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Why did Texas have a poll tax, and when did it end? Curious Texas investigates

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Tony Torres, who grew up in the 1950s, remembers seeing his parents scramble to gather money, simply to pay a poll tax to vote."My parents raised...

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The 1910 Slocum Massacre in East Texas officially saw between eight and 22 African Americans killed, and evidence suggests casualties were 10 times these amounts. Yet the massacre has become a dirty Lone Star secret, remarkable more for the inattention it has received than for its remembrance.

Unlike most Texas communities in the early 20th century, the unincorporated town of Slocum - like Rosewood, Florida - was largely African American, with several Black citizens considerably propertied and a few owning stores and other businesses. This alone, in parts of the South, might have been enough to foment violence. But in the area around Slocum, roughly 100 miles east of Waco, there were other issues, according to newspaper reports and other sometimes conflicting accounts of the massacre.

When a white man reportedly tried to collect a disputed debt from a well-regarded Black citizen, a confrontation occurred. Hard feelings lingered. When a regional road construction foreman put an African American in charge of rounding up help for local road improvements, a prominent white citizen named Jim Spurger was infuriated and became an agitator.

Rumors spread, warning of threats against Anglo citizens and plans for race riots. White malcontents manipulated the local Anglo population and, on July 29, white hysteria transmogrified into bloodshed.

Stoked and goaded by Spurger and others, a collection of white mobs made up of Slocum locals and heavily armed white residents from all over Anderson County roamed through the area in groups of six or seven or in mobs of 30 to 40 and, according to some reports, up to 200. Members of the mobs engaged in what authorities later termed a "potshot" occasion, firing on Black citizens at will. They moved from road to road and cabin to cabin, shooting down African Americans in their tracks. Survivors of the bloodshed spread the word, and African Americans began fleeing. The white mobs followed Blacks into the surrounding forests and marshes and shot many victims in the back as they fled. Several bodies were discovered with bundles of clothing and personal effects at their sides.

Every initial newspaper report on the transpiring bloodshed portrayed the African Americans as armed instigators, but these accounts were heinous mischaracterizations. Anderson County Sheriff William H. Black, of Palestine, Texas, and Special Deputy Godfrey Rees Fowler arrived in the Slocum area, and they discovered a terrified white populace, most of whom had slept overnight in churches and schoolhouses. But it was increasingly apparent that the alleged African American mob that had supposedly conspired to attack the local white community hadn't materialized.

When reporters gathered on July 31, up to two dozen murders had been reported, but local authorities had only eight bodies. Sheriff Black said it would be "difficult to find out just how many were killed" because they were "scattered all over the woods," and buzzards would find many of the victims first.

"Men were going about killing Negroes as fast as they could find them," Sheriff Black told the New York Times. "These Negroes have done no wrong that I can discover," Black continued. "I don't know how many were in the mob, but there may have been 200 or 300. They hunted the Negroes down like sheep."

The truth is, a harrowing number of African Americans were slaughtered in the counties of Anderson and Houston in the mid-summer of 1910. Yet today it's almost never spoke of, much less widely acknowledged, sufficiently researched, or historically considered, including its omission in A Centennial History of Anderson County, Texas (1936) and History of Houston County, Texas, 1687-1979 (1979).

Context and National Response

In every month for the six months leading up to the Slocum Massacre, an African American in the East Texas region was executed by a white mob based on allegations alone. No trials, no juries - simply white verdicts. After the lynching of Allen Brooks, just four months prior to the Slocum Massacre, a photograph of his hanging body and a crowd of a hundred spectators was made into a postcard that was mailed to friends and family. And these injustices weren't exceptions to the rule; rather, they were the rule under which African Americans lived and died in that part of the world.

On August 13, 1910, a group of more than 150 African American ministers from Washington, D.C., sent a letter to President Taft regarding the Slocum Massacre. In the letter, the committee implored President Taft to use the powers of his "great office to suppress lynchings, murder, and other forms of lawlessness" and to do something to "make human life more valuable and law more universally respected."

The attorney general responded on August 24 with a succinct letter stating, "The protection of life and property is generally a duty devolving up the state authorities," and continued "Your letter and petition deal with the subject of the treatment of colored persons generally and therefore furnish no facts which would warrant this Department in taking any steps to redress the wrongs complained of."

Trial and Aftermath

At the initial grand jury hearing of the suspects charged in the Slocum atrocity, nearly every remaining resident was subpoenaed; some refused to testify and were arrested. By the time the grand jury findings were reported on August 17, several hundred witnesses had been examined. Though 11 men were initially arrested, seven were indicted. The grand jury judge moved the trial to Harris County, distrusting the potential jury of peers the defendants might receive in Anderson County. The indictments received no interest or justice in Harris County. Eventually, all those charged were released, and none of the indictments were ever prosecuted.

