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From the National Park Service—if you want to save a copy, grab it soon. The current administration is taking apart the NPS.
Each June Black communities across the United States celebrate Juneteenth, a day that commemorates African American freedom. The conclusion of the U.S. Civil War in April 1865 freed almost all enslaved people in the U.S. South, but Black men, women, and children in Texas remained in bondage until Union soldiers freed them in June 1865. However, not all enslaved Black people in Texas waited for the Union Army to liberate them. Some escaped south to Mexico in search of freedom decades before the Civil War began.
In September 1858 twenty-two-year-old Sandy escaped from Big Cypress Creek, Texas, which was eighteen miles north of Houston. This instance was not the first time that he had run away. The last time he had fled, someone captured him approximately 180 miles southwest of Big Cypress Creek.[1] Undeterred by this failed escape, Sandy was “determined to make his way to Mexico.”[2] Despite wearing an “iron collar around his neck and shackles on his feet,” Sandy ran away again hoping to find freedom.[3] There were limited opportunities for fugitives from slavery to receive aid during their escapes through Texas. If Sandy ventured near an enslaved community, he could obtain food from its members. If he arrived to Hidalgo County, Texas, he could seek refuge at Nathaniel Jackson’s ranch or use John Webber’s ferry to cross the Rio Grande.[4] While it is unknown if Sandy ever reached freedom in Mexico, his efforts show that enslaved Texans viewed the nation as a safe haven.
By the early 1850s most enslaved people in Texas knew that Mexico was their best option for freedom. In a 1937 Works Progress Administration interview, then ninety-two-year-old Felix Haywood recalled, “Sometimes someone would come ‘long and try to get us to run up North and be free. We used to laugh at that. There wasn’t no reason to run up North. All we had to do was to walk, but walk South. And we’d be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande.”[5] Haywood and others in his enslaved Texas community likely learned about freedom in Mexico from local Mexicans in Texas, or Tejanos. Because of this spread of information, enslaved people in Texas knew that the northern United States and Canada were not feasible places for freedom not only because of the significant distance, but also because Mexico had abolished slavery decades earlier. In 1829 Mexican President Vicente Guerrero abolished slavery, but he exempted Texas from abolition to placate Anglo enslavers. In 1837 Mexico abolished slavery again without any exceptions.[6] Men and women in bondage who thought about escape used their knowledge of abolition in Mexico and a limited understanding of their local areas to seek freedom in a northeastern Mexican state.[7]
Unlike enslaved Black people who escaped to the northern United States and Canada, there were few communities of antislavery activists to assist self-liberated Black people who arrived in Mexico. After crossing the Rio Grande, freedom seekers typically sought refuge in the nearest border town. Coahuila border town Piedras Negras was an important site of freedom in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands because fugitives from slavery frequently escaped there in the early 1850s; a nearby settlement of Mascogos (Black Seminoles from the United States) helped reinforce the idea of Coahuila as a space of refuge.[8] Still, self-emancipated Black people residing in Mexican border towns had to remain vigilant to maintain their freedom. Alarmed by the flight of enslaved people to Mexico, Anglo Texas enslavers employed Texas Rangers––Texas’s police force founded in 1835––to track, capture, and extradite freedom seekers who had reached Mexico. While the U.S. government could not enforce the Fugitive Slave Act (1850) outside of U.S. borders, Rangers and others employed to kidnap fugitives from slavery used violence to capture freedom seekers in Mexico and return them to Texas.
Enslaved people in Texas imagined their journeys to freedom differently than those in bondage in the Upper and Lower U.S. South. Drawing from information they gathered from local Mexicans and their own failed escape attempts, enslaved Texans crafted routes that guided them south to Mexico. Their experiences cast a new light on enslavement and resistance in antebellum Texas. While Juneteenth celebrates Black freedom gained shortly after the U.S. Civil War, there were many freedom seekers from Texas who self-emancipated to Mexico before 1865.
Article contributed by Mekala Audain – Associate Professor of History at The College of New Jersey.
Audain, Mekala. “Design His Course to Mexico: The Fugitive Slave Experience in the Texas–Mexico Borderlands, 1850–1853.” In Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Freedom in North America, 1775–1860, edited by Damian Alan Pargas, 232–250. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2018.
Baumgartner, Alice L. South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War. New York: Basic Books, 2020.
Cornell, Sarah E. “Citizens of Nowhere: Fugitive Slaves and African Americans in Mexico, 1833–1857.” Journal of American History 100. 2 (2013): 351–374.
Kelley, Sean. “‘Mexico in His Head’: Slavery and the Texas–Mexico Border, 1810–1860.” Journal of Social History 37. 3 (2004): 709–723.
