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AFRICAN AMERICANS. People of African descent are some of the oldest residents of Texas. Beginning with the arrival of Estevanicoqv in 1528, African Texans have had a long heritage in the state and have worked alongside Americans of Mexican, European, and indigenous descent to make the state what it is today. The African-American history of Texas has also been paradoxical. On the one hand, blacks have worked with others to build the state's unique cultural heritage. But on the other hand, African Americans have been subjected to slavery,qv racial prejudice, and exclusion from the mainstream of state institutions. Their contributions to the state's development and growth in spite of these obstacles have been truly remarkable. From the beginning of European settlement in Texas, people of African descent were present. In 1528 Estevanico, a Moor, accompanied Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vacaqv across the territory known today as Texas. Estevanico was an important member of Cabeza de Vaca's mission because he could interpret the languages of many of the Indians that the expedition encountered. Along with the other members of the expedition he was captured by Indians and enslaved for five years. After escaping, Estevanico and the surviving members of the expedition made their way to Mexico. In 1539 he accompanied a second expedition into the Southwest. This time he was murdered by the Zuñi Indians and the mission failed. Other pioneer Africans accompanied the Spanish into the Southwest, and some settled with them in the region known today as Texas. By 1792 Spanish Texasqv numbered thirty-four blacks and 414 mulattoes. Some of them were free men and women. Unlike Estevanico and some of the Africans who inhabited the province prior to settlement by Anglo-Americans, most African Americans entered the area as slaves. The first Anglo-Americans who settled in Texas came from the southern United States and were accustomed to using African slaves as an important source of labor. During the first fifteen years of white settlement in Texas, from 1821 to the Texas Revolutionqv of 1836, slavery grew very slowly. On the eve of the Revolution only about 5,000 blacks were enslaved in Texas. With independence from Mexico, however, whites made African slavery an integral part of the state's economic development, and the institution of slavery grew rapidly. By 1840, 11,000 African Americans were enslaved in Texas. By 1850, 58,000 were enslaved, and by 1860, 182,000-30 percent of the Texas population. According to historian Randolph Campbell, slavery in Texas was similar to that in other parts of the American South. The records gathered by Campbell as well as the testimony of African Americans enslaved in Texas attest to the fact that black slaves in Texas had as harsh and as easy a lot as slaves in other parts of the South. Two cases illustrate this fact. In 1861 a Canadian newspaper published the story of Lavinia Bell, a black woman who had been kidnapped at an early age and sold into slavery in Texas. She escaped from bondage and told of being forced to work naked in the cottonfields near Galveston. She also told about how after her first escape attempt, she was physically mutilated and beaten severely by her owner. Other African Americans who were enslaved in Texas told similar stories of violence and cruelty by their owners. Hundreds sought escape, especially to Mexico. But there were also cases such as that of Joshua Houston,qv one of the slaves of Sam Houston.qv Joshua, owned initially by Houston's second wife, became an important member of Houston's family. He was treated well, taught to read and write, and prepared well for his eventual emancipation by the Houston family. After the Civil Warqv Joshua became a politician in Huntsville, and, as if to underscore his loyalty to his former owners, on one occasion he offered to lend money to Sam Houston's widow when she faced financial difficulties. While the treatment of African Americans enslaved in Texas may have varied on the basis of the disposition of individual slaveowners, it was clear that white Texans in general accepted and defended slavery. Moreover, slavery in Texas had all of the characteristics that had made it successful in other parts of the South. For instance, slaveholders dominated the state's economic and political life. The government of the Republic of Texasqv and, after 1845, the state legislature passed a series of slave codes to regulate the behavior of slaves and restrict the rights of free blacks. The census counted about 400 free blacks in 1850, although there may have been close to 1,000. White Texans also restricted the civil liberties of white opponents of slavery in order to suppress dissent about the institution. When rumors of a slave insurrection circulated in the state in 1860, Texans virtually suspended civil liberties and due process in the state. Suspected abolitionists were expelled from the state, and one was even hanged. A vigilante group in Dallas lynched three African-American slaves who were suspected of starting a fire that burnt most of the downtown area. Other slaves in the county were whipped. The Texas vote for secessionqv in February 1861 hastened the end of slavery and set in motion the eventual liberation of the state's African-American population. For blacks in Texas, freedom did not