African American History in the Archives

African Americans have lived in Texas for more than four hundred years - longer than in any other region of the United States. Beginning with the arrival of the first African American in 1528 Alwyn Barr, in Black Texans, examines the African American experience in Texas during the periods of exploration and colonization, slavery, Reconstruction, the struggle to retain the freedoms gained, the twentieth-century urban experience, and the modern civil rights movement.
E 185.93 .T4 B37 1996

The American West is mistakenly known as a region with few African Americans and virtually no Black history. This book challenges that view in a complex chronicle that begins in 1528 with the Spanish-speaking African diaspora. In 1848 the first English speaking African-Americans arrived - as slaves - creating a nucleus of post-American Civil War communities. Thousands of African-Americans thereafter migrated to the high plains while others drove cattle up the Chisholm trail or served on remote army outposts. The book moves on to examine the first Black church in 1872, the West's Black Civil Rights movement which began during the Civil War and 20th-century changes such as migration after World War II, the civil rights movement during the 1960s and the interest in multiculturalism.
E185.925 .T39 1998

The authors argue that African-American women in the West played active, though sometimes unacknowledged, roles in shaping the political, ideological, and social currents that influenced the United States over the past three centuries. This is the first major historical anthology on the topic.
E185.925 .A45 2003

This text argues that the Texas borderlands served as a test of efforts for cultural compromises between various cultural heritages, including Latin-Catholic, African, Anglo-Protestant, German, and Indigenous communities.
E 185.93 .T4 W66

A register of political events and publications relating to the United States and Americas. Includes contemporary descriptions and current events of Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and the Iberian Peninsula. Relevant public documents published in this text is as follows:
- Message of President Vicente Guerrero to the Mexican Congress, proclamation of abolishing slavery
D2 .A5

In this book, the eminent Harvard historian Frederick Merk focuses on the intricate maneuverings of President Tyler and his colleagues to reverse the policies of three previous Administrations and, without reference to public opinion, move toward the annexation of Texas.
F390 .M55 1972

The laws that governed the institution of slavery in early Texas were enacted over a fifty-year period in which Texas moved through incarnations as a Spanish colony, a Mexican state, an independent republic, a part of the United States, and a Confederate state. This unusual legal heritage sets Texas apart from the other slave-holding states and provides a unique opportunity to examine how slave laws were enacted and upheld as political and legal structures changed. The Laws of Slavery in Texas makes that examination possible by combining seminal historical essays with excerpts from key legal documents from the slave period and tying them together with interpretive commentary by the foremost scholar on the subject, Randolph B. Campbell.
KFT1601.6.S55 L39 2010

Free Blacks in Antebellum Texas collects the essays of Harold R. Schoen and Andrew Forest Muir, early scholars who conducted the most complete studies on the topic, although neither published a book. Schoen published six articles on “The Free Negro in Republic of Texas” and Muir four articles on free blacks in Texas before the Civil War.
E185.93.T4 F74 2015

The 32 reminiscences presented here provide insight into the lives of the enslaved, including recollections of being sold away from parents, suffering harsh punishment by overseers, and living in enslavement.
Also available online with UTA access.
E 444 .T55 1997

If we do in fact 'remember the Alamo, ' it is largely thanks to one person who witnessed the final assault and survived: the commanding officer's slave, a young man known simply as Joe. What Joe saw as the Alamo fell, recounted days later to the Texas Cabinet, has come down to us in records and newspaper reports. But who Joe was, where he came from, and what happened to him have all remained mysterious until now. In a remarkable feat of historical detective work, authors Ron J. Jackson, Jr., and Lee Spencer White have fully restored this pivotal yet elusive figure to his place in the American story.
F390.J64 J33 2015

Bruce A. Glasrud and Deborah M. Liles have gathered over thirty years of scholarship—articles, book excerpts, and new, original essays—to offer for the first time an overview of the history of African Americans in Central Texas. From slavery and agriculture in the nineteenth century to entrepreneurship and the struggle for civil rights in the twentieth century, African Americans in Central Texas History: From Slavery to Civil Rights fills in the critical missing pieces of an often-overlooked region in the state’s history.
E185.93.T4 A385 2019

The life of a cowboy was hardly glamorous. Poorly fed, underpaid, overworked, deprived of sleep, and prone to boredom and loneliness, cowboys choked in the dust, were cold at night, and suffered broken bones in falls and spills from horses. African American cowboys, however, also had to survive discrimination, bigotry, and prejudice. From scattered courthouse records, writings, and interviews with a few of the African American cowhands who were part of the history of Texas, Sara R. Massey and a host of writers have retrieved the little known stories of some of these cowboys. Among the stories in Black Cowboys of Texas, are those of Peter Martin, a freight hauler who assisted in a rebellion against the Mexican government: Bose Ikard, who went on the cattle drive that opened the Goodnight-Loving Trail; and Johanna July, a Black Seminole woman who trained horses for U.S. soldiers.
F391 .B58 2000

