Slavery in Texas | Juneteenthart

Slavery and Racism in Texas: Remembrance & Resistance

The first person of African descent arrived at what would be Texas, 308 years before slavery was legalized “The Lone Star State.” In 1528, Esteban Dorantes (also known by his slave name Estebanico) was among first explorers set foot in the territory near present-day Galveston, Texas. The Spaniards benefitted from the language and healing skills of this man born in Morocco, to navigate through Native American communities and explore today's American Southwest.

The very history of Texas is linked to slavery, beginning with Stephen F. Austin lobbying for Texas to be exempt from the Mexican national government’s abolition of slavery in 1829. After the Texas Revolution ended in 1836, the Constitution of the Republic of Texas legalized slavery and forbade any slave owner from freeing slaves. By 1860, the census included 182,566 slaves, approximately 30.2 percent of the total Texas population.

Those recognized as among the "founding families" of Dripping Springs brought with them 12 enslaved human beings from the Moss plantation in Mississippi. The first log rooms of what is now the Dr. Pound Pioneer Historical Farmstead Museum in Dripping Springs. According to historical marker information, the first two log pens (cabins) of what is now the Dr. Pound Pioneer Historical Farmstead Museum made of rough-hewn cypress logs were built in 1854 with slave labor.

Two enslaved seventeen-year-olds formed part of the Pound household in 1860.

The Little-Known Underground Railroad to Mexico

A growing number of enslaved people fled across the Rio Grande, after Mexico first attempted to abolish slavery in 1829. Researchers have also found evidence that tejanos, or Mexicans in Texas, acted as “conductors” on the southern route (also known as "la Red Clandestina”) by helping slaves escape to Mexico. This map shows approximate routes of escape in the Texas-Mexico borderlands and via the Gulf of Mexico between 1836 – after Texas gained independence from Mexico – and 1861.

Image credit: Thomas Mareite, PhD & Zach Levitt/NPR

Source: A Chapter In U.S. History Often Ignored: The Flight Of Runaway Slaves To Mexico

On January 1st, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves throughout the United States. However, slavery continued in Texas for two and a half more years until June 19, 1865. On that date, federal authority was established in Texas by General Gordon Granger who upon arriving in Galveston proclaimed the end of slavery for 250,000 African Americans as well as the end of the Confederacy.

Twenty-seven racist Jim Crow laws were passed in the Lone Star state between 1866 and 1958. Although African Americans were legally allowed to vote by 1870, their abilities to vote were often obstructed by violence.

In 1868 Pastor George Edwin Brooks, a Methodist preacher, former Union soldier, and registrar of voters for Brazos County was tortured, mutilated, and lynched during what has become known as the Millican massacre. According to historians, it was “the worst incident of racial violence in Texas during Reconstruction."

The project Lynching in Texas was set-up because "Texas is the most important state in the country for the study of lynching" according to professor Jeffrey Littlejohn at Sam Houston State University. With more than 700 documented murders, lynching in Texas involved more victims over a longer period than in almost any other state.

Two years before the Tulsa Race Massacre, the black community in Longview, Texas suffered the second of twenty-five major episodes of racial violence that took place in the United States during what is known as the “Red Summer” in 1919.

Thanks to the efforts of State Representative Al Edwards - Texas became the first state to declare Juneteenth an official holiday in 1979, when the bill he introduced was signed into law by Governor William P. Clements, Jr., commemorating General Granger’s order and declaration of the emancipation of slaves in Texas.