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The Enslaved and the Blind: State Officials and Enslaved People in Austin, Texas

By Daniel Josiah Thomas III

Black and white image of the Neill-Cochran House
(Used with permission of the Neill-Cochran House)

On November 6, 1855, Washington Hill commissioned Abner H. Cook to build a southern plantation house in Austin, Texas. The Texas Historical Commission reported that “the property worth $900 in August 1855 was worth $8,000 when Hill paid his taxes for 1856.”  When the two-story limestone home was completed, Hill had greatly overextended his financial resources. In an attempt to retain the property, Hill sought tenants to help with his costs. Fortunately for him, the Texas Legislature would approve funding for a program that would help. In 1856, the same year Hill’s home was completed, the legislature voted to found an Asylum for the Blind. Austin’s asylum would provide initial financial relief to Hill, but it also led to the use of enslaved people on his property.

1921 Sanborn Map of Austin featuring former compound of Texas School for the Blind
1921 Sanborn Map of Austin featuring former compound of Texas School for the Blind (via Library of Congress)

From 1856 to 1919, the Texas State Asylum for the Blind took copious and painstakingly detailed notes of all business-related meetings. One of the earliest entries recorded the asylum entering into a contract with Washington Hill for the purpose of using his property. An entry made on October 26, 1856 states:

Washington L. Hill proposes to lease his residence in the city of Austin for the use of the school for the term of two years commencing on the 20 Nov[em]b[e]r next for the term of nine hundred dollars per year payable quantity in advance — which proposition was accepted by the Board and R. L Townes was appointed to enter into contract with L. Hill.[1] (See below)

Image of a page of Texas State Asylum for the Blind's meeting notes
(Photo by Author)

The legal stipulation that he receive the entire year’s payment from the asylum in advance speaks to the urgency of Hill’s financial situation. Nonetheless, having extended control of his property to the School for the Blind allowed for the school to do what was necessary to conduct business.

Meeting files for 1860 illuminate how agents of the Texas State Legislature and their enslaved persons were vital to the school’s successful operation. Several entries that took place during a meeting on January 16, 1860 reveal both the enslaver’s name and the role their enslaved persons were to have at the School for the Blind. The meeting file states:

“The following proceedings were had. Ordered, that the Superintendent be authorized to employ Negro woman of W L Chalmers as cook  $18.00 per month, subject to be discharged upon notice by trustee: Also, the negro woman of Ed Clark, at $15 per month, subject to his discharge upon notice of Trustees: Also, to retain in the employ of the institute the Negro man of Col Neal at $20 per month and clothing. . . . The salary for the negro girl belonging to Doch Maynire was filed at $10 dollars per month instead of $12 dollars as first agreed upon. . . . The meeting then adjourned.[2] (See below)

Image of a page of Texas State Asylum for the Blind's meeting notes
(Photo by Author)

The two women, one girl, and one man mentioned at this meeting reveal the presence of four enslaved people laboring at Austin’s School for the Blind in 1860. In all these instances, the school paid each enslaver a monthly rate to use their enslaved persons for the benefit of the school’s operation.  While one enslaved woman was reported to have served as a cook, the role of the others was not mentioned. The identity of two of the men responsible for the renting of these enslaved people, however, is revealed by Texas’ ninth Governor, Francis Richard Lubbock in his memoirs.  W. L. Chalmers and Edward Clark were key members of the Texas State Legislature. Lubbock identified Chalmers as an “assistant clerk” of the Seventh Legislature, in 1857 and  “chief clerk” of the Ninth Legislature in 1861.[3] Edward Clark was the “Secretary of State” to Governor Elisha M. Pease from 1853-1857.[4] Clark would serve as the Lieutenant Governor of Texas from 1859-1861 and the Confederate Texas Governor in 1861. Thus, the property currently known as the Neill-Cochran house was once a place where both enslaved people and the highest-ranking state officials, converged to ensure the well-ordered functioning of the Texas School for the Blind.

Photograph of Historical Marker at the Neill-Cochran House Museum
Historical Marker at Neill-Cochran House Museum (via Flickr)

Sources for this article:
[1]  An Inventory of School for the Blind and Visually Impaired Meeting Files 1856-1919, 1979-2015, Volume 1989/073-28, Texas State Asylum for the Blind/Blind Institute/Texas School for the Blind, 1856-1919, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin, TX.
[2] Ibid, 24-25
[3] Frances Lubbock, Six Decades in Texas: Or Memoirs of Frances Richard Lubbock, Governor of Texas in War Time 1861-1863, Austin: B. C. Jones & co., printers, 1900), 223, 329.
[4] Ibid., 195.

An Inventory of School for the Blind and Visually Impaired Meeting Files 1856-1919, 1979-2015, Volume 1989/073-28, Texas State Asylum for the Blind/Blind Institute/Texas School for the Blind, 1856-1919, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin, TX.

Evelyn M. Carrington. The Neill-Cochran Museum House, 1855-1976: A Century of Living from Texas History. Waco, TX: Texian Press for the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Texas, 1977.

Kenneth Hafertepe. Survey and Multiple Property Nomination of Abner Cook Structures in Austin. 1989.

Francis Richard Lubbock. Six Decades in Texas; or, Memoirs of Francis Richard Lubbock, Governor of Texas in War Time, 1861-63. Edited by Cadwell Walton Raines. Austin: B. C. Jones & Co.,1900.


You might also like:
The Blackwell School in Marfa, Texas
Fandangos, Intemperance, and Debauchery
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The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

The Odds are Stacked Against Us: Oral Histories of Black Healthcare in the U.S.

By Thomaia Pamplin

Thomaia J. Pamplin is a graduate student at the University of Texas MD Anderson/UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Pamplin’s research focuses on the elderly, black community in Houston and their interactions with the healthcare system. She hopes her research will advance Narrative Medicine, a field that highlights the importance of knowing patients beyond their symptoms and causes. Pamplin aspires to be a doctor who lives up to that ideal in her own career.

Distrust in the U.S. healthcare institution has been pervasive in the black community for many generations. Although young African Americans may be far removed from atrocities like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which hundreds of black men were inoculated with syphilis without their informed consent and without any treatment, the mistrust seems to be handed down through subsequent generations. This lack of confidence in the healthcare system is reflected in studies that show the black infant mortality rate in the U.S. is twice as high as white infant mortality. The excess risk experienced by African-American infants reflects factors that are unique to the black experience in the U.S., including area-level poverty, differential access to pre-and perinatal care and other socioeconomic differences.[1] Studies have also shown that patients’ perceptions of their health care providers’ attitudes toward their ethnic or mental health status affect a patient’s decision to even pursue healthcare provisions.[2] Stereotypes like “the strong black woman,” also pressure women to not seek help or when seeking help, to feel as though better care is provided for non-black patients.[3]

Unidentified subject, onlookers and Dr. Walter Edmondson taking a blood test as part of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (Photo Credit: NARA, Atlanta, GA via Wikimedia Commons)

The Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at the University of Texas reported that “Blacks of all socioeconomic levels are disproportionately affected by stress-related diseases that translate into a radicalized life expectancy.” They also found that throughout the U.S. there is a shortage of mental health professionals especially serving in low-income areas. There is a wide gap between the life expectancy of Black and White people in the U.S.; this gap “can be attributed to higher death rates among Black men and women due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes perinatal conditions, and homicide.” Many of these ailments are the leading causes of death for other marginalized groups in the U.S. Some of the recommendations this report makes is to expand Medicaid, health communities’ model, increase representation of black healthcare professionals, strengthen the social and economic structure of these communities, and promote health in all legislative policy.[4]

There are roughly one million practicing physicians in the US and less than 6 percent of those physicians are African-American.[5] Meaning that for the 44 million black residents of the U.S., there are about 60,000 black practicing physicians.[6] That is one black doctor for every 700 black patients. This is not to say that only African-American physicians can treat African-American patients, but distrust in healthcare institutions could potentially be alleviated by having providers be of the same ethnicity as the patient.

As the statistics of black health disparities rise and the need for healthcare intervention is increasing, the black church in the U.S. has the potential to mobilize people to seek medical care. Studies have shown that health interventions in black communities through the church have been successful, especially in early cancer detection.[7] Women play a  “cornerstone” role in black churches and one study of Pastors’ perceptions on the health status of the black church and African-American communities found that “African-American women focus much of their time and energy caring for others within their church and less on their own health and well-being.” [8]

One way to understand the causes of racial health disparities, and the role of women in health care, inside and outside of black churches, is through oral histories, such as the interviews I conducted among lower-income women from a small congregation in southeast Texas. Two of their stories follow.

