would emerge. The National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was created in 1896. This umbrella organization took existing groups into its membership and incorporated new groups in the twentieth century. Histories of the organization list no Texas delegates at the first NACW conference; but sometime between 1899 and 1901, the Phillis Wheatley Club of Fort Worth became an affiliate.14 Texas women began networking with national leaders very early. In 1899, for example, when Mrs. E. E. Peterson of Texarkana wanted to find a black kindergarten teacher for her town, she wrote to Mrs. Booker T. (Margaret) Washington, who had helped develop the Colored Women's Kindergarten Association.15 By 1905, there were enough clubs in the state to form a Texas Federation of Colored Women's Clubs (later changed to the Texas Association of Colored Women's Clubs, and then the Texas Association of Women's Clubs). Meeting in Gainesville, the group elected Mrs. M. E. Y. Moore—an Eastern Star leader from Fort Worth—as the first state president. Mrs. Moore issued a call to "the colored women of Texas" to "improve the home, moral and social life in Texas communities."16 190 # The New Century

The Nancy Scott Home for Decrepit Old Ladies was founded in Austin ca. 1900 by Nancy Scott (center with hat).

In 1937, the National Association of Colored Women held its biennium in Fort Worth. Pictured is the Entertainment Committee of the Texas Association of Colored Women's Clubs, which planned the program.

By 1906, there were women's clubs in Houston (the Married Ladies Social, Art and Charity Club), Austin (the Douglass Club), and San Antonio (the Women's Progressive Club). In 1908, Mrs. Booker T. Washington came to Houston, where she spoke to the Married Ladies Club. That year, Josephine E. Holmes of Marshall was reelected as national first recording secretary for the NACW.17 The names of Texas women soon began showing up in the proceedings of other national black women's organizations. In 1903, Alice Dunn Logan, whose home town is unknown, was a member of the Executive Committee of the National Afro-American Council The Priscilla Art Club of Dallas, the oldest black women's club in the city, was founded in 1911. Its motto is "Art and Beauty, Home and Duty."

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meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. This council organized in 1890 and composed primarily of men, advocated equal civil and political rights and was active against lynching.18 Not all women's clubs in Texas joined the NACW, and many affiliated only after they were well established. Some were interested primarily in social activities, others in sophisticated institution building. But women across the state took inspiration from its dynamic national leadership. Mary Church Terrell the first president of the NACW, set a very high level of aspiration, and news of her activities reached Texas women. Josie Briggs Hall wrote in 1905 that "the race need not grow impatient as long as there is a . . . Mary Church Terrell." Texas women named clubs to uplift the less fortunate after Terrell.19 Community outreach was an essential activity for the Douglass Club in Austin, named for abolitionist and editor Frederick Douglass. The character Mae Dee Lewis in the children's book series by Ada DeBlanc Simond recalls that in 1906 the club was "organized by Miss Laura Pierce . . . to study literature and do philanthropic work. They plan to establish a day nursery soon. They have book studies and reviews, do lots of charity work, and once a year they have an elegant tea." Douglass Club members also coordinated local cultural events. For example, one year they made "a calendar of Christmas programs so everybody in the city could attend them all if they wanted to."20 The Douglass Club was the first in Aus192 # The New Century

Members of Austin's Douglass Club collected money for the Salvation Army in the 1940s. Left to right: Mary Elizabeth Lewis Lovelady, a teacher; Mary Yerwood Thompson, an educator and key leader in the Community Welfare Association's day nursery; and Sadie Jones, co-owner of a theater.

tin to join the NACW—in 1912, the period Simond's heroine is describing. By 1914, the NACW reported 50,000 members, over 1,000 clubs, and 28 federations. As it grew in strength and numbers, it served increasingly as a focal point for interorganizational cooperation. Representatives from many white organizations, such as the YWCA, suffrage associations, and the General Federation of Women's Clubs, appeared at NACW biennials, as well as representatives from the NAACP and Urban League.21 A Sea of Prejudice

Mrs. Willie M. Boardingham, a Texarkana high school teacher, led an effort to establish a public library in her town. The most successful fundraiser for the library was a baby contest.

Despite the success of a few women like Christia Adair, who organized an early interracial mothers' club in Kingsville, racism was a major problem in the club movement. Whether or not they had education, beautiful homes, and cultural accomplishments, the black club women confronted disparaging and prejudiced stereotypes of themselves. Nationally, black club women opposed the prohibition of interracial marriage, believing that such laws made black women more vulnerable to sexual exploitation. In Texas, they struggled against racism and intimations of immorality. For example, the "By-Laws of the Married Ladies Social, Art and Charity Club" of Houston required that members be "respectable married women living with their husbands." Christia Adair, a member of the club, reviewed the legacy of slavery in explaining the rationale for the founding of the National Association of Colored Women. The skin color of a black woman's children was not a consequence of anything she had done, Adair commented. Rather, it could be attributed to the wantonness of slave owners. "This organization is a group that has

Anna Dupree of Houston (second from left) was a successful beautician and a major philanthropist who donated generously toward the construction of the Anna Dupree Cottage of the Negro Child Center, an orphanage. Clubs and Community Building

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never had any barriers," she said. 'Our motto is 'Lifting as we climb.' Which means that we have not tried to major [focus] on the woman who has already reached her zenith, who has had all kinds of opportunities and advantages, but the woman who needs us, the woman who hasn't had any advantages, the woman who is down and needs to be lifted."22 National leader Fannie Barrier Williams noted that "the club is the effort of the few competent in behalf of the many incompetent." She spoke for the social elite who benefited from financial security and formal education, while recognizing the devastating impact of racism on poor women. Black club women reached out to their struggling sisters, not only because charity work was middle-class women's "sphere," but because they had felt the sting of racism in their own lives and wanted to remove those barriers. They also understood that supporting poor women's efforts to improve their lot could affect the survival of many black children.23 Fannie Barrier Williams and other leaders urged black men to stand up for the protection of their women. These sentiments were echoed by Josie Briggs Hall of Waxahachie, a black writer and teacher. She called for a reformation of morality to reverse racial stereotypes in what is probably the first book published by a black woman in Texas, Hall's Moral and Mental Capsule for the Economic and Domestic Life of the Negro, as a Solution of the Race Problem (1905).

In her essays and poems, she enjoined the members of her race to be above criticism and echoed many of the philosophical underpinnings of the black women's club movement. In her poem "The Pinnacle of Fame" she urges girls to "try to be good, / By raising the standard of womanhood."24 While Mrs. Hall was very critical of her own people, she also published a speech by Mrs. C. Minnie Allen of Fort Worth, which condemned the prevalent, and eminently unfair, double standard in the stereotyping of blacks by whites. Hall's and Allen's writings demonstrate the pivotal role many educated African-American women played in addressing matters of ethics with blacks and whites alike. Their prophetic interpretations developed within a broader tradition of black women moving between the intimate sphere of white and black communities, noticing and naming the contradictions they encountered within and between them.25 Early Interracial Cooperation The black and white women's club movements shared certain characteristics. They were organized the same way; their membership consisted mostly of middle-class, educated Protestant women; and they believed in the superiority of middle-class values, including education and material progress, the importance of the home, and woman's moral influence. They advocated social reform, aid to the poor, and self-actualization. 194 # The New Century

Mrs. Josie Briggs Hall of Waxahachie wrote the first book by a black woman published in Texas: Hall's Moral and Mental Capsule for the Economic and Domestic Life of the Negro, as a Solution of the Race Problem (1905).

The Texas Federation of Women's Clubs (TFWC) not only excluded blacks from membership but from many of the institutions the TFWC founded, most notably, the state's numerous free public libraries. The white and black women's club movements had some common aims, but they lived in different worlds. Major community projects might draw many groups into cooperation, and the TFWC and the TACWC exchanged speakers on occasion. One of the first known examples of a black woman addressing a white federated women's club in Texas occurred in 1915, when "a colored woman was permitted to speak in behalf of a Negro Orphan's Home at Abilene."26 One woman who moved between black and white spheres was Mrs. Laura A. Pinkney, a prominent Galveston black woman representing the Women's Progressive Club of Federated Charities. In 1915, she spoke to an interracial group of men and women about the need for a home for "indigent old colored people." Over the next several years, Mrs. Pinkney spoke at public fundraisers for the home and forged cooperation between the black community and United Charities. She was also active at the national level; by 1925, she was in charge of publicity for the National Legislative Council of Colored Women.27 The Training School for Delinquent Negro Girls The growth of the black women's club movement, together with an increase in white women's health, clean-up, and youth campaigns, resulted in larger projects on the national level around 1911. The TACWC's most ambitious statewide project was to create a home and training school for delinquent black girls who were jailed in the state prison for women.28 The plan for this training school was first adopted under the enthusiastic urging of Carrie (Mrs. C. E.) Adams of Beaumont, state president of the TACWC, 1916-1920. The next two presidents, Ethel (Mrs. R. A.) Ransom of Fort Worth and Mrs. H. E. Williams of Corsicana, campaigned heavily and in 1923 received an endorsement for the Home from the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs and the Joint Legislative Council, one of the first examples of statewide interracial cooperation. The council, also known as "The Petticoat Lobby," was a coalition of white women's groups who used the clout of newly enfranchised female voters to persuade legislators to pass measures of interest to Texas women.29 In 1923, the TACWC raised $2,000 for the down payment on ten acres in San Antonio with city water, a house, and a barn. Within three years, it had paid off the rest of the $5,500 purchase price. Then it enlisted a former white suffrage leader and interracial organizer, Jessie Daniel Ames, to help convince the state to take over the project. Ada Belle DeMent, senior state supervisor of girls for the TACWC, also lobbied and served as liaison to the white wornClubs and Community Building

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en's clubs. In 1927, the legislature did authorize construction of a state delinquent home for black girls, but it provided no money for another fourteen years.30 In 1941, after four TACWC presidents in succession had lobbied the Legislative Board of Control, Texas finally appropriated $60,000 to establish a State Training School for (Delinquent) Negro Girls. Not coincidentally, this was the first legislative session after the U.S. Supreme Court granted blacks in Texas the right to vote in the Democratic primaries; black voters finally had more influence with elected officials.31 The first students were admitted to the Brady State Training School for Negro Girls in 1947. The first superintendent of the facility, Iola (Mrs. I. W.) Rowan, a home demonstration agent from Prairie View and also a state president of the TACWC, led a protest against the forced labor conditions and lack of academics at the school. The residents were being used as truck farmers to provide vegetables for other state schools. In 1950, the school was removed from a deteriorating POW camp and relocated to a largely black area at Crockett. It housed about 115 girls. Vocational courses included cosmetology, child care, and laundry work. Black club women raised $5,000 toward a chapel and $2,000 for an organ for the Crockett school. The $5,000 check was presented in 1957 by Jeffie O. A. Conner, then president of the TACWC, to the Juvenile Committee of the Grand Jury Association of Dallas County. She noted that "helping the girls who are sent there come back into society and lead useful lives can best be done through religious experiences."32 The Club Movement Continues

Mrs. A. E. S. Johnson, a Marlin teacher and librarian, was president of the Texas Association of Colored Women's Clubs from 1926 to 1930, national chair of the Young Women's Committee for the National Association of Colored Women, and chair of its Mother, Home and Child (later Family Life) Department. She was also a member of the Texas Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation.

TACWC members enlisted the support of the Texas Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation in the 1920s and 1930s as they and the Texas Tuberculosis Association lobbied for the establishment of a state tubercular hospital for blacks. The sanitorium was finally opened in 1935 in Kerrville.33 The TACWC supported the agenda of its parent body, the NACW, which included a fight against lynching and the struggle for voting rights. Texas leaders also attended national conventions. Amelia Elsenia Johnson, a Marlin librarian and teacher of English and music, was president of the TACWC from 1926 to 1930. She and Carrie E. Adams of Beaumont, chair of the NACWC's Ways and Means Committee, reported to the 1926 national convention in Oakland, California, that Texas had 80 clubs with 1,800 members.34 By 1930, the NACW had drastically reduced the number of its committees and shifted its focus toward home and family life. Although its goals still included civic and political rights, the organization, according to historian Paula Giddings, had become an anachronism, with many of its functions assumed by newer orga-

Members of the Douglass Club in Austin had a gala celebration upon their fiftieth anniversary in 1956.

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nizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NACW, says Giddings, failed to understand that black women increasingly were the sole support of their families and that the great majority of them, regardless of economic class, would have to work throughout their lives. Yet it continued to be a viable organization whose chapters were quite ambitious." At the local level, Texas federated clubs worked on their own agendas. Minutes of the Ethel Ransom Club in Houston for the period 1927-1935 reflect a varied program, with lessons in embroidery, a play written by a member, and book reviews of "Negro authors." Members voted to fund a neighborhood playground, buy wood for a destitute family, sponsor a linen shower for the Blue Triangle Young Women's Christian Association, and visit residents of the Old Folks' Home, Tubercular Hospital, and the Houston Negro Hospital. They also celebrated National Club Women's Day, contributed to the 1933 exposition in Chicago, and collected one hundred signatures on a national disarmament petition.36 Local clubs continued to provide a support system for leadership and opportunities for service for thousands of women in small towns. Bessie Hardeway Thomas was the quintessential small-town club leader. She not only organized a Federated Community Health and Welfare Club in Cameron but also taught homemaking and first grade. In 1925, three Wichita Falls clubs (Progressive, Civic, and King Literary) organized the City Federation of Colored Women's Clubs and, the following year, bought a clubhouse for themselves and for the use of other black organizations. Local nurse,

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high school teacher, and social worker Zenobia Trimble organized the 1933 Culture Club for young women; she also helped found and was the mainstay of a day nursery in Wichita Falls for about forty years. In Texarkana, Mrs. Willie M. Boardingham, as president of the Colored Library Association, saw to it that a city library was built and equipped.37 Former NACW president Mary McLeod Bethune had for many years projected the need for a new superorganization to unite the major black women's organizations. It finally became a reality in 1935 when the National Council of Negro Women was founded. Bethune attended the 1937 biennial convention of the NACW in Fort Worth, where over three hundred women, fifty-six of them from Texas, heard her speak on the youth movement. Despite these visits by Bethune and efforts by a state organizer to establish local Texas chapters of the NCNW, the organization did not arrive in the state until 1946. Apparently, the TACWC was too entrenched.38 Another focus of the 1937 NACW convention was the threat of war. With tensions rising in Europe, the NACW's Department of Peace heard reports from local chapters of parades, of the distribution of peace literature, of speaker's bureaus, and of poster and pageant contests. It urged women to join their local Committee on the Cause and Cure of War affiliates, so that "we can feel that we have fought side by side with the women of the world in this great battle for peace." In Dallas, black members of the YWC A joined the Dallas State Committee on the Cause and Cure of War.39 At the 1939 convention of the NACW, Texas delegates reported that the state had eighty-eight clubs. A San Antonio club of forty women raised $10,000 to build the Ella Austin Orphanage. Clubs in Waco, Houston, Austin, and Galveston founded a vocational workshop for the blind, a nursing home for aged women, a community center, and nursery schools.40 Typically, black women's clubs were youth-oriented. The exclusion of black girls from the white Campfire programs and Girl Scouts led to separate groups. Houston women founded the first black Girl Scout troop in the South in the 1930s at the Gregg Street Colored Presbyterian Church. Austin's first Girl Scout troop for blacks was finally organized in 1935 by Juliette Ross Johnson, the president of the Kealing Junior High School PTA.41 Texas women went from state to national leadership. Ada Belle DeMent, a Mineral Wells teacher, was a very effective president of the TACWC from 1930 to 1934. During the leanest years of the Depression, she doubled the number of member clubs, lobbied the legislature for appropriations for the delinquent girls' school, revived the Junior Federation, and secured student grants of fifty dollars from the six black Texas senior colleges. She was chair of the NACW's Executive Committee and of its Peace and Function Committee before being elected national president in 1941.42 198 # The New Century

Dallas philanthropist Pearl Anderson, who died at age ninetyone in 1990, was known for her lifetime of giving. In 1955, she donated her home, valued at over $300,000, to the Dallas County Community Chest Fund to "benefit people of all races."

