Louisiana’s Pierre Landry: first black mayor in the U.S.

(WGNO) Louisiana is home to many of American history’s well-kept secrets, including the story of Pierre Landry, who became the country’s first African-American mayor in 1868.

River Road African-American Museum Executive Director Kathe Hambrick wants to keep Landry’s story alive for future generations.

“I didn’t know about Pierre Landry,” Hambrick said. “I went to high school here in Ascension Parish, and have lived here half my life.”

Landry was born on the Prevost plantation as a slave, but allowed to live as a free person of color, Hambrick said.

After the Civil War, during which most of the buildings in Donaldsonville were damaged or destroyed, Landry became the country’s first black mayor and a prominent politician. (read more, watch video)


In a digital archive of fugitive slave ads, a new portrait of slavery emerges

(The Conversation) Among the millions of people enslaved in the United States before 1865, hundreds of thousands attempted to flee from those who held them in bondage.

Some left temporarily to protest mistreatment. Others sought to reunite with loved ones from whom they had been forced apart. Many simply wanted freedom.

These fugitives from American slavery often left no trace in the historical record, but we can document the flight of many of them. After all, to their white owners, enslaved people were valuable property – well worth the time, effort and resources devoted to their capture. The method most likely to produce results was enlisting other white people in the search by publicly offering a reward.

Open practically any issue of any southern newspaper from the decades before the Civil War and you’ll see advertisements placed by slaveholders searching for runaway slaves. Perhaps as many as 200,000 of these notices appeared in the public prints of the South, and each one attaches a name and a story to a fugitive.

Historians have known about and used runaway advertisements before, of course, but they’ve never all been gathered in one easily accessible place. So in 2014, a team of scholars led by myself, Edward Baptist of Cornell University, and Mary Niall Mitchell of the University of New Orleans began collaborating on a project called Freedom on the Move to collect and digitize these ads. (read more, listen to audio interview)


Conroe Normal and Industrial College: Spirit of the Golden Bell

Conroe Normal and Industrial College original building

Print of Conroe Normal and Industrial College’s original building.

(The Woodlands Lifestyles and Homes) In post-Civil War Texas, segregation cast a pall over efforts of African-Americans to educate themselves. In those few schools for African-Americans in existence, most teachers were white Christians. At the beginning of the 20th century, Prairie View A&M was the only major university for blacks. Seeking at that time to enhance the educational capacities of African-Americans was an enterprising individual named Dr. Jimmie Johnson. The place he chose to establish his Normal and Industrial College was Conroe.

Dr. Johnson and his wife, Chaney, labored mightily to raise funds for their chosen work, meeting success in April 1903. For three hard years, the Johnsons taught, worked and built on to their creation. In 1906, Dr. Johnson, exhausted, sold his college to the Baptist District Association, which appointed Dr. David Abner to the presidency,

Dr. Abner was a brilliant choice, because he came with a marvelous record as a unifier. He was the first graduate of Bishop College, started in Marshall, Texas in 1881 by the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Unhappy that Bishop College was established in East Texas, in 1884 the Guadalupe Baptist Association founded Guadalupe College in Seguin. Dr. Abner, the Bishop graduate, helped ease the tension between these two schools when he assumed the presidency of Guadalupe College. He left the latter position for Conroe, bringing with him students and personnel from both East and West Central Texas. (read more)


TIPHC Bookshelf

Published scholarship on black history in Texas is growing and we’d like to share with you some suggested readings, both current and past, from some of the preeminent history scholars in Texas and beyond. We invite you to take a look at our bookshelf page — including a featured selection — and check back as the list grows. A different selection will be featured each week. We welcome suggestions and reviews. This week, we offer, “A Southern Family in White and Black, The Cuneys of Texas,” By Douglas Hales.

The complex issues of race and politics in nineteenth-century Texas may be nowhere more dramatically embodied than in three generations of the family of Norris Wright Cuney, mulatto labor and political leader. Douglas Hales explores the birthright Cuney received from his white plantation-owner father, Philip Cuney, and the way his heritage played out in the life of his daughter Maud Cuney-Hare. This intergenerational study casts light on the experience of race in the South before Emancipation, after Reconstruction, and in the diaspora that eventually led cultural leaders of African American heritage into the cities of the North.

Most Texas history books name Norris Wright Cuney as one of the most influential African American politicians in nineteenth-century Texas, but they tell little about him beyond his elected positions. In The Cuneys, Douglas Hales not only fills in the details of Cuney’s life and contributions but places him in the context of his family’s generations.

