Texas Black History Makers

09/01/2026

September 1, 1964 — Dr. Ervin S. Perry becomes the first Black faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. The Texas State Historical Association gives the exact date: Perry became an assistant professor of civil engineering on September 1, 1964, making him the first African American appointed to professional faculty status at a major Southern university. University of Texas at Austin independently confirms that Perry was UT’s first Black faculty member and the first Black professor at a predominantly white Southern university.

Born in Coldspring, Texas, Perry graduated from Prairie View A&M University and earned both his master’s and Ph.D. in civil engineering from UT. Today, UT’s Perry-Castañeda Library carries his name and preserves his legacy.

08/21/2026

Texas milestone is the 1953 desegregation of the Houston Public Library system for Black high-school students and adults. The change came after Black Houston leaders—including voting-rights plaintiff Lonnie E. Smith—pressed for equal access; Houston implemented the change quietly, years before the city’s public schools began desegregating.

08/19/2026

Benjamin Banneker’s 1791 letter to Thomas Jefferson. On August 19, 1791, the Black mathematician, astronomer and almanac author directly challenged Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson over slavery and racial prejudice, invoking America’s own principles of liberty and equality. The National Park Service and Library of Congress independently document the letter and its significance.

08/16/2026

On August 16, 1870, a remarkable chapter of Black Texas history began at Fort Duncan near Eagle Pass. The U.S. Army mustered the first detachment of Black Seminole Scouts into service. Historical records identify John Kibbetts as their leader; he was appointed sergeant, with the initial detachment serving six-month enlistments.

The Black Seminoles had a complicated history stretching across Florida, Indian Territory, Mexico, and Texas. Their communities included descendants of Africans who had escaped slavery and developed close relationships with the Seminole people. Facing the threat of enslavement and re-enslavement, some migrated to Mexico in the 19th century.

When members of the community returned to Texas in 1870, the Army recognized their extraordinary abilities as trackers, horsemen, scouts and fighters. Their knowledge of the borderlands—as well as English, Spanish and Indigenous languages—made them especially valuable.

Their record became extraordinary. The scouts operated primarily from Fort Duncan and Fort Clark, undertaking dangerous expeditions across the rugged Texas frontier. According to the National Park Service, they participated in 26 expeditions and 12 battles without losing a scout in combat.

Four Black Seminole Scouts—John Ward, Isaac Payne, Pompey Factor and Adam Payne—received the Medal of Honor for their service.

Yet their history also contains an injustice. The Black Seminoles entered service believing the government would help provide for their families and ultimately address their hopes for land. Despite their distinguished military service, those land expectations were never fulfilled.

August 16 deserves a place on the Texas Black History calendar. It marks the beginning of a military unit whose courage, knowledge and resilience became part of the history of Texas and the American West.

Texas State Historical Association — Black Seminole Scouts⁠
National Park Service — Black Seminole Indian Scouts⁠

07/31/2026

07/23/2026

In October 1862, Cooke County in North Texas was a community at war with itself. Most of North Texas had Unionist sympathies — many settlers came from Southern Appalachia and had no attachment to slavery or the Confederacy. Confederate authorities responded with paranoia. A "Citizens Court" was convened in Gainesville with no legal authority. Over the course of two weeks, 42 men accused of disloyalty or plotting insurrection were hanged. Some were guilty of nothing more than opposing secession. The event is called the Great Hanging at Gainesville. It remains the largest mass ex*****on in American history on American soil. Texas schoolbooks avoided it for generations. It happened.

07/20/2026

Black Seminoles in Mexico

07/17/2026

What a heroic lady!

Lulu Belle Madison White served as director of the Houston NAACP chapter from 1939 and as Texas NAACP state director from 1943 to 1949, building the organization from a small Houston chapter into a statewide network of over 100 chapters with tens of thousands of members, the largest NAACP state organization in the South.

White used the NAACP's organizational strength to challenge racial discrimination in Houston's wartime defense industries, which were receiving federal contracts that came with non-discrimination requirements under President Roosevelt's Executive Order 8802, filing complaints that forced Houston employers to hire Black workers in defense production jobs from which they had been excluded.

Her most significant legal victory was Herman Marion Sweatt's case against the University of Texas School of Law, in which White organized the NAACP's support for Sweatt and worked alongside Thurgood Marshall to develop the case that became Sweatt v. Painter in 1950, the Supreme Court ruling that laid the groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education.

Lulu Belle Madison White died in Houston in 1965 without receiving the national recognition that her organizational achievement deserved, with her work building the Texas NAACP into the South's largest state chapter documented primarily in civil rights history scholarship rather than in Texas public historical memory.

07/02/2026

Always remember!!!

07/01/2026

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