In the meanwhile, the personal holdings of many Slocum-area Anglo citizens fortuitously increased. The abandoned African American properties were absorbed or repurposed as the now-majority white population saw fit. The standard Southern Anglocentric world order was restored.

The community reflects effects of the event to this day. While most nearby towns have African American populations of 20 percent or more, Slocum's is just under 7 percent.

Recent Acknowledgments

On March 30, 2011, after a two-part February feature on the Slocum Massacre by Tim Madigan in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the 82nd Texas Legislature adopted House of Representatives Resolution 865, acknowledging the incident.

On January 16, 2016, a historical marker to the Slocum Massacre was unveiled. In a Washington Post article, Constance Hollie-Jawaid, who is a descendant of victims of the massacre and who applied for the historical marker, said, "This most definitely helps restore [the Slocum Massacre] to its proper place." Hollie-Jawaid continued, "It was being ignored, and by ignoring it, you're spitting in the face of those who died during that tragic event. You're basically saying either it didn't happen or it was not important, and it's very, very important."

Despite local opposition to the marker, Chris Florance, spokesperson for the Texas Historical Society, told the Washington Post, "There is difficult history in the state, and this shows there has been a lot of change." Longtime State Judge Bascom Bentley also noted, "I'm glad the marker is there. It's part of our history, an ugly part. But the purpose of history is to teach us how to do better in the present and future."

The atrocities committed in the Slocum area in 1910 should give us all pause and spur commitments to definitively establish the truth, fully acknowledge it, and honestly and constructively address it.

E. R. Bills is the author of The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas. Bills received a degree in journalism from Southwest Texas State University in 1990. Reprinted here with permission of the author. Versions of this story have been published on Dissident Voice, the Statesman, and the Patrick Murfin blog.
Our thanks to Constance Hollie-Jawaid (formerly Constance Hollie-Ramirez), a descendant of victims of the 1910 Slocum Massacre, for sharing this story with the Zinn Education Project. Hollie-Jawaid was a Dallas Independent School District principal for many years.

Posted on: Huffington Post.

© 2016 The Zinn Education Project.

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July 29, 1910: Slocum Massacre in Texas - Zinn Education Project

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The 1910 Slocum Massacre in East Texas officially saw between eight and 22 African Americans killed, and evidence suggests casualties were 10 times these amounts. Yet the massacre has become a dirty Lone Star secret, remarkable more for the inattention it has received than for its remembrance.

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1912 opening of the Colored Carnegie Library in Houston

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1912 opening of the Colored Carnegie Library in Houston

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Colored Carnegie Library, Houston, Texas (1913-1961) •

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The Colored Carnegie Library was a segregated branch of the Houston Lyceum and Carnegie Library (later the Houston Public Library). It opened in 1913 in Houston’s Fourth Ward and was one of the first public libraries for African-Americans west of the Mississippi River. It was … Read MoreColored Carn…

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1913 Founding of the "Harlem Hellfighters"

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1913 Founding of the "Harlem Hellfighters"

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1913 Founding of the "Harlem Hellfighters" - Google Search

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1915 The formation of the NAACP in Texas

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1915 The formation of the NAACP in Texas

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1915 The formation of the NAACP in Texas - Google Search

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Nestled in the border town of El Paso, the first Texas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People arose in 1915.

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Lynching of Jesse Washington - Wikipedia

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Large crowd looking at the burned body of Washington

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1942 Houston Riot of 19178. Dorris Miller Awarded Medal of Honer

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1942 Houston Riot of 19178. Dorris Miller Awarded Medal of Honer

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DORIS MILLER (12 Oct.1919- 24 Nov.1943).

Doris (Dorie) Miller, African-American hero of World War II, was born Doris Miller in Waco, Texas, on October 12, 1919, the son of sharecroppers Connery and Henrietta Miller. Miller entered A. J. Moore High School in Waco and became the school's star fullback. As the third of four sons in a family engaged in subsistence farming, he was forced to drop out of school. He supplemented the family income by working as a cook in a small restaurant in Waco during the Great Depression.

Less than a month before his twentieth birthday, Miller enlisted in the United States Navy at its Dallas recruiting station. Following bootcamp training in Norfolk, Virginia, he was assigned to the USS West Virginia as a messman.

On December 7, 1941, Mess Attendant Second Class Doris Miller was collecting soiled laundry just before 8:00 A.M. When the first bombs blasted his ship at anchor in Pearl Harbor, Miller went to the main deck where he assisted in moving the mortally wounded captain.