come until Juneteenth,qv June 19, 1865. In contrast to other parts of the South, where the approach of the Union Army encouraged thousands of enslaved blacks to free themselves and run away, Texas blacks remained enslaved until the end of the Civil War. Few were able to run away and enlist in the Union Army, as black men did in other parts of the South. The Reconstructionqv era presented black Texans another challenge. Many had to rebuild their lives, locate lost family members, and begin to live their lives as self-sufficient, free men and women. The establishment of the Freedmen's Bureauqv in the state aided this transition from slavery to freedom. But given the continuing racial animosity that separated blacks and whites after the war, this was not an easy task. The state legislature and several Texas cities passed Black Codesqv to restrict the rights of blacks, to prevent them from having free access to public facilities, and to force them back to the rural areas as agricultural laborers. The use of the political and legal system to regulate black behavior was accompanied by a literal reign of terror in the state. From 1865 to 1868 white Texans committed over 1,500 acts of violence against blacks; more than 350 blacks were murdered by whites. These were attempts to reestablish white supremacy and to force blacks back into their "place." Only the intervention of Congress and the imposition of military rule in the state after 1867 eliminated the Black Codes and brought a modicum of safety to African Americans. The arrival of military and Congressional efforts to protect black rights ushered in the second phase of Reconstruction in the state. In this period African Americans made a substantial contribution to the transition of Texas from a slave-labor state to one based on free labor. Ten African-American delegates at the Constitutional Convention of 1868-69qv helped to write a constitution that protected civil rights, established the state's first public education system, and extended the franchise to all men. Between 1868 and 1900, forty-three African Americans served in the state legislature, and they helped to move the state toward democracy. Such black Reconstruction leaders as George T. Ruby and Norris Wright Cuneyqqv became important members of the Republican partyqv and, along with other blacks, dominated state Republican politics through the turn of the twentieth century. During the course of the Reconstruction period, many African Americans moved from the state's rural areas to cities such as Dallas, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. On the outskirts of these cities they established "freedmantowns," which became the distinct black neighborhoods that still exist today. Black labor also contributed substantially to the economic development of these cities and helped the state to begin the transition from its near-total dependence on agriculture to industrialization. In 1879 a few thousand black Texans moved to Kansas seeking greater opportunities. Other black Texans participated in the postwar cattle boom (see BLACK COWBOYS), while the presence on the frontier of black soldiers, called Buffalo Soldiersqv by their Indian foes, exemplified the desire of many blacks to enter into the military responsibilities of citizenship. As in other parts of the South, Reconstruction lasted only a short time in Texas. Democrats regained control of the state in 1873 and proceeded to reverse many of the democratic reforms instituted by black and white Republicans. Between 1874 and 1900 the gains that African Americans had made in the political arena were virtually lost. In the 1890s, for example, more than 100,000 blacks voted in Texas elections. But after the imposition of a poll tax in 1902 and the passage of the white primaryqv law in 1903, fewer than 5,000 blacks voted in the state in 1906. In addition, segregation was established in all facets of public and private life in Texas for African Americans. In Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, public transportation and accommodations, schools, and, eventually, neighborhoods were segregated by law. Blacks in Houston and San Antonio challenged segregation on public transportation by forming their own bus and jitney companies. Dallas blacks won a case in 1916 that overturned a residential segregation ordinance. But nothing succeeded in stemming the tide of segregation that restricted the rights of black Texans by the early twentieth century. The victims of lynching,qv which did not end until the 1940s, were predominantly black. Riotsqv destroyed black neighborhoods. African Americans became disfranchised, second-class citizens, denied the basic human rights other citizens in the state took for granted. As a result, several thousand black Texans moved out of the state to the North and West in the twentieth century. Although the percentage of blacks in Texas fell to 20 percent of the population by 1900 and declined further in the twentieth century, their numbers grew to more than 600,000 in 1900 and 900,000 in 1940. Despite their second-class status, African Americans still built viable and progressive communities throughout the state. Almost immediately after Civil War, they established churches, schools, and other social organizations to serve their own needs. They established newspapers (the Dallas Express, Houston Informer and Texas Freeman, and San Antonio