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Issues of civil rights in Texas are generally associated with the state's two most prominent ethnic minorities: African Americans and Mexican Americans. Mexican Americans have made efforts to bring about improved political circumstances since the Anglo-American domination of Texas began in 1836. African Texans have fought for civil rights since their emancipation from slavery in 1865. Organized campaigns, however, were not launched until the early twentieth century.

Issues of immediate concern to Mexican Americans after the Texas Revolution centered around racist actions. In the 1850s, Tejanos faced expulsion from their Central Texas homes on the accusation that they helped slaves escape to Mexico. Others became victims of Anglo wrath around the Goliad area during the Cart War of 1857, as they did in South Texas in 1859 after Juan N. Cortina's capture of Brownsville. Following the Civil War, both the newly freed slaves and Tejanos faced further atrocities. In the 1880s, White men in East Texas used violence as a method of political control, and lynching became the common form of retaliation for alleged rapes of White women or for other insults or injuries perpetrated upon White society. Mexican Americans of South Texas experienced similar forms of brutality. The Ku Klux Klan, the White Caps, law officials, and the Texas Rangers, all acting as agents of White authority, regularly terrorized both Mexican Americans and Black Texans.

De facto segregation followed emancipation. Freedmen found themselves barred from most public places and schools and, as the nineteenth century wore on, confined to certain residential areas of towns. By the early twentieth century, such practices had been sanctioned by law. Whites never formulated these statutes with Tejanos in mind, but they enforced them through social custom nonetheless. By the 1880s and 1890s, furthermore, minority groups faced legal drives to disfranchise them, though Anglos turned to a variety of informal means to weaken their political strength. African and Mexican Americans faced terrorist tactics, literacy tests, the stuffing of ballot boxes, and accusations of incompetence when they won office. Political bosses in South Texas and other areas with large Mexican-American population such as the El Paso area valley, meantime, dominated by controlling the votes of the poor.

In 1902 the legislature passed the poll-tax law ( see ELECTION LAWS), and the next year Texas Democrats implemented the white primary. These mechanisms disfranchised Blacks, and Mexican Americans for that matter, for White society did not regard Tejanos as belonging to the "White" race. Progressive reformers of the age viewed both minority groups as having a corrupting influence on politics. By the late 1920s, Texas politicians had effectively immobilized African-Texan voters through court cases that defined political parties as private organizations that could exclude members. Some scholars have estimated that no more than 40,000 of the estimated 160,000 eligible Black voters retained their franchise in the 1920s.

Newer Jim Crow laws in the early twentieth century increased the segregation of the races, and in the cities, Black migrants from the rural areas joined their urban compatriots in ghettoes. The laws ordinarily did not target Mexicans but were enforced on the premise that Mexicans were an inferior and unhygienic people. Thus Tejanos were relegated to separate residential areas or designated public facilities. Hispanics, although mostly Catholic in faith, worshiped at largely segregated churches. Blacks and Hispanics attended segregated and inferior "colored" and "Mexican" schools. As late as the mid-1950s, the state legislature passed segregationist laws directed at Blacks (and by implication to Tejanos), some dealing with education, others with residential areas and public accommodations. Gov. R. Allan Shivers, who opposed the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, went so far as to call out the Texas Rangers at Mansfield in 1956 to prevent Black students from entering the public school ( see MANSFIELD SCHOOL DESEGREGATION INCIDENT). Although Marion Price Daniel, Sr., Shivers's successor, was more tolerant, the integration process in Texas was slow and painful. Supreme Court decisions in 1969 and 1971 ordered school districts to increase the number of Black students in White schools through the extremely controversial practice of busing.

Violence in the era until the Great Depression years resembled that of the nineteenth century. In the ten-year period before 1910, White Texans lynched about 100 Black men, at times after sadistic torture. Between 1900 and 1920, numerous race riots broke out, with Black Texans generally witnessing their homes and neighborhoods destroyed in acts of vengeance. Similarly, Tejanos became victims of Anglo wrath for insult, injury, or death of a White man, and Anglos applied lynch law to Tejanos with the same vindictiveness as they did to Blacks.

