The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 101, July 1997 - April, 1998 Page: 5
574 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Big Story: A Journalist Looks at Texas History
ninWIeSH ANue nw m eE o to . aN asO soo"m
wz wpct auIntE$BtWteibas Es No 6wr' MYE l pJ SOUc*A~
tGAR SS.tRa s lLtfIIG AafE 9 WUISW E
African Americans and slavery as depicted in Texas Hzstory Movies. Note the caption that
reads "Slaves could change masters at will." From Texas History Movies (1928, i943; repnnt,
Dallas: Mobil Oil Co., 1956), 65.
the winners' circle, where anyone who was not a white Protestant
American male was either invisible or ridiculous. In one strip a Texan
slams a Mexican soldier in the head with his rifle butt shouting "Sweet
Dreams, Greaser!"-while another yells "Down with the Tamale Eaters!"
A Texan who sees some Spaniards bathing remarks "It must be
Saturday." An American prisoner in a Mexican jail boasts of having
assaulted a priest. Black people with spiky hair, great staring white eyes
and enormous lips say things like "Ah sho likes dis place" or "Ah wish Ah
wuz way down souf in Africa"; Chinese people sporting pigtails mutter "I
no talkee Englesh."
It's not only that the depiction of slavery was just prettied up, it was
flat out deceitful. Any youngster reading Texas History Movies could have
reasonably concluded that black people enjoyed being owned body and
soul by a master. Of course it was some of the masters-or some of their
children and grandchildren-who were telling those tales. Not until
many years later did it occur to me to wonder how these stories would
have sounded had they been written by children and grandchildren of
the slaves.
As schoolchildren we read-and this is a direct quote-that "Any man
who inherited slaves was bound to free one-tenth of the number." That
was a lie; slaves were legally designated chattel, not flesh-and-blood, and
any man who inherited slaves was no more bound to free a single one of
them than he was obligated to liberate a portion of his cotton fields, his
pigs, or his grandmother's silver.
"Slaves could change masters at will," we read. Another lie. And we
read "The law provided for the education of Negroes even while they
were slaves,"-this we read under a picture of a little barefoot black1997
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 101, July 1997 - April, 1998, periodical, 1998; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117155/m1/33/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.