In 1870, only 1.8 percent of Texas blacks owned land, and Reconstruction did little to advance the freedmen’s economic independence. The conservative backlash eroded the few civil rights African-Americans possessed following emancipation, but while African-Americans understood the reality of their plight, they slowly and steadily worked to improve their lives just out of sight of whites. By 1890, 26 percent of African-Americans owned land, and by 1900, that would reach almost one-third.33
Two freedom colonies developed near Tomlinson Hill and became known as Gravel Hill and Cedar Valley. Another, called China Grove because of the many chinaberry trees, popped up on the Falls Plantation where Jones Creek intersected what is now Farm to Market Road 2027.34
Because these communities were African-American, white authorities never officially recognized them and rarely entered them. Each was located along a creek and centered on a church, and they developed into thriving communities. But they remained largely invisible to outsiders. Passersby might see a few old slave cabins, a couple of new black homesteads, a church or a school, and maybe a fire pit or some kiosks scattered in the trees. They didn’t look like much, but they could exist because they went unnoticed by whites.35
Blacks who did not own land, or live in separate villages, lived on the plantations and were nominally self-employed under the sharecropping system. The white landowner provided a black family with a twenty- to thirty-acre plot of land, seed, horses or oxen, farming equipment, a house, and whatever they needed to survive through the growing season. The supplies of food and clothing were called “furnishings.” The landowners collected the cotton after the harvest, sold it, and deducted the African-Americans’ expenses from the profits, then handed over the remaining cash. Based on the landowner’s accounting, though, there was often nothing left at the end of the year. It was not uncommon for a black family to end a growing season in debt, and once in debt to the landowner, the sharecropper could not leave until the debt was repaid.36
Sharecropping, though, was better than working as contract labor, which was scarcely different from slavery. Black families lived in former slave quarters, and a pistol-carrying “pusher,” who behaved much the same as an overseer, regulated the workers’ lives, with the sole goal of producing a crop.37
Larger plantations along the Brazos incorporated aspects of both systems. The families technically sharecropped the land, but they worked with other families to cover a huge field. This “through-and-through” system meant all of the sharecroppers worked as a team, and there were no distinct land leases. Everyone’s crop was combined, and the landowner determined who got what in the end. There was no challenging the white landowners’ word, since they controlled the sheriff and the courts.38
Many former Texas slaves felt life had been better during slavery. Whites no longer saw a reason to care about their workers’ health or well-being. Former slave Dave Byrd said:
You talk about slavery, it never begun until after we was supposed to be free. We had to work farms on the halves, very little to eat, and no clothes except what we begged. Then after we got a crop made, it would take every bit of it to pay our debts. We had no doctors when we got sick, and from the day we was turned loose, we had to shoulder the whole load. Taxes to pay, groceries to buy, and what did we get? Nothing.39
The larger the plantation, the worse the abuse. For landowners, replacing a sharecropper was easier than replacing a mule. Many blacks moved away from their old slave quarters to find homes of their own. In some cases—such as on the Tomlinson, Jones, and Stallworth plantations—planters set aside land for former slaves who chose to stay and work. While not officially deeding over parcels, they did provide a more private life.40
When African-Americans got plots of their own, they felled trees by setting slow-burning fires at the bases of the trunks. They used those logs to build two-room cabins, sometimes with a loft, homes like what they had built for their masters during slavery. They swept the dirt floors clean and kept a bare-dirt boundary around the cabin to protect against snakes and wildfires. The men fashioned picket fences from logs split along the grain to keep livestock away. Sometimes they made split-rail fences.41
