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Texas
Labor History Before 1935
Texas
Socialists Won 11.7% of Governor’s Vote
In the
1914 Texas Governor’s Race, E.R. Meitzen, the Socialist candidate from Hallettsville, piled up
11.7% of the vote and made his party the second largest in the state. Jim
Ferguson, the Democrat who eventually won, co-opted a large part of the tenant
farmer vote that might otherwise have gone with the Socialists.
I’m
putting more description of the remarkable Meitzen family and their profound
effect on progressive politics in the Socialism section of this site.
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Black
Soldiers Were Hanged for Mutiny in 1917
Angela
Armendariz Dorau, "Of Soldiers, Racism, and Mutiny. The 1917 Camp Logan Riot and Court Martial." Heritage, Spring, 1998. Includes a photo of the trial that was
donated by Attorney John H Crooker III.
These
were apparently Buffalo Soldiers from the 24th Regiment created in 1869. They
had distinguished war record and exemplary behavior before coming into Houston,
near TC Jester & Washington streets. "The citizens and leaders of
Houston let it be known that they did not want nor welcome armed black soldiers
in their city." But they wanted the federal construction money. The
soldiers only had billy-clubs for guard duty.
Hot
morning of August 23, 1917, a thunderstorm blew into a 102 degree day. Soldiers
resisted Jim Crow on the street cars, and were attacked by police. "At the
time of the riot, the Houston police force had a reputation for brutality and
racism and was in need of reform." "...commanding officers blind to
the impending danger." "Earlier on the day of the riot, Houston
police officers had beaten two black soldiers, thefirst for interfering in the
arrest of a black woman, and the second for inquiring about the first. In
addition to beating the second soldier, the police shot at him..."
That
night, the soldiers stormed the supply tent and armed themselves. Approximately
100 of them left for the city, aiming for revenge upon the police. Police met
them and a 2-hour riot ensued. 'Twenty people died either during the riot or as
a result of injuries received during the violence. Sixteen of those persons
were white, and five of them were police officers. Four black soldiers lost
their lives." 63 soldiers stood trial, all of whom had pled not
guilty." Court martial began November 1, 1917.
"On
November 29, 1917, the army convicted and sentenced 13 of the soldiers to death
and 41 to hard labor and life in prison. Four received shorter sentences and
five were acquitted." "Early in the morning of December 11, 1917, on
the banks of the Salado Creek in a clearing on the perimeter of Fort Sam
Houston, the condemned soldiers were hanged." "In September, 1918,
six more soldiers were hanged in the same spot at Fort Houston..." She
recommends book, "A Night of Violence" by Robert V Haynes, Louisiana
State University, 1976.
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OK, Frank Little's grave isn't exactly in Texas. It's in Butte, Montana (just north of Amarillo). But Frank was raised in Oklahoma next door, and I can't resist sharing the photo of his grave. It says "Frank Little 1879-1917. Slain by capitalist interests for organizing and inspiring his fellow men." Elaine Lantz and I have a thick scrapbook on the life of this most courageous and important American labor leader.
Compared to other labor figures, very little is written about Frank Little. But it wasn't because he lacked charisma or contributions -- it was because of the repression of the period. Click here for more on Frank Little
Little was killed on the same day that the Green Corn Rebellion began in Oklahoma. (See author "Bush" in Reading List)
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Early
Texas Activists Combined Socialism & Religion
I
have always been fascinated by religion in the labor movement. The Socialist
Party was stronger in Kansas than anywhere else in the early part of the
century, and they held their great camp meetings, as often as not, in
conjunction with Campbellite revivalists from the Church of Christ!
Texas
socialists were most popular among the German immigrants around Halletsville in
that same period, and religious camp meetings were intertwined with the
political speakers.
How
can the most downtrodden people hold both the labor movement and tent revivalists
so close to their hearts?
The
Fall edition of Labor's Heritage
gives part of the answer. Bryant Simon has a long article about a lay preacher
named James Evans who worked in a textile mill in the deep South around 1930.
The paternalistic mill owners had built 9 churches where their employees were
taught to be submissive.
But
many workers gathered with Evans in out of the way places to hear sermons about
the meek being blessed and how hard it is to get a camel through the eye of a
needle or a rich man into heaven.
According
to the article, "fundamentalist religious groupings indicated the workers'
social alienation and the depths of their religious and economic grievances.
Away from the influences of mainstream theological thought, the new churches
emphasized the equality of all people before God in the life to come, over the
trappings of this world. Poverty, in fact, represented grace to some. Others
censored the cultural practices, such as dancing, gambling, and consumption,
often associated with the upper classes."
