How a century-old recording revealed the lost world of African-American cantors

(Henry Sapoznik) The first few decades of the 20th century saw the rise of African-American synagogues simultaneously drawing inspiration from Jewish tradition and a Black worldview. What accounts for this rise is manyfold: Jim Crow laws which supplanted Reconstruction in the south drove a northern migration, a demographic shift which, in New York, brought African-Americans to the already established Jewish community in Harlem (by World War One, Harlem boasted the second largest Jewish community in the country.) Blacks were now encountering Jews as neighbors, employers, inspirations, customers and rivals.

Simultaneously, Black national aspirations grew, and drew inspiration from Zionism — itself a “back to Africa movement” — as a model.

Unaffiliated and unaccepted by the Jewish religious establishment, the congregations were for the most part small and poor, meeting in a storefront or a house — what similarly sized Orthodox congregations would call a shtibl , a little house — they constructed a crazy quilt of traditional Jewish practices (life cycle events, modesty of dress, kashrus/dietary laws, separate seating, etc) plus rituals which reflect the unique African-American worldview. Services were for the most part in Hebrew with some congregations conversant/fluent in Yiddish. (more)


Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power

biggers_the stream

John Biggers, The Stream Crosses the Path, 1961, oil and tempera on panel, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur J. Mandell. © 2020 John T. Biggers Estate / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, Estate Represented by Michael Rosenfeld Gallery

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is the final venue to present Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, featuring work by more than 60 Black artists that was created over two revolutionary decades in American history.

The exhibition, organized by Tate Modern in London, was slated to open at the MFAH in April, but it was delayed because of the pandemic lockdown at the previous venue in San Francisco, the de Young Museum. Soul of a Nation is on view in Houston from June 27 through August 30 as the final presentation of the three-year tour.

Soul of a Nation explores what it meant to be a Black artist in America during two revolutionary decades, from the 1960s and the Civil Rights movement to the early 1980s and the emergence of identity politics. The story unfolds in thematic sections, with a special emphasis on aligned groups in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and another focus on the work of artist Betye Saar. Among the many other artists featured are Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Roy DeCarava, David Hammons, Lorraine O’Grady, and Faith Ringgold. (more)


How Lead Belly Sang His Way out of the Hellhole on the Brazos

Famed bluesman Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter’s song “Midnight Special” sheds light on the horrible conditions at the Imperial State Prison Farm in Sugar Land.

Leadbelly(Houstonian Magazine) The graves were there all along, as Reginald Moore had maintained for years. He was proven right last April, when construction workers found the remains of nearly 100 people, most likely former slaves and black prisoners who, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, were forced to work in Texas’s brutal convict-leasing program, then buried and forgotten at the Imperial State Prison Farm in Sugar Land.

But before that heartbreaking discovery, anybody who listened to famed bluesman Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter’s 1934 recording of “Midnight Special” could have gathered just how bad things were at the prison. It’s all right there in the music, a folk song Ledbetter picked up while serving time at Imperial and doing everything he could to find a way out. (more)


How a Black Fireman Brought a Pole Into the Firehouse

More than a century ago, David Kenyon, a firefighter in Chicago, discovered the fastest way to the ground floor

firehouse poles

Poles like these at a Boston fire station are no longer used universally, but they remain emblematic of the profession. (Alex Potter)

(Smithsonian Magazine) In the 19th century, American firefighters had two ways of descending from their sleeping quarters to their horse-and-buggy conveyances on the ground floor: either by spiral staircase—installed to keep wayward horses from wandering upstairs—or through a tube chute, similar to the enclosed slides you see at playgrounds today. The stairs were cumbersome and the slides were slow, and in the 1870s, David Kenyon of Company 21, an all-African-American firehouse in Chicago, had an epiphany.

One day, Kenyon and a colleague got a call about a fire, and his fellow firefighter reached the ground by sliding down a wooden pole normally used to bale hay for horses. (more)


TIPHC Bookshelf

Playing In ShadowsPublished 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, “Playing in Shadows: Texas and Negro League Baseball,” (Texas Tech University Press), by Rob Fink.

