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Contradictory perceptions surround the status and role of black women both in and out of bondage. “On the one hand,” Suzanne Lebsock writes, “we have been told that black women, in slavery and afterward, were formidable people, ‘matriarchs,’ in fact.” Nevertheless , “all along, black women were dreadfully exploited.” Rarely, she concludes , “has so much power been attributed to so vulnerable a group.” A similar paradox embracing black women can be found in the works of America’s most famous African American historian. In his early writings, W. E. B. Du Bois described southern black women as tragic figures. In his later books, however, Du Bois noted that although black women suffered countless injustices during slavery and Reconstruction, their sacrifices produced “freedom and uplift” for themselves and their race.1 Within the past two decades feminist historians have rewritten women’s history from the point of view of the women themselves. Still, only a handful of studies concentrate on the history of black women.2 This essay will present a case study of black women in Houston during the Reconstruction era. Its larger purpose is to inspire other local studies about black women so that we may fully document their history. Only after we have studied the role of black women through the use of primary-source materials will we be able to resolve some of the paradoxes encountered by historians Lebsock and Du Bois. The story of Houston’s black women during the postwar years is based primarily upon information available in the records of the Bureau of Refugees , Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau). The manuscripts vary in quantity for the former Confederate states, Texas having a midsize collection of bureau papers.3 Before examining them, it is appropriate briefly to explain the bureau’s role. The concept of a major social-welfare agency resulted from the Emancipation Proclamation, and in early 1865 Congress established what eventuFour SEEKING EQUALITY Houston Black Women during Reconstruction 70 Freedom ally became the Freedmen’s Bureau. The underlying premise of the bureau was that it would not serve southern blacks as a guardian but would attempt to ensure that they received a fair chance in their struggle for equality . Although the role of the bureau was originally viewed as a limited one, once Reconstruction commenced blacks quickly realized that they would not receive fair trials or justice in the South, and so the bureau established special tribunals to deal with black complaints. “Dissatisfied though blacks so frequently were at the bureau’s feebleness and ambivalence,” Michael Perman concluded, they nevertheless “knew that without it they would have been far worse off.”4 Bureau archives constitute a major source of information about what black women in Texas, and especially Houston, were doing in the immediate aftermath of war. Furthermore, these records catalogue some of the serious problems that women encountered in the first years of freedom. protecting the family It is impossible to know precisely how many blacks were in Houston when the Civil War ended in April 1865, because slaveholders from other states transported blacks to Texas during the war for “safekeeping .” By 1870, however, the city counted almost 9,400 residents—approximately 5,700 white and 3,700 black. Houston blacks made up 39 percent of the population.5 Although the exact number of black women in Houston is not known, it is evident that they were active participants in postwar city life. With the long and bloody conflict decided and slavery ended, blacks began to search for family members, move back to the vicinity of their old plantations, or locate the nearest bureau office. “While it is true that much of the traveling about that the Freedmen’s Bureau paid for was inspired by the wish to try freedom out,” historian Willie Lee Rose contends that “a great deal more of it is explained by the laudable urge to find out what had happened to relatives long gone to another part of the world.” For the former slave, the “only way was to go and see, since the magic of writing was denied to him.”6 The bureau generally investigated the “physical and pecuniary” condition of the individuals who applied for financial support to travel in order to determine whether they were “worthy objects of charity to the government .” Thus, guided by local teachers, Rachel, an eighty-three-year-old Houstonian, turned to the bureau for assistance. The teachers located and [13.58.252.8...

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