Labor's Heritage also has articles about workers'
families in Massachusetts during the "Gilded Age", a biography of A.
Phillip Randolph, and descriptions of the general strike in Seattle in 1919. It
has fine glossy pictures, excellent writing, and long scholarly bibliographies
for those hungry for more labor history. Subscriptions are $17.95 from Box
47097, Atlanta, George 30362-9842.
The lay preacher won the workers'
hearts but had his union organizing drive smashed by the bosses using their traditional
methods of fear and intimidation.
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IWW Assaulted in 1919
November 11,
1919 was Centralia Massacre. 4 VFW attackers killed, 8 IWW's jailed 25 to 40
years, 1 lynched. Wesley Everest. There's a web page and maybe Washington State
Historical Society has it.
I got it
from Labor's Heritage Vol 10 No 4
$19.95 for one year. (301) 4312-5457 fxj 301-431-0385 Labor's Heritage 10000 New Hampshire Av.
Silver Spring, Maryland 20903 email:
rreynold@clark it's probably clark.edu but might be .com or .org
*****
Ruth A Allen, East Texas Lumber Workers. An Economic and Social Picture, 1870-1950. Univ of Texas Press, 1961. Dallas Public Library 331.7634 A428e. Allen was an economist and most of the book consists of documenting the poverty in the timber country of East Texas. However, on page 165 there begins a riveting chapter "Labor Unrest in the Pineries". Allen documents efforts of the Knights of Labor, the IWW, American Labor Union, The Brotherhood of Timber Workers, and the Timber Workers ofthe World to organize and keep contracts with the lumber barons from 1870 on. On page 183 she lists the IWW's "antireligious attitude, the addition to violence, and the uncompromising antisegregationism of the IWW" with alienating the loyalties of most Texas timber workers after the IWW federated with the Brotherhood. Meanwhile the employers banded together in an equal number of organizations, including the Southwestern Open Shop Association and the Texas Employers' Association. Allen gives other reasons for the general failure of unionization among East Texas timber workers: the cost differential for employers between operating and tolerating a strike or lockout, the racial disharmony among the workers, lack of immigration from other places, the fact that most East Texas timber workers were family men, and the divisions between skilled and unskilled workers. On page 191 Allen characterizes modern (1961) East Texas as "an island of poverty in the midst of plenty."
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Nigel Anthony Sellars, Oil, Wheat, + Wobblies. The Industrial Workers of the World in Oklahoma, 1905-1930. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1998
Nigel Sellars expanded his dissertation into a book that benefits everybody interested in labor history in our region. He expands on ideas that are generally known, contradicts some important misinformation, and brings it together in an interesting, scholarly way.
As an Oklahoman, the parts of the book that hit me hardest were the accounts of repression during the period. Oklahoma's virile young ruling class asserted itself in the cruelest and most illegal ways. There were terms I didn't understand such as "incorporationist"; and I couldn't really understand why he called the hooded murderers and torturers "progressive businessmen" -- but those terms may be common parlance among professional historians.
There were a tiny few points I wasn't clear on. I knew that Frank Little wanted the IWW to oppose WWI openly and that he lost the argument at the Executive Board on his last trip to Chicago. But I was not aware that Ralph Chaplin sided with Little, even though I've read Chaplin's account of the meeting. Sellars treats the common charge that the IWW opposed WWI as factual, even though they took no open stand against it. Also, I'm awfully tired of the official historical position that the Greencorn Rebellion folks, whom I consider heroes, were a bunch of countrified fools.
Sellars carefully documents the successes that the IWW enjoyed in organizing itinerant farm workers and the financial support that the entire organization derived. He firmly contradicts the idea that the IWW failed in everything they tried after WWI by showing continued success among the Oklahoma harvesters.
People genuinely interested in the strengths and weaknesses of the Industrial Workers of the World, not just their romantic appeal, will benefit from Sellars' hard work and honest portrayal.
Watch for Sellars' name in future. He told me in 1995 that he would tackle the great lack in American labor history -- a life of Frank Little -- after he finished his dissertation. Hopefully, he's on it!
Dallas was one of the jazz centers of the South. Down in "Deep Ellum" (Elm Street to the east of downtown), legendary entertainers such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Hudie Blake, and Hudie (Leadbelly) Ledbetter performed. The area still had remnants of old jazz clubs and whorehouses in the late 1970s. In the early 1990s, "Deep Ellum" was begun anew as a major city project and tourist attraction.
