I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: June 19, 2021] On Juneteenth

In recognition of Juneteenth this year, my University gave anyone who wanted one a copy of this book.

Gordon-Reed begins the preface by saying that Juneteenth was originally a Texas thing.  June 19, 1865 was the day that enslaved Texans were told that slavery had ended.  That was two year after the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed and two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant.

What’s interesting though is after stating this she says that she was initially annoyed that people outside of Texas were celebrating this day because it was a supposed to be a Texas thing and she has great pride in her home state–despite the above.

This short book is written with anecdotes and history in an attempt to not only talk about the history of Black people in Texas but also to help understand how she can have pride in a place that seemed to not want her.

Indeed, the first chapter is about Texas and how it came to be–a brief history lesson for Texans and non-Texans alike.  Most importantly though is the image of Texas:  Texas is a white man.  Her essays look to find out what that means for all not-white, not-men in the State.

The Texan is represented by the Rancher, the Cowboy and the Oilman.  But she insists we recall the Slave Plantation owner–no longer existing but hugely important to the State’s history.

She also gives a pretty fascinating explanation about the population boom of Texas back in the early days. The Mexican government was afraid of Comanche raids, so they encouraged Anglo-Americans to come settle in Texas.  However, they were opposed to slavery (as they had only recently separated from Spain).  But the rich white men had no intention of clearing the land without slaves.  They lobbied intensely to allow slavery to continue there.

The tension about slavery continued until Texas freed itself from Mexico in 1836.  With slavery safely established, white settlers flooded in.  They were annexed to the United States in 1845.  Then twenty years later Texas was part of the losing side of the Civil War.

But she says that when she was growing up, slavery was barely mentioned in history class. It was acknowledged that it existed in then was quickly moved on from.

When Gordon-Reed was going to elementary school, Texas was still fighting the desegregation of Brown v Board of Education by implementing a Freedom of Choice plan–assuming that White parents would choose White Schools and Black parents would choose Black Schools.

Annette was the first Black person in her town to go to a White school (her older brothers didn’t).  But it was negotiated ahead of time that no big deal would be made about it–no Ruby Bridges excitement and hysteria.  It would just happen.  There were threats against the family (she didn’t learn until later), but nothing came of it.

Montgomery County where she lived was notorious for its racial tension.  In 1885, a Black man was lynched and white folks knew about it ahead of time and brought a picnic lunch to celebrate–this was a message to the Black community.

Then in 1940 this astonishing story.  A Black man (Mr. White) was accused of raping a white woman.  The trial was deemed unfair by the Supreme Court because the confession was gotten under duress (he was chained to a tree and beaten).  The Supreme Court said the trial had to happen again.  During the second trail a white man waked up to Mr. White on trial and shot him point blank in the courtroom.  That man was later found not guilty of murder.

Typically, she reports, stories of white women caught with Black men were not rape but women going there voluntarily and then being caught.   The women accused them to save their own skin.

Anette was a good student in school–the only Black student in the White school and often made the honor roll. Educators in the area often came to check on her to see how things were going.

There were many ways in which the success of Black children meant that whiteness was not special anymore–your success meant my failure.  It was never about money though, or a White store owner would have welcomed Black dollars. The patriarchy assumed power over all including telling others what they could or couldn’t do with other people.  So Black men were limited in their encounters with white women.

She also notes the difference between her and the students in the Black Schools. The Black teachers believed that education was a chance for uplift for everyone.  When Annette showed a Black teacher a report card with Bs from her white school the teacher said to her, “When people are given the ability to do better.  They should do better.”

When schools were fully integrated, her mother went to a white school to teach and actually felt a sense of loss that she was no longer with her cadre of Black teacher.  She had become a teacher to improve Black students–the change was hard on her even though she loved al of her students.

It turned out that many Blacks felt the integration was not equal.  Black students went to White schools not many White students went to Black School.

Chapter 4 looks at Native Americans in Texas and the very complicated relationship they had with other people living there.  Although they were clearly oppressed (and killed) by White people, they did not find solidarity with Black people.  Rather, many Native Americans kept slaves.  Certain peoples even fought alongside Whites to help establish Texas only to be kicked off the land later on.

Aside, that is, from a “Native American” village not far from where she grew up which did very well during the 1970’s back-to-Earth movement and then even better when they built casinos.  She also says that the movie Billy Jack about a half-white, half-Native person uses martial arts to defeat the White people who opposed their school was hugely popular in their town even though most of the residents were farm more like the “bad” people than the good.  Perhaps they could admit things in the dark theater that they couldn’t in public.

Films were tough then.  There were so few Blacks in movies, each person could be Good or Bad for Black people in general. Like Remember the Alamo.

The chapter about the Alamo talks about how hard it is to have legends–people are far too complex to be reduced to legendary status–and even the biggest heroes had complicated lived.

The final chapter is “On Juneteenth” in which she talks about Galveston, where freed slaves helped to rebuild the city, putting it at the forefront of Juneteenth celebrations.