Mary McLeod Bethune (seated, center), founder of the National Council of Negro Women, addressed the Galveston branch in 1948 at the Avenue L Baptist Church.

The Ella Austin Orphanage housed thirty children in 1931. In 1938, a San Antonio women's club raised $10,000 to improve the facilities.

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Austin's Community Welfare Association In the face of segregation and the added misery caused by the Great Depression, the basic survival needs of the black community were great. One enduring example of women's teamwork and dedication is the Community Welfare Association (CWA) of Austin, organized by seven black women's federated clubs in 1927 to meet the crucial need for a building to house both their own activities and a community health center. Under the leadership of Mattie E. Holman Durden, its second president, the CWA was chartered in 1929, fortuitously before the stock market crash. With family stresses of the Depression era, its focus shifted to serving preschool children with a nursery program. Mary Agnes Yerwood Thompson, a key figure, recalled the feelings of many parents that "if I just had somewhere to leave my babies, I believe that I could get out and find a job."43 With funds raised from blacks and whites and assistance from the federal government, the CWA provided first a playground and then a nursery school for preschool children of parents on relief. The school became known as the WPA Nursery school after 1935 and the Howson Nursery School in 1943. In 1950, the program was taken over by the public school district. This center served as a site for distributing milk to needy families and a meeting place for many groups. The CWA also secured the services of a city nurse and campaigned for a neighborhood branch of the Austin Public Library. It is an outstanding example of a women's organization which had the ability to build and sustain a major community institution over an extended period, organizing across race and gender lines to accomplish its objectives.44

In the 1890s, the Ladies' Aid Club of Austin's Metropolitan AME Church included (standing, left to right) Mrs. R. T. Graham, Mrs. Virginia Terrell, Mrs. Martha Spriggins; (seated, left to right) Mrs. Mary Risher, Mrs. Belle Edmonds, Mrs. Fannie Ramsey, Mrs. Hurd Davis, and Mrs. Hannah Fowler.

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Church Missionary Societies

Mrs. Isabella Miller served as president of the State Home Missionary Society of the Baptist Church in 1908.

Church women have conducted missionary work in their communities since church societies began at the end of the nineteenth century. The instinct to do good works by helping the poor was bound closely with their desire to do the Lord's work while at the same time earning a place in heaven. When she was about eighteen (in 1902), Mrs. Eliza Jane Dudley Lethridge, a schoolteacher, headed the Missionary Society at Palestine Baptist Church in Victoria. Elsie Osby Nelms led her Society at Mount Zion Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in Shelby County in the early 1900s. In the 1920s, women of the Second Baptist Church of San Antonio contributed money bedding, clothing, and Bibles to Conroe College and Guadalupe College. Women of Austin's Ebenezer Third Baptist Church had a clothing bank, provided care baskets for needy members, and gave lap robes and tray favors to nursing home residents.45 Under the presidency of Mrs. V. E. Crawford, beginning in 1946, the General Missionary Society of Antioch Baptist Church in Houston added ten mission bands, a sewing group which repaired clothing for the needy, a foreign mission committee, and a citywide institute. Mrs. Crawford was serious enough about her missionary work to earn a Bachelor of Sacred Theology from Conroe Normal and Industrial College in 1955.46 Missionary societies also provided opportunities for members from around the state to gather in annual conventions for socializing and networking. The Women's District Convention, Auxiliary to the Mt. Olive (Baptist) Association, was organized in 1898. In 1929, the members met at Brenham Normal Industrial College for three days. Women filled all the roles that men normally filled in the traditional church hierarchy. They gave the welcoming address, led songs, conducted Bible lessons, and reported on "Echoes from Missionaries on the Field of Work Done." Mrs. Ada Wilson Hill, a resident of Brenham and later Galveston, was president of Mt. Olive for twenty-five years.47 The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) Church women were instrumental in bringing the Young Women's Christian Association and its activities to their communities. In the 1930s, Barbara M. James grew up next to her neighborhood YWCA in Dallas, which became her second home. In the days of segregation, she recalls, the YWCA was often the only place besides the church where blacks could hold meetings or social events. The Ys were integrated in 1946, but James did not become the first black woman to chair Dallas's Central YWCA until 1973.48 Black women had to wage a prolonged struggle for equal treatment in the YWCA. After it was organized in 1906, the national

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board agreed to establish segregated branches for blacks. Before World War I, there were such branches on the campuses of Wiley College in Marshall (1910) and Prairie View A & M (1912). Urban branches were soon organized in Houston (Blue Triangle) and in San Antonio (Pine Street Branch). In 1913, the national Y hired its first African-American staff member, Eva Bowles, as national secretary. In 1915, the first interracial conference ever held in the South set up a biracial committee to promote Y organizing among black women. Demands for integrated programs increased after 1920.49 During the Depression years, the Y nationally worked for antilynching legislation and took positions on many social issues of the day. The demands of black women for full integration would persist until 1946, when the national Y convention finally adopted an interracial charter, committing itself to full integration.50 The Blue Triangle Branch of the Houston YWCA was founded during World War I, growing out of a pressing need for a central meeting place for women and girls. Spearheaded by Mrs. B. J. (Jennie Bell) Covington, it opened in January 1918; after two years, it was accepted as a member of the Houston Central Association of the Y. In the early 1930s, the branch bought a residence for young women and girls and furnished it with gifts from churches, clubs, and friends.51 In 1926, Dallasites Frederica Dodd and Ethelyn Chisum organized a meeting of black women with representatives of the (white) Council of Church Women to urge that a black YWCA branch with a paid worker be created. The Central YWCA board assumed responsibility; the board of the Home Makers Industrial School and Community Center donated land; and black and white Methodist churches contributed building funds. An organizing conference for the Maria Morgan branch (named for a local white philanthropist) took place in 1928. Doris Wooten-Kirkman Wesley, executive secretary of the Blue Triangle branch of the Y in Houston, helped the Dallas women raise $21,000 to pay salaries for five staff members and several cafeteria employees. Kirkman had taken a special course in "Y work" at the National Training School in New York City and spent several years after World War I in recreational work.52 The Maria Morgan branch opened with a celebration in 1928. The Morgan branch Y was extremely active from the beginning in meeting community needs. For the year 1928-1929, it sponsored Race Relations Sunday, Negro Health Week, a mother and daughter banquet, a summer camp, and a world fellowship luncheon. By 1929, the branch had 220 paid members and offered classes in English, cooking, interior decoration, sex education, and home nursing. Organizations using the building included the Doctor's Auxiliary, the Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, the 202 # The New Century

Ella Mae Campbell Johnson Bailey was president of Church Women United of Dallas and secretary of Church Women United of Texas. A retired teacher, she has also been a leader in the YWCA, The Links, Inc., the Texas Coalition for Juvenile Justice, and Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

Dallas Negro Players, the Diamond Charity Club, the Princess Art Club, the Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation, and the Business Girls Club. By 1930, the Y had a $5,000 budget; but with the deepening of the Depression, its emphasis shifted to job registration and placement. In 1932, it registered 915 women for jobs, received 428 calls for employment help, and placed 228 women. In 1935, Mrs. Marion Hill Dillard became the executive director of the Maria Morgan Branch. Under her leadership, a new brick building was dedicated in 1940. By the time she retired in 1972, the Y had 1,500 members. She then became the first black elected president of Church Women United of Dallas. Thus, a circle was completed; Church Women United had helped the Morgan branch organize; now one of its leaders assumed the helm of the Church Women United.5' Edwina Higgins of Houston organized the Sickle Cell Disease Research Foundation of Texas. She has been active in the Visiting Nurses Association and president of The Links, Inc.

Dr. Mary Evans Sias became executive director of the YWCA of Metropolitan Dallas in 1984.

The Post-World War II Period African-American women remained integral to the Y's urban Texas programs when the YWCAs integrated after World War II, especially in black neighborhoods. Y women were also likely to be active in other clubs. Many of the women's clubs established early in the century are still in existence. For example, the Priscilla Art Club in Dallas continues to the present, as do Houston's 1906 Art, Literary and Charity Club and Austin's Douglass Club. Meanwhile, the Texas Association of Women's Clubs developed new growth in smaller cities. Shortly after the war, seven black women, excluded from the allwhite Bryan Woman's Clubs, founded the Negro Woman's Club. They chose as their motto "Let Us Be Seen by Our Deeds." Affiliating with their district of the TAWC, the Bryan women changed their group's name to the Bethunc Woman's Club. In 1972, Mexia women formed the League of Involved Women, initially raising funds for scholarships, then adding black history programs along with charitable and religious projects.54 Several organizations like the National Council of Negro Women and Jack and Jill, Inc., were founded in the 1930s, but did not arrive in Texas until after World War II. Chapters of the National Council of Negro Women were founded in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Huntsville, Beaumont, Corpus Christi, Temple, and Waco by 1946.55 The Austin NCNW conducted a very ambitious series of programs during its first year, 1946-1947. It launched a membership drive, sent a delegate to the national conference in Washington, and presented a speaker from Dallas, Mrs. Annetta Edmonds, on "Social Frontiers for Negro Women," and a panel discussion, "Minority Women in Action," with representatives from Mexico and the National Council of Jewish Women. Mrs. Homer P. Rainey, wife of the president of the University of Texas at Austin, spoke on Clubs and Community Building # 203

"Women of the World on the March." The year culminated with a presentation by the Planned Parenthood Federation.56 Following Mary McLeod Bethune's resignation as president in 1949, the national organization temporarily foundered, but it rebounded with the resurgence of the civil rights movement. In 1953, the NCNW Houston chapter under the leadership of Mrs. Anna Harris denounced the police for assaulting a pregnant black woman and demanded that the city council take action against insensitive police administrators.57 Many women's organizations like Jack and Jill, Inc., have focused on the needs of children and youth. Jack and Jill came to Houston in 1952. Its goal is to provide educational, civic, recreational, and social activities for children. Barbara Harrington, president of the Austin chapter, said, "We're not there because we like each other and want to socialize. We're there because we're mothers. . . . the Black family needs reinforcement and Black children need exposure to many activities and opportunities."58 The Links, Inc., was founded in 1946, but it wasfiveyears later when Dr. Thelma Patten Law organized the first of fifteen Texas chapters in Houston. Members are an elite group of women who must be invited to join. The multipurpose organization offers ser-

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vices to youth and focuses on the arts as well as national and international trends and services. According to Dr. Dorothea Brown, president of the Austin chapter and formerly a regional officer, the local group has sponsored an alcohol and drug education workshop, an Adopt-A-School project, youth talent in visual and performing arts, an international festival, voter registration, and support for the African Water Wells Project.59 Summary

Thelma Boston has nurtured over two hundred children as founder of the Boston Home for Handicapped Children in Dallas.

Ada C. Anderson (back row, right) founded the Leadership Enrichment Arts Program (LEAP) under the auspices of Austin Lyric Opera to provide opportunities for cultural enrichment for black youth. Students, standing, left to right: Benjamin Lyman, Jr., Masudi Stolard; seated, left to right: Brandon Simmons, Earnest Roos, Loraine Lyman, Denise Lyman, and Patrice Simmons. Adults, back row, standing, left to right: Benjamin Lyman, Sr., Ada Anderson; front, standing: Noel Koran, staff, Austin Lyric Opera.

Black women have carved out an illustrious record of self-help and institution building. At the local level, they founded, funded, and supported community institutions in the face of great economic hardships and segregation. The club movement grew out of their commitment to self-improvement and cultural enrichment, and later social links and political action. Participating in their own voluntary associations, they perfected their leadership skills. Through clubs, they emphasized racial pride, race advancement, and the defense of the black home and community.60 Many of the club leaders were the wives of political, religious, business, and educational leaders, but were often childless or had small families. A number were single or widowed. Black club women, many of whom were well educated, typically were employed, unlike white middle-class women. They frequently bridged the class barrier by reaching out to poor women, working mothers, and farm wives. Black and white club women alike were patronizing in dealing with poor persons, but these attitudes do not overshadow the large amount of good work they accomplished. Always concerned with education, self-improvement, and community improvement, black women's organizations became informal centers of information and ideologies and catalysts for social change. Beyond the "good works" of black women's clubs, their members have created and sustained a valuable forum for sisters, daughters, granddaughters, and nieces. In club meetings, black women have a safe space to affirm their particular realities and identities, uncensored by black men or by whites. Such spaces have empowered them to endure, individually and collectively.61

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#10 THE F I G H T FOR S U F F R A G E AMD A G A I N S T L Y N C H I N G "Are you saying that we can't vote because we're Negroes?"

Introduction

Mrs. B. J. Covington was chair of the Negro Women's Division of the Texas Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation. She also founded the Houston Blue Triangle YWCA. Texans had to pay a poll tax to vote until the U.S. Supreme Court declared the practice unconstitutional in 1966. This is the poll tax receipt of Ada Daniels of Edna, mother of suffrage leader Christia Adair.

