Doctoral student explores history of blacks in the Valley

Black History Month events:

Lectures from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Rainbow Room (Second Floor) of the South Texas College Library, 3201 W. Pecan Blvd., McAllen

>> History of Blacks in the Rio Grande Valley - Monday.

>> Hip-Hop as American Culture - Feb. 12.

>> Religion and Resistance: Slavery to Civil Rights - Feb. 16.

>> Black and Chicano Zoot Suiters - Feb. 19.

Museum of South Texas History, 200 N. Closner Blvd. Edinburg

>> Performance of Jalani and the Lock, University of Texas-Pan American professor Lorenzo Pace's children's book about his great-grandfather's enslavement. The event is scheduled to include musical performances and runs 2-4 p.m. today.

McALLEN — Most people probably won't be thinking about the historic role of African-Americans in the Rio Grande Valley as Black History Month starts today.

But most people aren't Alberto Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, a doctoral student at the University of Houston, has made it his mission to tell the history of blacks in South Texas and the dynamic among them, whites and Mexicans.

Though the population of blacks here has long hovered at only about 2 percent, Rodriguez says it's a story that's been under-researched and under-told.

"Nobody has done it," said Rodriguez, who has written a thesis on the subject and is now writing a dissertation that he hopes to turn into a book.

MIGRATION

Rodriguez's research has taken him from census data to segregated black cemeteries and even to elderly blacks who came here in the 1950s and are now starting to die off.

"They were really excited about having someone tell their story," said Rodriguez, who is scheduled to deliver a presentation on the subject Monday night at South Texas College.

Rodriguez said blacks had been seen in the Valley as early as 1750, when colonizers like José de Escandón began exploring the region and noticed people who were likely runaway slaves from Mexico and the Caribbean.

Eventually, another migration occurred when an estimated 100,000 to 500,000 slaves in the United States fled south on the Underground Railroad to Mexico, which banned slavery in 1819. But once slavery was illegal in the United States, many crossed the river to return to this country and settled in South Texas.

After the Civil War, freed slaves came here, driven largely by the cotton and rail industries. By the 1920s, blacks came to the increasingly urban Valley as rural dwellers from all over the country searched for work in the cities.

SECURITY

The region wasn't the picture of interracial harmony. Rodriguez said he discovered that in 1928, a black man whose wife washed laundry for a living was shot six times in the back by one of her customers who wasn't happy with the quality of the wash. His killer was released on $500 bond.

And the old-timers Rodriguez spoke with said that when they attended segregated schools, the hand-me-down textbooks they received from the white schools were typically filled with racial epithets written by the other students.

But the region was still more secure for blacks than the Deep South.

"In the Valley, you were less likely to be lynched," Rodriguez said. The 1928 shooting was the last recorded instance of racial violence directed toward blacks here.

"There are families that have been here for over 100 years," said South Texas College professor Mychal Odom, who plans to teach a course in black history next semester. "The story I keep finding is that some of these people have constantly found refuge down here, especially in the times of Jim Crow."

TRYING TIMES

The black population was reluctant to "ruffle any feathers," Rodriguez said. He learned that blacks here had to accept discrimination to maintain their relative safety and security.

When the first black high schools opened here in 1945, they were named after intellectuals like Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, as opposed to more controversial figures of the era like Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican native who organized the first major black nationalist movement in the United States.

Many black men took Mexican wives and learned Spanish, adapting to the culture around them.

"They had to deal with the Mexicans," Rodriguez said. "Their neighbors were Mexicans."

Despite their segregated schools, Rodriguez said, many blacks received good educations here, and the black population in this region had a high literacy rate for the era.

"It wasn't easy for them at all," Rodriguez said. "But they have a long history."

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Ryan Holeywell covers McAllen, PSJA, the Mid-Valley and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4446.