To Be Swift in Accepting our Legal Equality
On the second Tuesday in July of 1883, dozens of distressed black Texans met in Austin for the Texas State Convention for Negroes to address mounting civil rights and economic concerns. Noticeably absent, however, were black women. This paper then examines how black Texas men, hell-bent on deploying the full range of their newly acquired citizenship prerogatives, neglected their most important partners—black women—as they strategized ways to improve the quality of black life in the Lone Star State.