By John Burnett
NPR
In a forgotten cemetery on the edge of Texas in the Rio Grande delta, Olga Webber-Vasques says she's proud of her family's legacy – even if she only just learned the full story.
Turns out her great-great-grandparents, who are buried there, were agents in the little-known underground railroad that led through South Texas to Mexico during the 1800s. Thousands of enslaved people fled plantations to make their way to the Rio Grande, which became a river of deliverance.
"I don't know why there wasn't anything that we would've known as we were growing up. It amazes me to learn the underground deal – I had no idea at all," says Webber-Vasques, 70, who recently learned the story of her forebear John Ferdinand Webber from her daughter-in-law who has researched family history.
(In photo at right: Alice Baumgartner, a historian at the University of Southern California, is the author of a groundbreaking new book, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War.Paul Luke.)
From the 1830s up to emancipation, she estimates 3,000 to 5,000 enslaved people fled south and crossed over to free Mexican soil. That is far fewer than the estimated 30,000 to 100,000 enslaved people who crossed the Mason-Dixon line to reach free northern states and Canada.
But from the vantage of an East Texas plantation, liberty was a lot closer in Mexico.
Enslaved sailors and stowaways from New Orleans and Galveston, Texas, jumped ship in Mexican ports. Slaves drove wagons of cotton to market in Brownsville, Texas, and then slipped across the muddy river to Matamoros, Mexico. But their main mode of transportation was on horseback traversing the vast, feral stretches of South Texas down to the border.
"Sometimes someone would come 'long and try to get us to run up north and be free. We used to laugh at that," said former slave Felix Haywood, interviewed in 1937 for the federal Slave Narrative Project.
Haywood was 92 at the time, blind, white-haired and weather-beaten. He was born into slavery and as a young man tended cattle and sheep for ranchers around San Antonio.
"There wasn't no reason to run up north," he continued in the interview.
"All we had to do was to walk, but walk south, and we'd be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande. In Mexico, you could be free. They didn't care what color you was — black, white, yellow or blue. Hundreds of slaves did go to Mexico and got on all right."
Turns out her great-great-grandparents, who are buried there, were agents in the little-known underground railroad that led through South Texas to Mexico during the 1800s. Thousands of enslaved people fled plantations to make their way to the Rio Grande, which became a river of deliverance.
"I don't know why there wasn't anything that we would've known as we were growing up. It amazes me to learn the underground deal – I had no idea at all," says Webber-Vasques, 70, who recently learned the story of her forebear John Ferdinand Webber from her daughter-in-law who has researched family history.
"I'm very proud to be a Webber," she says.
https://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2017/01/john-webbers-fight-for-equality-vs-good.html
The flight of runaway slaves to Mexico is a chapter of history that is often overlooked or ignored. As the U.S. Treasury ponders putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill to commemorate her role in the northbound underground railroad, new attention is being paid to this southbound route.
Alice Baumgartner, a historian at the University of Southern California, is at the forefront of a burst of recent scholarship. A number of researchers are expanding knowledge of the important role that Mexico played in providing a refuge for enslaved people.
Mexico represented liberty
Baumgartner's new book, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War, was published late last year. She says Mexico in the 19th century is often regarded as "a place defined by poverty and political instability and violence" — and is rarely given credit for its role in providing a safe haven for runaway slaves.
"This history is to me most surprising because it shows us the side of Mexico as a place that actually was contributing to global debates about slavery and freedom," Baumgartner says.
The flight of runaway slaves to Mexico is a chapter of history that is often overlooked or ignored. As the U.S. Treasury ponders putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill to commemorate her role in the northbound underground railroad, new attention is being paid to this southbound route.
Alice Baumgartner, a historian at the University of Southern California, is at the forefront of a burst of recent scholarship. A number of researchers are expanding knowledge of the important role that Mexico played in providing a refuge for enslaved people.
Mexico represented liberty
Baumgartner's new book, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War, was published late last year. She says Mexico in the 19th century is often regarded as "a place defined by poverty and political instability and violence" — and is rarely given credit for its role in providing a safe haven for runaway slaves.
"This history is to me most surprising because it shows us the side of Mexico as a place that actually was contributing to global debates about slavery and freedom," Baumgartner says.