He then raced to an unattended deck gun and fired at the attacking planes until forced to abandon ship. It was Miller's first experience firing such a weapon because black sailors serving in the segregated steward's branch of the navy were not given the gunnery training received by white sailors. Although news stories have credited Miller with downing from two to five airplanes, these accounts have never been verified and are almost certainly apocryphal. Miller himself told Navy officials he thought he hit one of the planes. Navy officials conferred the Navy Cross upon Miller on May 27, 1942, in a ceremony at Pearl Harbor.

Following a Christmas leave in 1942, when he saw his home and family in Waco for the last time, Miller reported to duty aboard the aircraft carrier Liscome Bay (or Liscomb Bay) as a mess attendant, first class. During the battle of the Gilbert Islands, on November 24, 1943, his ship was torpedoed and sunk in the Pacific Ocean, and Miller perished. At that time, he had been promoted to cook, third class, and probably worked in the ship's galley. In addition to conferring upon him the Navy Cross, the navy honored Doris Miller by naming a dining hall, a barracks, and a destroyer escort for him. The USS Miller is the third naval ship to be named after a black navy man.

In Waco a YMCA branch, a park, and a cemetery bear his name. In Houston, Texas, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, elementary schools have been named for him, as has a Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter in Los Angeles. An auditorium on the campus of Huston-Tillotson College in Austin is dedicated to his memory. In Chicago the Doris Miller Foundation honors persons who make significant contributions to racial understanding.

Research: James M. SoRelle

Professor of History, Baylor University

Additional Research on Doris Miller

"How Doris Miller Changed the Movies" by Professor Robert Darden, Baylor University (PDF)

"Boy's Chance Meeting with Father of Hero" by Wilton Lanning
Medal of Honor Request Tom Landry Presents Doris Miller (Video) Photo of Doris's parents in 1942 The Texas Collection at Baylor - Info on Doris Miller

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DORIS MILLER (12 Oct.1919- 24 Nov.1943). Doris (Dorie) Miller, African-American hero of World War II, was born Doris Miller in Waco, Texas, on October 12, 1919, the son of sharecroppers Connery and Henrietta Miller. Miller entered A. J. Moore High School in Waco and became the school's star fullback.

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Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court with regard to voting rights and, by extension, racial desegregation. It overturned the Texas state law that authorized parties to set their internal rules, including the use of white primaries. The court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state to delegate its authority over elections to parties in order to allow discrimination to be practiced. This ruling affected all other states where the party used the white primary rule.

The Democratic Party had effectively excluded minority voter participation by this means, another device for legal disenfranchisement of blacks across the South beginning in the late 19th century.

Lonnie E. Smith, a black dentist from the Fifth Ward area of Houston and a voter in Harris County, Texas, sued county election official S. S. Allwright for the right to vote in a primary election being conducted by the Democratic Party. He challenged the 1923 state law that authorized the party to establish its internal rules; the party required all voters in its primary to be white.

The Democratic Party had controlled politics in the South since the late 19th century (see Solid South) and the state legislatures of the former Confederacy effectively disenfranchised blacks in the period from 1890 to 1908, by new constitutions and laws raising barriers to voter registration and voting. This crippled the Republican Party in all southern states except Tennessee and North Carolina where exceedingly loyal Unionist Appalachian white Republicanism remained, and resulted in the only competitive elections being held within the Democratic Party primary. Texas had used poll taxes and the white primary to exclude nearly all blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities from voting (the poll tax also had the effect of excluding poor whites prior to the establishment of mechanisms like the Grandfather clause which refranchised them).

Smith v. Allwright questioned whether or not states had the constitutional right to deny voters based on party membership. The Democratic Party of Texas denied Smith the right to vote on the basis of his skin color. Smith was attempting to cast his vote for a Democratic primary in which candidates for the House of Representatives, Senate, and Governor were being nominated, in addition to other state officers. The Texas Constitution states that every person qualified by residence in a district or county, in addition to other factors that are not relevant, "shall be deemed a qualified elector" in Article VI, §2, and Chapters Twelve and Thirteen of the statutes require primary elections for Senators, Representatives, and state officers. The Democratic Party of Texas was a "voluntary association" and protected from interference from the state except "in the interest of fair methods and a fair expression by their members of their preferences in the selection of their nominees, the State may regulate such elections by proper laws," which is a right that is protected in the Bill of Rights of Texas.