Mareite, Thomas. “Conditional Freedom: Free Soil and Fugitive Slaves from the US South to Mexico’s Northeast, 1803–1861.” PhD diss. Leiden University, 2020.Nichols, James David. The Limits of Liberty: Mobility and the Making of the Eastern U.S.–Mexico Border. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018.
[1] “Runaway,” The Weekly Telegraph (Houston, TX), October 20, 1858, University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.
[2]“Runaway.”
[3] “Runaway.”
[4] Roseann Bacha-Garza, “Race and Ethnicity along the Antebellum Rio Grande: Emancipated Slaves and Mixed Race Colonies,” in The Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846–1876, eds. Roseann Bacha-Garza, Christopher L. Miller, and Russell K. Skowronek (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019), 94–95.
[5] George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave – Texas Narratives, Vol. 4, Part 1 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972), 132. Emphasis in the original.
[6] Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1989), 25–26; Manuel Dublán y José Maria Lozano, Legislación Mexicana, o, colección complete de las disposiciones legislativas expedidas desde la independencia de la republica, tomo III (Mexico: Dublán y Lozano, 1876), 352.
[7] Campbell, An Empire for Slavery, 56.
[8] Frederick Law Olmstead, A Journey Through Texas; or a Saddle-trip on the Southwestern Frontier: With a Statistical Appendix (New York: Dix, Edwards & Co., 1857), 324. For more about Mascogos in Coahuila, see Kevin Mulroy, Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian Territory, Coahuila, and Texas (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1993).
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You think they would have looked at the policy more closely before cheering their fearless leader for restoring the names of military bases named in honor of Confederate generals. Instead, the Confederate heritage community has, once again, been made to look like fools.
When will they learn that Donald Trump has no interest in honoring their Confederate ancestors unless it benefits his political or business interests. He is and will always remain an opportunist. His views on the display of the Confederate battle flag have been all over the place since 2015 and he even placed a historical marker on his Virginia golf course commemorating a fake Civil War battle.
Back in February, organizations like the Sons of Confederate Veterans and Virginia Flaggers criticized President Trump for restoring the name Fort Bragg, because it honored a completely different person, who just happened to share the last name of Confederate general Braxton Bragg.
What Trump announced yesterday is just a continuation of this policy, but it looks like the Virginia Flaggers and their followers haven’t caught on yet. Here are just a few of the roughly 1,100 comments that have been posted on their Facebook page.
Thank you President Trump for bringing back our Great Southern Heroes names-!!!
Thank you President Trump . You’re a true American and the Greatest President we have ever had.
Becouse presudent trump is onnly brave Men spouk true America god bles president.
I love this man.!!! He JUST needs folks to be on his side… He can fix it all.! I believe this in my heart.! Deo Vindice.
Not everyone has been deceived, including none other than Confederate president Jefferson Davis.
Who is the genius, who figured out how to restore the name of Fort A.P. Hill without violating the law banning the naming of military bases after Confederate generals?
I am going to be laughing about this all day today.
As I pointed out back in February, the restoration of these military base names has absolutely nothing to do with honoring the Confederacy or Confederate military leaders. The Virginia Flaggers and other Confederate heritage groups should no better than to place their trust in a corrupt Northern businessman.
Isn’t this exactly the profile of the ‘evil and corrupt Yankee’ that we are told their ancestors were fighting against during the Civil War? LOL
Of course, what is striking is the hypocrisy behind their outrage over the renaming of these military bases. It should come as no surprise that no one in this community is speaking out against the proposal to rename naval vessels that honor some of this nation’s most important freedom fighters.
Mr. [Harvey] Milk is one of several trailblazers whose name has been identified for possible removal from naval vessels. According to a senior official familiar with a memo from John Phelan, the secretary of the Navy, they include Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, another Supreme Court justice, who became a feminist icon; Harriet Tubman, who, after being born into slavery, became an abolitionist instrumental in the Underground Railroad; Lucy Stone, a prominent abolitionist and suffragist; Medgar Evers, a civil-rights leader who was assassinated by a member of the Ku Klux Klan; Cesar Chavez, a labor leader; and Dolores Huerta, another labor leader.
Somehow this does not rise to the level of ‘erasing history.’
Harvey Milk served nearly four years in the Navy. He was discharged at the rank of a junior lieutenant after being threatened with a court martial because of his sexual orientation.
In 1943, Medgar Evers dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Army Reserve Corps during World War II. He unloaded weapons, vehicles, and supplies from transport ships. After D-Day, Evers and his 325th Port Company went into France, where he served in the all-Black 3677th Quartermaster Company and 958th Quartermaster Service Company. He was part of the Red Ball Express, a truck convoy system primarily composed of African American Soldiers that supplied Allied forces.
