Black
History under the Six Flags of Texas: A Chronology
Texas has been
under the control by three different nations; Spain, France, and Mexico.
Also Texas has been under the control by the Republic, Confederacy,
and the United States.
The
Spanish Flag (1519-1685)
The
Spanish flag was the first flag that represented Texas. This flag
flew over Texas for three centuries, starting in 1519-1685 and again
in 1690-1821, after Spanish explorers claims Texas in the name of
their king.
1519:
The Spanish flag was the first flag that represented Texas. This flag
flew over Texas for three centuries, starting in 1519-1685 and again
in 1690-1821, after Spanish explorers claims Texas in the name of
their king.
1528: Estevanico,
the first black in Texas arrived with the Spanish explorer Álvar
Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
The
French Flag (1685-1690)
The
French in the effort to expand the French Louisiana maintained a colony
in eastern Texas that began in 1685 and ended in1690. The French flag
flew over the state during that time.
The Spanish
Flag (1690-1821)
1691: A black
bugler accompanied Domingo Teran in exploring East Texas.
1776:
Black weaver help established Bucareli on the Trinity River.
1792: Texas had
34 blacks total; which was 15 per cent of the population
1803:
An increasing number of blacks in Texas came from the United States.
1807: Felipe Elua
bought his freedom and moved to San Antonio where he owned houses,
town lots, raised sugar, cotton, and vegetables.
1816: The African
slave trade in Texas began
1817: In December
Lafitte built slave barracks near Deweyville on Sabine River
The
Mexican Flag (1821-1836)
Mexico
winning its independence from Spain in 1821 Texas became part of the
Republic of Mexico. The Mexican flag flew over Texas from 1821 to
1836.
1821: Moses Austin
settled an Anglo-American colony in Mexican-Texas along the Brazos
and Colorado Rivers.
1821 – 1865
Slavery spread over the eastern two-fifths of the state of Texas.
1823/4-1846: The
Mexican Republic’s constitution abolished slavery and guaranteed
equality for all Mexicans citizens, which included blacks.
Early-1820’s:
Mexico’s policy to attract Anglo-American settlers for economic
development backfires—by 1835, of the estimated 41,000 inhabitants,
35,000 were Anglo-Americans, 3,000 were Mexican-Texans, and 3,000
were blacks free and enslaved.
Early to mid-1820’s:
Mexican-Texas was a safe haven for fugitive slaves, and was a province
for free blacks to own land, prosper and become wealthy.
1828: A contract
labor system was established that resembled slavery.
1835 Free Black
Samuel McCulloch, Jr., was the first casualty of the Texas Revolution,
receiving a shoulder wound when Texans captured the Mexican fort at
Goliad in October.
1835 – 1838
William Goyens, a free black acted as an interpreter for Sam Houston
with the East Texas Indians.
1835 – 1865
As many as 2,000 Africans were brought to Texas through the illegal
trans-Atlantic African slave trade.
1836: The Constitution
of the Texas Republic reversed a Mexican Constitutional statute concerning
fugitive slaves, stating that fugitive slaves entering the state shall
remain the status of a slave.
1836: A Spanish
slave ship, with 200 Africans aboard, sailed up Sabine River to Niblett’s
Bluff
1835-1836: The
outcome of the Texas War of Independence incorporates Texas into the
Southern United States, which officially extended slavery and prepared
the Mexican northern frontier for U.S. imperialism.
The
Texas Flag (1836-1845)
Texas
won its independence from Mexico in 1836 and established the Texas
state. This flag flew over Texas as its national flag respecting Texas
as an independent country from 1836 to 1845, but before joining the
United States in December 29, 1845.
1836
The estimated Texas slave population numbered 5,000 out of 38,470
population.
1836 Antislavery
advocate, Benjamin Lundy, who published the National Enquirer and Constitutional
Advocate of Universal Liberty in Philadelphia in August , also published,
"War in Texas," a pamphlet arguing against the annexation
of Texas to the United States.
1840: Law passed
by the Republic of Texas Congress that prohibited the immigration
of free blacks and ordered all free blacks to leave the Republic
within two years or be sold into slavery.
1840 Texas slave
code required newly emancipated slaves to leave Texas within two years
or risk being sold into slavery.
1840 Approximately
11,000 African Americans were enslaved in Texas by 1840.
1845 Texans had
held a referendum on joining the Union.