Black Nurse in North Carolina, March 1962 (via DPLA)

All Eyes on Mindi
“I remember being in school, in the classroom and not understanding what was being taught,” Mindi told me one day at a public library in South Texas. As she talked, I noticed big brown eyes peek from the edge of the wall near us. Glancing at me then, at her mom’s back, Mindi’s daughter was intimidatingly protective for a forty pound, four-year-old. Her thick, black hair was twisted in pink bow berets, somewhat resembling her mother’s short locs. The little girl skipped away after gathering the intel she needed.

“I was never bold,” Mindi told me “I was quiet and shy. And then I didn’t want to hurt people’s feelings… but now I can’t be that way anymore.”

Most of the 33-year-old mother’s career has been in education which is unsurprising when you hear her musical Texan accent. It sounds like at any point she can sing a song about a task, which would probably motivate all the kids in the library to start working.

“I would have blackouts and zone out,” Mindi continued.  She had never been diagnosed with a learning disorder; however, these episodes did affect how the future educator learned. “What the teacher would say went over my head… I would have to focus ten times harder and read chapters twice over…I was always the one who needed the curve.”

In adulthood, the blackouts occurred at the worst of times, but the third incident was the most frightening. One day, while Mindi was driving her car, she had a blackout seizure and struck a pole. She didn’t drive for eight months after the accident. This incident forced her health to become her family’s top priority.

In June 2016, four months before her first seizure, Mindi’s eldest son, twelve-year-old Jay, moved out of her home and into his grandmother’s. “I was always so excited to have a family of my own, so what really caused the sickness is when I felt like I lost my son…My family was separated, my body just–” She paused, her hands were in front of her chest, the back of her hands faced me as one cupped the other. She moved her chest forward as if the words could be pulled from her, but instead, she relaxed her body, took a breath, and restarted. “He was there, but I felt like I was grieving him. I felt like I took it too hard.”

Mindi attributed the conflict she had with her son to her personality, “my son took advantage and ran with it…He would run away from home over the slightest thing. If I asked him to wash the dishes and I’m asking him for the third time, I’m not going to ask as nicely. Then bam! [He’d] run away.” She recalled how he would talk back to her but not to her husband, she didn’t believe he respected boundaries with her, but in actuality, she recalled, “those boundaries weren’t set with him, with my husband, or with my coworkers. I had to go and do that at the age of 32.”

Mindi began to see neurologists in efforts to treat her seizures. She took numerous tests, but the results would always come back normal. “I remember being hooked up to all these gears, and the physician would be doing random things to try to make me have a seizure.” He tested her as if she were epileptic, though Mindi knew that was not the case. “I just felt like based off my symptoms, he should have done different things to make me have a seizure…Rather than doing all the things by the book. I thought he should have gone outside of the box…read a little deeper into my demeanor.”

“I remember asking God to help me. I don’t want to be a victim. Deuteronomy 30:19, God says we have the power to control the mind. So, we get to choose.” Mindi internalized this idea; she would tell herself, “Mindi, you can’t be quiet and shy, speak up. If this didn’t work, then go to another doctor.” She became firmer with her physicians because her triggers were continuously overlooked by them, until finally, she met with a specialist who she felt saw her condition for what it was. “I felt like the ball was back in my court,” she said. “My best doctor is the psychiatrist that I’m seeing now. When he diagnosed me, he didn’t use all these medical terms. He put it into a form that I could understand, he explained that it was a chemical imbalance…He explained what my brain was doing and why. I wasn’t just blown off…I actually feel like I have a personal relationship with him…He wanted to see my symptoms and I was able to actually have a full-blown anxiety attack in front of him… His approach seemed more fact-based rather than assumption, that’s what I liked.”

“I have a lot of eyes on me. They’re waiting on my next move” Mindi said of her family as her daughter dashed into my view again, glancing at the both of us. According to Mindi, her increased self-advocacy has even affected the way her children communicate. “If they ever feel some type of way,” Mindi said, “they say it, and I can now give them an answer on their level to make them understand.” For her mental health, Mindi said “I can’t let anything linger. I can talk now freely…open[ly] and honest[ly] and however you receive it, I’m sorry that’s how you receive it because I have to say it for myself.”

The Treatment of Not “Very Important People”
I met with Canjie in her home in southeast Texas. Her living room had dark hardwood floors and a giant widescreen TV on the wall. The evening news was on. Canjie is a woman in her 60s. She’s tall and has a short wispy afro, along with a sweet small grin that frequently lights up her face when she greets you or laughs.

Canjie learned the importance of self-advocacy after the first time her mother became drastically ill. “She always had heart trouble,” Canjie told me. One day, about twenty-seven years ago, she called her mother from work, only to hear mother “talking out of her head,” unexpectedly she seemed mentally unwell. Canjie told her, “Momma, get ready I’m coming down there.” She drove from Houston to San Antonio, even though her mother insisted she not come. When she arrived in San Antonio, Canjie’s sister and son took her mother to see her primary care physician, a man she had been seeing for decades. “She trusted him,” Canjie remembered. Though to her family, Canjie’s mother seemed to clearly be in pain and very confused, the doctor said nothing was wrong with her. The next day, they took Canjie’s mother to see the same physician because she was increasingly unwell. Her son and the doctor argued, they “almost got into it,” Canjie said, because of the neglect her mother was receiving even after being in his care for years. Canjie remembers the older white male doctor condescendingly shaking his finger in her 24-year-old son’s face and her son angrily told him to take his finger away. Canjie’s sister had already put their mother back in the van they had come in. They had to return home quickly because a shooting had erupted in the area, “there was always some shooting going near [my sister’s] house,” where Canjie’s mother stayed.

They decided to take her to the ER, the next day “[we] found out her gall bladder was about to burst.” She remembers the ER doctor saying, “Oh yes, we’ve got to do surgery.” He also told them that their mother would not have much time to live without treatment. This incident motivated Canjie throughout her life to advocate better for herself and loved ones. “These doctors…they’ve got a lot of patients and it’s just about a job for them,” she said.

Her mother did pass away eventually, and afterwards, Canjie decided she wanted to find the doctor that had so egregiously dismissed her family. She found that he was illegally prescribing drugs to his family and other people, “so they had arrested him,” she reported. “This man was not right,” she told her family, “he didn’t give a damn about Momma. He was just making money…She made it through that, but it was a mess, I promise you that.”

Texas Hospital, 1970 (via Wikimedia Commons)

In most clinics, Canjie believed people were “being treated like cattle.” She recalled going to one’s doctor’s office, giving a few details of symptoms to a medical assistant, then only being in contact with a doctor for less than five minutes, before he diagnosed her and described her medication. She also believed that she was prescribed medication too quickly at times. “My potassium was low,” she recalled, “and right away, [my physician] wanted to write me a medication, and I said ‘No, let me see what I can do.’ So, I came home, and I started eating bananas every day. When I went back to him, my potassium was normal. I would’ve gotten that medicine for nothing.” This was 15 years ago, and she has never had a problem with potassium insufficiency since.

She does have favorable healthcare experiences, including a primary care physician, Dr. S. “What I liked about him [was] we could talk. He didn’t rush you. You know, these doctors get you and try to rush you out because they have the next patient to get [to] because of insurance [companies] and stuff. Well Dr. S, he was on that same kind of insurance, but he would sit you in his office and talk to you for 30 minutes. He didn’t rush you out… you’d have the time to ask him all kinds of questions.”

“I really loved being his patient,” she continued, “I liked his nurse. I liked the whole experience, but he decided 20 years down the road…that he wanted to do the VIP program. That’s where doctors have specific patients that pay them and have 24 hours access to them. So, they pay them not only what the insurance pays but outside of that… another $2000 a month or something of that nature,” she explained. Dr. S asked Canjie if she wanted to join the program, but she declined. “It’s for the chronically ill,” she said, “and rich [people]” she added lightheartedly, “not for me, you know?” As she said this, I searched her face for anger or disappointment, but there was no trace of resentment for not being included as a “Very Important Person” with her favorite primary care physician. 

Conclusions
Mindi faced a problem that many parents and teachers experience, the weight of being responsible for many children’s upbringing. She was responsible for the development of her own children, as a Sunday-school and dance teacher, her community’s children, and as an educator, dozens in her district.

Her personality was such that her own needs and desires were not prioritized by others or herself at times. But with the intensity of her seizure condition increasing, her priorities changed. It was a very difficult road to becoming a better advocate for herself in every sphere, especially as a patient.

Mindi is typical of trends seen in black churches where their female members take on a heavy load of responsibility to others that can become detrimental to their own health. One reason Mindi wanted to share her story with me was to encourage other women with similar lifestyles, to start saying “no” more often, to take on less responsibility, and to prioritize their own health in order to live a better life.