A politically active plantation owner and slaveholder in Austin County, Philip Cuney participated in the annexation of Texas to the United States and supported the role of slavery and cotton in the developing economy of the new state. Wealthy and powerful, he fathered eight slave children whom he later freed and saw educated. Hales explores how and why Cuney differed from other planters of his time and place.

He then turns to the better-known Norris Wright Cuney to study how the black elite worked for political and economic opportunity in the reactionary period that followed Reconstruction in the South. Cuney led the Texas Republican Party in those turbulent years and, through his position as collection of customs at Galveston, distributed federal patronage to both white and black Texans. As the most powerful African American in Texas, and arguably in the entire South, Cuney became the focal point of white hostility, from both Democrats and members of the “Lily White” faction of his own party. His effective leadership won not only continued office for him but also a position of power within the Republican Party for Texas blacks at a time when the party of Lincoln repudiated African Americans in many other Southern states. From his position on the Galveston City Council, Cuney worked tirelessly for African American education and challenged the domination of white labor within the growing unions.

Norris Wright Cuney’s daughter, Maud, who was graced with a prestigious education, pursued a successful career in the arts as a concert pianist, musicologist, and playwright. A friend of W. E. B. Du Bois, she became actively involved in the racial uplift movement of the early twentieth century. Hales illuminates her role in the intellectual and political “awakening” of black America that culminated in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He adroitly explores her decision against “passing” as white and her commitment to uplift.

Through these three members of a single mixed-race family, Douglas Hales gives insight into the issues, challenges, and strengths of individuals. His work adds an important chapter to the history of Texas and of African Americans more broadly.


This Week in Texas Black History, May 7-13

8 – On this day in 1958, Lovie Lee Smith was born in Big Sandy, Texas. In high school, he led the Big Sandy Wildcats to three consecutive state championships and was all-state three years as an end and linebacker. Smith was a two-time All-America and three-time All-Missouri Valley Conference defensive back at the University of Tulsa. As head coach of the Chicago Bears, in 2007, he became the first African-American professional head coach to qualify a team for the Super Bowl when the Bears beat the New Orleans Saints, 39-14, in the NFC championship game. However, the Bears lost in Super Bowl XLI to the Indianapolis Colts, 29-17.

 

9 – In 1974, U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan was among the members of the House Judiciary Committee which opened hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Richard Nixon in the Watergate controversy. On July 25th, Jordan delivered a powerful message to the committee reminding her colleagues of the Constitutional basis for impeachment. Jordan asserted, “My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.”

 

 

11 – In 1994, Dr. Carol Surles becomes first African-American president of Texas Women’s University in Denton. A native of Florida, Surles earned her undergraduate degree in psychology at Fisk University in Nashville, her master’s degree in counseling from Chapman College in California, and her doctoral degree in education from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

 

 

12 – On this day in 1846, Norris Wright Cuney was born on a plantation near Hempstead. Cuney was the child of a white planter, Philip Minor Cuney and his slave, Adeline Stuart. Norris was educated at the Wylie Street School for blacks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He returned to Texas following the Civil War and settled in Galveston, where he became active in the Union League, the political arm of Radical Republican Reconstruction in Texas. Cuney became a powerful figure in Texas’ Republican circles, especially in Galveston and was appointed secretary of the Republican State Executive Committee in 1873, the highest party rank achieved by a Southern African American in the remaining decades of the century. In 1886, he was named the Republican Party’s national committeeman from Texas.


Blog: Ron Goodwin, Ph.D., author, PVAMU history professor

goodwinRon Goodwin’s bi-weekly blog appears exclusively for TIPHC. Goodwin is a San Antonio native and Air Force veteran. Generally, his column addresses contemporary issues in the black community and how they relate to black history. He and the TIPHC staff welcome your comments.

Read his latest entry, “100 days,” here.

 

 


Submissions Wanted

Historians, scholars, students, lend us your…writings. Help us produce the most comprehensive documentation ever undertaken for the African American experience in Texas. We encourage you to contribute items about people, places, events, issues, politics/legislation, sports, entertainment, religion, etc., as general entries or essays. Our documentation is wide-ranging and diverse, and you may research and write about the subject of your interest or, to start, please consult our list of suggested biographical entries and see submission guidelines. However, all topics must be approved by TIPHC editors before beginning your research/writing.

We welcome your questions or comments via email or telephone – mdhurd@pvamu.edu.