I guess the only honor and history that is worth defending is of those people who chose to make war against the United States rather than those who have defended it or stood up for its principle of equality.
For now, I am going to relish the fact that these people got exactly what they deserved.
We’re hosting a community support space for OHA members next week, focusing especially on independent practitioners. Join OHA President Troy Reeves, VP Sarah Milligan, and your fellow OHA community members in an open conversation about the issues and concerns all of you are currently facing, and any opportunities on the horizon. As usual, all members […]
Here are some issues from a well-recorded interview. We’ve sent hundreds of interviews just like this one through this same AI program. I’m not complaining about the program, it’s the best we’ve used. But AI doesn’t care about what people actually, it cares about telling you it’s correct.
So if you’re not using us, you’re paying somebody to listen to every single word to determine that the person said “shorts” not Charlotte. SERIOUSLY!? Let us help. AI isn’t as much help as they want you to think.
Forwarded to the YouTube Office of —> Forwarded to the UTxxx (for privacy) Office of
Indiana—> MD Anderson
Charlotte—> shorts
Due to some protocol—> MD Anderson protocol
Gave me a pen—-> Gave me a PBN
Fox Nine Hills—-> Fox signed his
Clock Clinic—> Clark Clinic
I think you’re the name—> I forgot her name
Beauty over there—> Video over there
Put the vat up—> put the video up
Hey, Robert—> Hey, ROC
Drug screens—> drawstrings
I’m tired—> I tie (referring to a pair of shorts)
I’m getting rid of the process—> I’m ready to process
Deposit—> Pause it
Cup—> color
Not to just buy—> Not to put you on the spot.
I’m trying to mimic you—-> I’m trying to remember, too.
Get the corner—> get the color
Those were unaware—> those were underwear
UT Please—> UT Police
This museum looks fascinating! Have you been? Have any pictures or anecdotes to share? We’d LOVE to hear from you!
We’ve transcribed hundreds of hours of WWII oral histories and we’ve loved every minute! Tell us your stories!
OUTDOOR EXHIBITS OPEN DAWN TO DUSK ALL YEAR
WE ARE ALWAYS OPEN ON VETERANS DAY, JULY 4 AND MEMORIAL DAY
Address: 3038 W 35th St, Austin, Tx 78703
The 45,000-square foot Texas Military Forces Museum explores the history of the Lone Star State’s militia and volunteer forces from 1823 (date of the first militia muster in Stephen F. Austin’s colony) to 1903 when the Congress created the National Guard. From 1903 to the present the museum tells the story of the Texas Army and Air National Guard, as well as the Texas State Guard, in both peacetime and wartime. Permanent exhibits utilize uniforms, weapons, equipment, personal items, film, music, photographs, battle dioramas and realistic full-scale environments to tell the story of the Texas Military Forces in the Texas Revolution, the Texas Navy, the Texas Republic, the Mexican War, the Battles along the Indian Frontier, the War between the States, the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, Peace Keeping Deployments and the Global War on Terror. Living history programs, battle reenactments and other special events take place throughout the year. Admission to the museum is FREE.
The library and archives are open by appointment only. Please call for an appointment. The museum maintains an archive of various materials including:
World War I Service cards for every Texan who served Link to WWI records online at Familysearch.org
World War II file cards for the 36th Infantry Division, a work in progress: WWII 36th File Cards Database
Link to PDFs- 36th Infantry Division Roster WWII
36th Division Morning Reports Jan-July 1944 https://www.36thdivisionarchive.com/36th-infantry-division-morning-reports
Thousands of original documents from the Texas National Guard from 1910 to the present day
Photo archive of pictures related to the Texas Military Forces
Nothing brings military history to life like hearing the sound of a machine gun, the boom of cannon, the rattle of musketry, the drone of aircraft engines or feeling the earth shake under you while a tank drives by. All of these experiences are available to visitors courtesy of the Texas Military Forces Museum Living History Detachment which conducts a series of battle reenactments, demonstrations, displays, parades and living history programs throughout the year to make history “come alive” for young and old alike.
The primary focus of the detachment is the 36th Infantry Division in World War II and the famous Texas Brigade during the War Between the States. However, the detachment also participates in World War I and Vietnam War events as well as other time periods.
The museum’s living historians travel around the country to take part in historic events, but the backbone of their schedule are three programs that take place on Camp Mabry each year: the Close Assault 1944 living history program which occurs over Memorial Day weekend and Veterans Day weekend and the annual Texas Military Forces Open House – Muster Day event during April.
To get involved with the museum’s living history program, check out the G Company brochure or B Company Brochure .