Canjie’s experience demonstrates the difficulty of achieving good results even with advocacy. She learned to be a better advocate when her mother’s health was in danger. She used that knowledge to cut the costs of her own healthcare treatment and find physicians who she thought treated her well. Ultimately, Canjie settled for lesser healthcare experiences because her favorite physician could no longer afford to see her or anybody who could not pay the “VIP” price.

What’s at stake here is the survival of marginalized people. There is an incredibly difficult road to advocating enough for one’s self or family. The amount of advocacy needed is drastically different among different groups of people. The doubled mortality rate of black infants compared to white infants shows this. Even with evident advocacy, good treatment is still inaccessible for certain people.

There are dozens of stories like Mindi’s and Canjie’s that have been publicized and many generation’s worth of stories that have not reached the public.

This research was supported by the UT College of Liberal Arts Engaged Scholar Initiative.


References:
[1] Lauren M. Rossen, Diba Khan, and Kenneth C. Schoendorf, “Mapping Geographic Variation in Infant Mortality and Related Black–White Disparities in the US,” Epidemiology 27: 5 (2016). doi:10.1097/ede.0000000000000509
[2] Akhavan, S., Tillgren P., “Client/Patient Perceptions of Achieving Equity in Primary Health Care: A Mixed Methods Study,” International Journal of Equity Health 14:65 (2015). doi:10.1186/s12939-015-0196-5
[3] Nicolaidis, C., Timmons, V., Thomas, M.J., et al., “’You don’t go tell White people nothing’: African American women’s perspectives on the influence of violence and race on depression and depression care,” American  Journal of Public Health. 100:8 (2018):1470–1476. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2009.161950
[4] Michelle Roundtree, “The State of Black Lives in Texas Health Report Health Report,” The University of Texas at Austin Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis. March 2019
[5] Kaiser Family Foundation. “Professionally Active Physicians.” https://www.kff.org/
[6] United States Census. https://www.census.gov.
[7] Slade, J.L., Holt, C.L., Bowie, J., et al. “Recruitment of African American Churches to Participate in Cancer Early Detection Interventions: A Community Perspective,” Journal of Religious Health 57:2 (2018):751–761. doi:10.1007/s10943-018-0586-2
[8] Gross, T.T., Story, C.R., Harvey, I.S., Allsopp, M., Whitt-Glover, M., “’As a Community, We Need to be More Health Conscious’: Pastors’ Perceptions on the Health Status of the Black Church and African-American Communities,” Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 5:3 (2018):570–579. doi:10.1007/s40615-017-0401-x

To learn more, consider these suggestions for further reading:
“The Never-Ending Mistreatment of Black Patients” by Jessica Nutik Zitter (The New York Times)
“The State of Black Lives in Texas Health Report” by Michell A. Roundtree Ph.D., et al, March 2019
“Doctors Don’t Always Believe You When You’re a Black Woman” by Joanne Spataro (VICE)
“Black Women are Dying from a Lack of Access to Reproductive Health Services” by Lathasa D. Mayes (TIME)
“America is Failing its Black Mothers” by Amy Roeder (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)

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Black Women in Black Power
Episode 80: Colonial Medicine and STDs in 1920s Uganda
Contraceptive Diplomacy: Reproductive Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan. By Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci (2018)
Industrial Sexuality: Gender in a Small Town in Egypt
#Blacklivesmatter Till They Don’t: Slavery’s Lasting Legacy

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Dean Page Keeton and Academic Freedom at UT Austin: Three Archival Letters

banner image for Dean Page Keeton and Academic Freedom at UT Austin: Three Archival Letters

One bonus of archival research is discovering documents irrelevant to the topic but so evocative that they can’t be ignored. In the State Bar of Texas archives, I found three letters from June 1960 between Werdner Page Keeton (1909-1999), Dean of the School of Law of The University of Texas, and two lawyers. Those letters caused me to detour from my project for a while.

Black and white image of W. Page Keeton, Dean of the UT Law School, 1949-1974
W. Page Keeton, Dean of the UT Law School, 1949-1974
Source: Law School Yearbook, 1959.

Homer L. Bruce, a tax-law partner of the Houston law firm Baker & Botts, sent the first letter to Keeton on June 15, 1960, with “carbon copies” to nine prominent members of the legal profession in Texas. Six days later, one of those nine recipients, a renowned oil and gas lawyer in a Fort Worth firm, Robert E. Hardwicke, also wrote Keeton. Both letters complained strongly about an article just published in the law school’s Texas Law Review by a UT tax-law professor, J. Henry Wilkinson, Jr. The article was titled “ABC—From A to Z,” and the letter writers were outraged that Wilkinson criticized a tax benefit for oil and gas companies known as the “percentage depletion allowance.” The third letter is Keeton’s June 28 response.

Image of letter from Homer L. Bruce to Dean Keeton dated June 15, 1960
Image of letter from Homer L. Bruce to Dean Keeton dated June 15, 1960
Homer L. Bruce to Dean Keeton, June 15, 1960
Source: State Bar of Texas, Archives Dept., via author.

The challenged article seems unremarkable today. Wilkinson’s topic was the “ABC” transaction, common in the oil-and-gas business. A producing property’s owner may sell a “production payment,” or a fixed quantity of the minerals to be produced, to a purchaser in a manner that takes advantage of the federal income-tax “allowance,” or deduction, of 27-1/2% of the property’s income, available to oil-producing taxpayers for the “depletion” resulting from the extraction of the minerals in the ground. Through patient examples, Wilkinson demonstrated that the ABC deal was not always as tax-advantageous as was believed. The article did refer to the allowance as “gratuitous.” And that observation drew the ire of Bruce and Hardwicke, who amplified their criticism by insisting that enemies of the depletion allowance—specifically, Hubert H. Humphrey—would use Wilkinson’s characterization of the percentage depletion allowance as “ammunition.”

Image of J. Henry Wilkinson, Jr's June 1960 article in Texas Law Review
Wilkinson’s June 1960 article in the Texas Law Review
Source: www.heinonline.com

In June 1960, when these letters were written, the Democratic Party’s national convention was a month away, and one still-active candidate for the presidential nomination was indeed Hubert Humphrey, then a two-term Senator from Minnesota who had consistently fought the depletion allowance in Congress. His fight against that and other “tax loopholes” had been unsuccessful but earned him respect as a reformer. In Texas, however, the depletion allowance was a sacred cow. The Texas Law Review had published an earlier article defending the depletion allowance, and the Chair of the Texas Railroad Commission, Ernest O. Thompson, wrote and spoke in favor of the allowance, and virtually all of the national legal literature and newspaper coverage in Texas about the allowance defended it. And Humphrey’s rival from Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson, was a protector of it. Humphrey later became LBJ’s vice-president but “never gave up” and, finally, in 1975, was gratified to see Congress abolish this tax “loophole.”

Black and white photograph of Hubert H. Humphrey
Hubert H. Humphrey
Source: WikimediaCommons

The addressee of the two letters, Keeton, was well acquainted with the oil and gas industry and its issues. He had earned the LL.B. in 1931 at UT, was hired to teach there, and quickly gained recognition in the field of torts, the law of civil injuries, and wrongful death. During World War II, he served in Washington as an executive of the Petroleum Administration for War. After a stint as dean of the Oklahoma University Law School, he accepted the deanship of UT’s law school in 1949, serving until 1974. He distinguished himself at both law schools by fostering racial integration and by continuing to teach torts as well as serving as dean. The law school grew during his deanship, and UT law alumni/ae revere Keeton. The city of Austin renamed the street alongside the law school for him, and he is buried in the State Cemetery by gubernatorial proclamation.

Moreover, Keeton was stalwart and adept, in protecting academic freedom at the law school. One innovative key to his success there was to liberate the school from overreliance on legislative appropriations by creating the UT Law School Foundation to receive alumni/ae contributions. Important supporters of this initiative were law graduates who attained positions of power within the oil and gas industry. For instance, Rex G. Baker of Humble Oil was a key supporter of the Foundation—and also a staunch defender of the depletion allowance.

Those relationships did not deter him. Keeton formulated a masterful response to the two letters that foreclosed any further discussion. “You realize, of course,” he began, “that I cannot act as any kind of a censor and do not even attempt to act as such with respect to what goes in the Review.” Having matter-of-factly vindicated academic freedom, the Dean added that he did not read Wilkinson to make any judgment about “merits or demerits of the percentage depletion allowance.” And by pointing out that the ABC structure does not always work as expected, “Wilkinson may have done a service to the oil industry.” Keeton also observed that the challenged word “gratuitous” was simply “a descriptive term,” indicating that the amount of the tax deduction was not tied to the cost of the property; the tax benefit was indeed essentially free to the oil and gas taxpayer.