1845: On Dec.
29th U.S. Congress accepted the Texas state constitution, and Texas
became the 28th state, with legal slavery.
The
United States Flag (1845-1861)
The
United States flag has flown over Texas from 1845 to 1861, then again
from 1866 to the present.
1846-1848: In
the aftermath of the U.S.-Mexican War, the U.S. extended its boundaries
from Texas to California, which resulted in Mexico losing almost half
of its territory.
1850
The United States census reported 397 free blacks in Texas and
58,161 slaves, 27.4 percent of the 212,592 people.
1850 Numerically,
females dominated, making up 56 percent, of the combined slave populations
of the four largest towns in Texas.
1850 Texas urban
bondsmen were in the labor force (10 to 54 years old) was 73 percent.
1850 Approximately
58,000 African Americans were enslaved in Texas by 1850.
1850 The census
counted only about 400 free blacks in Texas, although there may have
been close to 1,000.
1850 George Glenn,
who was honored as one of the handful of black members of the Old
Trail Drivers Association at the 1924 and 1926 annual meetings, was
born into slavery in Texas.
1852 In
the presidential election, the Whig party suffered from having a candidate
from Texas who was generally unpopular in the rest of the Union.
1852 Voter interest was low, and the Whigs garnered only 26 percent
of a meager turnout.
1853 Although
William Ochiltree drew some votes for governor, by 1855 the Whig party
was dead in Texas.
1854 Slave repression
intensified, as vigilantes in Austin drove autonomous slave
religion underground.
1854 The issue
of some German antislavery attitudes first came to public attention
at the time of the annual Staats-Saengerfest (State Singers Festival)
on May 14th and 15th. Delegates from various local political clubs
of German citizens in western Texas met in San Antonio.
1856 The editor
of the San Antonio Zeitung was threatened with a coat of tar and feathers
for printing criticisms of slavery.
1857 The Quitman
Texas Free Press, which contributed to growing fears of slave insurrections
in Texas, had disappeared by the summer.
1860: Series of
fires swept North, Central, and East Texas towns following John Brown’s
raid in 1859.
1860 Approximately
182,000 African Americans were enslaved in Texas by 1860 that was
about 30 percent of the Texas population.
1860 L. M. Stroud,
a planter in antebellum Texas owned 112 slaves. He was one of the
few planters in Texas who owned more than 100 slaves.
1860: Texas held
182,556 bondsmen of the 196,494 slaves in the Western U.S.
1860: The Belleville
Countryman, semiweekly newspaper, founded on July 28th. It was published
by W. S. Thayer for editor and proprietor John P. Osterhout.
1860 Large slave
holders such as Robert and D. G. Mills had plantations in the lower
Brazos and Colorado rivers in Brazoria, Matagorda, Fort Bend, and Wharton
counties.
1860 Brazoria
County was 72 percent slave, while north central Texas had fewer slaves
than any other settled part of the state, except for Hispanic areas.
1860 The United
States census reported 355 free blacks in Texas and 182,566 slaves,
30.2 percent of the total population.
1860 Texas was
divided between a region dependent on slavery region and a largely
slave-free region.
1860 Comprising
16 percent of the total, slaves formed an important part of the town
populations in Texas.
1860 Numerically,
females dominated, making up 54 percent, of the combined slave populations
of the four largest towns in Texas.
1860 Some 69 percent
of Texas urban slaves (10 to 54 years old) worked in town occupations.
1860 A slave
revolt planned for August, in which whites were said to be involved
was described in July in a letter printed by the Texas State
Gazette that said: "It was determined by certain
abolitionist preachers, who were expelled from the country last year,
to devastate, with fire and assassination, the whole of Northern Texas,
and when it was reduced to a helpless condition, a general revolt
of slaves, aided by the white men of the North in our midst,
was to come off on the day of election in August."
1860
In the summer, when vigilance committees alleged that there was a
widespread abolitionist plot to burn Texas towns and murder their
citizens, suspicion immediately fell upon outspoken critics of slavery.
The
Confederate Flag (1861-1865)
Between
1861 and 1865, the Confederate flag flew over Texas, as it was a state
in the Confederate States of America.
1861 A story of
Lavinia Bell, a black woman who had been kidnapped at her early age
and sold into slavery in Texas, was on a Canadian newspaper.
