Re: [TX] Black TEXANS
10 BLACK TEXANS
THE ROLES OF black people in the development of Texas have been significant since the sixteenth century, with the greatest influence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when blacks formed from 10 to 30 percent of the population. Early histories of the state by white historians tended to consider black history primarily in terms of race relations with the Anglo majority over the last two centuries, usually from a viewpoint of paternalism or even white superiority. Since the mid-twentieth century, however, a growing number of black and white historians have begun to present a more complex and sensitive understanding of institutions within the black community, as well as a more objective view of efforts to attain equal treatment.
An account intended primarily for general readers is Alwyn Barr, Black Texans: A History of Negroes in Texas, 1528-1971 ( Austin, 1973). After discussions of free blacks and slaves, this book considers political, economic, social, and educational activities during Reconstruction, the late nineteenth century, the progressive period through the depression, and World War II through the civil rights era. A bibliographical essay is included. Two brief essays are Roland C. Hayes , "Blacks in Texas," inTexas: A Sesquicentennial Celebration, ed. Donald W. Whisenhunt ( Austin, 1984), and James Smallwood, The Struggle Upward: Blacks inTexas ( Boston, 1983). A survey of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury segregation practices in the state is Bruce A. Glasrud, "Jim Crow's Emergence in Texas," American Studies 15 (Spring 1974).
Two volumes of biographical essays are Effie Kaye Adams, Tall Black Texans: Men of Courage ( Dubuque, 1972), which offers thirty brief sketches; and Alwyn Barr and Robert A. Calvert, eds., Black Leaders: Texans for Their Times ( Austin, 1981), which contains eight analytical essays. J. L. Nichols and William H.Crogman