Until 1918, no Texas women could vote. Christia Adair, Kitty Simmons, and other black women worked with white women in Kingsville to collect signatures on petitions demanding the vote in state party primary elections. But when Adair and her friends "dressed up and went to vote" on election day (July 27), she recalled, they were turned away. "So finally one woman, a Mrs. [Kitty] Simmons, said, 'Are you saying that we can't vote because we're Negroes?' And he [the election official] said, 'Yes, Negroes don't vote in primary in Texas.' So that just hurt our hearts real bad." ' Christia Adair was one of many black women who confronted racism, but refused to accept second-class citizenship without a struggle. They worked through their clubs and their churches to build community institutions and fought for an education, for dignity, and for equal rights. They helped organize Texas branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Texas Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation, and Progressive Voters Leagues. Black Texas women supported World War I by selling Liberty Bonds, planting victory gardens, and working for the Red Cross. As volunteers for the War Work Council of the Young Women's Christian Association, they ran recreational facilities for soldiers in Fort Worth, Waco, Galveston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Mrs. L. A. Pinkney, president of the Progressive Club in Galveston, organized women to prepare "comfort bags for our soldier boys who expect to leave next Tuesday."2

Some black women, however, raised doubts about the benefits of a world war. In 1917, Mrs. W. E, Thompson of San Antonio, grand matron of the Order of the Eastern Star for Texas, called it "war, war, grim-visaged war; we have a distaste for war." She questioned whether the war would result in equal rights, protection, and better understanding "after all the sacrifices of loved ones in battle." 3 Texas poet Bernice Love Wiggins, in her poem "Ethiopia Speaks," asked a different question—whether black women should not withhold their sons, and black men their loyalty, until "They stop hanging my sons to the branch of a tree, / Take it back till they cease to burn them alive, / Take it back till the white man shall cease to deprive / My sons, yea, my black sons, of rights justly won." 4 Votes for Black Women After the United States entered World War I, suffragists expanded their agenda to include active support of the war effort at home. That advocacy eventually helped win male votes for women's suffrage. The struggle had gone on for almost seventy-five years. Although the movement had begun in Seneca Falls in 1848, it was not until 1893 that Texas women, all white, founded the state's first suffrage association; it folded in 1895. In 1912, the organization of a suffrage association in San Antonio revitalized the Texas suffrage movement.5 Nationally, the movement was in full swing in Washington, D.C., which was also a center of black intellectual life and feminist activity. In 1913, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) began a drive for the passage of a federal woman suffrage amendment, later known as the Susan B. Anthony amendment. One highlight of the period was an NAWSA-sponsored segregated march on the eve of Woodrow Wilson's inauguration as president. Leaders of the march instructed black women to bring up the rear. Marchers representing Delta Sigma Theta, a national black sorority, undoubtedly included the sorority's founding officers from Texas—President Myra Davis Hemmings, Frederica Dodd Chase, and Jessie McGuire Dent—who were students at Howard University at the time.6 Racism flawed both the national and Texas suffrage organizations. As early as 1893, the NAWSA tried to placate its southern affiliates by allowing state organizations to determine their own membership criteria. Their strategy of "expediency" held that the enfranchisement of white women would benefit the white ruling class—"In every State there are more women who can read and write than all negro voters." In Texas, the legislature reluctantly granted women the right to vote in Democratic Party primaries in 1918, partly because it knew that local Democratic executive com208 # The New Century

mittees could bar blacks, men and women. The all-white Texas Equal Suffrage Association endorsed this position.7 Opponents of women's suffrage used many arguments. Former governor Oscar B. Colquitt said that "when you give the ballot to women, you give it to all women, regardless of color." One Texas legislator claimed that if Texas gave women the right to vote, "negroes and whites would intermarry and children of all colors would sit together in the public schools." Mrs. James B. Wells said there were only two types of women who would vote, "the Socialists and the negro women. The Socialists will vote because they are interested, the negroes because they enjoy it." 8 The Texas Equal Suffrage Association Most black female leaders continued to support women's suffrage because they believed that only through political equality could the status of black men and women be elevated. In 1917, the Texas Federation of Colored Women's Clubs endorsed suffrage, and the Negro Women Voters' League of Galveston was founded. The next year, Mrs. R. C. Andrews of Houston attended the convention of the National Association of Colored Women in Denver, at which the delegates urged passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Shortly after Texas women won the right to vote in Democratic Party primaries in March 1918, the president of the El Paso Colored Woman's Club, Mrs. E. P. Sampson, upset the TESA by applying for auxiliary membership in the NAWSA on behalf of her club. (The NAWSA had no individual members. Membership was through state associations.)9 Mrs. Sampson may have acted with the support of EI Paso white suffrage leaders. One of them, Belle C. Critchett, wrote that she was not surprised to hear of Mrs. Sampson's application, since "one of our members suggested the idea of uniting with the National Branch." Black and white women in El Paso worked together. Critchett noted that "twice members of our League have been guests of the Colored Women's Club where they have given programs and we have assisted." She assumed that "the colored women" would be admitted to the NAWSA, but conceded that "just now it is rather a hard question."10 When the TESA sought advice about Sampson's application from the national office, NAWSA president Carrie Chatman Catt equivocated and referred the matter back to them. Catt reasoned that "this woman [Mrs. Sampson] may desire to enter because she wishes to help the cause and she may merely be desirous of the recognition of her race. I am sure if I were a colored woman, I would do the same thing they are doing. . . . The constitution [of the NAWSA] was amended last year, so that such a club as Mrs. Sampson's could not come into the National Association directly."11 It is not known what action, if any, the TESA took on the Sampson application. The Fight for Suffrage and against Lynching

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Registering to Vote Since Texas was a one-party state, nomination in the Democratic Party primary was tantamount to election. After the legislature passed a bill granting women the right to vote in party primaries in March 1917, more women than men registered in some counties.12 While the TESA was grappling with Mrs. Sampson's application, it was also working feverishly to register the maximum number of women within the seventeen-day registration period for the Democratic Party primary. During this brief period, over 386,000 women registered. How many were black women is not known. Black women fought to protect their right to register. In Austin, the Colored Welfare League instructed women about the new suffrage law; in Galveston, the Negro Women Voters' League held a mass meeting to arouse interest. County officials followed no consistent policy; some registered black women, others refused. In Orange, the sheriff and tax collector went back on an agreement to register them. The black women indignantly hired an attorney and filed a court order in Beaumont to compel the sheriff to register them, but the case was dismissed and the women were not registered.13 In Austin, "colored women . . . were permitted to sign up" (that is, to register) but were told that in the upcoming primary, no provision was made for them to vote. In Fort Worth, the six Negro women who asked to register were barred by the County After Texas women won the Democratic Committee, but "the colored suffragettes insisted they right to vote in Democratic be allowed to register." The women were well dressed, "appeared Party primaries in 1918, black intelligent," and "some rode to the courthouse in automobiles," women were allowed to register, but were turned away from according to the Dallas Morning News. In Harris County, home to the polls on election day. the state's largest urban black population, black women registered in large numbers in separate booths in the lobby of the tax collector's main office without incident. The Houston Post reported that registration figures included 12,875 white women and "enough negresses . . . to make a grand total of 14,000 [an estimated 1,115 black women]." In Waxahachie, attempts to disqualify black women also failed, and they registered. Two days before the primary election, the Colored Women's Progressive Club of El Paso endorsed the candidates on the regular county Democratic ticket. Although black women fought hard for their right to register, it is not known if any were actually allowed to vote on July 27. Soon after the election, in August, Negro women were delegates to the Texas State Republican Convention and "perfected an organization known as the Republican Voters' League of Texas."14 The Texas Equal Suffrage Association continued working for suffrage amendments to both the state and national constitutions. A mass meeting of "colored people" in LaGrange, Fayette County, endorsed a state amendment, but it was defeated in May 1919. The 210 # The New Century

concluding push for passage of the Susan B. Anthony (Nineteenth) Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took place in Washington. Both senators from Texas supported the amendment on the final vote, and ten of the eighteen Texas House members voted for it. In June 1919, a month after Texas voters defeated the state amendment, the Texas legislature became the first in the South to ratify the federal amendment. It took effect on August 26, 1920.15 Running for Office After women won the vote, several black women ran for public office. In 1920, both the Lily White and Black and Tan wings of the Republican Party in Harris County (Houston) named candidates for local and state offices. Three women ran on the Black and Tan ticket in November: Mrs. G. B. M. Turner, for county school superintendent; Mrs. R. L. Yocome, for state representative; and

Christia Adair took schoolchildren to meet the train when Republican Warren G. Harding campaigned for president in Kingsville in 1920. After seeing him ignore the black children and shake hands only with the white children, Adair switched her allegiance to the Democratic Party. The Fight for Suffrage and against Lynching # 2 1 1

Mrs. F. L. Long, for county clerk. The Houston Post reported that "negro women voted in considerable numbers." Mrs. Long came in last in a three-person race. With most of the precincts reporting, she received 4,778 votes, 19 percent of the total cast, almost as many as the Republican with 5,000. The Democrat won with about 15,000.16 Election results are not available for the other two races. The general election of November 1920 was the first in which Texas women—black, white, and Hispanic—had ever voted, fifty years after black Texas men first voted. Although the number of black women voting statewide is not known, the Houston Post reported that in nearly every precinct "women had outvoted the men . . . that every negro woman who was eligible voted, and that the white woman vote equaled if it did not outnumber the white man vote," The Post noted that although the Negro women voted in considerable numbers for the Black and Tan ticket, the votes of the white Democratic women more than offset their votes.17 In 1925, the chair of the National (Colored) Women's Republican League wrote, "Now that colored women possess the ballot, we wield a tremendous power," urging her members to "drag the 14th and 15th Amendments from oblivion" and monitor bills in each state legislature. Unfortunately, black and white women did not unite across race lines either before or after they won the vote. If they had done so, they might have won their struggle earlier, and their subsequent influence might have been greater.18 After women got the vote, some became more "political." In 1920, Christia Adair took schoolchildren in Kingsville to greet Republican presidential candidate Warren G. Harding on his campaign tour. When Harding appeared on the platform of the train, he reached over the heads of the black children to shake hands with white children. Adair was so angry that she switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party.19

In 1923, the State Fair of Texas proclaimed October 24 Ku Klux Klan Day. 212 # The New Century

Violence and the Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan, which had undergone a rebirth during World War I, unleashed a wave of violence in Texas in the 1920s. Lynchings, beatings, and tarring and feathering were aimed at blacks, foreigners, and Jews. For example, the Klan pressured sixty black families to move from their homes near the College of Industrial Arts (for White Girls), now Texas Woman's University. It sent an anonymous letter to the local newspaper saying that the KKK stood for "the purity of young girls." In 1922, when the time came to move the homes, Mrs. Mary Ellen Taylor refused to leave voluntarily. She made the arduous journey "seated in her rocking chair in the center of the parlor," as the movers pulled her house away.20 In rural areas, blacks could be more easily brutalized, far from the scrutiny of others. Annie Mae Hunt's family "met a little tragedy on a Navasota plantation" in Grimes County. After her stepdaddy Kirk sassed the white landlord, the landlord and his friends came to their house late that night to whip Kirk. When they couldn't find him, they vented their rage on his family. They beat Mrs. Hunt's mother so badly that she couldn't walk for thirteen weeks and smashed her sister's nose with a pistol. Mrs. Hunt said, "I'm sorry I'm crying. . . . That is what happened a long time ago."21 The Ku Klux Klan became a powerful force among elected officials in small towns and large cities. Mrs. M. R. McKinney wrote that "human bodies are burned anywhere and any time" in Corsicana. Dorothy Robinson recalled that black men and women were beaten away from the polls with ax handles in Palestine. Many mayors, police chiefs, and other public officials were Klan members. In 1922, Texas voters even elected a Klansman, Earle B. Mayfield, to the U.S. Senate on the Democratic Party ticket; by 1924, the Klan controlled a large majority of Texas's 254 Democratic county conventions.22 The Klan was especially powerful in Dallas, where it dominated the police force and had a reputed membership of 13,000, the highest per capita in the nation. Klan threats forced many Texans to leave the state, like the family of Dallas black Baptist minister S. E. J. Watson. His fifteen-year-old daughter, Zelma Watson George, was at home caring for her five siblings while her parents went to the courthouse to try to free an innocent black youth. A Klan delegation wearing bedsheets came to her front door and told her, "You and your family better be out of town in 48 hours." George, later a United Nations diplomat, recalled, "We did leave [for Kansas]. In those days, we knew what happened if we ignored the Klan."23 In 1924, gubernatorial candidate Miriam A. (Ma) Ferguson defeated the Klan-backed candidate on an anti-Klan platform by alThe Fight for Suffrage and against Lynching # 2 1 3

most 100,000 votes in the Democratic Party primary and went on to win the general election in November. One of her first acts was to secure the passage of an antimask bill by the legislature, and the influence of the Klan gradually waned.24 Segregation Olive Banks remembered that in Bryan blacks "could go to the Palace Theatre but we had to sit in the balcony and go around to the side doors. . . . the Downtown Cafe—we couldn't go in there to eat."25 Lulu V. Jones of San Antonio was bitter that her employer never let her sit in the front seat of the car. "She let her little dog sit up there with her. I'd sit back there in that back seat and think 'Here I am in the back seat, not good enough to sit up there, but she'll eat my biscuits.'"26 During the heyday of Jim Crow (the first half of the twentieth century), blacks could not vote in the Democratic primaries, serve on juries, eat at restaurants outside the black community, sit in "white" waiting rooms at bus and train stations, or try on clothes in department stores. As late as World War II, when Mrs. A. B. DeMent of Mineral Wells was president of the National Association of Colored Women, she could not ride on an integrated train in Texas, eat at a roadside cafe, or use the bathroom at a filling station. In the early 1900s, the Austin City Council, along with councils in other cities, passed a Jim Crow ordinance requiring separate compartments on streetcars. The black community began a boycott, and domestics notified their employers that they would resign their jobs rather than ride segregated trolleys. Three Negro women were fined one hundred dollars for disorderly conduct on the streetcars, probably to protest the ordinance. In the late 1930s, racial segregation was still entrenched throughout the state, affecting every facet of life from the cradle to the grave.27 Discrimination also occurred in the inequitable expenditure of tax dollars. The state did not provide funding for a facility for delinquent black girls or for "colored orphans," nor were there pensions for needy Negro widows. The lack of adequate health care also caused severe problems, worse in rural areas and smaller towns than in the larger cities, where there were at least a few black physicians, nurses, and hospitals. In 1922, Mrs. M. R. McKinney, a registered nurse, described the need for a hospital for blacks in Corsicana and appealed for help in a letter to national club leader Mary Church Terrell. She said that the facility "for the sick and old colored people" was so poor and inadequate that they suffered greatly and often died—a "three room cottage with one bathroom and one toilet for men, women, and children," and no separation of those with communicable ailments. She wanted "to build a modern hospital for colored people with a free clinic attached."28 Whether she succeeded is not known. 214 # The New Century

Individual and Organized Resistance Many women became outraged at insults and exclusions. Lorece Williams of Caldwell County said, ''Mamma may not have been a one-woman revolutionary, but she was no white man's patsy either." One day she became so angry about the perpetual habit of a white man riding his horse across her yards and flowerbeds that she got out the double-barrel shotgun and, while humming "Amazing Grace," told him she wasn't going to stand for it any longer. She threatened to "shoot yo ass off sho as you bo'n," continuing, "They's either gonna be a dead nigger, a dead horse, or a dead white man on this day." He never rode through their yard again.29 In 1933, black home economics delegates from Texas Negro colleges were invited to attend a convention at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. Upon their arrival, they were ushered through the basement to the freight elevator. "They refused to make themselves content with such treatment" and convened at the home of Mrs. H. D. Winn to discuss the situation. Although they were asked to return to the convention, they went home instead.30 The Founding of the NAACP

In 1933, when Mrs. I. W. Rowan was state superintendent for black home demonstration agents in Texas, the delegates refused to ride the freight elevator when attending a conference in a downtown Dallas hotel. She was a key member of the Texas Commission on Interracial Cooperation.