1861: At a state
convention held in Austin delegates voted 166 to 8 to secede from
the Union. (Some 70 percent of the delegates owned slaves.)
1861 On February
23rd, Texas went to the polls and voted for secession.: 46,153
were for and 14,747 were against.
1861 The secession
of the state became official on March 2nd, Texas Independence Day.
1861 On March
5th, the Secession Convention reassembled and took further steps to
join the Confederacy.
1864 D. W. Burley,
who was a free black before the end of slavery, was a captain in a
battalion of black soldiers that defended St. Louis from Confederate
raiders.
1865: Texas’s
slave population increases to 250,000, as slave holders throughout the
United States attempt to preserve servile labor—70,000 blacks
were brought to Texas during the waning moments of the Civil War.
The United
States Flag (1866-present)
1865 D. W. Burley
arrived in Texas and organized a debating society for blacks.
June 19, 1865:
General Order No. 3, ended slavery in Texas two months after blacks
was emancipated in the Union.
1865: General
C. C. Andrews at Houston ordered that during holidays freedmen could
not have off until all the crops were gathered.
1865: The Belleville
Countryman ceased on August 21st. But it was subsequently continued
by the Texas Countryman.
1865: The Union
League, organized in the North to support the policies of President
Lincoln, established its first local council in Texas and faded as
a viable political force in 1873.
1865: The Freedmen’s
Bureau began operation in Texas under the control of General E. M.
Gregory.
1865 On November
15th, a provisional governor of Texas Andrew Jackson Hamilton issued
a proclamation fixing January 8, 1866 as the date for an election
of delegates to a constitutional convention to meet at Austin on February
7th.
1865-1868 More
than 1,500 acts of violence against blacks were committed and over
350 blacks were murdered by white Texans.
1866 The constitutional
convention in Texas adjourned on April 2nd.
1866: Texas’s
1866 Constitutional Convention gave newly freed African-American men
the right to sue or be sued, to contract and be contracted with, to
acquire and transmit property, to obtain equal criminal prosecution
under the law, and to testify orally in any case involving another
African-American.
1866: White state
constitutional convention met to write a new constitution that would
redefine black men.
1866: Gregory
Institute, a high school for black children, was established by the
Freedmen’s Bureau.
1866: Jeremiah
J. Hamilton, a black leader, organized a meeting in Bastrop to establish
unity among black laborers in controlling wages.
1866: Texas constitution
allowed separate black schools.
1867: The Texas
delegation was organized in response to the congressional edict to
extend the right to vote to all men regardless of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude.
1867: The first
ever state Republican convention that met in Houston was predominantly
Black in composition. About 150 Black Texans attended, compared to
less than 20 Whites.
1868 James McWashington
was one of five black delegates to sign the Constitution of 1869.
1868: The Freedmen’s
Bureau was phased out in Texas.
1868-1900 Forty
three African Americans served in the state legislature, and they
put their effort to move the state toward democracy.
1868-1869: The
Texas delegation split into two factions during the 1868-1869 Constitutional
Convention: the Conservatives and the Radicals.
1868-1869: Texas’s
first state president George T. Ruby, a free-born black, was elected
delegates to Texas’s Constitutional Convention.
1869: George T.
Ruby was appointed deputy collector of customs at Galveston, a position
in which he was an important patronage broker.
1870 D. W. Burley,
who was one of twelve black legislators, won election to the Texas
House of Representatives.
1870: Members
of the Radical faction of Texas delegation formed the Radical Republican
Association, an organization of white and African-American Republicans.
1870: President
Ulysses S. Grant proclaimed Reconstruction in Texas at an end on March
30th.1870: In August Texas legislature incorporated the Gregory Institute
as a black public high school.
1870-71: Franco-Prussian
war. French troops pulled out of Mexico. Texan filibusters invade
northern Mexico, seize Chihuahua and Sonora, proclaim Republic of
Sierra Madre, which requests annexation by CSA. Revolutionary forces
in Mexico execute Maximillian.
1871: The wife
of Senator Burton was thrown off a moving train when she refused to
leave the whites-only coach.
1871: Senator
Gaines, one of four African Americans to serve Texas as state senator
during the 19th century, supported the Free School Bill that helped
finance an agricultural and mechanical college (now Texas A&M
University).
1872: Paul Quinn
College was founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Austin.
Paul Quinn College began as an elementary and secondary school and
later moved to Waco.