From the 1830s up to emancipation, she estimates 3,000 to 5,000 enslaved people fled south and crossed over to free Mexican soil. That is far fewer than the estimated 30,000 to 100,000 enslaved people who crossed the Mason-Dixon line to reach free northern states and Canada.
But from the vantage of an East Texas plantation, liberty was a lot closer in Mexico.
Enslaved sailors and stowaways from New Orleans and Galveston, Texas, jumped ship in Mexican ports. Slaves drove wagons of cotton to market in Brownsville, Texas, and then slipped across the muddy river to Matamoros, Mexico. But their main mode of transportation was on horseback traversing the vast, feral stretches of South Texas down to the border.
"Sometimes someone would come 'long and try to get us to run up north and be free. We used to laugh at that," said former slave Felix Haywood, interviewed in 1937 for the federal Slave Narrative Project.
Haywood was 92 at the time, blind, white-haired and weather-beaten. He was born into slavery and as a young man tended cattle and sheep for ranchers around San Antonio.
"There wasn't no reason to run up north," he continued in the interview.
"All we had to do was to walk, but walk south, and we'd be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande. In Mexico, you could be free. They didn't care what color you was — black, white, yellow or blue. Hundreds of slaves did go to Mexico and got on all right."
Pathways to get to the Rio Grande
While the northbound underground railroad depended on a network of people who sheltered and aided fugitive slaves, the southern route was more informal.
(In photo at right: Former slave Felix Haywood, 92 years old when he was photographed in San Antonio in 1937, told an interviewer, "All we had to do was to walk, but walk south, and we'd be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande."Library of Congress.)
"We didn't have a conductor like a Harriet Tubman, and we didn't have a certain station like they did in Philadelphia where they could live and make some money," says Roseann Bacha-Garza, a borderlands historian at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and one of the few experts on the southern route to freedom.
"What we did have down here were pathways that people could follow to get to the Rio Grande."
"We didn't have a conductor like a Harriet Tubman, and we didn't have a certain station like they did in Philadelphia where they could live and make some money," says Roseann Bacha-Garza, a borderlands historian at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and one of the few experts on the southern route to freedom.
"What we did have down here were pathways that people could follow to get to the Rio Grande."
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13 comments:
Juan, La babosa is calling Kowalski and Martinez inhuman for ignoring his cries to denounce bullying. So now he tries to shame them by saying they are not qualified to be judges because he asked them to denounce bullying, and they did the right thing and ignored his childish actions. He asks them to denounce bullying, and then he bullies them! What a loony. The biggest bully in town wanting people to denounce bullying. Brilliant blimp… just brilliant.
Breaking News: Correa has signed with the Rangers.
So Duardo according to you if a judicial candidate refuses to denounce bullying the people have no right to know. No wonder you are so screwed up in the head. But then of course all you do is bully people, so why would you care?
Truthteller
Now tell us about Filemamon Vela's ancestors support for slave owners.
groundbreaking book?
If it's a historical book, it is not "groundbreaking".
You abuse so many words with your vato English, Montoya!
Da Bullying Blimp
So Mexico was the land of freedom? Try telling that to the millions of peons who were grubbing out a subsistence living on land belonging to "El Patron" in exchange for their servitude.
This history of Mexico is written in blood. There was the genocide against the natives and the oppression of the Mestizo population by the Gachupines. Land of freedom, my brown ass!
Where not down here for the locals.
Ta bien pendejo el bullyvato, Blimp.
Se cree chingon el guey, pero es mas caca que vaca.
December 11, 2021 at 10:16 AM
Las ratas blancas que no se ven la cola mamon gringo/coco.
December 11, 2021 at 10:16 AM = moron
In 1837, Calhoun railed in a speech on the Senate floor that slavery had “grown up with our society and institutions and is so interwoven with them that to destroy it would be to destroy us as a people.” He continued:
He would reiterate that slavery was, “instead of an evil, a good — a positive good.”
You are talking about cockroach europeans not the natives no seas pendejo. In Mexico and in the USA the cockroach europeans brought their ideas of slavery here.
Most slaver owners were racist republicans
They were helping the blacks while the whites killed and murdered and stole from the mexicans their lands and with the help of los rinches, she ought to be proud, wonder if she bought the land she lived on and from who - a gringo????
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