Around 1900, black leaders began emphasizing political rights as a means of ending Jim Crow and lynching. The Niagara Movement, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, was a short-lived attempt to promote independent political action as a counterbalance to Booker T. Washington's philosophy of accommodation. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1910, superseded the Niagara Movement. According to historian Anne Firor Scott, "When the NAACP got underway . . . observers remarked that most of its local work was performed by women." Women were among the founders of the Houston branch in 1912 and represented one-third of the founders of the Dallas branch in 1918. By 1919, Texas led the nation in NAACP membership.31 After World War I, which was supposed to have made the world safe for democracy, the NAACP responded to President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points peace program with its own Fourteen Points. It called for universal suffrage, better educational facilities and housing, abolition of discrimination in government employment, reform of the justice and penal systems, and an economic wage for "white and colored alike."32 The Texas Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation During the 1920s and 1930s, southern black and white women worked to achieve sisterhood across race lines. Mothers' Congress leaders, for example, interacted with those of the Negro branch of the Texas Congress of Mothers. White women's missionary soci-

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eties, particularly those of the Southern Methodist Church, the Federal Council of Church Women, and the black and white branches of the Young Women's Christian Associations, provided the foundation for much of this work.35 The Texas Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation (TCIC), founded in 1920, was composed of one hundred members, half black and half white, half men and half women. The Women's Division was organized in 1922 by Jessie Daniel Ames, a former white Texas suffrage leader.54 Within five years, it had grown into the South's major interracial reform group. Black women played leading roles in the TCIC from its beginning. Thefirstchair of the Negro Women's Division was Mrs. D. M. Mason of Dallas. Mrs. B. J. Covington of Houston, the wife of a prominent physician and the founder and first chair of the Blue Triangle Young Women's Christian Association in 1918, subsequently filled the position.35 Like Mrs. Covington, other outstanding black female leaders of the TCIC organized in their communities and spoke widely around the state. In 1926, the TCIC travel budget for the expenses of Negro speakers was $150. The women also raised funds, served as chairs and members of TCIC committees, and reported at annual meetings.36 Many of these women were elite college-educated club leaders and professionals with relatively well-paying jobs themselves or married to professional men who were not economically dependent on the white community. They formed a network which operated within the TCIC as well as in the federated club movement and black professional organizations like the Texas State Association of Teachers. Black leaders in the TCIC came from around the state and included presidents of two Negro colleges (Artemisia Bowden and Mary Elizabeth Branch) and leaders of the Texas Association of Colored Women (Mrs. C. H. Christian of Austin, Mrs. A. B. DeMent of Mineral Wells, Mrs. A. E. S. Johnson of Marlin, and Mrs. R. A. [Ethel] Ransom of Fort Worth). Other professionals included public school principals and counselors (Mrs. Lillian B. Horace of Fort Worth and Mrs. Julia Frazier of Dallas), a librarian at the Colored Carnegie Library in Houston (Miss Bessie Osborne), the state's Maternity and Infancy Nurse (Miss Annie Maie Mathis), and home demonstration agents (Mrs. Mary E. V. Hunter and Mrs. H. D. Winn). Mrs. F. N. McPherson of Gainesville was a leader in the Grand Court Order of Calanthe. Mrs. J. A. Grumbles was the wife of San Antonio'sfirstNAACP president; they were among the city's largest property owners.37 From the 1920s to the early 1940s, the impact of the TCIC consisted mainly of small but important victories. The Houston CIC got streets paved in black neighborhoods. The Dallas CIC women provided a kindergarten and free lunches for almost sixty children, 216 # The New Century

Jessie Daniel Ames was one of the few white women suffrage leaders in Texas to oppose the Klan. She later directed the Women's Division of the Texas Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation and was a founder of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching.

teacher training, and a Mothers' Club, and opened a room registry and employment bureau for young women. The state TCIC worked to institute courses on race relations in colleges and universities, established Boy Scout troops for Negroes, and persuaded the State Democratic Party Convention to endorse a state tubercular hospital for Negroes. They also helped secure a state-supported home for delinquent Negro girls and an orphanage.38 Although the TCIC achieved modest successes at both the local and state levels, segregation was too entrenched for radical changes to have taken place. New strategies would be required. In 1943, the Southern Regional Council, a new organization, replaced the Interracial Commission.39 "One Million Women United to Suppress Lynching"

Ethel Ransom, a Texas nurse and club leader, was Texas director of the National AntiLynching Crusaders.

Historian Gerda Lerner has said that "the myth of the black rapist of white women is the twin of the myth of the bad black woman—designed to support the continued exploitation of black men and women. Black women perceived this connection very clearly and were early in the forefront of the fight against the lynching system."40 Between 1889 and 1942, Texas was third in the nation in lynchings. Of the 378 lynchings recorded during this period, 302 were of African-Americans. The high number resulted from a combination of southern racial views and rural-frontier conditions in most areas. Lynchings usually occurred in rural areas or smaller towns, with the largest percentages of black population.41 No issue touched the heart of black frustration and rage as much as lynching. The public lynching of Henry Smith, who proclaimed his innocence, in Paris on February 3, 1893, became an international cause célèbre, with Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a Memphis, Tennessee, journalist, in the leadership. Wells said, "The fire lighted by this human torch flamed around the world."42 Lynchings like those in Texas drove women into action. Wells had launched a national campaign against lynching the previous year in Tennessee, following the murder of three close friends. Mary Church Terrell said that "statistics show that, out of every 100 negroes who are lynched, from 75-85 are not even accused of this crime [rape]." The women not only proved that the accusations that black males raped white women were false, but pointed out the absence of due process and different punishments meted out to the white and black rapist. Ida B. Wells said that "many of the cases of 'Assault' are simply adulteries between white women and colored men" based on mutual consent.43 Wells also exposed the most taboo subject of all—the sexual abuse of black girls and women by white men. Black men who tried to defend their women were also subject to lynching. They had to learn two lessons: defend black women and die, touch white The Fight for Suffrage and against Lynching

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women and die. In addition, society continued to ignore sexual crimes by black men against black women. Wells also highlighted the lynchings of black women. In a speech to British leaders, she reported on "the horrible case of the woman in San Antonio, Texas, who had been boxed up in a barrel with nails driven through the sides and rolled down a hill until she was dead." The San Antonio woman was the first of eleven black women lynched in Texas between 1895 and 1935. In Huntsville, for example, "Sarah Cabiness and her six children: George, Peter, Cute, Tenola, Thomas, and Bessie" were shot. By 1935, Texas ranked second in the lynching of women. Mississippi was first.44 By 1920, Texas led all states with eleven lynchings. The Crisis called it "The Lynching Industry." It had a particularly devastating impact not only on the lynch victims, but upon their families. Women were left widows, children orphaned, and families deprived of breadwinners. Lynchings and threats of lynchings had a chilling impact upon political activity and protests against segregation.45 Black Texas women fully supported efforts against lynching by the National Association of Colored Women, black sororities, the Young Women's Christian Association, the national Anti-Lynching Crusaders, and the NAACP. Mrs. R. A. (Ethel) Ransom, a Fort Worth nurse and club leader, was Texas state director for the Crusaders, formed in 1922 to recruit "One Million Women United to Suppress Lynching" and to raise one million dollars for a lobbying effort.46

218 # The New Century

QUESTION TO A MOB O, cruel mob—destroying crew. Who gave the life of man to you? Why have you gathered, small and great. To murder, more through sport than hate? Do you not feel the pangs of shame? When on your heads is placed the blame? O, cruel mob—unpitying crew. Who gave the life of man to you? Has Heaven commanded you to take Humans and burn them at the stake? O, cruel mob—think what you do: Who gave the life of man to you? O, fiends of earth that God gave breath, Why do you love the sound of death? What will you answer in Judgment? Who Will Say, God gave man's life to you? —Lauretta Holman Gooden, Dallas, Texas J. Mason Brewer, Heralding Dawn: An Anthology of Verse, p. 16

In 1916, a Waco mob beat, mutilated, hanged, and burned Jesse Washington before a cheering crowd of 10,000. W. Ε. Β. Du Bois wrote that "any talk of the triumph of Christianity, or the spread of human culture, is idle twaddle so long as the Waco lynching is possible in the United States of America." (The Crisis, July 1916).

Texas women were involved with other national black women's organizations like the National Legislative Council of Colored Women and the National League of Republican Colored Women. Mrs. Laura A. Pinkney, a Galveston club leader, served as the publicity chair for the National Legislative Council of Colored Women, and Mrs. Carrie E. Adams of Beaumont served as the chaplain of the League of Republican Colored Women. The league pressed for the passage of a federal antilynching bill during a March 1925 conference, with delegates from forty states, including Texas. Texas women, white and black, were also working to eliminate lynching through the Texas Commission for Inter-racial Cooperation. In 1925, Texas experienced its first year without a lynching since 1883.47 The fight for federal antilynching legislation continued through the 1930s as the major thrust of the NAACP's program. At the biennial meeting of the National Association of Colored Women in Fort Worth in July 1937, the delegates urged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to use his influence to obtain passage of federal antilynch legislation. The NACW opened a legislative headquarters in WashThe Fight for Suffrage and against Lynching

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ington, D.C., with antilynch legislation as a top priority. In her testimony before a congressional committee, Mary Church Terrell urged that an antilynch bill "be passed for the sake of colored women as well as for the men; colored women had been brutally lynched as well as colored men... . [and] the bill should be passed for the sake of white women who are being dehumanized and brutalized by applying the torch to burn colored men and by witnessing the barbarous scenes which always take place at Lynching Bees." All the Texas congressmen but one opposed it. The U.S. Congress has never passed legislation making lynching a federal crime.48 The Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching In 1930, a particularly brutal lynching of a black man in Sherman finally propelled white women into action. Jessie Daniel Ames, now president of the Southern Women's Division of the Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation, launched a white women's campaign against violence with a new organization, the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Ames became the executive director and created councils in every southern state. Mrs. John (Sallie L.) Hanna headed efforts in Texas. In 1934, she secured the pledges of all seven gubernatorial candidates to end lynching, including the winner, James V. Allred. Black women were enthusiastic about the ASWPL but resented being excluded from membership.49 Within ten years, over one hundred women's associations, with memberships of over four million, had joined the campaign, including women's auxiliaries of the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church, Disciples of Christ, Methodist Church, Baptist Southern Convention, Federation of Women's Clubs, YWCA, Business and Professional Women's Clubs, National Council of Jewish Women, and National Federation of (Jewish) Temple Sisterhoods. The ASWPL repudiated the contention that lynchings were to defend white womanhood, believing that part of the motivation was to keep blacks as part of a cheap labor force. The ASWPL used educational campaigns, investigations, and publicity to promote its program, concentrating particularly on law enforcement officials.50 In 1940, the nation experienced its first year without a lynching; in 1942, Ames disbanded the organization. Scholars believe that its work had a major impact on the reduction of lynching, because the lynching rate was lower in counties where the ASWPL program had been most active. The organization's major flaws were the exclusion of black women as members, its refusal to support federal antilynch legislation, and its failure to condemn "legal lynchings" as a major part of the problem.51

220 # The New Century

The White Primary The 1920s saw the emergence nationally of the "New Negro," one who was "resourceful, independent, race proud, economically advancing, and ready to tackle political and cultural ambitions," The New Negro insisted upon full citizenship. With this rise in militancy and an appreciation for black culture, the New Negro could be found among the ranks of the NAACP. In the 1920s, the NAACP initiated a series of court cases designed to expand black political participation. Some of its most significant cases originated in Texas, particularly the one against the white primary.52 The fight began in 1918 when Waco blacks won a temporary right to vote in the primary, continued with the first NAACP case involving Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon of El Paso in 1923, and culminated in 1944, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the white primary unconstitutional in Smith v. Allwright. Fear among white racists that black women would vote in large numbers, perhaps in greater proportion than white women, and be harder to intimidate than black men may have provided an additional rationale for the passage of the Texas White Primary Act in 1923.53 In response to this legislation, black men and women began a new struggle for equality. Civic and Political Clubs and the Revival of the NAACP

Mrs. Minnie Flanagan, longtime board member of the Progressive Voters League of Dallas, led a successful membership and voter registration campaign in the late 1930s.

Dallas black women played significant roles in the newly organized Dallas Progressive Citizens League in the 1930s, later changed to Progressive Voters League (PVL). Its first executive committee included four women—Mrs. George Moore, Mrs. Lovie Mae Jackson, Mrs. Julius McCowan, and Mrs. W. E. Shallowhorne. Mrs. Ε. Β. Payne served for years as the PVL's secretary, and Mrs. Minnie Flanagan and Mrs. Marzel Hill were added in 1937 to increase membership and register voters through the sale of poll taxes. Flanagan and Hill organized house-to-house canvassing, sponsored essay contests, ran a speakers bureau, and devised "Captain's Report Blanks." Under their leadership, 7,000 Dallas blacks (one-sixth of the electorate) paid their poll taxes and helped elect a slate of five candidates to the City Council (all white of course).54 Black women were politically active in other cities as well. As members of the Quinn for Sheriff club in Galveston in 1932, "several women have been in the field and are making house to house contact with the Negro voters and . . . are meeting with much success/' In Houston, 150 black men and women met in Emancipation Park in August 1930 to promote the Harris County Democratic Club. The "washerwoman, the maid . . . the teacher" were among the active members of Houston's Third Ward Civic Club. The San Antonio NAACP sent Nell Gray Washington as its representative to the 1934 national NAACP convention. In Dallas, Miss Margaret

The Fight for Suffrage and against Lynching # 221

Pennybacker urged women to pay their poll tax so that "we as a Race may use it at the proper time" and learn about issues. "Women," she said, "are now attracting attention in nation-wide affairs." In 1935, Houston's Black Women for Social Change protested injustices; in East Texas, Mrs. Armye Jones organized the Madison County Coordinated Cabinet to encourage Negroes to pay their poll taxes and work for better public facilities.55 During the 1936 Texas Centennial celebration at the State Fair in Dallas, black leaders organized the Texas State Conference of Branches of the NAACP and the Texas State Negro Chamber of Commerce. One of the NAACP's key field workers was Juanita Jackson, who organized branches in several cities. Mrs. P. R. Lubin was elected treasurer of the Texas NAACP.56 In 1937, Juanita E. Jackson revived the Houston branch of the NAACP and organized a Youth Council. Lulu B. (Mrs. Julius) White, a former schoolteacher, served as the liaison from the senior branch to the Youth Council. Unfortunately, the branch was beset by organizational dissension until national staff member Daisy Lampkin came to purge it of corruption in 1939. White, who was elected interim president, later became an NAACPfieldworker, thefirstpaid black staff person in the South.57 In the meantime, a Dallas woman, Mrs. Juanita Craft, assumed an active leadership role in that city's branch of the NAACP. The issue of jury service propelled her into action. She was particularly horrified by the case of G. F. Porter, an educator, who was thrown 222 # The New Century

Women were key members and leaders of the Dallas Progressive Voters League over the years.

from the courthouse steps and blinded after answering a jury summons.58 Juanita Craft and Lulu B. White became key statewide NAACP leaders, traveling thousands of miles to organize NAACP branches in dozens of Texas towns. They joined hundreds of other black women in fundraising and educational activities for the new civil rights and civic organizations. By 1940, the State NAACP Conference of Branches, distressed at the lack of progress for blacks, projected a ten-year program to eliminate the white primary, achieve educational equality, and end legal segregation.59 Black women would play significant roles in these struggles, as black Texans were poised on the eve of World War II to fight against fascism abroad and for democracy at home. Summary From the turn of the century until World War II, black women increasingly turned toward activism to protect themselves, their families, and their communities. Many came out of the club movement. As leaders of the NAACP, the Texas Commission on Interracial Cooperation, and the Progressive Voters Leagues, they fought for the vote, for an end to the white primary, and against the crime of lynching. Although most of their activities originated within their own groups, they also reached out across racial lines to unite with white women in attempting to end segregation and discrimination. This new generation of outspoken black women challenged the status quo. Working to rearrange southern lifeways through social reform and political activism, they developed a vast reservoir of experienced leaders, who used their skills to break down racism.60

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# 11 WORLD

WAR

II

"A splendid opportunity for colored women. "

Introduction

Elizabeth "Tex" Williams of Houston had a career as a WAC photographer for twenty-six years. She also worked as a laboratory technician and a medical photographer. All-woman locomotive washing crews (like the one pictured here on the Pennsylvania Railroad) worked in Kingsville during World War II, taking the place of men called to the armed services.

