African Americans in South Texas History

“Wantonly Maltreated and Slain,Simply Because They Are Free”

“Wantonly Maltreated and slain, simply Because They Are Free” RacialViolence during Reconstruction in SouthTexas rEBECCA A. KOsAry tHE SAN ANTONIO ExPRESS-NEWS WArNED in February of 1894 that colonizingAfricanAmericans in liberia to alleviate the“race problem”inTexas was a risky proposition.Not because the state of Texas or the southern region of the united states might lose a large proportion of agricultural laborers, and certainly not because most African Americans did not consider themselves necessarily “African.”According to this concerned Express-News writer, even if black Americans were“wafted to the choicest portion of Africa and furnished with everything necessary to the enjoyment of civilized life,”they would “rapidly retrograde” into savages like their ancestors.The writer further justified his position, explaining,“wherever the Negro has been removed from the influence of the white man he has rapidly drifted back to barbarism.”1 The next month antilynching activist Ida B.Wells toured England to inform European audiences of the frequency with which the barbaric practice of extralegal justice against African Americans was carried out in the united states.At a gathering in Manchester on March 21,a school principal informedWells of a front-page article in the afternoon paper that described the lynching of a black woman in san Antonio,Texas,who was“boxed up in a barrel with nails driven through the sides and rolled down a hill until she was dead.”Having not heard of the specific case until that very moment,Wells sat “as if turned to stone, with tears rolling down [her] cheeks at this new evidence of outrage and the apathy of the American white people.”2 ฀ 65฀ 66 rEBECCA A. KOsAry The juxtaposition of these two stories demonstrates the extreme chasm that existed between the perceptions of whites and the realities of life for blacks at the turn of the century in Texas. By the 1890s many white Texans, it seems, believed the only way to control the alleged “savagery” of blacks was through savagery itself. But this attitude was nothing new. On the contrary, whites in Texas used extremely brutal forms of violence against African Americans immediately following emancipation in 1865, not only to control their alleged bestiality, but to create a climate of fear in order to subjugate all black Texans. This essay examines the general atmosphere of violence during the reconstruction conflict in southTexas,particularly the years 1865–68, when the Freedmen’s Bureau kept detailed records of white abuses perpetrated against the former slaves. Bureau records indicate that even before the advent of Congressional reconstruction, when white Texans bitterly opposed federal “occupation” forces and used violence and intimidation to limit black male voting,Texas was in the midst of a racial conflict that dramatically affected African Americans of both genders. Freed people were abused and killed in disproportionately large numbers during the period, and the brutality of the violence perpetrated against them rarely fit the alleged provocations.Violence was used to keep blacks economically and socially subordinate,to keep them from gaining an education, and to keep black men, in particular, from participating in the political system.The extremely violent atmosphere that existed in Texas during the early years of reconstruction was more than a manifestation of racism and bitterness toward blacks. rather, the period may be viewed as an extension of the Civil War; a race war in which violence perpetrated against black men, women, and children was a central component in the overall strategy of racial dominance and control. Over the last quarter of a century scholars have demonstrated clearly that violence was a major component of race relations in Texas and throughout the former Confederacy during reconstruction.Texas historians, including James smallwood, Gregg Cantrell, and the late Barry A. Crouch, among others, have determined that violence against Wantonly฀Maltreated฀and฀Slain฀ 67฀ blacks during reconstruction was far-reaching and frequent.Arguing that it was either socially, economically, or politically motivated, these Texas historians successfully advanced the view that violence was a major component of race relations in the state during reconstruction. yet few recent works have focused on the southernmost counties in the state, an area with a rich history and, unfortunately, rampant racial violence.This essay attempts to fill this void in the literature.3 On June 19,1865,when federal troops arrived in Galveston,Texas, General Gordon Granger read a statement that dramatically changed the lives of African Americans: all slaves were now...