The party is allowed to determine its own policies and membership according to Waples v. Marrast, and adopted a policy that all white citizens qualified to vote in Texas were eligible for membership, therefore allowing only white citizens to vote. Holding policies that only allow citizens of a particular race or color to vote is an inherently discriminatory practice. The Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Seventeenth Amendments protect against such actions from any state. The argument, however, is whether the Texas Democratic Party is independent from the state and free to make policies as it pleases. Smith was not allowed to vote in a Democratic primary election on the basis of his skin color. He, the petitioner, argues that since he was not allowed to participate in a state election, the Party is not independent of the state. There were two conflicting Supreme Court decisions that were impeding the judicial precedent for this case: Grovey v. Townsend and United States v. Classic.

In Grovey v. Townsend, the petitioner argued that he was denied a ballot for the Democratic party primary election, even though he is a lawful citizen of the United States of America. The petitioner was going to be absent on the day of the election and demanded an absentee ballot. The petitioner was denied the ballot on the grounds of a statute of the Democratic Convention of Texas which stated:

"Be it resolved that all white citizens of the Texas who are qualified to vote under the Constitution and laws of the state shall be eligible to membership in the Democratic party and as such entitled to participate in its deliberations."

This denial on the grounds of race and color was argued to be a direct and unlawful violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America. Denying a ballot on the basis of the petitioner's race or color is legal under Texas law, but unconstitutional. The Fourteenth Amendment states that no citizen, naturalized or born, shall have their rights infringed by any law, nor shall they be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny any citizen equal protection under its laws.

The main question in Grovey was if a declaration of party membership equated state action. The argument of the respondents was that the resolution of the state convention limiting membership did not limit the participation of black voters, particularly the petitioner. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the respondent did not discriminate against the petitioner and therefore did not deny him any Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment rights.

United States v. Classic

In U.S. v. Classic, two federal indictments were brought against six election commissioners, alleging conspiracy and corruption in the Democratic primary election for U.S. Representative. They were charged with miscounting and altering the ballots that were cast. The indictment was challenged because Newberry v. United States held that primary elections are not subject to the same Congressional oversight as general elections. Therefore, the question was if Congress is allowed to regulate primaries, specifically to protect voters from miscounts or altered ballots. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Article I of the Constitution authorizes Congress to regulate elections, in addition to allowing Congress to choose which constitutional powers are carried out.

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that Texas was indeed abridging Smith's Fifteenth Amendment right to vote, which was also denying his Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law. The unconstitutional practice of denying voters based on their race was discriminatory and Texas was held responsible, since it was delegating its authority to the Democratic Party. The Grovey v. Townsend decision was therefore overruled and Smith's previous denials were reversed. Thurgood Marshall, who would become the Supreme Court's first black justice, championed this decision and later stated that this was his most important case.

Justice Roberts wrote a dissenting opinion for the Smith case. He was the only disagreeing justice, and argued that this decision was soon going to be overruled. He stated that three cases had been ruled and subsequently overruled on this issue already, maintaining that the seemingly ambiguous nature of rulings in these cases meant that this ruling did not follow the historical precedent. He also argued that this case was different from Classic; in Louisiana, elections are run by the state, making them state elections, but Texas party elections are run by the party, which does not put them under the jurisdiction of the state.

This decision enabled the revival of black participation in Texas politics, for those voters who could get through the discriminatory voter registration process. Smith's efforts inspired Barbara Jordan, a Fifth Ward resident who would later become a black politician in Texas. The Smith case was decided in 1944. By 1948, the number of registered black voters in the South rose fourfold, from 200,000 in 1940 to 800,000 in 1948, and by 1952, it rose to over one million. This decision also helped reiterate the idea that public events run by private organizations, especially elections, are held to the same constitutional standards as all fully public events.

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Smith v. Allwright , 321 U.S. 649 (1944), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court with regard to voting rights and, by extension, racial desegregation. It overturned the Texas state law that authorized parties to set their internal rules, including the use of white primaries.

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A case in which the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited the University of Texas from rejecting applicants solely on the basis of race.

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1953 D.Joe Williams integrates collegiate sports

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1953 D.Joe Williams integrates collegiate sports

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D. Joe Williams’s Hall of Fame Rings | Bullock Texas State History Museum

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D. Joe Williams (1936-2013) was the first African American to integrate collegiate sports in Texas. In recognition of his athletic excellence, Williams was inducted into three different Texas sports Halls of Fame.

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1955 Dallas Youth Council Protest of Negro Achievement Day

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1955 Dallas Youth Council Protest of Negro Achievement Day

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In 1955, the Texas State Fair in Dallas was segregated, a tradition that dated back to 1889 when planners first set aside a day for African Americans to attend the fair. Then called Colored People's Day, it was discontinued in 1910 and renamed Negro Achievement Day in 1936.