Picture of a letter from Dean Page Keeton to Homer L. Bruce dated June 28, 1960
Dean Page Keeton to Homer L. Bruce, June 28, 1960
Source: State Bar of Texas, Archives Dept., via author.

Academic freedom at UT has had a long history. In 1917, when Governor James E. Ferguson vetoed appropriations for UT because the President would not dismiss faculty to whom Ferguson objected, the Legislature, at the urging of UT alumni/ae, impeached and removed him. In his 1986 oral history interview, Keeton recounted less spectacular but nonetheless significant instances during his tenure of politicians and the Board of Regents seeking to meddle with the faculty and academic matters, efforts Keeton successfully repulsed. But Keeton’s defense of academic freedom was not always public, as in the example of these previously unknown letters in the archive. Keeton’s handling of that situation in June 1960 highlights the ongoing task of University leaders to protect academic freedom, and it burnishes both Keeton’s legacy and the reputation of UT as a place for the free exchange of knowledge and viewpoints.

The State Bar of Texas’s Archives Department, also known as the “Gov. Bill and Vara Daniel Center for Legal History,” contains the Bar’s permanent records. The Archives’ professional archivist also manages and provides access to the collections of the Texas Bar Historical Foundation there. The archives are located in the Texas Law Center in Austin, Texas. The three letters were contributed to this archive in 1992 by J. Chrys Dougherty, a historically minded lawyer; his father-in-law, Ireland Graves, was one of the nine cc recipients of the three letters.

Josiah Daniel (UT Law, J.D. 1978; UT History, M.A. 1986) is a Retired Partner in Residence of the international law firm Vinson & Elkins LLP in its Dallas, Texas office. After four decades of law practice, he now is focusing on the history of the legal profession in Texas and is writing a biography of Dallas congressman Hatton W. Sumners (1875-1962), based on his papers in the Dallas Historical Society’s archive. His C.V. is on his blog: http://blog-josiahmdaniel3.blogspot.com/2018/03/cv.html. He may be reached at jdaniel@velaw.com.

Sources for this article include:

Lewis L.Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era (Austin: UT Press, 1973).

“W. Page Keeton, An Oral History Interview” (Austin: UT Austin School of Law, Tarlton Law Library, Legal Bibliography Series No. 36 (1992) 49-52, 69-74.

Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1960 (N.Y., Harper, 1963)

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Remembering the Tex-Son Strike: Legacies of Latina-led Labor Activism in San Antonio, Texas

Banner image for the post Remembering the Tex-Son Strike: Legacies of Latina-Led Labor Activism in San Antonio, Texas

The year 2019 marks the 60th anniversary of the Tex-Son strike, a major labor battle waged in San Antonio, Texas from 1959 to 1963 by mostly Mexican, Mexican-American, and some Anglo women all of whom were active members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) Local 180. This strike is important for the history of Mexican Americans, women, and labor organization because it bridged the two other major moments for Mexican and Mexican American labor activism: the Pecan Shellers strike in San Antonio during the 1930s and the other Farah strike of the 1970s in El Paso. Little is known about labor activism strategies of marginalized women in the Southwest during the period in between these two infamous labor organizing efforts. The Tex-Son strike unveils what working women did to advocate for their needs on the garment factory floor during the Cold War period, especially in a historically anti-labor, anti-union state.

Black and white image of two women carrying picket signs, Tex-Son "On Strike" for Local 180, ILGWU, San Antonio, 1963
International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, Local 180 (San Antonio, TX) Records, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Two women on strike for Tex-Son Local 180, San Antonio, Texas, International Ladies Garment Workers Union (I. L. G. W. U.). 1963. UTA Libraries Digital Gallery, https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/img/10007779.

The Tex-Son strike was organized by the ILGWU, affiliated for most of its existence with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and then the AFL-CIO when the AFL merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1955. By the mid-1930s, most of the garment industry moved to the Southwest as the region offered a low-cost labor pool of Black and Latinx workers. This industry transition proved to be complicated for the ILGWU as the union sent Anglo men with little experience in Spanish-speaking communities to represent workers in the Southwest. Eventually, the ILGWU maintained a presence in large cities in Texas, including San Antonio.

San Antonio was home to one of the largest populations of ethnically Mexican people in the United States, which the garment industry exploited for some of the lowest wages in the country. Many working-class ethnically Mexican women in San Antonio were able to obtain positions in the defense industry during WWII, but afterwards were left with slim options besides factory jobs. Tex-Son, owned by brothers Harold and Emanuel Franzel, employed both Anglo and Mexican American women, but were actively outsourcing work to Tupelo, Mississippi where Black women made up a lucrative labor force. In response to an uptick in union membership among Tex-Son workers by the ILGWU, the Franzels produced anti-union literature and warned their workers against signing any union agreements in the fall of 1958, before the strike began. In response, the ILGWU Negotiating Committee sent demands to the Franzels which included better wages and benefits among others.

The work of Gregoria Montalbo was essential to building momentum for the strike. An organizer from Chicago, her main job was to explain to hopeful recruits about the benefits and necessity of a strike against Tex-Son. Montalbo’s role as the president of Local 180 was focused on recruitment prior to the strike as well as working to gain support from San Antonio’s clergy during the strike, appealing to the many workers who were members of Catholic congregations in the city. One of the most committed clergy supporters was Father Sherrill Smith who agreed with Local 180 that San Antonio needed unions in order to create a more equitable work environment for everyone. He played a key role on the picket line and going door to door to recruit more people to join the strike.

The Tex-Son strike was the first to use an ILGWU Chicana lead organizer, Sophie Gonzalez, who became the face of the Tex-Son strike. Gonzalez began union organizing in 1949 after her brother, a union organizer for the Amalgamated Meatcutters and Butchers of America Union, encouraged her to accept a position in the ILGWU. Her presence in local newspapers and on the picket line was an integral piece of the ILGWU’s strategy. She maintained a certain physical appearance that portrayed her respectability as a woman but remained fierce in her communication of worker’s demands to the media and locals.

The very first week of the strike was the most tumultuous in terms of physical altercations between the women and allies on strike, the women who continued to work throughout the strike, and the police. On February 26th and 27th, the women on strike, angered by scab workers being escorted in and out of the factory, began throwing eggs and rocks at strike breakers and getting in physical altercations. The police charged the strikers with rioting and drunkenness, however there was not sufficient evidence to prove that any of the strikers were inebriated while on the picket lines.

Black and white image of Helen Martinez and her four children in San Antonio, Texas
Helen Martinez and her four children with picket signs, San Antonio, Texas. 1959, George and Latane Lambert Papers, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, UTA Libraries Digital Gallery, https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/img/10002671. 

The ILGWU also engaged in a propaganda campaign to accompany the strike and boycott of Tex-Son goods. This campaign exploited the dominant ideology of the time about motherhood instead of on the women’s role as economic providers. In doing so, they produced materials such as reproducing checks given to Tex-Son employees next to pictures of their children, effectively communicating the inability to care for a family on such dismal paychecks. Even children participated by handing out balloons to other children entering surrounding department stores with “Don’t Buy Tex-Son Children’s Clothes,” imprinted on them. These tactics, however, were detrimental to the image of strikers as workers, not just mothers.

In the first year of the strike, the ILGWU women gained support from other local unions, such as the International Union of Brewery Workers, and other male supporters who assisted in picket line activities. However, the daily hardships that came along with picketing wore down many of the women who originally joined the strike. Many were forced to seek out other kinds of employment, especially after being blacklisted by Tex-Son, barring them from working at other garment factories. By September 1960, ILGWU strikers began to fear that their leadership was giving up on them, which eventually came to fruition when two months later, the small benefit checks from ILGWU stopped entirely and Gonzalez and other union leaders pulled out of the strike entirely.  After appeals from people like County Commissioner Albert Peña Jr., the AFL-CIO office in Washington, D.C. agreed to continue to fund the remaining 80 women on the picket line. However, morale was already low and a few women complained that Gonzalez’s absence hurt the propaganda strategy. Others, however, complained that her leadership style and charges of opportunism hurt the strike from the very beginning. Ultimately, the strike lost its fervor due to continued violence perpetrated on the women and general distrust and lack of enthusiasm and financial support. By the end of 1962 the ILGWU pulled out of San Antonio altogether. On January 24, 1963, only eleven women were left on the last day at the picket line.

Black and white image of brewer workers supporting Tex-Son strikes
International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, Local 180 (San Antonio, TX) Records, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Tex-Son strike, Local 180, San Antonio, Texas. 1963. UTA Libraries Digital Gallery, https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/img/10007781. 