This study concentrates on the gradual decline of the status of Black Texans in the post-Reconstruction era. The author describes the fight for equity in the political, economic, and social life of the state, and delves into the backgrounds and personalities of African-American leaders. A particular interest is given to the history of African-American political leaders in Texas and the eventual elimination of the Black vote.
E185.93 .T4 R5 1971

Established by Congress in 1865 to help newly emancipated blacks make the transition from slavery to freedom, the Freedmen's Bureau is considered the first social welfare agency in American history. How effectively the Bureau carried out its mission, however, has long been a subject of debate. In this revisionist study of the Bureau's operations in Texas, Barry A. Crouch challenges traditional views that the Bureau was ineffective and asserts that its agents actually made considerable--and often successful--attempts to assist Black Texans.
E 185.93 .T4 C76 1992

With Freedom's Lawmakers, Eric Foner has assembled the first comprehensive directory of the over 1,500 African Americans who held political office in the South during the Reconstruction era. He has compiled an impressive amount of information about the antebellum status, occupations, property ownership, and military service of these officials - who range from U.S. congressmen to local justices of the peace and constables. This revised paperback edition also includes material on forty-five additional officials. In his Introduction, Foner analyzes and interprets the roles of the black American officeholders. Concise biographies, in alphabetical order, trace the life histories of these individuals - many previously unknown. This useful and informative volume also includes an index by state, by occupation, by office during Reconstruction, by birth status, and by topic.
E 185.96 .F64 1996

A history of African-American legislators serving in Texas, African-American politics and ideas, and an overview of the politics between the beginning of the Reconstruction era and the disenfranchisement of Black voters.
E 185.93 .T4 B7

Ruthe Winegarten, a prolific and competent independent scholar of Texas history, enriches understanding of the Lone Star State with this long-needed and well-done study of the African American women of Texas, from the Spanish colonial era to the present.
E 185.93 .T4 W55 1995

Barbara Jordan was a private woman in public spaces. She emerged from the obscurity of Houston's segregated Fifth Ward to become the first African American Congresswoman elected from Texas since Reconstruction and a keynote speaker at two national Democratic conventions. Although her public career began in politics, she soon became known for her ethics, her vision of community, and her passion for education and public service. Jordan challenged the nation to reclaim constitutional ideals, adhere to moral principles, and commit to a pluralism that was dynamic and transformative. In her speeches she emerges as a woman who views public life as an opportunity to share the very best that the human spirit can conceive. This provocative and creative work offers the first comprehensive analysis of Jordan's written speeches, with particular emphasis on the period that begins with the Watergate years and ends with her immigration initiatives. Ethics, public religion, and law are the three themes that predominate in Jordan's speeches.
E840.8.J62 H65 2000

Reprint of the 1904 edition.
An overview of African-American military service history, including early literature of Black Servicemen serving in the American Revolution, War of 1812, and Civil War. This text places particular emphasis on Black Soldiers serving in Cuba and at the battle of San Juan.
E725.5.N3 S8 1969

This collection of documents illuminates the lives and experiences of the African Americans who served in the Regular Army between the Civil War and World War I.
E185.925 .V65 2003

After nearly 200,000 African-American soldiers fought in the Civil War, Congress enacted legislation to authorize regiments of cavalry and infantry for service in the West. The Ninth and Tenth cavalries won fame as "buffalo soldiers", nearly overshadowing the critical support role of the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth infantries. Now Arlen L. Fowler brings to light the story of African-American infantry service from 1869 to 1891 in Texas, Indian Territory, the Dakotas, Montana, and Arizona.
E 185.63 .F66 1996

A history of African-American servicemen in the US Coast Guard.
E185.63 .C379 2014

A 5 volume set of photographs and biographies of WWII servicemen and servicewomen compiled in 1948. African-American servicemen and women are found in volume 3, with names listed in volume 5.
F 385 .H5

Historians Thomas W. Cutrer and T. Michael Parrish have not only painstakingly reconstructed Doris Miller's inspiring actions on December 7. They also offer for the first time a full biography of Miller placed in the larger context of African American service in the United States military and the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement.
D767.92 .C87 2018

Emiel Owens served his country in the 777th Field Artillery, involved in actions from Omaha Beach to the occupation army in the Philippines. Like the rest of the U.S. Army at the time, the 777th was a segregated unit. Remarkably few memoirs by African Americans have been published from the World War II era, making Owens's account especially valuable. Because he situates his military experience in the larger context of his life and the society in which he lived, his story also reveals much about the changing racial climate of the last several decades.
D769.34 777th .O94 2006

Senate documents including hearings, interviews, and investigations that were compiled and presented before the 60th Congressional session in Texas. This investigation was regarding what is now known as the Brownsville Affair, an incident of racial discrimination where Buffalo Soldiers were accused of attacking a white bartender, leading to President Theodore Roosevelt to order a discharge without honor 167 soldiers. The men were pardoned and exonerated in the 1970's.
UB323 .A4 1908