A collaboration between the Negro Chamber of Commerce and the State Fair Board, Negro Achievement Day featured a parade decked out with floats and fair Queens, the presentation of the Most Distinguished Negro Citizen Award, and high school and college football games. The day drew African American visitors from all over the state.

In 1953, the fair announced that African Americans could attend the fair on any day, but could only fully participate in the fair's enjoyments on Negro Achievement Day. Juanita Craft, NAACP Youth Council advisor for the Dallas branch, spearheaded a movement to end discrimination at the fair so that any person of any race could participate on any day they chose. Craft and members of the Youth Council decided to stage a boycott of the fair to draw attention to discriminatory practices. Teenagers, equipped with signs proclaiming "TODAY IS NEGRO APPEASEMENT DAY AT THE FAIR," picketed the parade that began at the local black high school. In an interview given in 1974, Craft remembered, "Those kids went to the starting point at Lincoln High School and boarded the floats right along with the queens and everybody else and rode down the streets saying, 'Stay out. Don't sell your pride for a segregated ride.' The kids were on top of people's houses along the route of the parade with megaphones telling about the segregated policy out there and to stay out."

When the parade reached the picket line at the entrance of the fair, participants turned and refused to enter. The picket line lasted throughout the day and into the night. While the Youth Council did not succeed in ending Negro Achievement Day, they were able to draw attention to the discrimination African Americans faced. The Youth Council was given an award by the NAACP for their well organized and peaceful demonstration. In later years, adults took over picketing the fair. Achievement Day (fair planners dropped the "Negro" in 1957) officially ended in 1961, followed by the full desegregation of the fair later in the '60s.

The boycott, and the majority of other civil rights activity in Dallas, was captured on film by photographer R. C. Hickman. Born in the East Texas town of Mineloa in 1922, Hickman moved to Dallas with his family in the 1930s. After attending Tillotson College in Austin, he served as an Army photographer in World War II, then returned to Dallas to work as a photographer for the Dallas Star Post. As the unofficial photographer of the African American community in Dallas in the 1950s, he captured pivotal moments in the city's civil rights history, including visits by Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall.

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NAACP Picket the Texas State Fair in 1955

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In 1955, members of the NAACP Youth Council formed a picket line to protest segregation at the Texas State Fair in Dallas.

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The Mansfield school desegregation incident is a 1956 event in the Civil Rights Movement in Mansfield, Texas, a suburb of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

In 1955, the Mansfield Independent School District was segregated and still sent its black children to separate, run down facilities, despite the Brown v. Board of Education court decision in 1954. Three students brought a suit with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In Jackson v. Rawdon, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the students. In 1956, Mansfield ISD became the first school district in the state ordered by a federal court to desegregate. The school board approved the measure and allowed Mansfield High School to desegregate. Although other districts in Texas desegregated quietly that fall, the mayor and police chief of Mansfield did not approve of this measure. When school started on August 30, 1956, they joined over 300 whites in front of Mansfield High School. Their goal was to prevent the enrollment of the three black students. The town turned into complete turmoil as three black effigies were hanged as part of the demonstration.

Texas Governor Allan Shivers was a noted segregationist and used the power of his office to resist implementation of Brown v. Board of Education. Shivers dispatched Texas Rangers to prevent integration, led by Captain Jay Banks, who, in addition to threatening to arrest Black students, refused to take down an effigy of a Black man hanging by a noose at the entrance of Mansfield High School. Shivers then authorized the Mansfield Independent School District to send its Black students to Fort Worth, Texas. By doing this the school district had effectively ignored a federal court order for integration.

After the transfer of the Black students to Fort Worth, the demonstrations soon ended and order was restored. It was this success that in 1957 inspired Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus to attempt a similar ordeal in Little Rock, Arkansas. Later that year, Texas passed more segregation laws that delayed integration even further.

Facing the lack of federal funds, the Mansfield Independent School District quietly desegregated in 1965. The decade long defiance of a federal school integration order was one of the longest in the nation during that period.

In June 2020, a statue modeled after Texas Ranger Captain Jay Banks, called One Riot, One Ranger, was removed from Dallas Love Field. It was first dedicated in 1961, 5 years after the Mansfield School Desegregation Incident.

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Mansfield school desegregation incident - Wikipedia

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The Mansfield school desegregation incident is a 1956 event in the Civil Rights Movement in Mansfield, Texas, a suburb of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex.

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The 1965-66 Texas Western Miners basketball team represented Texas Western College, now the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), led by Hall of Fame head coach Don Haskins. The team won the national championship in 1966, becoming the first team with an all-black starting lineup to do so.[citation needed ] The Miners only lost one game, a road loss to Seattle by two points. They won their games by an average of 15.2 points.