African and Mexican Americans criticized segregationist policies and White injustices via their newspapers, labor organizations, and self-help societies. Black state conventions issued periodic protests in the 1880s and 1890s. On particular occasions during the nineteenth century, communities joined in support of leaders rising up against perceived wrongs or in behalf of those unjustly condemned. Tejanos, for one, rallied behind Juan N. Cortina and Catarino Garza, and contributed to the Gregorio Cortez Defense Network, which campaigned for the defense of a tenant farmer named Gregorio Cortez, who killed a sheriff in Karnes County in self-defense in 1901.

The period between 1900 and 1930 saw continued efforts by minorities to break down racial barriers. In 1911 Mexican-American leaders met at the Congreso Mexicanista in Laredo and addressed the common problems of land loss, lynchings, ethnic subordination, educational inequalities, and various other degradations. In 1919 the Brownsville legislator J. T. Canales spearheaded a successful effort to reduce the size of the Texas Ranger force in the wake of various atrocities the rangers had committed in the preceding decade. La Agrupación Protectora Mexicana, founded in 1911, had as its intent the protection of farm renters and laborers facing expulsion by their landlords.

Much of the leadership on behalf of civil rights came from the ranks of the middle class. Black leaders established a chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Houston in 1912, three years after the founding of the national organization; by 1930 some thirty chapters existed throughout the state. The association pursued the elimination of the white primary and other obstacles to voting, as well as the desegregation of schools, institutions of higher education, and public places. Tejanos established their own organizations to pursue similar objectives, among them the Orden Hijos de America ( Order of Sons of America). The order was succeeded in 1929 by the League of United Latin American Citizens, which committed itself to the same goals of racial equality.

Mexican Americans and Black Texans continued their advocacy for equality during the depression era. In San Antonio, Tejanos founded La Liga Pro-Defensa Escolar ( School Improvement League), which succeeded in getting the city's school board to build three new elementary schools and make improvements in existing facilities. Mexican Americans in the Gulf Coast area near Houston and in El Paso organized the Confederación de Organizaciones Mexicanas y Latino Americanas in the late 1930s, also for the purpose of eradicating racist policies. The Black movement, for its part, won increased White support in the 1930s from the ranks of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching and from such prominent congressmen as Maury Maverick.

After World War II, Tejano war veterans founded the American G.I. Forum, and by the 1950s, LULAC and the Forum became the foremost Mexican-American groups using the legal system to remove segregation, educational inequities, and various other discriminatory practices. In 1961 the politically oriented Political Association of Spanish Speaking Organizations joined LULAC and the G.I. Forum to pursuing the goal of mobilizing the Texas-Mexican electorate in an effort to prod mainstream politicians to heed the needs of Hispanics. African Americans, meantime, undertook poll-tax and voter-registration drives through the Democratic Progressive Voters League; the white primary had been declared illegal in 1944. During the 1960s the Progressive Voters League worked to inform Black people about political issues and encouraged them to vote.

During the 1960s both African Americans and Mexican Americans took part in national movements intended to bring down racial barriers. Black Texans held demonstrations within the state to protest the endurance of segregated conditions. They also instituted boycotts of racist merchants. In conjunction with the National March on Washington in 1963, approximately 900 protesters marched on the state Capitol. The group, which included Hispanics, Blacks, and Whites, attacked the slow pace of desegregation in the state and Governor John Connally's opposition to the pending civil-rights bill in Washington. By the latter half of the sixties, some segments of the Black community flocked to the cause of "Black power" and accepted violence as a means of social redress, though the destruction of property and life in Texas in no way compared to that in some other states. In a similar manner, Tejanos took part in the Chicano movement of the era, and some, especially youths, supported the movement's militancy, its denunciation of "gringos," and its talk of separatism from American society. The Raza Unida party spearheaded the movement during the 1970s; as a political party, Raza Unida offered solutions to inequalities previously addressed by reformist groups such as LULAC and the G.I. Forum. Members used demonstrations and boycotts and confrontational approaches, but violence of significant magnitude seldom materialized. The movement declined by the mid-1970s.