While baseball may have long been considered an all-American sport in which a melting pot could celebrate ethnic heroes like Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Connie Mack, and Stan Musial, racial segregation excluded blacks from an otherwise democratic picture. Such was certainly the case in Texas, where, in the state’s first professional matchup soon after the Civil War, the R. E. Lees faced the Stonewalls―and African Americans, not surprisingly, played no part. Drawing upon oral histories and mining such rare sources as rosters and box scores from black newspapers, Rob Fink situates the semiprofessional West Texas Colored League against the rise and decline of professional Negro Leagues. From the 1880s Galveston Flyaways through Dallas shortstop Ernie Banks’s signing with the Chicago Cubs in 1953, “Playing in Shadows” brings to light an important but little-studied inning in American sport.


This Week in Texas Black History

July 12

Barbara Jordan

Texas Congresswoman, Barbara Jordan, became the first African-American to give the keynote address at a major national political convention by giving a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention on this date in 1976 in New York City. In opening her remarks, Jordan noted the significance of her appearance: “…my presence here is one additional bit of evidence that the American dream need not ever be deferred.” Jordan was a Houston native and graduate of Phillis Wheatley High School and Texas Southern University.

July 15

Forest Whitaker

Forest Whitaker, actor, producer, and director, was born on this day in 1961 in Longview. At age four, he moved with his family to Los Angeles. Whitaker was a star tackle at Palisades High School and received college football scholarship offers, however, after suffering a back injury he began to study opera and acting.  In 1982, he made his film debut in the comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but his breakout role came in 1988 portraying jazz legend Charlie Parker, in the Clint Eastwood film, Bird, for which Whitaker earned the Cannes Film Festival award for Best Actor and a Golden Globe nomination. His first directing effort was the film Waiting to Exhale in 1995, and in 2006 was widely lauded for his role as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the movie The Last King of Scotland. For that, Whitaker earned the 2007 Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, making him the fourth African-American actor to do so, joining Sidney PoitierDenzel Washington, and Jamie Foxx. That same year, Whitaker played Dr. James Farmer Sr. in The Great Debaters, the movie about the acclaimed Wiley College debate team of the 1930s and its coach, Melvin Tolson.

July 16

Wilhelmina Delco

On this date in 1929, Wilhelmina Delco was born in Chicago. Delco received a degree in sociology from Fisk University in Nashville in 1950 and seven years later relocated with her husband to Austin. Delco was elected to the Austin Independent School District Board of Trustees in 1968, making her the first African American elected to public office in Austin. In 1974, she won a seat in the Texas House of Representatives, making her the first African American official elected at-large in Travis County. Delco served 10 terms in the Legislature. In 1991, she was appointed Speaker Pro Tempore, becoming the first woman and the second African American to hold the second highest position in the Texas Houseof Representatives. She retired from the Legislature in 1995.


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

Ron Goodwin is an assistant professor of history at Prairie View A&M University. Even though he was a military “brat,” he still considers San Antonio home. Like his father and brother, Ron joined the U.S. Air Force and while enlisted received his undergraduate degree from Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, Texas. After his honorable discharge, he completed graduate degrees from Texas Southern University. Goodwin’s book, Blacks in Houston, is a pictorial history of Houston’s black community. His most recent book, Remembering the Days of Sorrow, examines the institution of slavery in Texas from the perspective of the New Deal’s Slave Narratives.

Recent Posts

Protect and Serve (Control)

The black community’s relationship with law and order has been tenuous, at best, for generations. Sadly, I believe our society has lost sight of the original purpose of law enforcement and how that purpose has been altered in our current societal and global environments. What’s even worse, if that’s possible, is that some groups in our society still embrace the archaic and erroneous ideology that people of color are genetically inferior to those of… (more)

More Uncomfortable Truths

In February 2020, I was asked to contribute an opinion piece for the PVAMU website. I submitted an essay describing what I called an Uncomfortable Truth of Black History Month. That “truth” focused on the black community’s continual efforts to prove it is worthy of recognition as contributors to American society. Even more so, I argued, it is time the black community finally acknowledges that the subliminal need for acceptance is based on the… (more)


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. Please contact Michael Hurd, Director of TIPHC, at mdhurd@pvamu.edu.