The Miners defeated Kentucky (an all-white program until 1969) 72-65 in the historic championship game, played on Saturday, March 19, at Cole Field House on the University of Maryland campus in College Park, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

The team was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007 and inspired the book and film .

The 1965-66 Texas Western basketball team faced many issues because of their race. For example, when they won the championship no one brought out a ladder for them to cut down the net. Nevil Shed had to hoist up Willie Worsley so he could do the honors. Also, they were not invited on The Ed Sullivan Show, which was customary for the NCAA Champions. Texas Western's (UTEP's) winning the basketball national championship helped promote the desegregation of athletics in the Southeastern Conference which had its first black basketball player in 1967.

Fitzpatrick, Frank. And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Basketball Game That Changed American Sports (2000)

Haskins, Don with Dan Wetzel. Glory Road: My Story of the 1966 NCAA Basketball Championship and How One Team Triumphed Against the Odds and Changed America Forever. New York:Hyperion, 2006. 254 pp. No index. ISBN 1-4013-0791-4.

Hutchison, Phillip. "The legend of Texas Western: journalism and the epic sports spectacle that wasn't." Critical Studies in Media Communication 33.2 (2016): 154-167.

Sanchez, Ramon. Basketball's Biggest Upset: Texas Western Changed The Sport With A Win Over Kentucky In 1966 (1991) excerpt, game by game details-and play-by-play for championship game.

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1965-66 Texas Western Miners men's basketball team - Wikipedia

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The 1965-66 Texas Western Miners basketball team represented Texas Western College, now the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), led by Hall of Fame head coach Don Haskins. The team won the national championship in 1966, becoming the first team with an all-black starting lineup to do so.[citation needed ] The Miners only lost one game, a road loss to Seattle by two points.

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Election of Barbra Jordan to the Texas state Senate (1967) and House of Representatives (1973)

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Election of Barbra Jordan to the Texas state Senate (1967) and House of Representatives (1973)

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Barbara Jordan emerged as an eloquent and powerful interpreter of the Watergate impeachment investigation at a time when many Americans despaired about the Constitution and the country. As one of the first African Americans elected from the Deep South since 1898 and the first Black Congresswoman ever from that region, Jordan lent added weight to her message by her very presence on the House Judiciary Committee.

Barbara Charline Jordan was born in Houston, Texas, on February 21, 1936, one of three daughters of Benjamin M. Jordan and Arlyne Patten Jordan. Benjamin Jordan, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, worked in a local warehouse before becoming pastor of Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church, which his family had long attended. Arlyne Jordan was an accomplished public speaker. Barbara Jordan was educated in the Houston public schools and graduated from Phyllis Wheatley High School in 1952. She earned a BA from Texas Southern University in 1956 and a law degree from Boston University in 1959. That same year, she was admitted to the Massachusetts and Texas bars, and she began to practice law in Houston in 1960. To supplement her income (she worked temporarily out of her parents' home), Jordan was employed as an administrative assistant to a county judge. ¹

Barbara Jordan's political turning point occurred when she worked on the John F. Kennedy presidential campaign in 1960. She eventually helped manage a highly organized get-out-the-vote program that served Houston's 40 African-American precincts. In 1962 and 1964, Jordan ran for the Texas house of representatives but lost both times, so in 1966 she ran for the Texas senate when court-enforced redistricting created a constituency that consisted largely of minority voters. Jordan won, defeating a white liberal and becoming the first African-American state senator in the U.S. since 1883 as well as the first Black woman ever elected to that chamber. ² The other 30 (male, white) senators received her coolly, but Jordan quickly earned a reputation as an effective legislator who pushed through bills establishing the state's first minimum wage law, anti-discrimination clauses in business contracts, and the Texas Fair Employment Practices Commission. On March 28, 1972, Jordan's peers elected her president pro tempore of the Texas senate, making her the first Black woman in America to preside over a legislative body. In seconding the nomination, one of Jordan's male colleagues on the other side of the chamber stood, spread his arms open, and said, "What can I say? Black is beautiful." ³ One of Jordan's responsibilities as president pro tempore was to serve as acting governor when the governor and lieutenant governor were out of the state. When Jordan filled that largely ceremonial role on June 10, 1972, she became the first Black chief executive in the nation.