When the first group of thirty-nine black female volunteers arrived at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, in 1943, to be sworn in as members of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, they found that segregation had followed them. 'The colored girls" were told to "move on this side." Nevertheless, the WAAC was the only military opportunity available to them. Trained by white males and segregated in their own barracks, they were soon "made into soldiers." ' The war gave black women their first chance to serve in the military. In 1941, the United States Congress created the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) so that women could fill noncombatant jobs, thus releasing men for combat. The WAAC was run by the army, but was not a part of it; thus, members were not entitled to the same pay, rank, or benefits as men.2 Black groups objected to the appointment of Oveta Culp Hobby of Houston as director of the WAAC, fearing that her southern background would inhibit fair treatment for Negro women. At their insistence, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson appointed Mary McLeod Bethune, then director of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration, as Hobby's special assistant with responsibility for selecting black women for the first Officers Training School.3 The army set a goal of recruiting enough black women to constitute 10 percent of the WAAC. Bethune worked hard to enlist officer candidates, primarily at African-American colleges, but despite her best efforts, black women never comprised more than 6 percent of the whole. An estimated 4,000 black women served, including

120 officers. Black women were excluded from the U.S. Navy until October 1944, too late to see active duty.4 The original policies (if not the practices) of the WAAC were nondiscriminatory, but when it became the Women's Army Corps (WAC) in 1943 and fell under army administration, it adopted the official policy of segregation. Black noncommissioned female officers were often assigned to food and cleaning services, while white women had clerical and administrative responsibilities.5 Nevertheless, recruiting efforts among both rural and urban women proceeded apace. In Dallas, Lieutenant Dovey Johnson inducted thirteen black recruits into the WAC at the Maria Morgan YWCA in 1943. Lieutenant Alice Marie Jones, a native Texan, served as a recruiter in Houston. She told the Houston Informer that the "Woman's Army Auxiliary Corps offers a splendid opportunity for colored women to help achieve success in the war effort."6 Lieutenant Jones was one of ten black Texas women, all graduates of Prairie View A&M College, who were among the first 400 women nationwide to serve in the WAC, graduating from training with the rank of third officer, the equivalent of second lieutenant. They put on their gold bars and were assigned to various posts of duty. Some were recruiters, and others assisted with the training and administration of companies of auxiliaries who replaced men in noncombat army jobs.7 Annie Lois Brown Wright of Brenham joined up despite the opposition of her father and seven brothers. She took comfort from the fact that "my mother and my two sisters said they were with me." She recalled that all the female officers were closely scrutinized wherever they went. They were well received in cities and private homes wherever they traveled, and Wright developed friendships with many celebrities, such as Lena Home and Joe Louis."8 A few black women had unusual military careers. Elizabeth "Tex" Williams of Houston was a WAC photographer from 1944 to 1970. She also worked as a laboratory technician and a medical photographer, often flying as the only woman on Army Air Force maneuvers to record combat techniques. She was the first female graduate of the Photo Division School at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. After the war, she was a photographer for defense intelligence agencies. Williams never married, saying, "I could only handle one thing at a time, and I chose military life." She retired to Los Angeles, then to Huachuca City, Arizona.9 "You Asked for Cooks" As a cook in the WAACs, Mary Bingham August Anderson soon came to the conclusion that "soldiers work on their stomach." When she joined the WAACs in 1943 at the age of forty-one, she was the oldest black in the group. After reading a notice to "Join 228 * The Modern Period

Four Prairie View College graduates were in the first group of Women's Army Auxiliary Corps who trained at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, in 1943, earning the rank of third officer, the equivalent of second lieutenant. Left to right: Annie Lois Brown Wright, Ruth L. Freeman, Geraldine Bright, and Alice Marie Jones.

Some female students at Prairie View College studied engineering, industrial education, and auto mechanics. the WAACs and see the world," she "had a vision. I went into a large field—there was nothing but women," who said, "We need help." She rushed down to City Hall to volunteer, but the recruiters called her "Pee Wee" and told her to go home because she was only four feet, eleven inches tall. She refused to go. "You asked for cooks," she replied, "and I am an experienced cook."10 World War II

229

Corporal Mary Bingham August Anderson, a World War II WAC, had duties as a cook when stationed at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.

Anderson trained at Fort Des Moines and was then assigned to Camp Sibert, Alabama, where she taught black and white cooks, male and female, the tricks of the trade. Many of them "didn't know you had to let the water boil for three minutes" to make coffee. She also taught the male soldiers to "wash your hands when you come out of the bathroom and don't dry them on the seat of your pants." As the oldest WAAC on the base, she was looked up to by both male and female soldiers, who called her "Aunt Mary," "Mommy," and "The Little Brown Bummer."11 (The heavyweight champion Joe Louis was known as the Brown Bomber.) After her discharge, Anderson became a supervisor of culinary arts at the Gulf Coast Vocational School in Houston, She served three terms as the commander of the segregated American Legion Post 801, 22nd District, 2nd Division. In the mid-1970s, she defended her right to run for national office at a legion convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. When one bigot referred to her as "that little nigger," she demanded that the offender be chastised at the podium. "I demand my rights and my respects. I am not black or white. I am brown, four foot eleven inches. I stand my ground. I 230 # The Modern Period

Mrs. Mary Bingham August Anderson of Houston, pictured at eighty-seven in 1989, served as post commander of her American Legion Post for three terms. During World War II, she was one of the oldest women in the Women's Army Corps, joining at age forty-one.

am not Portia but I fight for my right." When interviewed at age ninety, she bragged about being a member of the Honor Society of Women Legionnaires, Department of Texas.12 Black Nurses After the war started, black nurses achieved increased status and greater public esteem as they were integrated into the Army and Navy Nurse Corps. Some 343 black women served in the Army Nurse Corps; but by January 1945, there were still only four blacks in the navy. It took President Truman's 1948 executive order to achieve the full integration of black nurses into the armed forces.13 Estelle Massey Riddle Osborne from Palestine was on the staff of the National Nursing Council for War Service. Her responsibilities included improving the preparation and utilization of black nurses, such as those stationed at the U.S. Army Nurse Corps Station Hospital at Fort Clark, Texas. Most were assigned to hospitals serving only black troops, but a few served whites as well. Second Lieutenant Leola Green of Houston spent ten months of active duty in the North African theater. When she returned home at Christmas in 1943, she described the lack of discrimination in medical care to a Houston Informer reporter: "An injured soldier ceases to be black and white in the fighting force." 14 On the Home Front Some black female members of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps were stationed at the Station Hospital at Fort Clark in 1943. The young woman with the arrow over her head is Second Lieutenant Mattie M. Hamilton.

At home, women enthusiastically raised funds and worked as United Service Organization (USO) hostesses. The Grand Court, Order of Calanthe, a Texas-based national insurance company run entirely by women, bought an impressive $100,000 in War Bonds. In Austin, Mrs. Maud A. B. Fuller was "constantly on the go" sell-

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231

ing bonds. "Every fraternity meeting is greeted with her presence, and she does not run away empty handed."15 Raising soldiers' morale was also important war work. As director of Servicemen's Recreation for the City of Austin, Catherine Lamkin planned entertainment and recreation for black troops stationed nearby. She also organized the Officers' Wives Clubs and the Servicemen's Wives Club. Ruth G. Jackson was director of Negro work at the El Paso USO. Women in Houston staffed the desk at the Southern-Pacific Train Station.16 Sorority members and other black club women throughout the country worked in USO centers and sent candies, cigarettes, and letters to soldiers. "All for Defense, Defense for AH" was the theme of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority in San Antonio. Members sponsored an air raid warden, provided first aid instructors, and urged their members to buy defense bonds. The national Delta Sigma Theta Sorority launched the Jobs Analysis and Opportunities Project to be implemented by local chapters, which sought to win jobs and improve working conditions for black women in public and private sector employment. The Southwest Region of the Deltas donated books to Camp Swift.17 Home demonstration clubs throughout the state promoted the slogan "Food will win the war and write the peace." Members made garments for the Red Cross, grew victory gardens, and practiced food conservation. In small towns like Palestine, women and children collected scrap metal. In Dallas, Mrs. Lee Flanagan, a vol-

232 # The Modern Period

4-H girls learned to knit at Prairie View College in 1942. Mrs. Ada Moore of Prairie View College was assisted by Miss Helen M. Johnson, home demonstration agent for Lamar County.

Miss E. F. Robinson, a San Antonio nurse, conducted a Red Cross class in home nursing for Negroes during World War II. Playing the part of the patient is Alice Flint. Almost two hundred black women participated in the program.

unteer for the Price Panel Administration, checked prices at stores and cafeterias. Mrs. L. G. Pinkston chaired the War Mothers Club at the Dallas USO and was a nurses' aide at the Pinkston Clinic.18 Women Workers in Wartime In 1940, the national Delta Sigma Theta sorority set up experimental centers in six regions to investigate job opportunities, secure increased representation of black women on public boards and commissions, and develop strategies for improving the working conditions of unskilled women in domestic service and private industry.19 On the eve of World War II, Negro unemployment was still high in Texas. In Houston, for example, the unemployment rate was 11 percent for blacks, 7.1 percent for whites. In that city, 53.7 percent of black females worked, while only 29.2 percent of whites did.20 The war, which resulted in economic expansion and labor shortages, created new job opportunities for increasing numbers of black men and women in defense work in Texas. Black men were hired in the heavy, predominantly male, industries—petrochemicals, aircraft, metal products, and shipbuilding. Black women in those industries usually worked as scrubwomen or janitors. The problems of job discrimination and rigid segregation still plagued the black community.21 Wartime economic conditions resulted in accelerated urban migration by black Texas women, some unionization, and a somewhat improved economic status. The number of women on the farm fell drastically as black women moved to urban areas in search of defense work or better-paying jobs. In a study of 1,000 East World War II

233

Texas rural black families, the percentage of black women working in domestic and personal service jobs fell from 47.6 in 1941 to 17.2 in 1944.22 During the war, the Congress considered legislation to broaden the Social Security Act to include domestics and farm laborers, but domestic workers did not receive coverage until 1951. The number of black female workers in industries covered by the Bureau of Old Age and Survivor's Insurance in Texas increased rapidly as the demand for labor increased. From 1940 to 1945, the numbers grew fivefold—from 18,500 to 97,000.23 Some black women were able to move into more desirable and better-paid jobs. Even so, in Texas industries which hired black women (e.g., textiles, apparel, and food industries), only a few jobs were skilled; about half were semiskilled or unskilled, such as custodial jobs. A number of women found employment in government service. Ruby Wyatt Mitchell of Houston and Ella Ruth White of Dallas moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the War Department.24 Mrs. Annie Rucker Baker was appointed postmistress of Littig, east of Austin, in 1944 by Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson.25 In Texas and nationwide, there was a growing shortage of black domestics as women found other kinds of jobs, sometimes in defense employment, sometimes filling niches vacated by white women who moved into defense industries. Black "kitchen mechanics" now commanded higher wages. Annie Mae Hunt, a Dallas domestic, recalled that after Pearl Harbor was bombed, "That's when housework begin to go up." Her wages rose from a dollar and a half a day to five and then seven dollars a day. The number of black female farm workers also fell dramatically. Jobs in war

Mrs. Naunita Harmon Carroll of Cuero helped launch the destroyer escort U.S.S. Harmon, named after her son, who was killed during action against the Japanese in Guadalcanal in 1942. It was thefirstwarship ever named after a black sailor.

1

Young people boosted morale during World War II by providing entertainment for soldiers and the folks back home. 234 # The Modern Period

Olivia Rawlston was president of an International Ladies' Garment Workers Union segregated local at a Dallas dress factory during the 1940s and 1950s.

industries provided nontraditional employment for some of them, and opportunities became available in hospitals, schools, and other institutional settings.26 Black Texas women in industrial jobs worked for the railroad in Kingsville, made military uniforms in Dallas garment factories, processed meat in Fort Worth packinghouses, and labored in the Houston shipyards. In 1944, at the height of the war, most of the Dallas blacks working in food and tobacco (2,119), in textile mill products (129), and in apparel manufacturing (623) were probably women. Trade union membership for black women was limited for the most part to these industries.27 Olivia Rawlston had a long history of union activity from the 1930s, when her husband worked for the railroad. She was elected president of the women's auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. On payday, she went down to the railway station to collect dues from the men "and I would always talk [about] the union." When World War II broke out, she was one of almost four hundred black women in Dallas hired by the Nardis Company to make military garments. The black women were pressers, "bundle girls, collar-setters, button-hole girls, and sleeve makers." She praised the Jewish owner, Bernard Gold, who "took the Negro woman out of the kitchen and put her on power machines," where she could earn more. He was also sympathetic to their union, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU).28 According to Rawlston, although the ILGWU was segregated into black and white locals, the women worked well together. (Hispanic women were members of the white local.) Black women in the shop responded to her knowledge and commitment by electing her their president. She served for thirteen years as leader of the Dallas B, or black ILGWU local, which represented 98 percent of the women at the plant. But many of the forewomen, all white, were "very nasty," particularly toward the union leaders. The plant manager also harassed her constantly. "He knew I was president of the local, and he would get me up from my machine and call me in maybe three and four times a day." Once the manager picked up a piece of iron, threw it on the floor, and cursed Rawlston. But she wasn't intimidated. She told him, "Now that doesn't excite me, just so you don't hit me with it that's all." Although he fired her, she was back at work the next day, and he finally lost his job. Rawlston was the first black delegate from the South to attend an ILGWU convention, held in Boston, during wartime.29 Some black women worked in the Houston shipyards. On September 23, 1944, the Houston Informer ran an article indicating that a "discharged war worker" (Mrs. Inez Reynolds) in a local shipbuilding plant had apparently returned to work "after being fired for defending herself in an affray with a work supervisor of another craft who slapped her down after cursing her." According to reWorld War II

235

ports, "she defended herself well. Union members protested her discharge from service in war production/' 30 In Kingsville, Annie Campbell Cornell was one of about ten black women who worked at the Missouri Pacific Railroad shop at outdoor jobs—carrying mail, cleaning boxcars, sweeping, handling freight, and washing and steaming the engines. White women worked in the office. When Cornell told the foreman she was afraid to get up on the engine, she was assigned to carry the mail and paint. The black women belonged to the Women's Auxiliary of the Colored Trainmen's Association, but apparently received benefits of the union contract (for example, preference based on seniority). When men began returning from the armed forces, Cornell said, management wanted to dismiss the women and purge them from the seniority roster. However, the union prevented them from doing so. She exercised her seniority, sometimes bumping as many as thirty people, and began working in the office. She stayed with the railroad almost ten years, but not long enough to get a pension check.31 The United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA), a CIOaffiliate, had the best record of achievement for black members of any labor union in the state. Blacks began getting a few good jobs in the packinghouse industry in Fort Worth during the war, as white workers left for better-paying jobs or the armed forces. By 1945, about one-third of all meat packing production workers in Texas were blacks, many of them women.32 Gladys (Mrs. Eddie) Humphrey worked for seventeen years at Armour and Company in Fort Worth, beginning around 1945 with a starting wage of sixty-five cents an hour. She worked at their Ratcliff Chili Factory on the South Side, where she was a member of Local 54-A of the UPWA, an integrated union. Quite a few black women processed cuts from hogs, cattle, sheep, and entrails and worked in the hide cellar, stretching and drying hides, tasks formerly done by men. The black workers did the dirtier jobs, and their pay was somewhat less. The Anglo women sliced bacon, which was considered cleaner work. Humphrey canned chili, Vienna sausage and hot tamales, capped lids, and sliced bacon. She was promoted to be an inspector, where her responsibilities shifted to grading, separating, and packing bacon, then labeling the cartons for shipping. She was elected as the union's recording secretary for the district, which covered five states, a position she held from about 1954 to 1962. She also attended annual union schools in several states and even signed up her husband in the union. He was later elected financial secretary.33 The black workers at Armour did not get the same wages as the whites until the union broke down segregation. When a black woman got laid off first because she had less seniority, she was assigned instead to the "slice bacon" department, which was "lily 236 # The Modern Period

Members of 4-H clubs all across Texas helped the war effort by growing victory gardens.