Registerqqv), grocery stores, funeral homes, and other business establishments that served a predominant African-American clientele. In the late nineteenth century black farmers formed a cooperative to encourage black land ownership and to raise crop prices. From 1900 to 1940 a majority of black Texans remained in farming, with about 20 percent owning their land while most rented farms as tenants. The Great Depressionqv of the 1930s hastened a trend toward urbanization. In the same period blacks in Dallas organized a cotton-processing mill, but it failed in less than five years. These self-help and economic development efforts by black Texans indicate that they did not allow the oppression of white racism to deter them from striving to build successful communities. After the Civil War, African Americans also developed their first educational institutions. Black collegesqv such as Bishop, Paul Quinn, and Wiley were founded by several religious denominations, primarily Baptist and Methodist organizations. African-American churchesqv such as Boll Street African Methodist Episcopal in Dallas also started the first schools in that city for black children. The city of Houston provided schools for its black citizens beginning in 1871. By 1888 the city government in Dallas followed suit. African Americans also contributed to the state's social and cultural heritage in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Musicians such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Huddie (Leadbelly) Ledbetter, Eddie Durham, Scott Joplin,qqv Bobbi Humphrey, and many others became innovators in blues, jazz,qqv and ragtime. Singers such as Julius L. C. Bledsoeqv and Osceola Mays sang songs from the African-American folk tradition as well as their own contemporary compositions. Such writers as Maude Cuney-Hare, J. Mason Brewer, and Sutton Griggsqqv wrote biographies and novels and recorded the folklore of black Texans. Artist John Biggers of Houston became one of the nation's most important mural painters and an internationally recognized artist. In sports, such black Texans as Charlie Taylor, Ernie Banks, Jack Johnson,qv and George Foreman earned national fame in football, baseball, and boxing. After the integration of the state's universities, black Texas athletes such as Earl Campbell of the University of Texas at Austin, Elvin Hayes of the University of Houston, and Jerry Levias of Southern Methodist University had outstanding college athletic careers. One of the most significant achievements of blacks in the state was their participation in the Texas Centennialqv of 1936. This event was important because it allowed African Americans to highlight the contributions that they had made to the state's and the nation's development. Through the efforts of A. Maceo Smithqv of the Dallas Negro Chamber of Commerce and Samuel W. Houstonqv of Huntsville, the Hall of Negro Lifeqv was built at Fair Parkqv in Dallas to bring to the state the works of Harlem Renaissance painter Aaron Douglass as well as to exhibit the paintings of Texas artists Samuel A. Countee of Houston and Frank Sheinall of Galveston. More importantly, the Negro Day event held in Dallas as the black celebration of the Texas Centennial proved to be an important opportunity for black Texans to meet and plan strategy to end the segregation and discrimination that they faced. Three organizations emerged from the Negro Day celebration of 1936: the Texas State Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Texas State Negro Chamber of Commerce, and the Texas Negro Peace Officers Association (now the Texas Peace Officers Associationqv). All three organizations had as their objective to improve the lot of blacks in Texas. The Texas Centennial was indeed a watershed event for African Americans. After it they launched a campaign to win the citizenship rights that the state's segregation laws and racist tradition denied them. Texas blacks won two of the nation's most significant civil-rights cases. They renewed challenges to the state's white primary system four times, and, eventually, they won a Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Allwright (1944), which declared the white primary unconstitutional. This landmark case won by black Texans opened primaries for blacks throughout the South. In 1950, black Texans also won one of the major legal cases that eliminated segregation in the South's graduate and professional schools. The Sweatt v. Painterqv case, filed by Thurgood Marshall, legal counsel of the NAACP, and local NAACP attorney William J. Durham of Dallas, forced the University of Texas Law School to admit black students. Although the Sweatt case was one of several cases that the NAACP filed to gain entry for black students into graduate and professional schools, it also became one of the cases that laid the groundwork for the NAACP's challenge to segregation in public schools in the famous Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas case. Despite the notion among some historians that Texas did not need a civil-rights movementqv to end its legacy of racial discrimination, African Americans had to use both the courts and direct action in the 1950s and 1960s to win access to public services throughout the state. Using a variety of methods, black citizens won the right to sit on juries, equal pay for equal work for black teachers, the elimination of residential segregation in