During the same period, the federal government pursued an agenda designed to achieve racial equality, and Texas Mexicans and Black Texans both profited from this initiative. The Twenty-fourth Amendment, ratified in 1964, barred the poll tax in federal elections, and that same year Congress passed the Civil Rights Act outlawing the Jim Crow tradition. Texas followed suit in 1969 by repealing its own separatist statutes. The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated local restrictions to voting and required that federal marshals monitor election proceedings. Ten years later, another voting-rights act demanded modification or elimination of at-large elections.

After the 1960s several organizations joined LULAC and the G.I. Forum in the cause of equality for Mexican Americans. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, founded in 1968, emerged as the most successful civil-rights organization of the late twentieth century. It focused on the state's inequitable system of financing schools, redistricting, and related problems. Working to see the increasing political participation of Tejanos and the removal of obstacles to Tejano empowerment was the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project. Groups at the city level that sought to help out barrio residents included COPS in San Antonio, and EPISO in the El Paso area. The struggle for civil rights also produced a number of favorable court decisions. Black Texans won a judicial victory in 1927 when the Supreme Court ruled in Nixon v. Herndon that the white primary violated constitutional guarantees. When the state circumvented the decision by declaring political parties to be private organizations that had the right to decide their own memberships, Blacks again turned to the courts. Not until the case of Smith v. Allwright (1944) did the Supreme Court overturn the practice.

The post-World War II era came to be a time of increased successes for civil-rights litigants. The case of Sweatt v. Painter (1950) integrated the University of Texas law school, and in its wake several undergraduate colleges in the state desegregated. The famous case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 produced the integration of schools, buses, restaurants, and other public accommodations. Mexican Americans also won victories that struck at discriminatory traditions. In Hernandez v. State of Texas (1954), the United States Supreme Court recognized Mexican Americans as a class whose rights Anglos had violated through Jim Crow practices. In the field of education, the Delgado v. Del Rio ISD (1948) made it illegal for school boards to designate specific buildings for Mexican-American students on school grounds; Hernandez v. Driscoll CISD (1957) stated that retaining Mexican-American children for four years in the first two grades amounted to discrimination based on race; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi ISD (1970) recognized Mexican Americans as an "identifiable ethnic group" so as to prevent the subterfuge of combining Mexicans and Blacks to meet integration; and Edgewood ISD v. Kirby (1989) held that the system of financing public education in the state discriminated against Mexican Americans.

Much of the activity in civil rights during the last quarter of the twentieth century and the opening decade of the new millennium focused on consolidating the gains of previous decades. For example, African Americans and Mexican Americans registered to vote in unprecedented numbers, and members of both ethnic groups won election to major local, state, and federal offices. Issues such as affirmative action in higher education remained, but the civil-rights movement permanently changed the social and political landscape of Texas.

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Civil Rights.Issues of civil rights in Texas are generally associated with the state’s two most prominent ethnic minorities: African Americans and Mexican Americans. Mexican Americans have made efforts to bring about improved political circumstances since the Anglo-American domination of Texas began…

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1955 Dallas Youth Council Protest of Negro Achievment Day 

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1955 Dallas Youth Council Protest of Negro Achievment Day 

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https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/slocum-massacre/

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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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Opening of the Colored Carniege Library in Houston(1912)

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Opening of the Colored Carniege Library in Houston(1912)

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https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/institutions-african-american-history/colored-carnegie-library-houston-texas-1913-1961/

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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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Founding of the ̈Harlemm Hellfighters̈(1913)

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Founding of the ̈Harlemm Hellfighters̈(1913)

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The formation of the NAASP in Texas(1915)

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The formation of the NAASP in Texas(1915)

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Houston Riot 19178 Dorris Miller Award Medal of Honor(1942)

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Houston Riot 19178 Dorris Miller Award Medal of Honor(1942)

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D. Joe Williams intergrates Collegiate sports(1953)

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D. Joe Williams intergrates Collegiate sports(1953)

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election of barbara jorden to the texas state senate (1967)

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election of barbara jorden to the texas state senate (1967)

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texas legislative black caucus formed (1973)

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texas legislative black caucus formed (1973)