In 1971 Jordan entered the race for the Texas congressional seat encompassing downtown Houston. The district had been redrawn after the 1970 Census and was composed of a predominantly African-American and Hispanic-American population. In the 1972 Democratic primary, Jordan faced Curtis Graves, another Black state legislator, who attacked her for being too close to the white establishment. Jordan blunted Graves's charges with her legislative credentials. "I'm not going to Washington and turn things upside down in a day," she told supporters at a rally. "I'll only be one of 435. But the 434 will know I'm there." 4 Jordan took the primary with 80 percent of the vote. In the general election, against Republican Paul Merritt, she won 81 percent of the vote. Along with Andrew Jackson Young Jr. of Georgia, Jordan became the first African American in the twentieth century elected to Congress from the Deep South. In the next two campaign cycles, Jordan overwhelmed her opposition, capturing 85 percent of the total vote in both general elections. ⁵

Representative Jordan's political philosophy from her days in the state legislature led her to focus on local issues. Civil rights and women's rights activists sometimes criticized her when she chose to favor her community interests rather than theirs. She followed this pattern in the House. "I sought the power points," she once said. "I knew if I were going to get anything done, [the congressional and party leaders] would be the ones to help me get it done." ⁶ Jordan was reluctant to commit herself fully to any one interest group or caucus, such as the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), of which she was a member. House women met informally too, but Jordan's attendance at those meetings was irregular, and she was noncommittal on most issues that were brought before the group. She was especially careful not to attach herself too closely to an agenda she had little control over that might impinge on her ability to navigate and compromise within the institutional power structure. "I am neither a black politician nor a woman politician," Jordan said in 1975. "Just a politician, a professional politician." ⁷

In both her Texas legislative career and in the U.S. House, Jordan made the conscious decision to pursue power within the established system. One of her first moves in Congress was to establish relationships with Members of the Texas delegation, which had strong institutional connections. Her attention to influence inside the House was demonstrated by where she sat in the House Chamber's large, theater-style seating arrangement. CBC members traditionally sat to the far left of the chamber, but Jordan chose to sit near the center aisle because she could hear better, be seen by the presiding officer, and save an open seat for colleagues who wanted to stop and chat. Her seating preference as well as her loyalty to the Texas delegation agitated fellow CBC members, but both were consistent with Jordan's model of seeking congressional influence. ⁸

Jordan also believed that an important committee assignment, one where she would be a trailblazer because of her gender and race, would magnify her influence. Thus, she disregarded suggestions that she accept a seat on the Education and Labor Committee and used her connection with Texan Lyndon B. Johnson-she had been his guest at the White House during her time as a state legislator-to secure a plum committee assignment on the Judiciary Committee. Securing former President Johnson's intercession with Wilbur Daigh Mills of Arkansas, the chairman of the Committee on Committees, she landed a seat on the Judiciary Committee, where she served for her three terms in the House. ⁹ In the 94th and 95th Congresses (1975-1979), she was also assigned to the Committee on Government Operations. ¹⁰

It was as a freshman Member of the Judiciary Committee, however, that Jordan earned national recognition. In the summer of 1974, as the committee considered articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon for crimes associated with the Watergate Scandal, Jordan delivered opening remarks that shook the committee room and the large television audience that had tuned in to the proceedings. "My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total," Jordan said. "I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." She then explained the reasoning behind her support of each of the five articles of impeachment against President Nixon. In conclusion, Jordan said that if her fellow committee members did not find the evidence compelling enough, "then perhaps the eighteenth-century Constitution should be abandoned to a twentieth-century paper shredder." Reaction to Jordan's statement was overwhelming. Jordan recalled that people swarmed around her car after the hearings to congratulate her, and many people sent the Texas Representative letters of praise. One person even posted a message on a series of billboards in Houston: "Thank you, Barbara Jordan, for explaining the Constitution to us." ¹¹ The Watergate impeachment hearings helped create Jordan's reputation as a respected national politician.

From her first days in Congress, Jordan encouraged colleagues to extend the federal protection of civil rights to more Americans. She introduced civil rights amendments to legislation authorizing law enforcement assistance grants and joined seven other members on the Judiciary Committee in opposing Gerald R. Ford's nomination as Vice President, citing a mediocre civil rights record. In 1975, when Congress voted to extend the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Jordan sponsored legislation that broadened the provisions of the act to include Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Although she voted for busing to enforce racial desegregation in public schools, she was one of the few African-American Members of Congress to question the utility of the policy. ¹²

Jordan's talent as a speaker continued to contribute to her national profile. In 1976 she became the first woman and the first African-American keynote speaker at a Democratic National Convention. Appearing after a subdued speech by Ohio Senator John Herschel Glenn Jr., Jordan energized the convention with her oratory. "We are a people in search of a national community," she told the delegates, "attempting to fulfill our national purpose, to create and sustain a society in which all of us are equal.... We cannot improve on the system of government, handed down to us by the founders of the Republic, but we can find new ways to implement that system and to realize our destiny." ¹³ Amid the historical perspective of the national bicentennial, and in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Watergate, Jordan's message, like her commanding voice, resonated with Americans. She campaigned widely for Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, who defeated President Ford in the general election. Though Carter later interviewed Jordan for a Cabinet position, he did not offer her the position of U.S. Attorney General, the one post she said she would accept.