the state's major cities, jobs on the police forces of Dallas and Fort Worth, and open seating on public transportation throughout the state. They also used sit-ins in Houston and Marshall to end segregation in public accommodations. By the mid-1960s, only one area of citizenship rights continued to elude black Texans: serving in elective office. In 1958, Houstonian Hattie White became the first African American to win an elective office in the state since Reconstruction by winning a seat on the school board. But many citizens thought that she was white and voted for her in error. She served ten turbulent years on the Houston school board, fighting constantly to force other members of the board to implement court-ordered desegregation of the school system. After Mrs. White's election black Texans did not win another elective office until 1966, when several black candidates throughout the state won political races. Among the pioneers were Joe Lockridge of Dallas, who won a seat in the state house of representatives, and Barbara Jordan of Houston, who won a seat in the Texas Senate. In 1971, Judson Robinson became Houston's first black city councilman since Reconstruction. A year later Barbara Jordan was elected to the United States House of Representatives, thus becoming the first African American in Texas history to represent the state in Congress. Her election symbolized the progress that blacks had made in the state after over 100 years of racial segregation and exclusion. Despite the lingering effects of the old racist and segregationist legacy, African Americans continued to achieve in both the private and public spheres in the state. They won elective office on the city, county, and statewide levels. In 1992, for example, Morris Overstreet of Amarillo became the first African American to win a statewide office when he was elected a judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.qv Employment opportunities also increased significantly for black Texans, especially in the larger urban areas such as Dallas and Houston. In 1983, for instance, Dallas was named "one of the ten best cities for blacks" because of the social, political, and economic opportunities available there for African Americans. In addition, African Americans continued to participate in the state's social and cultural life and to add their creative talents to the state's as well as the nation's artistic development. Two of many examples are the works added to American literature by Houston playwright and author Ntozake Shange and short story writer J. California Cooper of East Texas. Shange's work "for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf" played on Broadway and toured the country for several years. Her novels Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo (1982) and Betsey Brown (1985) were national best-sellers. Cooper's short stories in A Piece of Mine (1984) and Family (1991) also earned her national acclaim. These achievements were the result of black Texans' ongoing struggle for equal opportunity and human dignity. African Americans have lived in the area known as Texas as long as any other ethnic group except American Indians. Throughout their history in the state, they have contributed their blood, sweat, and hard labor to make Texas what it is in the 1990s. Although the 2,000,000 black Texans in 1990 formed only 12 percent of the state's population, blacks had made major contributions to Texas history and culture. The previous thirty years of African-American history in Texas had been quite eventful. During that period black citizens had taken major steps toward reversing the negative aspects of the previous 100 years. Yet, they had only begun to reap the benefits of their labor and persistence. See also CIVIL RIGHTS, ANTEBELLUM TEXAS, TEXAS TROUBLES, SLAVE INSURRECTIONS, ABOLITION, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, ELECTION LAWS, BLACK EXTENSION SERVICE, COLORED FARMERS' ALLIANCE, FARM TENANCY, and DALLAS BLACK CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Alwyn Barr, Black Texans: A History of Negroes in Texas, 1528-1971 (Austin: Jenkins, 1973). Howard Beeth and Cary D. Wintz, eds., Black Dixie: Afro-Texan History and Culture in Houston (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992). Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989). Barry A. Crouch, The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Texans (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992). Chandler Davidson, Biracial Politics: Conflict and Coalition in the Metropolitan South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972). W. Marvin Dulaney and Kathleen Underwood, eds., Essays on the American Civil Rights Movement (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993). Darlene Clark Hine, Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the White Primary in Texas (Millwood, New York: KTO Press, 1979). Merline Pitre, Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares: The Black Leadership of Texas, 1868-1900 (Austin: Eakin, 1985). Lawrence D. Rice, The Negro in Texas, 1874-1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971). James Smallwood, Time of Hope, Time of Despair: Black Texans during Reconstruction (London: Kennikat, 1981). Ruthe Winegarten, Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995). W. Marvin Dulaney
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