The consequences of an unsuccessful strike were clearly visible;  after the ILGWU pulled out of San Antonio, unionism in the city remained practically absent. Many factories began to mock Tex-Son’s strategy of outsourcing work to the Deep South and across the U.S.-Mexico border. However, the Tex-Son strike is an important episode in the history of ethnically Mexican women’s Cold War era strategies to gaining labor rights for themselves. Blending public and private spheres by challenging the public to support their fight as mothers making ends meet for their families, the women presented locals with a new idea of women’s roles in the realm of labor. The Tex-Son strike also served as a primer of sorts for Texas Chicano Movement activism in the late 60s and early 70s that began to appeal to Chicanas’ racial and ethnic identity and oppression, rather than solely on gender identity and motherhood.

In addition to the historical importance, the strike also connects with current issues such as the recent Mississippi ICE raids at a poultry processing plant. Many observers suggest that the workers were targeted specifically because they successfully unionized and won a law suit against Koch Foods for $3.75 million over sexual harassment, national origin and race discrimination, and retaliation against Latinx workers. Although there are obvious differences between these two events, there are some salient congruencies. Both involved gendered discrimination and discrimination based on race and ethnicity. More obvious though, is the constant threats of violence that Latinx workers face then and today and their vulnerable position in exploitative labor relations. The Tex-Son strike and the unionization of the Mississippi poultry plant both ended in victory and defeat causing families to be uprooted and the loss of important sources of income. The immigrants detained by ICE are facing some of the most horrid conditions in detention and the women of the Tex-Son strike were beaten and chastised on the picket line. As different as the consequences of each are, the women involved share unsatisfactory and even dangerous work conditions alongside gender, ethnic, and national origin discrimination.

Sixty years after the beginning of the Tex-Son strike, Latinx people in the U.S. are still a major source of cheap labor and a punching bag for anti-union and anti-immigrant sentiments. Fortunately, strong labor activist roots for Latinx peoples of all nationalities and races still remain at the core of obtaining equitable working conditions. The Tex-Son strike of 1959, among others throughout the hemisphere, should be remembered as a foundation and lesson for labor activists today as anti-immigrant rhetoric is spewed from the highest bodies of government here and abroad.

This article draws on the following sources:

Lori Flores, “An Unladylike Strike Fashionably Clothed: Mexicana and Anglo Women Garment Workers Against Tex-Son, 1959-1963. Pacific Historical Review. 78, no. 3 (August 2009), 367-402.

Irene Ledesma, “Texas Newspapers and Chicana Workers’ Activism, 1919-1974. Western Historical Quarterly, 27, no. 3 (1995), 309-331

Vicki Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America. 10th Anniversary Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

More from Micaela Valadez:

City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas by Andrew M. Busch (2017)
Dreaming with the Ancestors: Black Seminole Women in Texas and Mexico by Shirley Boteler Mock (2010)

Related Articles:

Goddess of Anarchy: Lucy Parsons, American Radical
Women Shaping Texas in the Twentieth Century
Textbooks, Texas, and Discontent: The Fight against Inadequate Educational Resources

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Love in the Time of Texas Slavery

By María Esther Hammack

An earlier version of this story was published on Fourth Part of the World.

I wasn’t looking to find a story of abounding love when researching violent episodes of Texas history. Then I ran across a Texas newspaper article that shed a brief light on the lives of a Black woman and a Mexican man who had lived as husband and wife in the 1840s, twenty-five miles northeast of Victoria, Texas. She was a woman forced to live in bondage in Jackson County, near the town of Texana, in present day Edna, Texas. Her husband was a Mexican man who was likely indentured, employed, or a peon in that same vicinity.

The report, unsurprisingly, did not fully document their lives, experiences, or bonds of intimacy. It did, however, document a glimpse of two lives whose stories and relationship often go untold in the archive. This glimpse and the many questions the source delivered compelled me to further explore this couple’s relationship and harrowing flight to freedom. As a historian whose work investigates the experiences of enslaved and free Black women, men, and children who sought freedom across transnational frontiers, I wanted to learn more about this couple. I was interested in knowing more about the woman and her origins. Was she born enslaved in Texas? How long was she held in bondage near Texana? Had she tried to run to freedom before? What was her trade? How many languages did she speak? The archive has a history of silencing the Black experience and Texas has historically engaged in a disconcerting suppression of its Black past. Answers to my many questions, therefore, proved daunting tasks that led me to creative ways to study this couple’s narrative. I turned to investigate the environment and history of the geographic localities where this woman was held in order to learn more about her life, what she may have witnessed, and her tragic journey to freedom.

A 1856 map of Jackson County, Texas depicting Texana, Texas
1856 Jackson County TX Map showing Texana. Texas General Land Office.

The region where this courageous Black woman was held enslaved had been largely inhabited by Tonkawa and Lipan Apache tribal communities up until the 1830s, when they were unsettled by a group of Anglo colonizers who arrived as part of Stephen F. Austin’s Old Three Hundred colonization program. In 1832, these Anglo-settlers led the Sandy Creek assault against the native communities living in the area and destroyed remaining Tonkawa and Lipan Apache settlements. Six slave holding families, originally from Alabama, consolidated power over the area. These six families redeveloped the region’s agricultural, cattle, and trading industries through the labor of the people they held in bondage. Was this fearless Black woman brought enslaved from Alabama? Was her family forced to move to Texas alongside her? How did she come to meet the Mexican man? It is likely that she was forced to toil in both sugar and cotton crops, staples that turned high profits in Jackson County during that time. Perhaps she may have worked in any of the many groups of enslaved people who packed, prepared and carried the products of said crops to the local port on the Lavaca River. She may have played a central role in the trade that was sent out weekly on the steamboat that ran from Texana, through the pass of Matagorda Bay, to other parts of Texas, Louisiana and the Gulf South.

This daring woman was one of hundreds of enslaved individuals who turned this locality into a successful trading hub. In the early 1850s, Texana was made the seat of Jackson County, a place that became an important military and trading center that linked Texas to the rest of the US South. During that period, 34% of its population was enslaved, and only a decade later, in the 1860s, the enslaved population had risen to be half of the total population because cotton and sugar drove the land’s economic affluence. After the Civil War, when slavery ended, this prosperous area, developed by enslaved people, became a ghost town. Yet, in 1848, when this story takes place, the region was booming and welcoming of visitors and settlers, except Black and Brown. The people governing the county were certainly hostile to enslaved and free Blacks and expressly militant against settlers of Mexican descent. Interestingly, the Mexican man in this story, by 1848, had managed to live across that county for several years. Why? What was his experience upon arrival? How did he end up living in Jackson County, Texas?  Where did he come from? How did he come to meet his wife? While we may never know where this couple met, how their lives intertwined, or how their plan to run away was devised and developed, we do know that this couple ultimately fled together. It is imaginable that both desired a future where they were free. A future far removed from Texas slavery.

In the summer of 1848, and perhaps for years before, these two lovers carefully planned their escape, surely detailing every trail, bend, and river they would encounter and need to traverse on their journey to freedom. In early July of that same year, they took two horses and rode them southward, hoping to leave Texas behind and reach safe havens beyond the Mexican border.

Image of the painting A Ride for Liberty by Eastman Johnson from the Brooklyn Museum
Eastman Johnson. A Ride for Liberty. Brooklyn Museum.

They made their way towards Mexican territory, but as they reached the Lavaca river they were intercepted and pursued by a group of slave hunters, unscrupulous employees of a highly profitable profession. They were quickly surrounded. They stood no chance and received no mercy. The Romeo of this story was lynched. His body was returned to the place where authorities claimed he had “stolen” his enslaved wife. His body was then hung and displayed as a public reminder and threat to all others who hoped, braved, or even thought to run away. In this story, Juliet faced an unimaginable fate. Tortured and robbed of the freedom she almost secured for herself across a Mexican frontier, she was forcibly returned to her ruthless enslaver. The rest of her story remains hidden, silent, until it is found, and told.

The report of this couple’s story is but a fragment, a tiny visible thread in the vast unknown tapestry of the lives and experiences of thousands of women, men, and children who faced, fought, resisted and survived (or failed to survive) enslavement in Texas. It offers us a window into the vibrant, diverse and porous composite that was Texas, during a time when the institution of slavery thrived and consolidated on this side of the border, and freedom existed just a few miles south, on the other side.

Theirs was a story of bravery, of life and death: a harrowing tale of sacrifice, impassioned desire for freedom, and heartbreak different from any I have ever encountered in the archive. We know very little about their relationship. Did they have children? How did he envision freedom at their destination? Was family waiting for them in Mexican territory? Although reconstructing their background and the extent of their intimacy may not be possible, we do know that in their story love was empowering, death was swift and its perpetrators vicious. They sought freedom, yet instead they found a macabre ending committed by Texas vigilantes and sanctioned by laws that protected and promoted the institution of slavery in Texas. Theirs was a story raw, fleeting, and heartbreaking; one where freedom was worth the most violent “‘til death do us part.” Their lives and death are a love story shaped by slavery, freedom, and resistance; marked with blood and violence and no happily ever after. This record documents a rare biography of a couple’s partnership existing amongst a burning desire for freedom. It is a memoir of love in time of Texas slavery.