4-H club girls in Washington County raised baby chicks to improve the diets of black families through the Victory Farm Program. Texas poultry production rose from fifth to second in the nation in 1942.

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237

white." The white women walked out in protest and were told by both the management and the union that, if they did not return to work, they could pick up their checks and not come back. They returned "and that settled that." Humphrey praised the union as a strong one which won pregnancy leave for female members, registered voters, and participated in the United Way. Upon retirement, Humphrey received good health benefits as a result of the union contract. She was a believer in women's rights. "We felt like we should make a fair wage. Sometimes our jobs were just as hard and complicated as the men but women never made quite the same wage." She was on the local and national committees for Women's Activities.34 The Fair Employment Practices Commission After black Americans threatened to hold a mass demonstration in Washington, D.C., in 1941, the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) was created to implement President Roosevelt's executive orders prohibiting racial discrimination by defense industries, government employers, and labor unions. Despite pressure from national black leaders, including the National Council of Negro Women, blacks obtained little satisfaction from the FEPC, which lacked enforcement powers and suffered from internal divisions. Even when they obtained the same skilled jobs held by Anglos, the job classification and pay of black workers often remained unchanged. The FEPC was supposed to investigate complaints from workers, but most employers successfully defied it. Blacks in Texas

Gladys Humphrey, a leader of the United Packing House Workers of America union in Fort Worth, received a certificate for perfect attendance at a union school.

238 # The Modern Period

war plants were consistently paid less than whites. For example, in the Dickson Gun Plant in Houston, a subsidiary of the Hughes Tool Company, Negro women earned less than all other workers. Their top hourly wage was 721/2cents an hour, compared with 85 cents for Negro men, $1.29 for white females, and $1.57 for white males. The largest individual weekly earnings were $50.63 for black women, $83.56 for black men, $90.50 for white women, and $161.03 for white men.35 Lulu B. White of Houston, a statewide NAACP worker, challenged the War Manpower Commission to find jobs for black women in the Houston shipyards. She fought for the right of black women to work the day shift at the Atlas Dress Manufacturing Company, urged Southwestern Bell Telephone to hire black operators, and demanded that Governor Pappy Lee O'Daniel support the FEPC. In White's philosophy, blacks and whites had to work together in labor unions for economic independence.36 Summary Black Texas women served their country during World War II by joining the armed forces, working in defense industries, rolling bandages, conserving food, and planting victory gardens. They gained access to some jobs and industries which had heretofore been closed to them. A few became leaders in their trade unions. During the course of the war, the number of black women in poorly paid domestic work dropped by 15 percent nationally, while those working as factory operatives and as clerical, sales, and professional workers increased. By war's end, the position of black female workers had improved substantially, although they never filled some of the best-paying factory jobs and the better-paid industrial jobs went to black men, not women. Many of the gains were short-lived: conversion to a peacetime economy resulted in retrenchment and displacement of black industrial workers, with many women forced back into domestic service.37 The clamor for civil rights began on the eve of the U.S. entry into the war. As hostilities accelerated, the irony of black soldiers fighting and dying to combat fascism abroad while their brothers and sisters faced discrimination in the United States was bitter. Black leaders soon launched "Double V" clubs across the country, vowing victory over the Axis powers worldwide and victory over racism at home.38 Black Americans geared up to press for full citizenship rights. In spite of the threats of physical violence and economic sanctions, black women were in the thick of the civil rights movement and the expansion of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from the beginning, and their leadership helped achieve the victories of the 1960s.39

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# 12 THE

CIVIL

RIGHTS

MOVEMENT

"The fight is on!"

Introduction

After World War II, the crusade against lynching intensified. Many women worked through the NAACP, the American Crusade to End Lynching, and the National Council of Church Women to protest brutal lynchings. In September 1946, women from around the country picketed the White House. The NAACP fought hard to win equal educational opportunities for black children. It distributed this poster ca. 1946.

When Dorothy Robinson caught a train from San Francisco to Bay City, Texas, in 1944, she had a humiliating experience: "White prisoners-of-war (Germans I suppose) were marched under guard through my coach to enjoy a meal in the dining car to which I had been denied admittance." Her anger was echoed by Thyra Edwards of Houston, who wrote that "Jim Crow still rides in the army, . . . the Jew is still maligned . . . the minorities which have made and are America—have not been integrated into our life as equals, as Americans." It was clear to black Americans that racism was far from dead; the fight for democracy would now have to shift from Hitler and the Nazis to the home front. ' From the end of World War II through the civil rights movement of the 1960s, blacks intensified their efforts to achieve equality. The experience of working in the public sphere during World War II stimulated political activism. Historian John Hope Franklin has called the civil rights movement "The Black Revolution." Its leaders pressed for the complete dismantling of segregation: equal access to public accommodations, voting rights, the implementation of school desegregation, and increased employment opportunities in the federal government and the private sector. Women played crucial roles, sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes in the forefront, in boycotts, mass demonstrations, voter registration drives, and court cases.2 Protests resulted in presidential action and federal legislation. In a series of momentous decisions, the United States Supreme Court

declared the white primary and the poll tax unconstitutional and struck down the "separate but equal" doctrines in public and higher education. The civil rights movement prompted legislation which broke Jim Crow's back in the South and established the basis for equality before the law. The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided the legal foundation for women's rights and gave the attorney general the power to protect citizens against discrimination and segregation in voting, education, and public facilities. It established a federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce the law and required the elimination of discrimination in federally funded programs. When the bill first came to the House, Representative Howard Smith of Virginia tacked the word sex to Title VII, prohibiting discrimination in employment, thinking that would defeat the entire bill. The bill passed, and sex discrimination in employment became illegal.3 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 transformed blacks into a potent political force. By exercising their franchise, black women began to elect some of their own to public office. In many cases, women risked their lives and their livelihoods to fight the dehumanizing Jim Crow system. National civil rights leader Ella Baker said that "the movement of the fifties and sixties was carried largely by women." She and other southern black women like Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Anne Moody took their lives in their hands as leaders and foot soldiers in the crusade for human dignity.4 In Texas, women like Lulu B. White, Juanita Craft, and Christia Adair played leading roles. They and others worked on civil rights issues in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Texas State Association of Teachers, the Progressive Voters League, the Texas Association of Colored Women's Clubs, the National Council of Negro Women, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, sororities, churches, and the YWCA. They filed suit for pay equalization of public school teachers and fought to integrate libraries, schools, colleges, restaurants, and other public accommodations. Three Texas Heroines Black women contributed significantly to the overall achievements of the Texas State Conference of Branches of the NAACP in the face of opposition by white racists, the state attorney general, the FBI, and the United States House Committee on Un-American Activities. Three extraordinary Texas leaders—Lulu B. White, Christia Adair, and Juanita Craft—were in the forefront, although they have yet to receive the credit and recognition they deserve.5 "Matriarch of the Civil Rights Movement": Lulu B. White Lulu B. White has been called the driving force behind the Houston chapter of the NAACP, the "matriarch of the civil rights movement 242 # The Modern Period

in Texas," and "a rebel with a cause," Standing six feet tall and weighing 250 pounds, she commanded respect with her "strong black voice" and her "bold, brave, loud, and dignified" manner. Her husband's financial prosperity and his moral support enabled her to retire as a teacher at an early age and devote her life to the fight for civil rights.6 White began as an NAACP foot soldier in the 1930s, but soon ascended to state leadership. At age twenty-nine, in 1939, she became acting president of the Houston branch and then its full-time salaried executive secretary from 1943 until 1949. She was the first black woman in the South to hold such a position. Under her leadership, the Houston chapter grew to 5,679 members in 1943, then doubled to 12,000 members by 1945, the second highest in the United States (and the largest in the South). In 1946, White was elected director of state branches; her friend and co-worker from Dallas, Juanita Craft, was appointed state organizer. The two women traveled thousands of miles organizing dozens of branches all across the state at great risk to their personal safety. By 1949, Texas had almost 30,000 members.7

CIVIL RIGHTS LANDMARKS

Signs like this one at a Houston city park outraged black citizens who paid taxes for its upkeep.

1944 The U.S. Supreme Court declares Texas white primary unconstitutional (Smith v. Allwright) 1948 President Harry Truman issues an executive order requiring fair employment in the federal service 1950 The U.S. Supreme Court declares segregation in higher education unconstitutional (Sweatt v. Painter) 1954 Texas women win right to serve on juries with the adoption of a state constitutional amendment 1954 The U.S. Supreme Court rules "separate but equal" public schools unconstitutional (Brown v. Board of Education) 1964 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlaws poll tax as a requirement for voting 1964 President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing racial discrimination in restaurants, motels, places of amusement, and most other public accommodations 1965 Voting Rights Act of 1965 forces political subdivisions to change their election systems to allow for greater participation by minorities 1966 U.S. Supreme Court upholds the ban on poll tax 1972 Title IX of the federal Educational Amendments prohibits sex discrimination in institutions receiving federal funds

The Civil Rights Movement # 243

In 1948, Lulu Â. White supported Henry A. Wallace for president of the United States. When the national NAACP called her on the carpet for giving the appearance that it endorsed Wallace through her, she retorted, "I have a damn right to endorse anybody I want to." That year she was called before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, a prelude to the beginning of the Red Scare in Houston several years later. After her resignation from state NAACP work in 1949, White continued as a national field worker. Until her death in 1957, Lulu B. White "symbolized the spirit of the civil rights movement in Texas."8

Juanita Craft of Dallas organized dozens of NAACP chapters in Texas. Front row, left to right: unidentified man, Juanita Craft, Walter White of New York, Dr. Payton Medlock of Tyler. Back row: John J. Jones of Texarkana, Μ. Ô. Blanton of Chicago, Thurgood Marshall of Washington, D.C.

"The Fight Is On!": Juanita Craft Juanita Craft devoted forty years to winning equal rights for African-Americans. Her activism began when she joined the NAACP around 1935, shortly after a state tubercular hospital for whites only refused to admit her terminally ill mother. Within a few years, Craft achieved statewide stature. She was one of the first black women deputized to sell poll tax certificates in Texas and served as a Democratic Party precinct chair for twenty-three years. In 1946, she became a state NAACP organizer. One of the flyers she used to promote her speeches was headlined "The fight is on!" She was commander-in-chief of the Dallas NAACP's membership drive, selling more poll taxes (1,146) than any of the county's other black deputies. By 1947, the branch had grown to 7,000 members. From the 1940s on, she attended more than thirty national NAACP conventions and was chair of the Credentials Committee twenty-eight times.9 Craft was an organizing genius, who proudly boasted that by the late 1950s the NAACP had 182 branches in Texas. Her successful strategy included lining up key individuals in target communities who pledged to recruit fifty members and apply for a charter. Their efforts would culminate in a mass meeting with Craft as the featured speaker. In the 1950s and 1960s, Craft helped desegregate Dallas's public facilities and businesses. At age seventy-three, she ran for the Dallas City Council and beat her opponent in a run off 2 to 1. She served two terms, from 1975 to 1979. In 1984, she received the Eleanor Roosevelt Pioneer Award from Texas Woman's University. She died in 1985 at the age of eighty-three.10 "Fire in Her Belly": Christia Adair When Christia Adair died in 1990 at age ninety-six, hundreds of Houstonians turned out to pay her tribute. A city councilwoman said Adair "had fire in her belly, and it got stronger as she got older."11 Adair cut her political teeth in 1918 when she collected petitions advocating the right of Texas women to vote in Democratic Party primaries. Her seventy-two years on the human rights firing line included long service as a club woman, NAACP volun244

The Modern Period

Houstonian Lulu B. White was known as "matriarch of the civil rights movement in Texas" for her leadership in the NAACP from 1939 to 1949.

Juanita Craft used the slogan "Thefightis on!" to publicize her speeches organizing for the NAACP around the state.

teer and paid official, leader in the Methodist Church, and pioneer in the struggle to integrate Houston's airport, public libraries, and department stores. Christia Adair's involvement with the NAACP began in 1925 as recording secretary of the Houston branch. After the death of her husband, Elbert Adair, in 1943, "instead of looking for a man, I got to looking for a job," she said. "I never can remember the day when I wasn't liberated.. .. Negro women have always been in a position to work and do things that they wanted to do." After World War II, Adair was hired by Lulu B. White, then executive secretary of the Houston NAACP, as her paid administrative assistant. When the organization ran out of funds in 1949, Adair continued working for little or no pay.12 Christia Adair and the NAACP triumphed in getting the "Whites only" signs taken down at the Houston Airport. She said, "Negroes could not sit in the waiting room, . . . get a cold drink, couldn't go buy a cold soda water or anything at the counters or concessions." In addition, "Negro men and women used the same restroom." When the city sought federal funds for a new airport, Adair and the NAACP complained about discrimination to the Federal AviaThe Civil Rights Movement # 245

tion Administration. The FAA advised the city that it could not provide federal funds under those conditions. The city floated a local bond instead. Just before the opening of the new airport in 1953, Roy Hofheinz became mayor. When Adair advised him that the new airport also had discriminatory signs, Hofheinz saw to it that the signs were taken down and that blacks had equal access to the facilities.13 In 1956, Texas Attorney General John Ben Sheppard vowed to run the NAACP out of Texas by intimidating its leaders. Adair, then the executive director of the Houston branch, recalled that the branch "had been infiltrated, which was terrible for us, and our names were on the [House] un-American Activities [Committee] list." Sheppard seized all their records, "padlocked our office and put us out of business." Sheppard filed barratry charges against the NAACP and confiscated branch office records throughout the state. He tried to force Adair to turn over her membership lists, but she refused. During a trial in Tyler, she was grilled on the witness stand for seventeen days, but divulged not one single name. Her defense counsel was Thurgood Marshall, later a United States Supreme Court justice. Although the NAACP won the case and Christia Adair reopened the Houston office, her health was adversely affected. "I have scars on my brains and my heart," she said. The threats and bomb scares had taken their toll. "There have been nights that I have been afraid to come home."14 Historian Merline Pitre has said that Adair stood on the shoulders of Lulu B. White. Because Adair lived to a ripe old age and White died young, Pitre believes that Adair got credit for things White had done. That may have been partially true, but there is no question that Christia Adair's accomplishments were substantial and worthy of recognition in their own right.15

Christia Adair of Houston died in 1990 at age ninety-six after seventy-two years offightingfor suffrage and civil rights.