In the winter, they cooked meals in a fireplace made from mud and straw. A long pole was always kept outside in case the chimney caught fire and needed to be pushed over before it set the house on fire. Women rose before dawn and cooked biscuits in large three-legged black pots known as “Dutch ovens.” They made “hoe-cakes” by spreading cornmeal batter on the blade of a large cotton hoe and holding it above the flame. Others simply made “ashcakes,” by brushing away the hot coals from the hearth and pouring batter directly on a hot stone, then covering it with ashes. In the summer, women prepared meals in outdoor fire pits.42
Farmworkers used their cotton hoes to plant their first crop of corn and vegetables. They hunted for wild game, which was still plentiful in the hardwood forests of the Brazos river bottoms; notched the ears of their hogs and cattle and allowed them to graze freely in communal pastures; marked their chickens and turkeys and let them roam during the day, while luring them home with corn in the evening. These free-range methods continued into the 1940s.43
In areas where blacks built their churches and schools and set up cemeteries, freedmen built simple structures and lived close enough to white planters so they could sharecrop or work for a monthly wage. They acquired mules, oxen, and horses and made plows out of old trees and scrap iron. This eventually allowed them to plant a cash crop on their own land while still working for white landowners. But subsistence crops came first: sweet potatoes, peas, peanuts, corn, melons, vegetables, and syrup cane. Sweet potatoes fed the family year-round, and corn not only fed humans but also domesticated animals. If either of these crops failed, a farm family could lose everything, and, in the worst case, starve. On the other hand, a sign of prosperity was a full corncrib, a plentiful supply of potatoes, and a smokehouse full of pork.44
The freedman’s goal was simple: avoid the discrimination and humiliation that came from interacting with whites. The more self-sufficient a black family became, the less they suffered. African-Americans who owned their land had the best chance for success, even if they lived on the worst land in the most distant corners of the county. But it also required exceptional frugality and resourcefulness never to waste anything, especially money.
In 1877, there were only 678 black schools in Texas, and, even if a school was nearby, most children couldn’t go because they worked.45 Child labor was always part of subsistence farming, and black children performed chores at home until they were big enough to harvest crops or wield a hoe. Farm labor was intense and primitive: “Planting was done by sowing the seed by hand and cultivating with eye-hoes and mules, behind which were cast-iron plows and a man or woman, walking four times down each row—from sun to sun. Work was hard, almost backbreaking, and there was little rest or relaxation.”46
Boys and young men raised hunting dogs and spent their free time chasing rabbits with sticks, rocks, and slingshots. But they more often hunted at night, catching possums by hand. Black hunters developed ingenious traps for everything from ground-dwelling birds to white-tailed deer. Baked possum with sweet potatoes was a popular dish, and raccoon and squirrel provided variety in the diet.47 Hunting and fishing provided not just food but also recreation. Sometimes black men arranged large social events to catch fish to celebrate Juneteenth, the day Texas slaves were emancipated. The majority of the meal would come from fried catfish, foraged greens, and wild blackberry pies.48
As much as these communities strived to be self-sufficient, the inhabitants still needed to purchase some manufactured goods, such as needles, spices, and kitchenware. They could visit a friendly white shopkeeper, or, more frequently, a white traveling salesman would stop in the village. In the larger freedom colonies, a black man would likely run a store from his home.49
Based on the household numbering system used by census takers, Milo and Phillis Tomlinson lived a sh
ort distance from the white Tomlinsons. Milo was a sharecropper and the couple had three children born before emancipation: Peter, in 1857; Martha, in 1863; and Charles, in 1864. Hylland and Bird were born in 1868 and 1869, respectively.50 Milo and Phillis formalized their marriage at the Falls County courthouse in 1869 after a wedding ceremony performed by the Reverend Calvin Magee at the Gravel Hill Baptist Church.51 Milo, Phillis, and Peter were illiterate and owned no real estate; they had two hundred dollars in personal property, well below the average even for black families in western Falls County.52