Other Articles by María Esther Hammack:

The Illegal Slave Trade in Texas
Textbooks Texas, and Discontent 

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The Paperwork of Slavery
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Slavery and Freedom in Savanna 

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Digital Resources – “The Reddest of the Blacks”

By Sean Guillory

Lovett Fort-Whiteman was born in Dallas, Texas in 1889 and died in a Stalinist labor camp sometime after 1938. The son of a former slave, a graduate of Tuskegee University, Fort-Whiteman became one of the most important African American Communist activists and organizers of the 1920s and the only known African American to be a victim of the Stalinist Terror. How did the Dallas native, dubbed “The Reddest of The Blacks,” by Time Magazine in 1925, wind up a victim of Stalinist violence in Soviet Russia? Sean Guillory has made this short video to recount his fascinating and moving story. The video was originally posted on Guillory’s excellent podcast and blog page, “Sean’s Russia Blog” and we re-post it here with his permission.

 

Other Articles You May Like:

The Proletarian Dream
Reforming Texas in Early Twentieth-century Texas
Confederados: The Texans of Brazil
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The Blackwell School in Marfa, Texas

By Samuel Ginsburg

Marfa, a West Texas town of less than 2,000 permanent residents, attracts a lot of visitors. Known as the backdrop to 1959 James Dean film Giant, the town’s main attractions include two main streets lined with galleries, the mysterious Marfa lights that only seem to come out when nobody is looking, and the Chinati Foundation, an epic former military base-turned-art museum. While the scene is now speckled with luxury airstreams and Instagram models dressed in pristine cowboy gear, the bohemian vibe brought over in the 1970s by artists trying to escape New York still resonates, and the sprawling desert backdrop adds to the effect that makes “Marfa” (the idea) feel bigger than Marfa (the place).

Just a few blocks from the main drag is the Blackwell School, a plain, white building that might have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for its Texas Historic Landmark sign. The museum inside the old schoolhouse tells the story of de facto segregation in Marfa since 1889, as special schools were set up for Mexican-descendent children until integration was achieved in 1965. Old desks and books line the open rooms, along with photos and articles about the scholarly and extracurricular activities of the students. More than a look at the evils of segregation and inequality, the museum highlights the special moments in the lives of the people that passed through the school. Photographs show smiling children decorating pumpkins, playing basketball, and proudly posing in marching band uniforms. While meandering through the exhibits, one gets the feeling that great things happened in this place, despite problematic history that led to the school’s founding.

Photograph of the main street of Marfa, Texas
Marfa, Texas (via Wikipedia)

As not to cover up the issues surrounding the school, there are parts of the museum that show the instances of institutional discrimination, such as the board of former teachers that features very few Spanish last names. The museum’s most striking exhibit is titled “Burying Mr. Spanish” and tells the story of a mock funeral that was held in 1954 to officially kill off the use of Spanish at the school. As English was the only language allowed on campus, 7th-grade teacher Evelyn Davis organized an event in which students wrote Spanish words on small pieces of paper, put them in a coffin, and then buried them next to the school’s flagpole. The museum has photos of the event, along with the coffin and a wooden cross that says “Spanish” and “R.I.P.” In “The Last Rights of Spanish Speaking,” Davis calls hearing the language her greatest “pet peeve,” and recounted the ceremony that had been going well (for her) until the very end: “Everything was perfect up to this moment until two pall bearers, who had not rehearsed, were to lower the casket with dignity. They started pulling against each other in disagreement, which was followed by anger, and then a volley Spanish curse words # % @ * $ * ? The solemnity turned to titters, then giggles followed by hilarious laughter as the bearers threw dirt at each other. What a GREAT FIASCO!” As heartbreaking as it is to read about a school-sanctioned ceremony aimed at cutting off the students’ cultural heritage, it’s hard not to laugh at the ensuing bout of rebellious chaos. As a moment of both forced assimilation and student resistance, this scene recognizes the complicated nature of this space and the need to preserve its stories.

The earlier known photograph of the Blackwell School in Marfa, Texas
The Earliest Known Photo of the Blackwell School (via Marfa Public Radio)

The Blackwell School Alliance was founded in 2007 by former students as the abandoned building was being threatened with demolition. Since then, efforts have been made to seek state and federal protection of the site. The alliance has also looked for ways to reincorporate the school’s history back into the public memory of Marfa. These efforts included the Blackwell Block Party and the commission of a mural by artist Jesus “Cimi” Alvarado. The mural features a poem by Luis Valdez about Chicano pride, an image of current Marfa students building rockets, and the West Texas desert in the background. Most importantly, the mural positions the Blackwell School in the very center, right between Marfa’s iconic water tower and Presidio Country Courthouse. The goal is to reshape how Marfa is seen by both tourists and residents, to create a space for this history within the conceptual landscape of artists and cowboys. For those people fighting to keep the museum open and running, this is a part of Marfa that more people should be visiting.

For more information on the museum and for ways to support the Blackwell School Alliance, visit //www.theblackwellschool.org/.


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From Marfa to Mauritania in Forty Years
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The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

A Longhorn’s Life of Service: Tom Ward

Black and white photograph of a headshot of Tom Ward

By Nicholas Roland

On March 23, 1961, recently-inaugurated President John F. Kennedy held a press conference at the State Department on Laos, a country little-known to most Americans at the time. Using a series of oversized maps, Kennedy detailed the advance of Communist Laotian and North Vietnamese forces in the country’s northeastern provinces. Rejecting an American military solution to the situation, Kennedy argued for a negotiated peace and a neutral Laos in hopes of containing the advance of communism in Southeast Asia. Before the Bay of Pigs disaster, before the Cuban missile crisis, and before serious escalation of American involvement in Vietnam, Laos presented the young president with his first major foreign policy dilemma. Kennedy’s wish for a peaceful, neutral Laos would be nominally achieved the following year, after months of negotiations. In accordance with the peace settlement, the United States withdrew its military advisors. The North Vietnamese did not.

In Austin, Texas, a University of Texas graduate and staff member, Tom Ward, was one of the few Americans paying keen attention to the situation in Southeast Asia in the early 1960s. Born in 1931, Ward grew up in Austin, in the 1930s and 1940s a sleepy college and government town hardly recognizable as the rapidly developing, cosmopolitan capital that Texans are familiar with today. In a recent interview, Ward recalled his upbringing in the Old Enfield neighborhood, when the street’s paving ended at the Missouri-Pacific Railroad tracks, now Mo-Pac. At that time the University of Texas loomed even larger than it does today. As a boy, Ward attended a nursery school run by the university’s Department of Home Economics. He later attended many UT football games, paying a quarter to sit with his friends in a children’s section in the north endzone dubbed “the Knothole Gang.” In the pre-air-conditioned summers, Ward played in Pease Park and swam at Deep Eddy and Barton Springs. “I had a very pleasant experience growing up in Austin,” he remembers.

After graduating from Austin High School in 1949, Ward entered the University of Texas. He initially majored in business administration and pre-law, but finally decided to pursue his real interests: government and history. After graduating in 1954 with a degree in government and substantial coursework in history, Ward volunteered for the military. Having grown up during the Second World War, Ward said, “I felt that there was definitely an obligation to be in the service.” In 1955, Ward was sent to Fort Ord, California, for basic and advanced infantry training. He was initially designated to be sent as a replacement to Korea, but when it was discovered that he had a college degree he was reassigned to an anti-aircraft guided missile battalion at Fort Bliss, Texas. After serving out his time in the El Paso area, Ward returned to Austin, where in 1957 he began graduate work. He accepted an offer to work in the university admissions office the following year. It was at about this time that American involvement in Southeast Asia began to make headlines.

Black and white photograph of a twin-engine airplane dropping supplies via parachute during flight
Air drop of supplies

Ward had long held interests in government, history, and international relations, especially regarding Southeast Asia. He recalls with fondness that these interests were nurtured during his years at UT through courses in history, jurisprudence, and international relations with professors like William Livingston, James Roach, and Malcolm MacDonald in government; R. John Rath, Walter Prescott Webb, Otis Singletary, and Oliver Radkey in history; and George Hoffman in geography. In 1961, Ward had even taken a leave of absence from his position at UT to travel in Asia with a fraternity brother, a six-month trip that took them from Japan through East and Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, and Europe, contracting hepatitis A along the way after drinking rice wine with a group of locals in Burma (now Myanmar). His adventures in 1961 were a harbinger of things to come. Ultimately, Tom Ward was destined for a life of service and overseas adventure far from the small, slow-paced Texas city where he had grown up.