After World War II, women took up the cause of peace and disarmament. Travis County home demonstration club women made a United Nations quilt. 246 # The Modern Period

In 1965 and 1966, Mae Marion (seated far right) ran an office financed by the NAACP to sell poll taxes in East Austin.

Political Activity: Behind the Scenes and on the Ballot By the late 1940s, black Texans had become a political force, particularly in the major cities. In the wake of Smith v. Allwright, in 1944, which outlawed the white primary, they began moving in massive numbers from the Republican to the Democratic Party. Black women worked in the Democratic Party to register voters and stimulate political activity. In 1948, blacks provided a substantial margin of victory for presidential candidate Harry Truman. That same year in Harris County, Erma LeRoy ran unsuccessfully as an independent candidate for the state legislature against a white female and actually carried several precincts. She was the first black candidate in the county since 1923. LeRoy was later appointed to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission by President John F. Kennedy.16 Black women were active in other cities as well. In the 1940s and 1950s, the San Antonio alumnae chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha collaborated with the NAACP in voter registration drives and the promotion of political action and civil rights legislation. In the 1960s, Lucille Crawford, known as a "loyal true-blue Democrat," founded and was first president of the Black Austin Democrats. Lenora Rolla of Fort Worth helped form chapters of the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, organized voter registration campaigns, served as administrative assistant to state senator Don Kennard, and campaigned statewide for the KennedyJohnson and Johnson-Humphrey tickets in the 1960s.17 The Civil Rights Movement # 247

Erma LeRoy, a Houston NAACP leader, ran an unsuccessful race for the legislature in 1948 as an independent candidate.

As president of the Fifth Ward Civic Club in Houston from 1943 to 1951, Lillie Portley (center, with back to camera) spearheaded the drive against the white primary. 248 # The Modern Period

In 1958, Mrs. Charles E. (Hattie Mae) White, the wife of an optometrist and "a champion for racial integration," announced her candidacy for the Houston School Board. She became the first black Texan elected to public office in the twentieth century. Her victory reflected unprecedented support from the black community and modest support by white moderates. "It was the first time," White said, "that blacks and whites had worked together on an organized campaign." Her platform included better school buildings, federal aid, curriculum improvements, and peaceful integration. She pointed out that a duplicate system of schools was too expensive to maintain, that Negro schools "are not equal though now they are separate," and that Houston was under a court order to integrate. White was a teacher, mother of five, president of the Miller Junior High PTA, and a member of several interracial organizations, including the Houston Association for Better Schools and the League of Women Voters.18

In 1958, Mrs. Charles E. (Hattie Mae) White became the first black Texan elected to public office since Reconstruction. She served on the Houston School Board until 1967.

A week after her election, Hattie Mae White's car windshield was shattered by air rifle pellets, and a "burlap-wrapped gasolinesoaked cross was set ablaze" in her front yard. The years of her tenure (1958-1967) were the most acrimonious in the history of the district, as the board tried to avoid desegregation. With the election of a white ally, Gertrude Barnstone, in 1964, the two women worked together to speed up school desegregation. White was reelected to the school board for a second term, but was defeated in a third bid. The following year, the federal free milk program, which she had valiantly supported, was finally adopted by the board.19 Some women who left Texas held political office in their adopted states. The first Texas-born black woman to serve in a state legislature was Blanche Mae Preston McSmith, a native of Marshall. Her parents made her walk to school rather than ride a Jim Crow streetcar. She was the first black realtor in Alaska and helped found the NAACP there in 1951. On April 26, 1959, McSmith was appointed to the Alaska legislature by Governor William Egan to fill an unexpired term. She served during the interim period after the first session, which adjourned April 16, and then during the second session from January through March 1960. Many residents thought she was an Eskimo.20 In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Dr. Zelma George, a native of Hearne, as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Fifteenth General Assembly of the United Nations. In 1961, she won the Dag Hammarskjöld Award for Contributions to International Understanding, only one of many honors received for her accomplishments as a sociologist, educator, musicologist, opera singer, diplomat, lecturer, and human rights champion. After her distinguished career in opera, she earned a doctorate in sociology from New York University. In 1982, she marched against nuclear The Civil Rights Movement # 249

Dr. Zelma George, a native of Hearne and later a resident of Cleveland, Ohio, was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Fifteenth General Assembly of the United Nations. In 1961, she won the Dag Hammarskjold Award for Contributions to International Understanding.

armaments in her motorized wheelchair and then flew to Europe for the opening of the Vienna Opera.21 Following the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, there were intense voter registration drives in black communities throughout the state. "All Texas Negroes Free to Vote," proclaimed the Houston Informer on July 22, 1944. Black Texans won a great victory when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Texas white primary to be unconstitutional in Smith v. Allwright. Mrs. Lillie Portley, president of Houston's Fifth Ward Civic Club, had spearheaded the drive to gain black primary suffrage, which led to the suit finally won by a Houston dentist, Dr. Lonnie E. Smith.22 Lulu B. White, executive secretary of the Houston NAACP, heralded the decision as "the second emancipation of the Negro." Under her leadership, that branch soon grew to the largest in the South. By 1946, blacks across the state were voting in large numbers. Lulu White organized voter registration campaigns, recruited black candidates, and made sure that blacks were elected delegates to the Harris County Democratic Convention. In 1949, she was one of the founders of the Harris County Council of Organizations to protect the benefits of the victory over the white primary.23 But this was only the first case to which White contributed mightily. Desegregating Education Graduate and Professional Schools In 1945, Lulu B. White recruited a plaintiff for a landmark lawsuit which would result in desegregation in higher education in Texas.24 The plaintiff was Heman Marion Sweatt, a mail carrier and friend of White and her husband, Julius.25 250 # The Modern Period

Dr. Virginia Stull was the first black woman to graduate from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, in 1966.

Versia Lindsay Lacy of Dallas was thefirstAfrican-American to receive a Ph.D. in radiation biology from Texas Woman's University. She went on to a longtime teaching career at both college and public school levels.

With its victory over the white primary in hand, the NAACP began pursuing equal education for blacks. The battle, which would eventually affect every public university, college, and school in the state, began in the professional schools of the state university. When Heman Sweatt tried to register for law school at the University of Texas, he was turned down; he was "duly qualified . . . except for the fact that he is a Negro." The NAACP had found its case to test the "separate but equal" doctrine in Sweatt v. Painter.26 The State of Texas, meanwhile, began enacting a masterful series of charades in order to claim that blacks had equal educational opportunity. In 1945, the legislature renamed Prairie View a "university"; in 1947, it established a "law school" in Houston, staffed by two local black attorneys, and appropriated funds for the Texas State University for Negroes in Houston. The ersatz Houston law school was abandoned in March 1947 in favor of a basement on East Thirteenth Street in Austin, with three part-time professors from the UT Law School and permission to use the library of the Texas Supreme Court. Not a single student applied.27 Meanwhile, Sweatt's suit proceeded through the judicial system at a painfully slow pace. Thurgood Marshall, of the NAACP's legal department, fought for a "frontal assault" on segregation itself as opposed to an alternative strategy of trying to make black colleges "equal" to those of whites. This difference in the two approaches divided two of Houston's most respected NAACP officials, Carter Wesley, publisher of the Houston Informer, and Lulu B. White. Wesley believed that equal rights could be won through insisting on equal, albeit separate, facilities. For White, however, separate institutions could never be equal. Wesley attacked White as a Communist and a divisive force. The enmity continued until White finally resigned as head of the Houston NAACP in 1949.28 As it turned out, the approaches of both White and Wesley met with success. The Supreme Court validated Heman Sweatt's right to attend the University of Texas Law School in its June 1950 decision, and the new branch university—Texas State University for Negroes (TSUN)—opened. TSUN, which occupied the facilities of the old Houston College for Negroes, became Texas Southern University in 1951.29 Undergraduate Schools Responding to the U.S. Supreme Court, the UT regents reluctantly dropped racial barriers to enrollment at the Austin campus for the fall of 1956. It was thus thefirstmajor southern university to admit black undergraduates. Black students lived in segregated, substandard dormitories, were ineligible for varsity athletics, and were prohibited from entering most local businesses.30 Even in her second year at the University of Texas in Austin, Bettye McAdams felt socially isolated: "The great bulk of the The Civil Rights Movement # 251

students choose to ignore us." Although McAdams could attend classes, she felt hers was hardly a typical university experience.31 Black female students first lived in the Eliza Dee Dorm, a Huston-Tillotson College building at some distance from UT maintained by Methodist church women. In 1958, when Eliza Dee was demolished, two buildings close to campus served as living space. Almetris Duren was the housemother of one, the Modified Co-op. "Mama" Duren, as she came to be known, was advisor, confidante, and simply friend to all black students at UT for twenty-five years. She gave countless students the fortitude to persevere with their studies under very difficult conditions. Duren recruited minority students, instituted programs to welcome, counsel, and tutor entering black students, and oiled squeaky bureaucratic wheels.32 The most serious complaint of black students in the 1960s was segregated housing. Black female students petitioned the UT Regents for the right to "select the living facilities of our choice." The Regents finally removed racial barriers in housing after three black students filed suit in 1964. Living in a "fully integrated" dormitory had its problems too. in Linda Lewis's dormitory, one pair of black roommates lived on each of the three floors. She and her roommate were "constantly barraged with questions about any and every detail of [their] lives and [their] thoughts" by curious white classmates. Girls inquired about their hair, their food preferences, and their political beliefs. She and her friends regularly took "time out with only Black people" by visiting a nearby black college, Huston-Tillotson. Lewis's membership in an all-black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, was "a joy" because only her black sisters "could really understand the constant battles to maintain respect and a clear sense of self-worth in this unique situation."33 The integration of blacks into university life occurred in tiny increments. During the period from 1962 to 1964, Cora Eiland Hicks, a teaching assistant in the English Department, was hired as the first black faculty member, Gwen Jordan was elected to student government, and black women were chosen for membership in Orange Jackets and Spooks.34 Dorothy Robinson was one of the first black women to benefit from UT's new admission policy. By the time she entered UT for a summer course in 1955, she had "already earned a master's degree from San Francisco State Teachers College and, in the pursuit thereof, had driven more than 10,000 miles by automobile" between her home in Palestine, Texas, and California. These were the sacrifices black women made to obtain professional and graduate education before integration.35 Women in Corpus Christi played a key role in the peaceful desegregation of Del Mar College, which integrated even before the law was changed, the first institution in the South to do so. These lines of understanding dated back to the organization of the lo252 # The Modern Period

Hattie Briscoe received her law degree from St. Mary's University in San Antonio in 1956 at age forty. She was the first black woman to receive a law degree from a Texas university.

Dr. Vivienne Malone-Mays was one of the first blacks to earn a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1966, she became Baylor University's first black professor.

cal YWCA in 1945 by a diverse group of black and white women working together.36 By 1958, two-thirds of Texas's formerly white colleges were integrated. Texas Woman's University in Denton admitted its first black student in 1961, Alsenia Ann Dowells of Dallas. In 1963, two women were among the first blacks to attend Texas A&M University in the summer session—Barbara Searcy, a transfer student from Prairie View, and E. V. McLendon, a Bryan public school teacher.37 Black women seeking a professional education began to benefit from the integration of higher education. When Vivienne MaloneMays applied for entrance to Baylor University in 1949, she was refused admission because of her race and attended Fisk instead. She later obtained a doctorate in mathematics from UT Austin (1966) and returned to Baylor as its first black professor.38 Hattie Briscoe, who attended a private institution, St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, became one of Texas's first black female attorneys in 1956. She was told during the first semester that "women had no business being there." She replied, "I am a woman, I am in law school and I am going to become a lawyer." In 1956, her dream came true. At age forty, Briscoe became the first black woman to graduate from St. Mary's—one of the top students in the class. Ten years later, Virginia Elizabeth Stull made history when she became the first black woman to receive a doctor of medicine degree at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.39 Public Schools

Dorothy Robinson often saw two half-empty school buses moving in tandem toward different schools in the small East Texas town of Palestine, one headed to the white school, the other to the black.40 Despite the passage by the Texas legislature of an educational reform bill, the Gilmer-Aiken Act, in 1949, black schools continued to be woefully underfunded. The 1954 and 1955 decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka af-

firmed Lulu B. White's contention that separate schools were inherently unequal. Federal district courts were instructed to ensure compliance "with all deliberate speed."41 Struggle around public school desegregation issues continued for years, as White Citizens Councils organized to resist desegregation all across the South. In Texas, the legislature and local school boards employed a variety of plans to minimize the impact of desegregation.42 Houston provides a good example of the struggle in urban areas. In 1956, Delores Ross and Beneva D. Williams Nyamu requested admission to the white schools nearest their homes. Although the federal court ordered the Houston Independent School District to The Civil Rights Movement # 2 5 3

begin desegregation with the first grade in September 1960 and to proceed one grade per year, only twelve students attended a white school that year. To be eligible, a child had to be six, be in the first grade, have a health certificate and a transfer slip if he or she attended a black kindergarten, and have no older brother or sister attending an all-black school. In 1962, the "brother-sister" rule was overturned. Christia Adair and other women rang "doorbells to let the mothers know that they didn't have to send their children away across town to school," but could "send them to the closest school to them." They were responsible for the first black children entering formerly all-white schools nearest to their homes.43 When the white high school in Bryan was integrated in 1964, a white student asked a black student, "What do you want us to call you—a Negro, a colored, or what?" The girl answered, "Call me Lucille." But whatever one student called another, only about 5 percent of the some 325,000 black Texas youths attended fully integrated schools ten years after Brown v. Board. Even so, Texas ranked first among the eleven southern states. By 1965, after the 1964 Civil Rights Act allowed withdrawal of federal funds from segregated school districts, all but sixty-six Texas districts had undertaken desegregation or filed plans with the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) to do so. Although the Texas Education Agency claimed in 1970 that 75 percent of the state's black students attended desegregated schools, HEW reported that only 35 percent attended predominantly white schools. Court tests 254 # The Modern Period

Dorothy Robinson taught for almostfiftyyears in the Texas public schools. She is shown with her last class of students in Palestine, on her sixty-fifth birthday, May 3, 1974.

challenged the integration plans of Houston and Dallas, where 92 and 97 percent respectively attended predominantly black schools. Public school integration turned out to be much more elusive than the plaintiffs had envisioned in 1954.44 Both parents and teachers have raised some poignant concerns in the wake of school integration. In Austin, several schools in black communities closed, including Anderson High School, with its rich black heritage. This left children to travel farther from home and to compete with their more numerous white classmates for positions of leadership in high school. Often, black students were the only ones bused, and thus were less able to participate in extracurricular activities. In Dallas, the best black principals and teachers were moved to the predominantly white schools, while inexperienced white teachers were transferred to schools in black neighborhoods. Many black teachers were fired during the transition period. These things happened all across the state.45 Pay Equalization

Mae D. Simmons, for whom a city park is named, was a Lubbock school principal for many years.

Thelma Paige Richardson filed suit against the Dallas Independent School District in federal court on December 4, 1942, seeking equal pay for AfricanAmerican teachers. The action was settled out of court in her favor.