Other African-American families working for the white Tomlinsons included the Baileys, Magees, Jacksons, Johnsons, and Davidsons. Each household averaged six or more people, sometimes with more than one family sharing a single cabin. The Baileys still live on the Hill and hold a family reunion every year. They were among the wealthiest black families in the county, with four hundred dollars in assets, more than many white farmers in the late nineteenth century.53
Three black churches served the Tomlinson Hill area: the Gravel Hill Church, nestled among African-American homes; the one at Cedar Valley, which was a half mile to the north; and the one at China Grove. All were Baptist churches built on land donated by the Tomlinson, Stallworth, and Jones families, who were also Baptists.54 The participatory style of the services appealed to many blacks, most of whom had grown up with white Baptist preachers during slavery.55
Each Baptist church was governed by seven deacons, who managed the church’s finances and hired the minister. Church deacons settled disputes and passed judgments in their communities, since white lawmen generally didn’t get involved in disagreements or crimes involving only blacks. Banishment was the ultimate punishment.56 Under white oppression, opportunities to hold formal political leadership positions dwindled, but the church offered black men the chance to lead their communities with little interference from whites. This led to a varying degree of commitment to religious duties, with some using the church only to gather power over others.57 In addition to Saturday-night suppers and Sunday-morning services, churches held revivals in the summer, usually in August, when there was little agricultural work. These lasted from two to three weeks, and frequently brought together congregations from several churches.58
Before her death in 2012 at the age of eighty-six, Pinkie Taylor Price described China Grove and Cedar Valley in an oral history interview. She talked about her grandparents Milo and Martha Travis, who were born into slavery on Tomlinson Hill. Taylor described how Milo chose the name Travis and discussed their life in Cedar Valley:
They told all the slaves to go to … the county seat, to register and be citizens of the United States because they were free then. And so on the way there, my grandfather was riding whatever vehicle they had to ride in, a wagon or whatever. He just decided he just didn’t want to be named for his master. So when he was going in, he saw a sign and it had, Travis, T-R-A-V-I-S, but nobody knew how to pronounce it or not, but he remembered it. So when he got to the courthouse and they asked him, “What’s your name?” instead of saying Milo Tomlinson, he said Milo Travis. And that’s the only family I know, down in China Grove or in Falls County, that was named Travis. And I wondered why we didn’t have nobody else, you know, named Travis. But I found out that’s why, ’cause he took on his own name.59
Pinkie’s grandmother, Martha, married a man who was also independent and had saved enough to buy his own farm. He insisted that she stay at home with their children. They spent most of their time growing subsistence crops, including vegetables, berries, grapes, peanuts, and watermelon, but also raised hogs and cotton for cash. Pinkie remembered how as a little girl she saw Martha still living in the one-room log cabin that Milo had built in the woods near Cedar Valley.
Pinkie explained how sharecroppers had almost no control over their finances and recalled how the white Tomlinsons promised three-fourths of the crop to the tenant farmer, only to keep all of it to repay the loans for the furnishings:
He would lend you enough money to raise that, and then he’d tell you what store to go to and buy your groceries. And the owner of the store would keep all the records of what you buy and he’d keep track. And he would tell the man that lent you the money what it is. You’re not supposed to keep no kind of records for yourself. You’re supposed to let those two men decide how much you took up and how much you didn’t.
And then they had a store in town where your people go and get them some clothes on credit, but that man and the man that you’re working for kept that record. You didn’t keep it.
By October or November, I know ’cause my cousin’s family lived close to us and they worked for Tomlinsons, they would get upset every fall ’cause they would owe the Tomlinsons all the money [according to the records].
