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February is Black History Month, a time to highlight the stories and honor the accomplishments of African Americans. Their
achievements in the Lone Star State can be found throughout the Handbook of Texas Online.
One important and ultimately poignant chapter in the history of Texas African Americans took place during Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War when blacks and whites re-imagined their relationship to each other. Freed from slavery after a long and bitter conflict,
black Texans, aided by the Freedmen's Bureau and intermittently protected by federal troops, experimented with the economic, educational, and political boundaries of
their new status.
Political participation was a particularly important arena in which black Texans staked a claim for equality. The newly freed
Texans enthusiastically formed political organizations, voted, and sought political office. Richard Allen, for example, came to Texas as a slave in 1837 and began an extraordinary political career after being freed in 1865. He
served as a voter registrar in 1867 and as a Freedmen’s Bureau agent in 1868. Allen helped organize the Republican Party in Harris County and was elected to the Twelfth Legislature as one of the first and most active black legislators. In 1878
he was nominated for lieutenant governor, thus becoming the first African American to run for statewide office in Texas.
Another black leader, Mathew Gaines, secretly taught himself to read while still a slave. After emancipation he became a minister and politician, serving as
a state senator and championing education for the black community. He also successfully pressed for the Militia Bill, which
enabled black communities to protect themselves against mob violence.
State senator George T. Ruby was an important figure in the leadership of the Union League and the Texas Republican Party, and was dubbed “the most important black politician in Texas during Reconstruction in terms
of power and ability” by one historian.
The white majority viewed all of these gains with hostility and sought to reestablish the status quo through Black Codes, secret societies such as the Ku Klux Klan, and ultimately disenfranchisement of black voters. By the end of the nineteenth century Texas blacks had lost most of their
political clout, and Jim Crow had made segregation the law of the land. A few black leaders, including Allen and Ruby, became disillusioned and urged blacks to leave the state,
but many black Texans remained and persevered. Though their political, social, and economic gains were eroded over time, Reconstruction-era
blacks made important strides toward equality, laying the foundation for the civil-rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.
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