In 1978, downplaying reports about her poor health, Jordan declined to run for what would have been certain re-election to a fourth term, citing her "internal compass," which she said was pointing her "away from demands that are all consuming." ¹⁴ She also said she wanted to work more directly on behalf of her fellow Texans. Jordan was appointed the Lyndon Johnson Chair in National Policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin, where she taught until the early 1990s. She continued to lecture widely on national affairs. In 1988 and 1992, she delivered speeches at the Democratic National Convention. Her 1992 keynote address was delivered from a wheelchair while she was in the midst of a lengthy battle with multiple sclerosis. In 1994 President William J. (Bill) Clinton appointed her to lead the Commission on Immigration Reform, a bipartisan group that delivered its findings in September of that year. Jordan received nearly two dozen honorary degrees and, in 1990, was named to the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca, New York. She never married and carefully guarded her private life. ¹⁵

Jordan died in Austin, Texas, on January 17, 1996, from pneumonia that was a complication of leukemia. ¹⁶ Newspapers across the country published extensive obituaries that celebrated her oratory, her defense of the Constitution, and the role she played in inspiring generations of minority women in politics. "She left Congress after only three terms, a mere six years," the editors of the New York Times wrote. "No landmark legislation bears her name. Yet few lawmakers in this century have left a more profound and positive impression on the nation than Barbara Jordan." ¹⁷

View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress

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JORDAN, Barbara Charline | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives

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Barbara Jordan emerged as an eloquent and powerful interpreter of the Watergate impeachment investigation at a time when many Americans despaired about the Constitution and the country. As one of the first African Americans elected from the Deep South since 1898 and the first Black Congresswoman ever from that region, Jordan lent added weight to her message by her very presence on the House Judiciary Committee.

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1973 Texas Legislative Black Caucus Formed

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1973 Texas Legislative Black Caucus Formed

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The Texas Legislative Black Caucus (TLBC) was organized in 1973 by eight African Americans who were elected to the Texas House of Representatives in November of 1972. These eight new state representatives were the largest number of African Americans elected to serve in the Texas legislature since Reconstruction. The founding members of the TLBC were Paul Ragsdale, Sam Hudson III, and Eddie Bernice Johnson from Dallas; Craig Washington, Anthony Hall, Senfronia Thompson, and Mickey Leland from Houston; and G. J. Sutton from San Antonio. These individuals formed the Black Caucus to work cooperatively with the Democratic Party in the interest of the African-American community in Texas. They also sought to work with other legislative caucuses, such as the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, to provide a bloc of votes that would support legislation to improve the quality of life for African Americans in areas such as education, housing, health care, and employment.

From its small beginnings the Texas Legislative Black Caucus has grown in number and influence. In 2013 it had a membership of eighteen legislators who represented Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Frisco, and Beaumont. Three years after its founding, the Black Caucus started holding annual conventions to connect with its constituents throughout the state of Texas. In 1993 the Black Caucus upgraded its annual conventions and began hosting the Texas Legislative Black Caucus Weekend, similar to the Congressional Black Caucus Weekend held annually by the African-American members of the United States Congress. This event has evolved into the bi-annual, African-American Legislative Summit hosted by the members of the Black Caucus. At these bi-annual summits, the Black Caucus hosts a banquet to award academic scholarships to students from high schools across the state through its foundation and to recognize individuals from throughout the state for their contributions to their communities. The summits also consist of workshops focusing on issues related to improving African-American life in Texas. In addition to spearheading the creation of a Department of African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, the Black Caucus has helped to create an Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin "to work closely with the Texas Legislature to address and study issues affecting the African-American community and the rapidly growing urban population in the state."

Research on the effectiveness of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus has shown that since its organization in 1973, it has been very effective in representing its constituents on critical and social issues such as education, housing, and employment. Although as of 2013 it has been a minority within a minority party in the Texas legislature, its members' voting cohesion on "race relevant issues" has helped to pass legislation beneficial to the state's African-American and underserved populations.

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The Texas Legislative Black Caucus (TLBC) was organized in 1973 by eight African Americans who were elected to the Texas House of Representatives in November of 1972. These eight new state representatives were the largest number of African Americans elected to serve in the Texas legislature since Reconstruction.