1873: Norris Wright
Cuney, an educated black politician, organized a Color Men’s
Convention in Brenham to promote good feelings between themselves
and the white fellow citizens.
1873: Former African-American
legislator Goldstein Dupree was killed by the Ku Klux Klan while campaigning
for Governor Davis.
1873 Born as a
slave, Walter Moses Burton was elected to the Texas Senate. Representing
Fort Bend, Wharton, Waller and Austin counties he served four terms.
1873 Jacob E. Freeman
participated in the Colored Meña's Convention at Brenham, which
tried to enhance the status of African Americans in Texas politics.
1874 Sr. David
Abner, who was born into slavery, was elected to the Texas legislature.
1874 Jacob E.
Freeman won election to the Texas House of Representatives for the
14th Legislature and served on the Penitentiary Committee.
1875 Bird B. Davis,
who was born into slavery, represented Wharton County at the Texas
Constitutional Convention of 1875.
1875: On January
23rd a committee was appointed by the mayor of the Houston to look
into the possibility of establishing a system of free schools in Houston.
1875: Matthew
Gaines, one of four African Americans to serve Texas as state senator
during the 19th century, was arrested for making a civil rights speech
in Giddings, Texas.
1876: Ratified
by voters the constitution reiterated that the right to vote could
not be restricted by race, although it could be restricted by sex.
And proposed bill for women’s suffrage was ignored during the
convention.
1876: The Agricultural
and Mechanical College of Texas for Colored Youths; known today as
Prairie View; was founded.
1878: Prairie
View opened with only eight black men.
1879 As
part of the "Exodus of 1879," a few thousand black
Texans moved to Kansas to seek greater opportunities
1883: Texan compensated
emancipation scheme ruled unconstitutional by Confederate Supreme
Court. Populist Party founded in Confederacy.
1885-1914: Republic
of Texas becomes important oil and beef producer; dependence on plantation
agriculture weakened. Texas Ranger police/army organization reformed
after Apache Wars (1873-1898).
1887: William
H. Holland, who was born as a slave in Marshall in 1841, petitioned
the Texas Legislature to establish a Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Institute
for Colored Youth, and legislation was passed.
1887-1888 Houston
A. P. Bassett represented Grimes County in the Texas House of Representatives
during the 20th Legislature.
1889: Texas called
constitutional convention. Attempt to amend constitution to abolish
slavery failed. Texas seceded from the CSA and reestablished itself
as an independent republic. Texas Constitution abolished slavery without
compensation.
1889: Texas initiated
segregation of public transportation
1889 A black Republican
party member, Alexander Asberry who was born into slavery in Wilderville
served in the 21st Legislature.
1895: Riots in
Texas Rangers, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Alabama militia killed
over 5,000 freed slaves in a 5-day period; much of the city was destroyed.
1892: Three slaves
- Patrick Jennigsm, Sam Smith, and a slave called "Cato"
- were hanged in Dallas.
1900:
35,000 blacks worked as farm laborers, 45,000 farmed as tenants, and
20,000 owned the land they tilled.
1900 The number
of blacks in Texas grew to more than 600,000 even though the percentage
of the blacks in Texas fell to 20 percent of the population by 1900.
1901: The New
Century Cotton Mills at Dallas was organized by a Negro Masonic Lodge.
1906 Fewer than
5,000 blacks voted in the state after the imposition of a poll tax
in 1902 and the passage of the white primary law in 1903.
1909: Penny Savings
Bank opened, which was black owned.
1910: Segregated
neighborhoods established in Texas. Dallas city ordinance passed designating
the boundaries of black and white neighborhoods.
1910: Negro Democratic
League was organized by black leaders in search of a political home.
1910: Texas school
districts spent an average of $10 per year on white students and $5.74
on black students.
1912 The 1st Texas
chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People) was organized in Houston. It was three years after
the national organization had been founded.
1914: The Progressive
Party barred blacks from it organization.
1917: The Morrill
Act and the Smith-Hughes Act helped establish four black high schools.
1919: An Equal
Rights Association was organized by blacks to promote democratic government
and equal justice.
1927: Texas law
that prevented blacks from voting in “white primaries”
overturned.
1929 – 1930’s:
The Great Depression struck hard at black Texans with an increase
of unemployment from 4.8 per cent to 8.8 per cent in 1933.
