Juneteenth, Jim Crow and how the fight of one Black Texas family to make freedom real offers lessons for Texas lawmakers trying to erase history from the classroom
The 182,566 enslaved African Americans in Texas had finally won their freedom.
- The 182,566 enslaved African Americans in Texas had finally won their freedom.
- He had long served as the enslaved servant of Gen. Sam Houston, the most well-known military and political leader in Texas.
- If Juneteenth meant anything, it meant at least that Joshua Houston and his family were free.
- Indeed, the radical promise of Juneteenth is embodied in the community activism of Joshua Houston and the educational career of his son Samuel Walker Houston.
The violent white reaction to Black political power
- In 1878 and 1882, a Republican coalition of Black and white voters opposed to conservative Democratic rule elected Houston as the county’s first Black county commissioner, a powerful position in local governance.
- In the two decades following emancipation, 52 Black men served in the state Legislature or the state’s constitutional conventions.
- Opposition to Black freedom had been a powerful force in the state’s political culture since emancipation.
- Later, in the 1880s, attacks on Black elected officials, their white political allies and Black voters escalated dramatically.
Like father, like son
- On an unknown date, a few years after Juneteenth, Joshua Houston’s son Samuel Walker Houston was born free in the bright light of Reconstruction.
- Houston’s school was named for him and served as one of the first county training schools for African Americans in Texas.
- Young women at Houston’s school received training in homemaking, sewing and cooking, while young men learned carpentry, woodworking and mathematics.
- Together, the group led the Texas Commission on Interracial Cooperation’s effort to evaluate Texas public school textbooks during the 1930s.
An ongoing battle for equality
- The argument used for supporting such restrictions is that “divisive concepts” like the history of racism may make some students feel uncomfortable or guilty.
- In reality, the prohibition on teaching the darker chapters of our past creates a segregated history.
- Americans cannot appreciate the accomplishments of Joshua and Samuel Walker Houston without examining the vicious realities of Jim Crow society.