Shared from the 10/25/2020 San Antonio Express eEdition

Alamo story that omits slavery incomplete

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Billy Calzada /Staff photographer

People explore Alamo Plaza after it reopened in August. As talks continue about telling the full story of the Alamo, Black history and the enslavement of people cannot be left out.

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For the past several years, public officials and columnists have written opinion pieces about the Alamo Master Plan, which is to include a museum in Alamo Plaza. They write that the full story behind the Alamo will be told. I agree. It is time to tell the truth. All of it.

It is essential the chronicling of Blacks in Texas, beginning with our freedom, captivity and enslavement, are included and exhibited in the museum.

The “truths” surrounding the history of African Americans in Texas are firmly attached to the Battle of the Alamo. Yet for a century and a half, evidence of our legacy in Texas has seldom been displayed or documented, especially in Texas public schools and textbooks. In 21st-century America, we must accept the responsibility to tell the true story.

Slavery was savage, dangerous and inhumane, yet it lasted for three centuries in America. It is inextricably tied to the history of Texas and Black people in a way that is impossible to disentangle. This history, and the role of African Americans in building Texas, must be acknowledged.

Texians, Americans living in Mexico’s least populated state, Coahuila y Tejas, had been enticed by the Mexican government to settle there with liberal land grants requiring only that they become citizens, Catholics and preferably Spanish speakers.

Texians saw this land as fertile fields in which to grow cotton and satisfy increasing demand from as far away as England. But enslaved labor was needed to make the desired profit.

Some Texians brought their enslaved captives with them. However, Mexico had outlawed slavery, at various times, and though there was ambivalence, it remained at least semi-legal until 1835.

This contributed to the mounting tensions in Tejas between those who wanted control and decision-making centralized in Mexico City, and those who wanted policies, including those pertaining to slavery, handled locally.

Texas joined the rebellion against centralism because both Texians and Tejanos in Texas believed that federalism better served their interests. Free colored people were ordered to leave the Republic of Texas, and Native Americans were refused citizenship. While not the direct cause of the Texas Revolution, struggles over slavery helped set the stage for the ensuing insurrection culminating in the March 6, 1836, Battle of the Alamo and devastating loss of lives of its defenders. A few family members, servants and enslaved people survived.

The defenders of the Alamo were avenged at the Battle at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, and Tejas soon became the Republic of Texas. A few months later, the Republic drew up its Constitution, which legally established slavery in Texas.

Vital decisions in the new Republic of Texas such as choice of allies, trade deals, laws and agreements were influenced by how securely officials could protect the institution of slavery. Because of slave labor, many early Texas settlers could build great family wealth.

By the time Texas cast its lot with the Confederacy in the Civil War, there were more than 182,000 enslaved people in the state, over 30 percent of the population.

As the state prepares to build the museum at Alamo Plaza, which should include the Woolworth Building, the history of African Americans must fully be told. In June, the National Trust for Historic Preservation issued the following statement:

“Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation asserts without equivocation:

Black History Matters.

Historic places of all types and periods should be places of truth-telling and inclusivity.

Historic preservation must actively advance justice and equity for all people.”

These assertions should apply to the Alamo Plaza museum, however uncomfortable they make people feel. The Alamo is a powerful landmark in Texas history and, along with the other four San Antonio missions, is a UNESCO-designated World Heritage site. Everyone, not just African Americans, deserves to know all the story, including the role of slavery and African Americans in helping to build the state of Texas.

As Maya Angelou wrote: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

Aaronetta Pierce is an advocate for African art and culture, and a 1993 inductee into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame.

“If history is going to be scientific, if the record of human action is going to be set down with the accuracy and faithfulness of detail which will allow its use as a measuring rod and guidepost for the future, there must be set some standards of ethics in research and interpretation.”
W.E.B. DuBois, “Black Reconstruction in America”

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