African Americans in South Texas History

Foreword

Foreword African Americans—In SouthTexas? CAry D. WINTZ AFrICAN AMErICAN HIsTOry AND TExAs HIsTOry have been intertwined since the firstAfricans and Europeans arrived in this part of the world. Esteban accompanied the Cabeza de Vaca expedition, and blacks accompanied spanish and mestizo settlers intoTexas in the eighteenth century. Blacks, both slave and free, inhabited spanish Texas and Mexican Texas. With Anglo settlement came thousands more, mostly enslaved.At the time of emancipation in June 1865,over two hundred thousand blacks calledTexas home.That number swelled to over six hundred twenty thousand in 1900 and more than 2.4 million a century later.Throughout the states history the great majority of Texas blacks lived in the eastern and northeastern part of the state, especially in EastTexas, the Brazos river valley, and the large cities,in particular Houston and Dallas.southTexas throughout its history has been home to relatively few African American residents. For the purposes of this study,Bruce Glasrud defines southTexas as the more-or-less trapezoid-shaped area bounded by the Gulf of Mexico on the southeast,the rio Grande on the southwest from the gulf to Eagle Pass, then eastward through san Antonio, continuing east on Interstate 10 to the Brazos river, and from the Brazos river back to the gulf.Today this area covers some forty-three counties with a combined population of a little over 5.1 million persons, of whom almost three hundred fifty thousand (6.8 percent) are African Americans1 . However, three counties along the northern boundary of this region (Bexar,Fort Bend, and Brazoria counties) contain almost 78 percent of the black vii viii FOrEWOrD population of southTexas.The remaining forty counties together have fewer than seventy-eight thousand African Americans, who make up only 2.9 percent of the population. Clearly southTexas is not a center of black population. African Americans are greatly outnumbered by both Mexican Americans and whites, and they exercise neither great political nor great economic power in this region. This demographic data is important to appreciate the significance of African Americans in SouthTexas History and the importance of the study of African American history in southTexas. First it is important to note that the study of African Americans should not, indeed, must not be confined to just those regions, cities, and states where blacks compose a large portion of the population.To understand the African American experience in all of its fullness and complexity,it is necessary to examine African American history in seguin as well as in Harlem, and in south Texas as well as in the black belt of Mississippi,the cotton and sugar plantation areas of antebellumTexas,and the ghettos of Deep Ellum in Dallas and the FourthWard in Houston.The presence of African Americans in southTexas’history is unavoidable.For example,Hidalgo county,where today blacks make up less than 1 percent of the population, was the site of the 1906 Brownsville riot,which involved an alleged attack by black soldiers on the town of Brownsville and symbolized both the high level of racial tension throughout the nation in the early twentieth century and the propensity to hold African Americans accountable for this racial strife. less dramatic, but ultimately more noteworthy, were the experiences of individual blacks who settled in south Texas communities, raised their families, created black institutions, and struggled for dignity both during slavery and following emancipation over the past century and a half. It is particularly important for scholars who studyAfricanAmerican history to examine those areas with relatively small black populations in order to compare and contrast them with areas having larger black populations. How did slavery, emancipation, and reconstruction play out in south Texas? Was Jim Crow as rigid in the rio Grande Valley as it was in EastTexas?What was the impact of the civil rights struggle in south Texas cities and small towns? How did small black com- munities address their needs for religion and education? These are just a few of the questions that beg attention. In addition it is important to determine what sources are available for African American history in south Texas, and what historical scholarship exists.The answers to these questions and others will deepen our understanding of the African American experience in Texas and in the unites states. It will also serve notice that it is important to focus additional scholarship on this relatively neglected area of African American history inTexas...