The African-American Texans

Many Africans who arrived in Texas before 1860 were brought in as slaves; others came as free people, indentured servants, or escaped slaves. Whatever the case, their story is linked directly to Spanish and Anglo-American settlement which largely defined Texas.

Slavery—the ownership of human beings by others to perform labor—is as old as civilized humanity from Rome to China and has been carried on as a systematic process by all major cultures for economic, though brutal, reasons. Until the modern era, humans were the most efficient source of intelligent power. Except for the brute force of oxen and elephants, camels and horses, llamas and dogs, humans provided the energy to plant and build for masters who could force the labor.

Dr. J. Mason Brewer

Most of the first Africans in the New World were brought by European entrepreneurs. Although the Spanish did enslave Indians in the service of agriculture, mining, and personal needs, as the natives died of overwork or disease or chose to move on, Europeans began kidnapping Africans to fill their places. Significant numbers of Africans were soon to be found in all reaches of the Spanish empire, including the frontier province of Texas. Many of these were of mixed heritage, and some individuals bought or were granted freedom. Spanish law, unlike later United States law, allowed freed people all legal rights except government office employment.

At the time of the Mexican Revolution of 1821, the new government technically made slavery illegal. Anglo-Americans who chose this decade to enter Texas from the east brought in “indentured servants” around the edges of Mexican law. After the Anglo-American revolution of 1836, Texas became slave-holding territory for the next quarter century.

And in all these years, whether legally possible or not, some blacks became free, and a few came as freedmen...a very few.

Also, in all of these years, individuals of African heritage distinguished themselves as soldiers, explorers, educators, builders, and settlers.

Most African-American residents of Texas today—nearly 12 percent of the total population—originated from blacks brought by Anglos before 1860 largely to East Texas, then an agricultural extension of the United States' South, or they came for economic reasons in contemporary times.

The distribution of blacks in Texas reflects this story: most live in the southeast quadrant of the state, many of these still rural, and in all metropolitan areas.

The story of African-American settlement is also reflected in the names given to, or taken by, the people. Earlier Africans, taken as slaves from dark-skinned cultures, were called blacks—Negroes. By no means “uncultured,” these became the stereotype blacks to Europeans: los negros esclavos.

Europeans used the Spanish word, or “Moor,” or the names of areas of Africa from which slaves were taken. Thus, “Negro” became a hated word for later generations. “Afro-American” and “African American” are modern terms, indicating a great truth: many African traditions—at least in detail—were stripped from the people in a deliberate way. A forcible relocation into another culture, a larger and more powerful culture, results in much loss. This, of course, is true for all groups entering Texas or any “host” culture in relatively small numbers, whether by force or not.

Yet all groups retain something of their heritage, and so did Africans. But succeeding generations were, for better or worse, greatly changed...into Americans.

The term “black,” a simple translation, is widely accepted, particularly by the younger generation, as a proper political and cultural term.

Thus, African Americans in Texas, neither a single people nor a group with definite borders, have an immensely interesting history and possess a story that has been a large part of Texas.

Even considering the overwhelming fact of slavery and its resulting anonymity, many African-American Texans are known for individual contributions.

The first known by name was a personal slave of Andrés Dorantes, a Moor called Estevan, who was one of four to survive the Narváez expedition's disaster in 1528. Estevan, Dorantes, Alonso del Castillo, and Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca survived years in what is today Texas and finally found their way to Mexico to tell their stories. One of these stories—that north of Mexico were cities of gold—fired further Spanish exploration. And one of the later efforts was led by the durable Estevan.

The villa of San Antonio de Béxar—under several names and often with nearly the rank of provincial capital—was always home to blacks who engaged in jobs from agriculture to blacksmithing, teaching to selling merchandise. The Spanish, unlike later Anglos, accepted the facts of intermarriage and individual accomplishment without denying the necessity of slavery.

After 1836 the technicality of freedom was denied to blacks in the republic and later the state, but a few free individuals nevertheless called Texas home.

Samuel McCulloch Jr. was one of the first men to be wounded in the Texas Revolution, at Goliad in 1835. Scout Hendrick Arnold led a column of Texan volunteers in the later, successful attack on San Antonio. Samuel G. Hardin fought at San Jacinto. Such individuals, few in number, were either given special legislative permission to remain in Texas or benefited from local law looking the other way.

Others were never freed in any real sense. Chloe Stevens, born in 1794 and brought to Liberty County in the 1820s, was near the battle of San Jacinto and helped care for the wounded of both sides. She died in San Antonio in 1901 at the age of 107, after living several lifetimes as personal servant, slave, wife, and mother. She saw much of Texas history.

Most individuals were given the hard task of crossing from slavery before the Civil War to technical freedom thereafter.

Many blacks found military service a logical career. In Texas, and in much of the post-Civil War West, the Buffalo Soldiers became a frontier tradition. Black soldiers of the 9th and 10th Cavalries and the 24th and 25th Infantries protected settlement areas against Indian and renegade attack until near the turn of the century. The origin of the name “Buffalo Soldiers” is not known for certain. Some soldiers, in the cold of high plains winters, wore buffalo-hide robes and ponchos; some blacks had curly hair; and the soldiers had the determination and speed of the native animal. Certainly the name was given by the Plains Indians, perhaps for all these reasons.

And a single man could become a cowboy. Many did, and a few, such as Daniel Webster “80 John” Wallace, eventually owned their own ranches and herds. Wallace died a millionaire in 1939.

Also, after the Civil War, black families proved durable enough to weather the restrictive civil laws that replaced literal slavery for the next three generations. The tradition of sharecropping provided a bridge for some African Americans to a future not imagined by earlier generations, black or white, while others had brought with them skills such as metalworking and pottery making or had learned a trade under slavery and could practice it with profit. After June 19, 1865, Emancipation Day in Texas and a day still celebrated, men could set themselves up as weavers, potters, blacksmiths, masons, and carpenters. Today, no field of modern human endeavor lacks the names of African Americans.