- Home
- Ruthe Winegarten
Brave Black Women
Brave Black Women Read online
BRAVE BLACK WOMEN
FROM SLAVERY TO THE SPACE SHUTTLE
Ruthe Winegarten and Sharon Kahn
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS
AUSTIN
Copyright © 1997 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
First edition, 1997
This book is adapted for young readers from Ruthe Winegarten’s Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995).
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713–7819.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Winegarten, Ruthe.
Brave Black women : from slavery to the space shuttle / Ruthe Winegarten and Sharon Kahn. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Adaptation of: Black Texas women. 1995.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-292-79106-2 (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-292-79107-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Afro-American women—Texas—History—Juvenile literature. 2. Texas—History—1846–1950—Juvenile literature. 3. Texas—History—1951– —Juvenile literature. [1. Afro-Americans—Texas—History. 2. Women—Texas—History. 3. Texas—History.] I. Kahn, Sharon, 1934– . II. Winegarten, Ruthe. Black Texas Women. III. Title.
E185.93.T4B563 1997
305.48'960730764—dc20
96–35614
AC
Design by Elizabeth Towler Menon
Cover photos, clockwise from top right: Mae Jemison (NASA); Ethelyn Taylor Chisum (Texas/Dallas History Archives Division, Dallas Public Library); Anne Lundy (photo by Jeff St. Mary, courtesy Anne Lundy); Barbara Jordan (Houston Chronicle); Bessie Coleman (Smithsonian Institution); Phylicia Rashad (Adept New American Museum, Mount Vernon, N.Y.); chopping cotton (photo by Dorothea Lange, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations). Center: Carlette Guidry (copyright Susan Allen Camp, Women’s Athletics Division, University of Texas at Austin).
ISBN 978-0-292-75735-6 (e-book)
ISBN 978-0-292-78555-7 (individual e-book)
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Slavery: Overcoming Fear
2. Freed Women: How They Survived
3. Education: The Road to a Better Life
4. Community Building: Women United!
5. Fighting Oppression: For the Vote and Against Violence
6. Work: Women of Achievement
7. World War II: Serving Their Country
8. The Civil Rights Movement: Equal Justice for All
9. The Arts and Sports: Creating and Performing
10. Law and Politics: Women of Power
11. Barbara Jordan: Defender of the Constitution
Barbara Jordan Chronology
Sources of Quotations by Barbara Jordan
Reading List
Credits
Index
Preface
I won’t know what the next step is until I get there. I know that when I went to Boston, and Austin, and Washington, I took with me everything I had learned before. And that’s what I will do this time. That’s the point of it, isn’t it? To bring everything you have with you wherever you go.
BARBARA JORDAN spoke these words to students—her favorite audience. Though she was a legislator, an orator, and a great American leader, her role as teacher was the most important one, and she taught us all. Barbara Jordan died as this book was being written, and it is her spirit which breathes life into its chapters.
Barbara Jordan told us in the words above that the point of life is to bring everything you have with you wherever you go. Though she was a child of the twentieth century, she brought with her the rich heritage of all the brave black women who had gone before her and who worked alongside her. As she succeeded in the world, she took with her everything she had learned before. What she brought with her is what this book is all about.
The great poet W. B. Yeats wrote:
O chestnut-tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
(“Among School Children,” 1928)
Like the chestnut tree, Barbara Jordan sprang from the great roots of African American women who nourished this country for three centuries through slavery to freedom. She is a part of them, and they of her. Brave Black Women tells us their stories and shows us their photographs, emphasizing the black women of Jordan’s home state of Texas, whose legacy she inherited. Many of them, along with Jordan, achieved national fame.
Barbara Jordan said, “I get from the soil and spirit of Texas the feeling that I, as an individual, can accomplish whatever I want to, and that there are no limits, that you can just keep going, keep soaring. I like that spirit.”
Dignity marks these lives with a graceful step, uniting Barbara Jordan and those who came before her. Join us as we follow, in pictures and words, the dancer and the dance.
Ruthe Winegarten and Sharon Kahn, 1996
Acknowledgments
We are grateful for the excellent editorial assistance of Dr. Dorothea Brown, Dr. Nancy Baker Jones, and Frieda Werden.
We thank our family members for their love and support: David, Suzanne, and Jon Weizenbaum and Nancy Nussbaum; and Debbie Winegarten, Marc Sanders, and Martha Wilson.
Our editor at U.T. Press, Theresa J. May, believed in the value of this book and has lent constant encouragement, for which we are most appreciative.
CHAPTER 1
Slavery: Overcoming Fear
As you listen to these words of Abraham Lincoln, relate them to the concept of a national community in which every last one of us participates: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of a democracy.”
BARBARA JORDAN
Slave women worked without pay. Former slave Mariah Carr of Marshall demonstrates the spinning wheel. During the Civil War, she spun thread for long hours to make clothes for the Confederate soldiers.
WHAT WAS SLAVERY LIKE?