Two career teachers, Thelma Paige Richardson of Dallas and Jessie McGuire Dent of Galveston, played leading roles in achieving pay equalization. Pressure came from the Teachers State Association of Texas (TSAT) and a new organization, the Texas Council of Negro Organizations (TCNO). Those who fought publicly for equal salaries put their lives on the line and suffered, but they paved the way for others.46 The Negro Teacher's Alliance of Dallas decided to file a suit, but finding a suitable plaintiff was difficult. Few were willing to risk the loss of their job, harassment, and possible violence. But soon a courageous woman stepped forward: Thelma Paige. In 1942, she became the plaintiff in a suit demanding equal pay for black and white teachers. Paige claimed that after teaching in the Dallas Independent School District for nine years, she received only $1,260 a year, while the salary of a white teacher with the same qualifications was $1,800 a year. Black principals with high school permanent certificates earned $2,300-2,700 a year in comparison with their white counterparts, who earned $5,000. The fight ended in 1943 when NAACP attorney W. J. Durham won a judgment in the case Paige v. Board of Education, City of Dallas, that granted pay raises to African-American teachers over a two-year period until their salary level reached that of whites.47 The example of Thelma Paige's petition was followed in almost a dozen cities. In Galveston, Jessie McGuire Dent, who was represented by her husband, Thomas Dent, a prominent attorney, won a similar case. By June 1945, equalized salaries were the rule in Texas cities.48

The Civil Rights Movement # 255

Public Accommodations Individual acts of resistance occurred in many communities. When Dorothy Robinson stopped in a small Texas town to get her car serviced, she waited until the attendant was busy pumping gas and checking under the hood before she stepped into the ladies' room. The attendant followed her, opened the door, which had no lock, and said caustically, "You can't use that." Mrs. Robinson chuckled, "Without changing my position and without any effort to recoup my feminine modesty, I replied, 'I'm sorry, sir, but I am already in the process of using it.'" 49 Black Texas women won the battle of the department store fitting rooms. Mable Chandler and fellow Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sister Florence Phelps, a social worker, decided it was time to take action in Dallas. They organized Interested Women, a group of three hundred professionals, who closed their accounts with local businesses, recorded the names of clerks who refused service, urged women to burn their credit cards, and threatened to boycott stores during the Easter season of 1961. The stores finally acceded to their demands and the women celebrated with a shopping trip in August.50 In Houston, Christia Adair, who was "pretty thin, skinny," bought a $29 girdle she did not need in order to win the right of other women to try on clothes. She recalled that if a Negro woman wanted to buy a hat, "the sales lady would put it on her own head and say, º think it's pretty; don't you like that?' I'd say, 'Well, I like it on you but I don't know if I'd like it on me or not'. . .. And they would always have their foot on the chair so you couldn't sit down in front of the mirror. . . . Of course, I never bought anything that I couldn't try on." Adair remembered, "I went to buy a girdle. . . . And when they headed me toward the alteration room, I said, º don't want anything done to it. I just want to try it on.'" Adair insisted they call the manager, who said, "Show the customer to the fitting room."51 By the mid-1950s, southern blacks realized that an assault on segregation required action of a qualitatively different nature. Al--ea Simmons, who later became the chief congressional lobbyist and director of the NAACP's Washington Bureau, recalled that "the most dehumanizing incident of my life occurred in the late 1950s while we were trying to desegregate the eating facilities in Dallas." She, her sister, one of the first black students in law school at Southern Methodist University, and a white male law student sat at the downtown bus station lunch counter for five or six hours. "Nobody shouted at us, nobody said anything to us, nobody wiped the counter in front of us. They just ignored us." Another Dallasite, Juanita Craft, remembered one waitress telling her that "we don't serve Negroes." Craft responded, "Oh, no, I know you don't serve 256 # The Modern Period

Mable N. Chandler was one of the founders of Interested Women, which worked to open Dallas department stores and restaurants to blacks.

Black and white students sat in at segregated lunch counters in major Texas cities during the 1960s. These students were in Austin.

Negroes, I just want a ten cent Coke." Annie Mae Hunt shared the sentiments of many blacks who were angered at senseless discrimination. "They let us cook in their kitchens, but we couldn't sit on their tacky green plastic stools out front and order a hamburger and a coca-cola for ourselves and our children." In 1956, Mrs. Lillie Marie Alonzo, two attorneys, and a reporter for the Houston Informer, Nina McGowan, were arrested for attempting to eat in the Harris County Courthouse cafeteria. When Minnie Flanagan became president of the NAACP in 1959, the organization became involved in the Dallas sit-ins.52 In February 1960, a new phase of the struggle for access to public accommodations began when four students sat in at a lunch counter in Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina. Sit-ins soon electrified the movement and swept across the South. The Alpha Kappa Alpha alumnae chapter was active in the sit-ins in San Antonio, the first city in the South to integrate its lunch counters." In the South Texas ranching town of Kingsville, blacks broke down segregation at the local drive-in restaurants. Annie Campbell Cornell remembered that "we started just parking our cars up in there . . . and wouldn't move" until the business closed at 11:00 P.M. Finally, "they started serving us."54 In Austin, Ada Anderson and Bertha Means led a particularly successful effort implemented by the Mothers Action Committee (MAC) to integrate an ice skating rink. MAC, which originated with the Jack and Jill organization (composed of African-American women concerned about their children), worked with white allies to integrate the facility. When the Ice Palace opened in September 1962 in the middle of the black community, the managers made it clear that blacks would not be welcome. MAC mothers and their

The Civil Rights Movement # 2 5 7

In 1962, Bertha Means (left) and Ada Anderson (right) led the Mothers Action Committee, which picketed for a year to integrate the Ice Palace, an Austin skating rink.

children marched for a year, every day, every night, and on weekends "through rain, sleet, and snow until the owners dropped the racial barriers," said Anderson." Continued Resistance Following the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, black Americans, who had provided the margin of victory, waited in vain for the passage of new civil rights legislation. Finally, they took to the streets. Activists from all across the country, including Texans, mobilized for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In Houston, for example, citizens elected delegates and raised $25,000. More than 200,000 blacks and whites gathered on August 28, 1963, in the largest demonstration in the history of the capital to hear Martin Luther King's electrifying address, "I have a dream."56 In 1963, Galveston club women urged the passage of an ordinance forbidding discrimination in public places in a letter to city officials. Signers included Mrs. Beatrice Home, president, Galveston Beauticians Club; Mrs. Iva Mae Sayles, basileus, Sigma Phi Theta Chapter, Alpha Chi Pi Sorority; Mrs. Chester Jordan, president, the Aristocrats Social Club; and Mrs. Frankie Jackson, president, the Silver Bell Social Club. Other leaders negotiated with St. Mary's Infirmary around the issues of employment, the lack of privacy for Negro patients, and the denial of afternoon nourishment to them.57 Black and white members of the Texas League of Nursing were insulted by the management of Galveston's Jack Tar Hotel, where they had planned a meeting in 1963. The hotel's sales director said that "colored participants will be welcome to stay in the hotel and to use the cafeteria and Coffee Cove," but the swimming pool and 258 # The Modern Period

the Quarterdeck Club "have not been integrated."58 The dismantling of segregation would not be easy. The scarcity of affordable and available housing was another major problem. In 1960, Mrs. Sallie R. Fagan, a Dallas teacher, was not rehired because she purchased a home in a white neighborhood. In 1969, Le Oneita Holland, a computer programmer at Collins Radio, filed the first class action suit in the Dallas area under the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968. She alleged that she was not permitted to rent an apartment in Richardson, a Dallas suburb, because of her race or color. Within two years, blacks began integrating formerly all-white neighborhoods. However, the Greater Dallas Housing Opportunity Center found in a 1971 survey that housing discrimination was still "substantial."59 With the increase in the number of female-headed households nationally, Aid to Families with Dependent Children grew quickly in the 1960s. The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) was formed in 1967 to educate potentially eligible recipients about benefits and to win additional benefits. In 1968, Velma Roberts, a divorced mother of five, organized an Austin chapter of the NWRO in cooperation with students from the University of Texas School of Social Work. She was president from 1968 to 1975, doing "recruiting, organizing, fundraising and general hellraising." She "didn't take nothing off of nobody, Black or White." Under her leadership, the group pressured the Austin school system to notify all families with children receiving AFDC aid that they were also eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches. They also "fought for decent housing, food, clothes, childcare." Members of the Houston chapter condemned cuts to the program by the Reagan administration in 1981. At that time, Texas had the lowest payment in the United States—about thirty-two dollars per month per child.60 Summary During the civil rights battles of the mid-twentieth century, legions of women contributed their time, their money, and their passion for equality. Outraged at inequities in education, women sought legal remedies. In the battles over access to public accommodations, they picketed, sat-in, spoke in public, boycotted, negotiated, forged alliances, registered voters, and demanded equal access in dozens of other ways. Black women began voting in larger numbers proportionately than either black men or white women. They also constituted a higher percentage nationally of all black elected officials as compared to white women within their racial group.61 Fortunately, many of these women were able to take advantage of the victories they helped to achieve by being appointed or elected to public office and paved the way for others to follow. The Civil Rights Movement # 2 5 9

# 13 B R E A K I N G T H E GLASS

CEILING

"This is our time. "

Introduction

Dr. Mae C. Jemison broke precedent as the first black female astronaut in 1988. In 1992, she was a science specialist on an eight-day NASA space mission.

In the 1950s, the first question asked of any job applicant telephoning the Texas Employment Commission was, "Are you white or colored?" Blacks, no matter how well qualified, were routinely screened from all but the most menial jobs. An experiment funded by the American Friends Service Committee starting in 1955 highlighted the problem. AFSC paid Almetra Robinson, "a college educated, trim, attractive and tactful young Negro woman," to interest the Dallas business community in "the potential for Negroes" in business employment. She developed a list of eight highly qualified women graduates of Prairie View A&M, who had been tested for impeccable spelling, typing, and shorthand, and attempted to place them as secretaries. For over a year, she had no success, even with tax-supported institutions. As white activist Cordye Hall wrote, "No employer in Dallas had the courage to employ a Negro in any position of responsibility normally held by whites." The Job Opportunities Project for Minorities finally placed a black secretary with the American Jewish Committee in 1956; then Zales Jewelers, Texas Instruments, Southwestern Medical School, and Collins Radio hired black stenographers as well. But there was a long way to go.1 A trickle of other pioneers broke through the color barrier in the 1950s and early 1960s. For example, Margie A. Duty became the first black woman to join the Houston Police Department in 1953. In 1963, Mary Ann Good from Galveston and Zona Perrett from San Antonio became the first black secretaries employed by the

Texas legislature. One woman who made the most of her early breakthrough was Azie Taylor Morton, a business graduate cum laude of Huston-Tillotson College hired in 1958 as administrative assistant to the head of Texas's AFL-CIO. With her labor contacts, she climbed the ladder of government and Democratic Party jobs, and President Carter appointed her the first black treasurer of the United States in 1977. Azie Taylor Morton's signature appears on all U.S. currency printed between 1977 and 1980.2 Exodus from the Domestic Labor Ghetto In 1950, 74 percent of employed black Texas women were in service work like cooking and cleaning—52 percent in private homes and the other 22 percent in institutions like hospitals. By 1980, only 36 percent were in such service jobs, and a mere 7 percent in homes.3 A key factor in this vast exodus from the domestic labor ghetto was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which addressed both race and sex discrimination. Among those demonstrably affected by the changed atmosphere was Dr. Connie Yerwood of Austin, promoted in 1964 to director of Maternal and Child Health Services after working for the Texas Department of Health for twenty-eight years. Around the same time, Yvonne Ewell was appointed the first black female elementary consultant serving district-wide in the Dallas Independent School District (she was elected to the school board in 1987). The City of Houston hired Carolyn White in 1964, the first of many black women clerical workers there.4 Throughout the South, the percentage of black women in the clerical and sales sector nearly quadrupled from 1950 to 1980, and their median earnings were approximately 95 percent of white women's by 1970.5 Labor Organizing Since 1947, Texas has been a so-called right to work state, outlawing contracts that exclude nonunion workers and using other measures to keep unions weak. Although black women have been active in some of the most successful unions in the state, like the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), there has been no major research yet on the importance of black women in the Texas labor movement. The two stories below are interesting examples. As of 1970, there were still 90,000 domestic workers in Texas, two-thirds black, earning a median annual full-time income of just $2,300.6 Federal minimum wage law was extended in 1974 to cover the country's 1.5 million domestic workers, but household workers were so isolated that the law was difficult to enforce. Betty Lockhart, who had been a Dallas maid for more than twenty years,

262

The Modern Period

tried to address the problem in 1976 by organizing the Dallas Committee on Household Employment. "We want dignity," she said.7 Lockhart called for employers to meet their obligations to make social security payments for domestic service workers; increase wages; improve hours; provide insurance, sick leave, paid holidays, and better child care; and permit collective bargaining. In an interview, she praised the value of domestic workers: "Many women could not work outside their homes if it weren't for us. . . . you're taking care of their house—their biggest investment—and their children." Within a few months, the organization had almost fifty members, and temporary funding from CETA (the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973), but it never grew into a major union movement.8 The Nacogdoches Struggle Azie Taylor Morton served as U.S. treasurer from 1977 to 1980. Her signature appears on all U.S. currency printed during those years.

Organizing was more feasible in institutional settings, but not easy. One of the most celebrated class action discrimination cases against an employer took fifteen years to win, even with the help of a powerful union. Annie Mae Carpenter et al. v. Stephen F. Austin State University was filed at the instigation of the NAACP in 1972. It alleged that the university systematically discriminated against black workers, only hiring them for housekeeping and food service, paying them inadequately, and denying them promotions or transfers. The workers won their suit in 1975, and the university had exhausted its appeals by 1979, but it still refused to pay the back wages or settle the civil rights issue.9 In 1983, the NAACP recruited the 5,000-member Communications Workers of America/Texas State Employees' Union (an affiliate of the 32,000-member Communication Workers of America Texas branch), to organize at SFASU. About 80 percent of the food service workers, who were 95 percent black women, joined the union; in 1985, the university retaliated by announcing it would contract out the food service, eliminating all worker benefits—even though the department earned the university millions in profits. Top university officials not only formed a private food service corporation to take the valuable contract, but even had the university print their letterhead!10 The CWA/TSEU launched a massive grassroots campaign to prevent privatization of state jobs, including jobs in prisons. If the university were allowed to use privatization to destroy a union local, CWA/TSEU believed, other state agencies would quickly follow suit; so they gave the Nacogdoches workers every support. However, the union credits the workers' own activism and selforganization with the greatest part of the victory. Among the grassroots leaders were Vertis Teal, Jean Rather, and Mattie Stegall. One

Breaking the Glass Ceiling # 263

1950 Census Data on Employment among Nonwhite. Nonhispanic Women in Texas Number

Percent

7,814

6.0

1,433

1.1

2,558

1.9

Clerical and kindred

2,154

1.6

Sales workers

1,566

1.2

Craftsmen and kindred

391

< 1.0

Operatives and kindred

9,457

7.2

Private household workers

67,425

51.6

Service workers except household

29,408

22.5

Farm laborers, unpaid family workers Farm laborers, except unpaid, and

3,015

2.3

2,560

2.0

Laborers except farm and mine

1,287