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Dallas
Ku Klux Klan Chapter Organized Late 1920
Historian Kent Biffle ran a column in the Dallas Morning News February 5, 1995,
about the forming of Klan#66 in Dallas by Bertram G. Christie. Leading Dallas
figures, including at least one mayor and one police chief, were members at one
time, according to Biffle’s sources, UT-Austin Professor Norman D Brown in Hood, Bonnet and Little Brown Jug, and Southern
Methodist University’s Darwin Payne’s history of Dallas, Big D.
Biffle says that the Klan enrolled 3-6
million members in the early 1920s. In Texas, they claimed 400,000 members and
elected Earle B Mayfield, an admitted Klansman, to the U.S. Senate in 1922. One
of the Dallas members was banker R.L. Thornton, who later on organized the
Citizens’ Council that ran Dallas from 1935 to today (2002). Here is Biffle
quoting Payne, “The Dallas Chapter… swelled within 4 years to an estimated 13,000
members, the largest local Klan in the nation.
‘…Many charter members were from the
banks, the utility companies, and the professions…. By the spring of 1922, the
Klan’s local executive committee of 10 included Police Commissioner (Louis)
Turley, three attorneys, a physician, and the assistant general manager of the
Dallas Street Railway Co.
‘Its steering committee of 100 included 12
lawyers, 8 physicians, 4 Dallas Power & Light Co. officials, the
superintendent of the local Ford Motor Co., a Dallas Times Herald reporter, the
Democratic Party county chairman, the county tax collector, a district
judge-elect, a runoff candidate for district attorney (who would go on to win)
and smattering of bankers, druggist grocer,s and others …
‘Robert L. Thornton Sr., the man who would
later win acclamation as Mr Dallas, was a member.”
Dallasites are often reminded of Mayor
Thornton, because they have to drive on the R.L. Thornton freeway.
The Biffle article goes on to remember the
racist activities of the Klan in Dallas and its great influence throughout the
state. He mentions “Negro Day” at the State Fair, the only day that
African-Americans could come to see what their taxes had paid for.
The Dallas
Morning News often takes credit for having fought against Klan influence in
Dallas. Biffle says that their actual influence was gone by the time the Great
Depression began. But they have continued to have some presence, including a
downtown Dallas parade and rally on the police station steps in 1982.
1921
Tulsa Massacre Shamed All
My friend Gary D learned a lot about
atrocity during his two years in Vietnam, but it wasn't his first knowledge.
Gary, you see, is from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
When did he learn about those mad,
murderous days in Tulsa around May 31, 1921? He says he always knew even as a
child. He knew people who lived in those days and worked with at least one who
was there.
"Wall Street of the South" was what
they called the Greenville section of Tulsa. Native Americans, who were allowed
many material things but were not allowed cash, hocked items with the African
American store-keepers in Greenville. Gary says that's where the money came
from, and it generated a certain amount of jealousy among Tulsa's white
residents.
The story is well known now: a white
female elevator operator was heard to yell as a young Black man departed. He
may have stepped on her shoe, but no charges were ever brought. The young man
was put into jail and talk of lynching began immediately. The daily newspaper
roused the angry white crowd, it is said, but no one can find a copy of that
newspaper today.
That night, a white mob gathered at the
jail. But their plans were thwarted when armed Black veterans from Greenville
confronted them. There would be no lynching that night.
However, after the newspapers came out the
next morning, white mobs descended on Greenville. They killed, they burned, and
they lynched the Black neighborhood forever out of existence. Gary says it was
the first and only time in U.S. history that American citizens were bombed from
the air!
The massacre raged for three days. Most of
the bodies were never found. Gary was raised believing that there was a mass
grave at the National Guard Armory, right next to the baseball stadium where
the Black ycitizens of Greenville were held in concentration-camp style.
The silence afterward stretched into
years. Gary wrote a paper about it in his high-school writing class, but the
teacher branded it false and tore it up. He barely passed the class. Later on,
he worked on a newspaper that had funding, but the funding disappeared (and so
did the newspaper) right after they ran an account of the Tulsa massacre.
In the 1990s, the news began to leak out,
and people started looking for the graves…
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"One kind favor I'll ask of you
One kind favor I'll ask of youOne kind favor, I'll ask of you, LordSee that my grave is kept clean!"
Blind Lemon Jefferson's most famous folk song gave a wish that has been fulfilled by some of his many admirers. In the 1990s, a group of contemporary artists went together to get him a new headstone and care for the grass. The grave is in the segregated section of the Wortham, Texas, cemetery on Highway 14.
The famous folk singer is often associated with the “Deep Ellum” section of Dallas where he and his Louisiana friend, Hudie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter often sang. According to his tombstone, he was born December 1893, and died December 1933.
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