In 1962, after the short-lived farce of Laotian neutrality, President Kennedy responded to the continued Communist insurgency in the country by increasing America’s aid to the Royal Lao government through the Central Intelligence Agency and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) channels. Kennedy hoped that a combination of assistance to ethnic minorities and economic aid to the country in general could stem the advance of the Communist Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese allies without drawing US conventional military forces into the conflict. Given his experience and interests, it is little wonder that a professor at UT subsequently recommended Tom Ward to one of the State Department recruiters that fanned out over the country in search of potential aid workers for the American effort in Southeast Asia. With USAID in its infancy, Ward was interviewed by an official from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the closest thing the U.S. government had at the time to a source of expertise in working with indigenous populations. Despite his awareness of the ongoing conflict in the country, Ward recalled, “I volunteered for Laos. … And the reason I wanted to go to Laos, [was] because of my experience at the university and I knew about Laos.” Before his new adventure commenced, however, one last memorable occasion on the Forty Acres came on March 9, 1962, when Ward was one of 1,200 students who packed into the Texas Union to hear an address on civil rights by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Ward became one of six recruits selected to serve in Laos, with another twelve destined for Vietnam. Several months were spent at the University of California at Berkeley for training in local languages, Southeast Asian studies, and community development. Although they were civilian aid workers, Ward recalls, “community development training could also be considered counterinsurgency.” By April 1963, Tom Ward had become a foreign service officer and arrived in Laos, joining what became known as America’s “Secret War” in the small country.

Upon arrival in Laos, Ward found himself living with the Hmong ethnic minority group in a village called Sam Thong, working to coordinate the delivery of food, medical care, basic education, and other forms of humanitarian relief. Ward’s partner was the irascible Edgar “Pop” Buell, a former Indiana farmer and widower who had come to Laos in 1960 to work for International Voluntary Services, a private forerunner to the Peace Corps. It was in the mountainous northeastern provinces that the Pathet Lao guerillas were most active, and the indigenous Hmong formed the backbone of the CIA’s clandestine anti-Communist fighting force. In other words, Ward was now in a war zone.

Black and white photograph of Tom Ward with Hmong children in Sam Thong, Laos in 1965
Tom with Hmong children in Sam Thong, Laos, 1965

Ward and Buell’s humanitarian work was necessitated by the Communist forces’ disruption of the traditional cycles of Hmong agriculture. By providing the Hmong with aid and basic services, the U.S. and Laotian governments hoped to maintain a counterinsurgency in the country and to strengthen the legitimacy of the Royal Lao government. “I lived in a grass hut with bamboo walls, a grass roof, dirt floor, no electricity, no plumbing, [and] a [55]-gallon drum out back for water. That’s where you bathed, and you lived like the local people did and ate their food,” recalls Ward. In addition to Ward and Buell, a CIA intelligence officer and a paramilitary officer were stationed nearby to coordinate training and military support for the Hmong.

Black and white photograph of Americans distributing relief supplies to Hmong villagers
Distribution of relief supplies

Although Ward’s work in Laos was focused on humanitarian relief, the dangers of operating in a war zone were a fact of daily life. The only two roads leading into northern Laos were both blocked, so Ward and other American personnel were forced to move around the countryside on small short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft operated by Air America, a CIA-owned dummy corporation that played a vital role in the agency’s paramilitary efforts. Although “these were the best pilots in the world,” Ward says, travel in the war-torn country was filled with danger. Ward recounts many landings on airstrips that were shorter than 250 feet in length, or in some cases simply clearings on the side of a mountain. The planes negotiated low visibility and rugged terrain without instruments and avoided enemy anti-aircraft fire by flying as high as 10,000 feet, despite a lack of onboard oxygen. Once, Ward was supposed to go back to the capital city of Vientiane for a break, but a fellow aid worker had a date planned with a local woman and wanted Ward’s seat on the next plane. Ward gave up his spot on the flight. He learned later that the plane had crashed in the forest and had not been located for three days. Incredibly, the aid worker with whom he had swapped flights was still alive, albeit with severe burns that forced his evacuation from the country. On another occasion, mortar rounds began to land on a nearby position. With helicopter transportation seemingly unavailable at the time, Ward and his fellow workers prepared to walk out of the danger zone to safety. Finally, helicopters came and they were evacuated. Another memorable incident was the recovery of a US pilot who had been shot down and rescued by the Hmong.

Tom Ward served in Laos until January 1968, just before the Tet Offensive in neighboring Vietnam, at which time he was reassigned to the US mission in Thailand. As U.S. military involvement in Vietnam escalated, both aerial bombardment and ground fighting spilled over into Laos and Cambodia. Ultimately, all three countries would fall to Communist forces in 1975. Reflecting on the trajectory of events in Southeast Asia, Ward believes that the joint effort between the CIA and USAID was a successful counterinsurgency campaign that was derailed by U.S. military escalation in the region. “I think we . . . were there for the right reason and we did a good job,” says Ward, “and that forces beyond us took over and that’s why it ended up like it did.” Ward continues, “overemphasis on the military was counterproductive as far as I’m concerned.” Rather than a conventional military victory achieved through massive air power and ground combat, Ward believes that a counterinsurgency campaign could have achieved much different results in Southeast Asia.

Black and white photograph of eight armed Hmong fighters
Hmong fighters

In contrast to Laos, for a variety of reasons anti-Communist efforts in Thailand were ultimately successful. Like other Southeast Asian countries at the time, in the 1960s the Thai government sought American help to counteract a rural Communist insurgency. Ward worked for USAID in the Accelerated Rural Development program (ARD) between 1968 and 1975. This joint Thai-U.S. program sought to improve the local economies of the country’s troubled rural areas, thereby relieving their grievances and instilling confidence in the central government. Ward says the program was “like in the New Deal.” “I was in Chiang Rai for two years,” he continues, “and [I] worked with these programs in education, in health, and providing . . . improved rice seed to farmers, building roads so they could get their crops to market and this sort of thing.” Although the Communist insurgency continued in Thailand until 1989, Ward believes that “the standards of living were definitely raised in those areas. And if you go look at them today, it’s unbelievable the difference. You know, you have universities in a lot of these different places, a lot of these provinces where there was little economic development.”

After twelve years in Laos and Thailand, Ward returned to Washington, D.C., to work for the USAID Office of International Training. For the next five years, his career took him on short-term assignments to Nigeria, Tanzania, Egypt, Burma, Nepal, and Pakistan, helping to select candidates identified by their governments for graduate degrees and specialized technical training in the United States. From its founding to the time that he departed the program, Ward recalls, “we’d trained over 10,000 people” in fields such as agriculture, public health, finance, education, and a variety of governmental functions.

Ward was then assigned to Indonesia as a Development Training Officer working with the Indonesian government to select candidates for graduate training in American universities and short-term technical training with various U.S. government agencies. USAID’s training programs had a long-term impact on participating countries: at one point, six members of Indonesia’s governing cabinet had been trained in the United States. The goal, Ward says, was “to work yourself out of a job” as participating countries built indigenous governance capacity and technical expertise. Although the work was generally not as dangerous as his experiences in previous assignments, Ward still found himself in proximity to momentous events around the world. He was in Nigeria during a “transition from one dictator to another,” and he visited Kabul in 1978, on the eve of the Soviet-Afghan War (1979–1989).

In 1985, Tom Ward was called back to Washington, D.C., where he became a career counselor for foreign service officers.  In 1991, after thirty years in service – twenty of them spent overseas – Ward retired from the State Department. Ward continued to work for a time as a government consultant in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Pakistan. Today he splits time between Washington, D.C., and Austin, punctuated with continued trips overseas.

Black and white image of "Pop" Buell with three Hmong fighters
“Pop” Buell with Hmong fighters

Reflecting on his decades of experience as a foreign service officer, Ward was often astonished at the ignorance and apathy toward international events that he would encounter on visits home. While stationed in Laos, he says, “I’d come home on leave and they’d say, ‘Well, where [have] you been?’ ‘Well, I’ve been in Asia.’ ‘Oh, that’s interesting, tell me about it.’” Ward laughs. “And I’d get maybe two or three sentences, and then they’d change the subject: ‘Oh by the way, did you see ‘I Love Lucy’ last night?’” Ignorance of foreign cultures could also be a problem in government agencies and the military. Although he believes that in Southeast Asia, “a lot of these people were very dedicated officers and men… they were not taught to learn about the culture, speak the language, learn how the people felt about things, and how to work with them from their point of view, if at all possible.” This lack of understanding failed both the United States and the people of Laos and Vietnam. Ward believes that the situation has improved over time, but familiarity with foreign cultures and political systems remains a key variable in the success or failure of U.S. efforts overseas.

