African Americans in South Texas History

The Forging of the African American Community in Corpus Christi, Texas,1865–1900

The Forging of the African American Community in Corpus Christi,Texas, 1865–1900 ruE WOOD uNTIl rECENTly,THE AFrICAN AMErICAN ExPErIENCE in Texas had not been as thoroughly studied as in other southern states. This can partly be attributed to the fact that slavery in the state became a significant and visible institution only during the thirty years before the Civil War. In addition,Texas is commonly associated with the West, not the south, making regional identity an issue that continues to perplex historians.1 Texas provides a unique backdrop for African American history since it was the only member of the Confederacy to remain a frontier state after the war.yet there is no comprehensive study of blacks in Texas between the end of the CivilWar and the turn of the twentieth century that encompasses both western and southern perspectives.2 Corpus Christi during this period was a Texas frontier town and growing seaport at the confluence of diverse cultural and economic streams.To the northeast lay the cotton and sugar producing region of East Texas, and beyond that the deep south.African Americans composed a majority of the population in many of the counties in these regions. To the southwest stretched vast semiarid ranchlands dotted with Mexican communities.These geographic, economic, and cultural realities produced an African American community in Corpus Christi that was a hybrid of sorts.The small size of the black community and its economic ties to the ranching industry are indicative of a frontier experience.3 Development of black religious and educational institutions in the city, however, parallels the development of similar institutions in the urban south.The role of the New England-based American ฀ 99฀ 100 ruE WOOD Missionary Association (AMA) in the founding of both a church and a school for blacks in Corpus Christi along with segregation in education are experiences repeated throughout southern cities.4 In essence, the African American experience in Corpus Christi during this era was typically southern with a western flair. James Weldon Johnson, the national secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), wrote in the Denver Post in 1925,“your west is giving the Negro a better deal than any other section of the country. I cannot attempt to analyze the reasons for this, but the fact remains that there is more opportunity for my race, and less prejudice against it in this section of the country than anywhere else in the united states.”5 Indeed, blacks moved westward in search of expanded economic opportunity and to escape the restrictions of the south. In general, they found more opportunity and less discrimination, but they encountered legal restrictions, commonly in the form of antimiscegenation laws and school segregation.Whites in western states appear to have accepted the “doctrine of parallel development ,” that is, the idea that blacks should be accorded equal protection under the law and equal opportunity in the marketplace but not “social equality” in the form of intermarriage or racial integration of clubs, fraternal societies, churches, and entertainment facilities.6 Blacks were too few in number in the West to challenge whites for economic and political resources and power.This was not true of the south where they composed a significant proportion of the total population and posed a serious threat to the political power and dominant economic position of whites.Consequently, in theWest race relations formed a patchwork of various levels of discrimination, segregation , and exclusion. legislation to segregate the races, limit economic opportunities, or curtail the political rights of African Americans was more common in western cities,territories,and states with higher concentrations of blacks than it was in those with lower concentrations.7 After the Civil War there was an exodus of southern blacks to western states, notably Kansas and Nebraska.The peak of this migration occurred in 1879 when blacks, responding to false promises of free land, made their way from Texas, louisiana, Mississippi, and Ten- Forging฀of฀the฀African฀American฀Community฀ 101฀ nessee to Kansas.8 The lure of the mining industry brought an influx of African Americans to California and Colorado. By 1900 these two states had the largest black populations in the Far West.9 Western cities did not have high concentrations of blacks;percentages for major cities ranged from 1 to 12 percent of the total population. Employment opportunities in the West were greater than in the south.African Americans...