1933: Blacks and
white could not wrestle together.
1936 Blacks participated
in the Texas Centennial of 1936, where they were allowed to disseminate
information on the contributions they made to the state and to the nation's
development.
1936 From the
Negro Day celebration of 1936 three organizations emerged: the Texas
State Conference of Branches of the NAACP, the Texas State Negro Chamber
of Commerce, and the Texas Negro Peace Officers Association (now the
Texas Peace Officers Association).
1936: Barbara
Jordan Born on February 21 in Houston, Texas
1939: Black farmers
received loans and marketing guidance from the Farm Security Administration
to alleviate the suffrage from the Great Depression.
1941: The Texas
Commission on Democracy in Education was established by the Colored
Teachers State Association to promote equality for black teachers
and schools.
1943: Texas Council
of Negro Organizations attacked segregation of public colleges.
1944 Texas blacks
won a Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Allwright case of 1944, which
declared the white primary unconstitutional.
1950:
Texas blacks won a major Supreme Court decision in the Sweatt v. Painter
case that eliminated segregation in graduate and professional schools.
The U.S. Supreme Court ordered that Herman Sweatt and four other blacks
be allowed to register at the University of Texas at Austin law school.
1952: Colleges
began to integrate
1954 Brown
v Board of Education Supreme Court decision declared that the 1896
Plessy v Ferguson ruling of "separate but equal" was unconstitutional.
The integration of schools began for school districts from the Brown
case.
1956 Opposing
the Brown decision R. Allan Shivers, Texas Governor, called out Texas
Rangers to prevent Black students from entering the public school
in Mansfield.
1956: Barbara
Jordan graduates magna cum laude from Texas Southern University
1958: There were
over 120 school districts that integrated their schools; except in
Dallas and Houston school districts.
1959: Barbara
Jordan graduates from Boston University Law School
1960’s:
Black and white students from Texas Southern University in Houston,
the University of Texas at Austin, and other colleges across Texas
began to protest restaurant and theater segregation.
1962 Barbara Jordan
runs for the Texas House of Representatives, loses election
1963: NAACP and
the Congress of Racial Equality picketed, petitioned, and boycotted
against segregation in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio.
1964: The Civil
Rights Act passed; which made other school districts to integrate
their schools.
1964 Barbara Jordan
loses second campaign for the Texas legislature
1965: The Future
Farmers of America and the Future Homemakers of America emerged with
the New Farmers of America and the New Homemakers of America, the
black counterparts.
1966: The poll
tax requirement to vote was struck down by the Supreme Court.
1966: Black high
schools began to participate in the Texas Interscholastic League sports
competition.
1966: Barbara
Jordan elected to the Texas State Senate, becoming the state's first
black senator since 1883; gains support of President Lyndon B. Johnson
1968: Barbara
Jordan wins second term in Texas senate
1970: 75 per cent
of the black students in Texas went to integrated schools reported
by the Texas Education Agency.
1971 Judson Robinson
became the first black city councilman in Houston.
1971: Federal
judge eliminated last of the all-black schools by combining them with
white and biracial school districts.
1972: Barbara
Jordan elected to U.S. House of Representatives; assigned to House
Judiciary Committee
1979: Barbara
Jordan Retires from public life; becomes professor at University
of Texas-Austin
1983 Dallas was
named one of the ten best cities for blacks due to the social,
political, and economic opportunities for African Americans.
1989 – 1995:
Texas Statutes did not authorize sentencing prisoners to hard labor
as part of their punishment. (Statutes before and after did authorize
the imposition of such slavery.)
1994: Barbara
Jordan Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom
1996: Barbara
Jordan Dies in Austin Texas on January 17
Related
Links:
Six
National Flags of Texas Flags
North
Texas Opposed Secession in 1860
George
T. Ruby
Progressive
Party
Brownsville
Raid
Brown
Case
Civil
Rights Act of 1964
Bibliography:
Alwyn Barr, Black Texans: A History of Negroes in Texas, 1528-1971
(Austin: Jenkins Publishing Company, 1982), pp. 39-69.
Alwyn Barr and
Robert A. Calvert, eds., Black Leaders: Texans for Their Times
(Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1981).
Alexander Hogg,
Industrial Education [Origin and Progress.] State Agricultural
and Mechanical College of Texas (Galveston, Texas: The Galveston News,
1879), pp. 23-39.