After a career spent in public service, Ward has not been content to simply focus on personal pursuits in retirement. Over time he has become increasingly active in supporting the institution that molded his interests and opened the door to his career: The University of Texas at Austin. Ward has found ways to volunteer his time and leadership over the years, joining the College of Liberal Arts Advisory Council shortly after his retirement and the Department of History Visiting Committee a few years later. He is currently in the process of establishing a chair in international relations in the College of Liberal Arts.

Ward’s career has informed his involvement with UT. In his experience, the best way to improve lives is “through education, in this country or overseas.” He continues, “What we were doing overseas [was] giving them development opportunities they didn’t have.” As a foreign service officer Tom Ward worked to improve the economies and governments of other countries. Now he sees similar opportunities closer to home, through UT’s ability to increase American understanding of the international context and in the university’s potential to aid underserved and non-traditional student populations.

Dr. Nicholas Roland is a historian at the Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, D.C. He earned his PhD from The University of Texas at Austin in 2017. A revised version of his dissertation, “Violence in the Hill Country: The Texas Frontier in the Civil War Era,” is forthcoming from UT Press. 

Sources:

Tom Ward oral history, April 19, 2018

//www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHA-020.aspx

//history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/laos-crisis

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The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

From There to Here: Indrani Chatterjee

In 1947, when British India was carved into two states of India and Pakistan, many Hindu families relocated from eastern Pakistan (which became Bangladesh in 1971) to Indian Bengal. My parents came from two such families. My father was deeply curious about the world, and bought various Readers Digest and National Geographic publications on a meager rupee-based salary, earned as a doctor in the postcolonial Indian army. My youth was shaped by his predicament, balancing between his own ‘outsider’ status in the complex social-political world of postcolonial India, and the straining to flee these complexities for a world conjured up by books, theater, film.

In the 1980s, when I wanted to pursue research in history, funds were scarce. I worked as an adjunct at various women’s colleges for some years, learning to teach neo-literate young girls about distant places and long-ago events in Hindi when necessary. I met my partner, another historian, at a teacher’s strike for better wages during one such stint. Five years later, a scholarship to pursue research in School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, finally gave me the chance to belong to the land of books my parents had taught me to love.

The wealth of records in the SOAS Library, British Library and the British Museum convinced me to remain in the field of teaching and research, and to make these gains available to others in the country of my origin. But the country of my birth-origin had moved on by the late 1990s. Though I resigned my tenured job of teaching in a college of Delhi University, and moved to a full-time research position in my mother’s beloved city, Calcutta, the ethnic-linguistic and religious sectarianisms of the closing years of the millennium also narrowed research agendas. The Indian elections of 1998 were decisive in that regard. My life in research, as distinct from my partner’s, was over if we did not relocate. By 2000, we had both begun another version of ‘outsider’ lives, this time in the North American academe, he as a chair-holding professor, and me as a spouse on a visa that disallowed paid employment! Then began the struggle to secure work-authorization and the green card (resident status), learning the rituals of professional belonging – the job-search, from letter-writing to securing letter-writers for one’s own research, the social codes undergirding the profession. Mercifully, there were the Journal of Higher Education, various web-sites for applicants, and more than a little help from my friends. With all these tools, a brave Black feminist Chair heading a search at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ and an inheritance of survivorship, I entered the academic workforce in 2001. And here I am, a citizen, learning my way through the delightful open stacks of the Perry Castañeda Library, willing to do whatever it takes to preserve this new country of mine for the perpetually curious.

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Fandangos, Intemperance, and Debauchery

“Can any good come out of San Antonio?” This was the question at the heart of an 1846 letter penned by the Rev. John McCullough. He was writing to his Presbyterian superiors on the East Coast, who had assigned him the task of conducting missionary work on the new American frontier in Texas.

McCullough’s letter, housed on the UT Austin campus at the Briscoe Center for American History, is colorful, detailed, and dour, providing a rare first-hand account of a fledgling Texas community caught in the crossfire of the Mexican-American War.

Photograph of a letter by Rev. John McCullough
McCullough’s letter, housed at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.

McCullough describes San Antonio as a cosmopolitan merchant town of 4,000 people, the majority being Mexican, with Anglos, Germans, and French making up the remainder. He notes that the city was filled with “traders from the Rio Grande,” as well as medical tourists — “travelers” there for health reasons. In addition, the town was “thronged with strangers” — a testament to the presence of 2,000–3,000 newly arrived U.S. troops. The mix of troops, tourists, merchants and locals created a moral landscape that made McCullough recoil.

For the Reverend, San Antonio was a place full of “people exhibiting intemperance and uttering blasphemy.” Gambling was the “prevailing vice,” the sabbath was ignored and locals engaged in a “species of night frolics called fandangos.” It was also a place where priests kept cockerels “shod for fighting” in the church annex. Such men-of-the-cloth also had “a respectable posterity” of children “scattered throughout town.”

Black and white print entitled Sketches in San Antonio--The Fandango--From A Sketch by Our Own Correspondent
Fandangos were a source of revenue for San Antonio, raising $560 in 1847, 10 years after a licensing scheme had been passed (by a council consisting of Anglos and Mexicans).

McCullough obviously experienced a significant degree of culture shock on the frontier. Of the other remaining accounts of San Antonio during the period, most are morally neutral, even celebratory.  For example, in 1828, José María Sánchez and the botanist Jean Louis Berlandier passed through, Sánchez noting without prejudice that the “care-free” people were “enthusiastic dancers” while Berlandier spoke dancing as “the chief amusement among the lower classes.” In 1845, the traveler Frederic Benjamin Page described San Antonians as a people for whom “music and dancing, hunting and the chase, cards and love make up their whole existence.” In 1857, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. cheerily recalled a “jumble of races, costumes, languages and buildings,” a “free and easy, loloppy sort of life,” populated by women whose dresses “seemed lazily reluctant to cover their plump persons.”

A print featuring a large map of San Antonio from the 19th century

Undoubtedly, McCullough’s spiky moralism was influenced by personal convictions and a desire to secure funding for his missionary endeavors. Nevertheless, life on the frontier was precarious and often tragic — factors which may have fueled the preachy intensity. According to R. F. Bunting, McCullough’s successor, the San Antonio of 1846 was a “miserable and dilapidated place,” wrecked by war and preyed upon by “desperados” and “undesirables.” Indeed, McCullough survived several attempts on his life by those who took umbrage at his use of the pulpit to rail against gambling and saloons. He had some success setting up a local school but in 1849 his mental health was failing. The same year, his wife died in a cholera outbreak and he moved to Galveston to recuperate with family members. After recovering his faculties he founded a seminary for women with his two sisters there. However in 1853 Galveston endured a severe outbreak of yellow fever. The school closed down — McCullough lost both his sisters as well as a nephew and niece to the outbreak. Dejected and defeated, he left for Ohio.

Black and white portrait of Rev. John McCullough
A portrait of Rev. McCullough

Despite his moral indignation, nervous disposition and chaotic life, McCullough ultimately waxed optimistic in his account of Texas: “Can any good come out of San Antonio?” His answer was identical to the biblical passage of John’s gospel that he was paraphrasing — “with God all things are possible.” But his faith in Texas was material as well as spiritual: “no doubt . . . this will, in a few years be a large town.” For McCullough, the area around San Antonio had enough rivers (with enough girth and fall) to build “manufactories” that could “surpass Lowell,” the Massachusetts town that had grown rapidly into a manufacturing powerhouse in the first half the 19th century. He also mused that central Texas might one day be the “best cotton growing region in the world,” a comment that underlined his ambivalence to slavery as much as his penchant for speculation. (McCullough was from a staunchly abolitionist family and preached to black congregations throughout his life. However one early 20th century account of him adds — rather euphemistically — that he “accepted southern culture.”) Perhaps it was his optimism about Texas that led to his return later in the decade. During the 1850s McCullough had married again (to a woman whose extended family owned several slaves) and apparently settled for a quiet life in Ohio as a salaried minister. But at some point in 1859, he decided to mess with Texas once more, moving to Burnet County in a wagon carrying his family and grand piano, and with plans, according to the Southwestern Presbyterian, to “preach in that destitute region” and found another school. It turned out to be a disastrous decision. The Civil War disrupted his fundraising and left him bankrupt. He died of apoplexy suddenly in 1870, leaving a widow and nine children. Obituaries remembered McCullough as a pioneer preacher and a kind man, despite the fact that his “attachment to principle [was] inflexible.” The adobe walled huts in which he used to teach English to street children had long since vanished from San Antonio’s streets. Today, he is commemorated by a five mile long stretch of tarmac north of Interstate 35: “McCullough Street.”

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