BRAVE black women endured years of slavery until the end of the Civil War. Their own lives, and those of their families, belonged to the slave owners. These masters and mistresses controlled their slaves’ actions during the workday.
Even at night and on the weekends, slave women often worked, washing, ironing, spinning thread, and sewing. Despite many hardships, slaves remembered and continued their African traditions, where women were honored and respected as they grew older and wiser.
Have you ever picked up a big dog weighing fifty pounds? Was the load so heavy you almost dropped it? Slave children worked in the fields picking cotton. The sacks they filled could hold as much as fifty pounds. Some women picked three hundred or sometimes four hundred pounds of cotton a day, as much as the men. The children worked beside them, filling sacks made in a smaller size. They had to work fast and keep picking, even when they were hot, tired, and sleepy. Sometimes they were hungry and thirsty, too, and frightened of the overseer, the slaves’ boss. They didn’t have much time to play. Children as young as five or six also baby-sat for infants and toddlers, gathered firewood, swept the yard, and tended animals.
“Chopping cotton” means hoeing to get the weeds out. Slave women and sharecroppers worked hard in the cotton fields from sunup to sundown. They planted, chopped, or picked depending on the season.
Clara Anderson was six years old when she and a girl friend were captured by a white man. It was Christmas Day, 1843. They were stole
n from their parents in Maryland and brought to Texas as slaves. Clara was badly mistreated. Years later, she remembered her many troubles:
“This all happened in Austin, Texas. The folks would give me a little to eat, and half the time I was almost starved to death. There was some little Jewish children who lived nearby, and every day when they would come from school, they’d leave me some food. They’d hide this food in a tree-stump, where I’d go and git it. Those children would bring me buttered bread, cakes, and other things.”
Clara Anderson was six years old when she was captured in Maryland and brought to Austin as a slave.
Clara Anderson lived to be freed after the Civil War and to raise her own family. She said, “I always had to work, and to this day, I barely know my A-B-C’s.” But Clara had a good mind. She remembered her life as a slave and told her stories instead of writing them down. The stories are part of a collection of slave tales that will be preserved for generations to come.
Katie Darling’s master and mistress had six children. She nursed all of them. She said, “I stayed in the house with them and slept on a pallet on the floor, and as soon as I was big enough to tote the milk pail they put me to milking, too. Massa had more than 100 cows, and most of the time me and Violet did all the milking. We’d better be in that cowpen by five o’clock [in the morning]. One morning massa caught me letting one of the calves do some milking, and he let me off without whipping that time, but that didn’t mean he was always good, because those cows had more feeling for us than massa and missy.”
Hannah Mullins was born a slave. She and her family lived in a double log cabin with two rooms separated by a hall. A big bell rang in the morning for the slaves to get up very early, and again at bedtime. Hannah was raised in the slave nursery with other slave children until she was five years old. At mealtime, the cooks set two long wooden troughs on the table and filled them with crumbled corn bread and milk. Hannah and the other children lined up on each side of the table with their wooden spoons. When the women in charge of the nursery told the children to begin eating, they all dug in at once. Each one raced to fill up before the food was gone. Even then, they were still hungry the rest of the day.
CHILDREN WERE SOLD, TOO
MEMBERS of many slave families were separated from each other. Mintie Maria Miller remembered a heartbreaking experience:
“When I was little, my brother, uncle, aunt and mother was sold and I went with ’em. My father wasn’t sold so he couldn’t go. My sister got on de wagon to go, too, and de marster said, ‘Adeline, you can’t come. You got to stay here with Mistress.’ Dat’s de last I ever seen my sister. She was four years old.”
Slaves who ran away were often hunted down with dogs, and their owners placed ads in the newspapers for their return. One man offered to pay a $20 reward for the return of “Eliza, a little negro girl about 8 or nine years old.” A slave named Rhodie discovered a successful recipe for “keeping the hounds from following you . . . take black pepper and put it in your socks and run without your shoes. It made the hounds sneeze.”
KIAN LONG, A TEXAS PIONEER
KIAN LONG was the slave and lifelong companion of Jane Long, one of the first white women to settle in Texas. Thirteen-year-old Kian and Jane spent a freezing winter alone on Bolivar Island across from Galveston in 1821 while Texas was still part of Spain. The women survived by shooting birds and catching fish, which they shared with their loyal dog. Because the women were afraid of the Karankawa Indians who lived nearby, they ran a red flannel petticoat up the flagpole and periodically fired off the cannon to give the impression that the fort was still protected by soldiers. Kian helped Jane give birth in an ice-covered tent, and later the women ran two inns. The first gunpowder of the Texas Revolution was even stored behind their inn in Brazoria. Kian was given permission to marry, and she and her husband had four children, who were slaves, too. But they were all freed after the Civil War. Kian’s descendants were free. One grandson, Henry C. Breed, became a Houston police officer.
Some black women were free before the Civil War. A few even owned slaves.