There were other options, but few good ones. Some landowners offered different contracts, but all seemed to end with the black farmer owing the white landowner whatever money the crop brought at market. Owning your own land brought in more revenue, but there was always the chance of a failed crop. One bad year and a farmer would likely lose his land, because the land was almost always the collateral for the seed money. Black farmers suffered because 59 percent of them worked fifty acres or fewer, and 83 percent worked fewer than one hundred acres. By comparison, white landowners cultivated an average of 425 acres and enjoyed an economy of scale. Whites also negotiated with different stores and suppliers to get favorable loans.60
The Convention of Colored Men protested the sharecropping system and lobbied for reform, and black activists created the Colored Farmers Association and the Colored State Grange, an advocacy group that helped form black cooperatives. Black farm workers organized strikes against large plantations, but none of these efforts created any significant change.61
African-Americans in Texas, already suffering from the depression of 1877, recognized that whites had constructed enormous barriers to keep them from prospering. African-Americans had also watched white Republicans abandon any real attempt to enforce civil rights. As a result, approximately twelve thousand African-Americans left in the exodus of 1879 for Kansas, after rumors spread that they could acquire free land. But no free land existed, and about 10 percent of the migrants returned.62
Other black Texans enrolled in the American Colonization Society’s program to ship blacks to Liberia, a new African colony established by freedmen. Twelve Texans traveled to Africa in 1879, and the society’s agent continued to promote the colony into the 1890s, but no large-scale emigration took place.63
Yet there was some progress for blacks in Texas. The white-controlled legislature established the first black land-grant college in 1878 near Hempstead, naming it Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical College. The college was placed under the Texas A&M board of directors and began with eight students. The state government converted it into a normal school to train teachers the following year. Enrollment shot up to sixty, with every student appointed by either a legislator or a member of the board of directors. The only other colleges admitting blacks were private church schools, including Paul Quinn College, in Austin; Wiley College, in Marshall; and the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s normal school, in Denison. In 1881, church groups opened four more colleges for African-Americans, most of them dedicated to training teachers.64 African-Americans made up 25 percent of Texas’s population in 1880.65
The black Tomlinsons, though, were primarily concerned with the spring rains, unpredictable Brazos floods, and the cotton boll weevil. Milo and Phillis had eight children under their roof, while their eldest son, Peter, and his wife, Josie, had two boys and one girl.66 They all worked a portion of Tomlinson Hill, hoping their share would exceed the debt owed to the white Tomlinsons.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
The votes of the Negroes were to be reckoned with, since most of them followed leaders. There arose a general adverse feeling against them, because of this—a feeling, which perhaps lingers, to the present.
—Roy
Eddins
Mayor J. D. Oltorf launched a campaign to beautify Marlin in 1878, and the city council ordered those guilty of misdemeanors to clean the streets of horse dung. When city convicts refused to do the work, Oltorf and the city council drafted a new ordinance:
It shall be the duty of the Marshall of said city to tie such convict or convicts by the thumbs and with their hands raised over their heads, tie them to the ceiling of the roofing inside the calaboose, and keep them in that position until they shall consent to comply with the terms of said ordinances; and if any convicts … use profane, vulgar or obscene language in the hearing of the citizens of said city, it shall be the duty of the Marshall, if necessary, to prevent the use of such language, to gag such convict.1
African-Americans made up more than 50 percent of the state’s prisoners at the time, and cities across the state used vagrancy laws to jail blacks and force them to work. City marshals prosecuted African-Americans much more aggressively for petty crimes, including using “abusive language,” which was often nothing more than speaking back to a white person. Since blacks had little money, they couldn’t post bail and were forced to occupy Oltorf’s calaboose. The mayor’s use of torture to force African-Americans to work was not unusual. Many towns still used whippings to punish minor offenders when they could not pay a fine, and, again, blacks made up the majority of those who suffered.2
Cattle drives from Marlin up the Chisholm Trail reached their zenith in the early 1880s, less than twenty years after they started. Popular fiction then, and Hollywood films later, glamorized the Texas cowboy, but the former slaves who picked cotton and raised the cattle on places like Tomlinson Hill contributed more to the state’s economy. Milo’s family helped raise the Tomlinsons’ cattle, which bore the “7” brand.3 When cows were ready for market, blacks helped the white Tomlinsons herd them to northern markets. A quarter of all cowboys were African-American, but when white authors wrote the folk history of the West, they omitted blacks.4
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