FREE WOMEN OF COLOR
NOT all black women before the Civil War were slaves. A few hundred were free women of color. Their children were also free since they took the status of their mothers. Free people of color were not considered full citizens. They could not vote, serve on juries, or hold office. (Of course, no other women could either.) But most were hard-working and industrious members of their communities, and their neighbors respected them.
Doing the laundry was hard work. Monday was usually wash day.
Some women were nurses, laundresses, and cooks. Others were seamstresses, boardinghouse keepers, and sellers of milk and butter.
A few free women of color, like Tamar Morgan of Brazoria, became prosperous businesswomen and property owners. She came to Texas as a slave, but she worked hard, saved her money, and bought her freedom. Her husband, Samuel H. Hardin, a barber, came to Texas with Stephen F. Austin’s original “Old Three Hundred” group of colonists. Even respected people of color like Tamar and Samuel had trouble keeping their freedom. The couple asked their neighbors for help. The neighbors signed a petition asking that Tamar and Samuel be allowed to remain in Texas. It was one of the few such petitions granted by the Texas Congress. Within a few years, Tamar owned four town lots and one hundred acres of good land.
Charity Bird of Jefferson supported herself by baking cakes and selling them. She made enough money one year to take an enjoyable vacation back to the United States. (Texas was an independent republic at that time.) Fanny McFarland, a Houston laundress, saved her money, invested in property, and became quite wealthy. She was one of that city’s first successful real estate owners.
THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS
DID you know that the song “The Yellow Rose of Texas” was written about a black woman? Some African American women like Emily West (sometimes called Emily Morgan) came to Texas already free. She became the most famous of them and is sometimes known as the Yellow Rose of Texas. A native of New York, she came to Texas with Mrs. Lorenzo de Zavala in 1835. Emily was captured by General Santa Anna of Mexico on his way to fight General Sam Houston and the Texas troops. One tall Texas tale claims that right before the Battle of San Jacinto, Emily sent Houston the location of the Mexican troops. Santa Anna was so interested in courting Emily that he didn’t realize Houston’s forces were getting ready to attack. The Mexican Army was unprepared, and the Texans won the battle in eighteen minutes. Emily later applied for a passport, stating that she had lost her freedom papers on the San Jacinto battlefield. She is believed to have returned home to New York in 1837.
CHAPTER 2
Freed Women: How They Survived
You have got to be able to love yourself—love yourself strongly, and not let anybody disabuse you of your self-respect.
BARBARA JORDAN
AFTER the Confederate armies surrendered and the Civil War ended, slaves were declared free. Texas slaves were freed on June 19, 1865. Imagine your feelings if you had been imprisoned for a long time and suddenly were set free. What if all your relatives had been in prison, too, and none of you had a place to live, or food to eat, or money? What would you do?
When the slaves were freed, many began searching for family members who had been sold away to other owners. Women and men who had not been allowed to marry now held wedding ceremonies. And all freed slaves turned their efforts to finding ways to make a living.
LAUNDRESSES
THE former slave women did what they knew best and what was needed—doing the laundry—but now they got paid. There was no indoor plumbing in those days. Women and children had to carry water from a well or a river, sometimes very far away. Women spent long hours over pots of boiling water. One pot was for soapy water, and sometimes two or more were used for rinsing. The clothes had to be pushed down in the water and pulled out with big sticks. The heavy, wet clothes were wrung out by hand. Finally, the clothes were either hung on a l
ine or laid out on bushes to dry in the sun. This was an all-day job.
After freedom, mothers and children worked together to earn money for their families by doing laundry for other people.
Many slave women used to press other people’s cotton clothes. Some heavy irons used by slaves had a bell in the handle so that when the bell stopped ringing, the mistress knew her slave had stopped ironing. After freedom, women continued doing the laundry with heavy irons. In the days before electricity, they had several irons heating up on the fire while they ironed with the one already hot. Annie Mae Hunt recalled, “I could iron a shirt or a child’s dress so a fly couldn’t stand on the collar. A fly, he would slip off.”
Laundry was hard work, but it was a job that let a woman go into business for herself. If she moved to a new town or a big city, she could usually find laundry to do. She would either go to different people’s houses and do the wash there, or take their dirty clothes to her own house, so she could watch her children and get them to help.
In the 1870s, steam laundries came to Texas and some women worked there instead of at home. In Galveston, laundry workers went on strike in 1877, the first time ever for Texas women. They were protesting their low pay and demanding $1.50 a day. They marched up and down the streets shouting “We will starve no more” and boarded up the shops of some steam laundry owners who refused to pay more money. We don’t know whether they won the strike or not.
SHARECROPPERS
FAMILIES like Mintie Maria Miller’s reunited and began to live together in family groups. They shared their meals, houses, and expenses, and helped one another to survive. These extended families enjoyed living together once again.
Even if they only had the skills of field workers, most women at first refused to go back to work in the old, slave way, with mean overseers watching them every minute. They wanted to be near their own homes. So the owners of the old plantations divided the land into shares. Each family rented a plot of land from the owner and paid for it with part of the crop that they raised. Most women then continued working alongside their husbands in the fields as sharecroppers.