Answers to the “REAL Texas Values” quiz:

1. The Alamo is:

“B” is correct.

Stephen F. Austin, the “Father of Texas,” insisted that “Texas must be a slave country.” Between 1836, when the battle of the Alamo was fought, and 1850, the slave population in Texas increased eight-fold. When Texas seceded from the U.S. to join the slavery-defending Confederacy, it declared it was doing this as a “commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits—a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.” This, along with the theft of that land from Mexico, and genocide of the Plains Indians who lived there, is what is celebrated in the Alamo.

Sources:

Slavery and the Myth of the Alamo, James W. Russell, May 28, 2012

The Influence of Slavery in the Colonization of Texas, Eugene C. Barker, June 1924

Alamo renovation gets stuck over arguments about slavery, Texas Tribune, May 10, 2020

The Alamo, 1854. Credit: Wikipedia

2. The Texas Rangers are:

“C” is correct.

The Texas Rangers “executed hundreds, perhaps thousands of Mexicans and Mexican Americans ... many of them had committed no crimes ... they were guilty of having brown skin.” On the border, the Rangers “operated as what we would now term death squads.” One of the most infamous Ranger massacres was in January 1918, in the West Texas farming and goat ranching village of Porvenir. Rangers, along with some U.S. cavalry, raided Porvenir in the middle of the night, took 15 boys and men out of their homes, put them against a wall, murdered all of them, then tried to cover it up. The U.S. Army burned the village. None of the murderers were arrested.

A pro baseball team was named after these racist killers, and several TV shows and movies have featured them. Bonus question—ask yourself:  What does it say about the values and culture of a country and state that continues to honor the murderers? How is that any different from the statues honoring Confederate (slave-holding) soldiers and politicians?

Sources:

'Cult Of Glory' Reveals The Dark History Of The Texas Rangers, National Public Radio

Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers, by Doug J. Swanson, June 9, 2020

The bodies of three Mexicans who were lynched in Texas, 1915, are dragged to town by three Texas Rangers.

3. “True” is correct.

James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old Black man, was brutally beaten by three white men, his face was covered with paint, and he was possibly slashed with a knife. His killers tied him by his ankles to the back of their pickup truck with chains, and drove through dirt trails and the backwoods around Jasper in the dark of night, until James Byrd Jr. was dead and his body torn to pieces. The killers then dumped his remains in Jasper’s segregated Black cemetery and went to a barbecue. Two of the murderers were known white supremacists.

Sources:

Murder of James Byrd, Jr., Encyclopedia Britannica

James Byrd, Jr.

4. La Matanza (“The Massacre”)

“C” is correct.

A scholarly study concluded that between 1910 and 1920, “more than 5,000 Mexican Americans were murdered ... That wave of terror included numerous extra-judicial lynchings and murders of Mexican Americans by vigilantes, local law-enforcement officers, and Texas Rangers.” Tens of thousands of people of Mexican descent were driven from their farms and homes, and the governor “offered pardons to Texas lawmen for their involvement in the atrocities if they would drive Texans of Mexican descent from the Lower Rio Grande Valley.”

Sources:

Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848-1928, William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, January 12, 2017

Recounting Historical Violence Against Ethnic Mexicans, NPR Interview

American Crime Case #16: “La Matanza”: A Decade of Lynching & Terrorizing Mexican People in South Texas, 1910—1920, revcom.us, June 1, 2019

Electrically charged fence detains Mexican refugee children, Fort Bliss, Texas, 1914.

5. Waco

The answer is: On May 15, 1916, an all-white jury convicted 17-year-old Jesse Washington in four minutes for the rape and murder of a white woman. A white mob estimated at 15,000-20,000 people then dragged him from the courthouse to Waco’s City Hall. They wrapped a chain around his neck, beat and stabbed him. They hung him from a tree, poured coal oil over him, and built a massive fire into which they slowly lowered him for an hour. His burned, mangled body was taken to a nearby town with a large Black population, and left hanging from a utility pole. No one was arrested for his murder. Photographs of the gruesome lynching of Jesse Washington were sold across the U.S., and advertised “Texas values” around the world.

Source:

Jesse Washington Lynching, Waco History

The lynching of Jesse Washington, 1916.

6. Mirabeau B. Lamar

All are true.

When he was president of the Republic of Texas from 1838 to 1841, Lamar began a system of rigidly enforced “whites-only education.” Texas public schools in fact remain among the most segregated in the country, and many of them are named “Lamar” in honor of this white supremacist. In a massacre described in schoolbooks as the “battle of the Neches,” seven chiefs of associated Indian tribes, and hundreds of people, including many women and children, were murdered in a genocidal campaign Lamar called an “exterminating war.” After the slaughter, survivors among the Texas Cherokees tried to escape to Mexico, but they were driven into what was then “Indian Territory” and today is the state of Oklahoma.

Sources:

Mirabeau B. Lamar, Texas Monthly

Texas' Second President Calls for the Expulsion or Extermination of the Republic's Indians, University of Houston Digital History

Dis-integration, Texas Tribune

Battle of the Neches, Texas State Historical Association

7. “True” is correct.

On July 24, 1973, 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez and his 13-year-old brother were taken from their home in the middle of the night by Dallas police. The cops accused the brothers of robbing $8 from a vending machine. One of the cops “played” Russian roulette with the boys, supposedly to extract a confession. On his second pull of the trigger, he blew out Santos Rodriguez’s brain. Days later, thousands of young people—Chicano, Black, and white—righteously rebelled in downtown Dallas.

Sources:

July 24, 1973: 12-Year-Old Santos Rodriguez Killed By Police, Zinn Education Project

12-year-old Santos Rodriguez

8. Paris, Texas

The answer is:

In 1893, Henry Smith, a young Black man, was lynched by a mob of thousands. Smith was accused of raping and murdering a white girl. The mob took him in a “celebratory parade” to a scaffold in the center of Paris which had the word “Justice” painted on it. They tortured him with hot irons for nearly an hour before soaking him with kerosene and setting him ablaze. “Photographs of the torture and burning of Smith were taken and were later sold as prints and postcards. And according to some accounts, his agonized screams were recorded on a primitive graphophone [record player] and later played before audiences as images of his killing were projected on a screen”. No one was arrested for the savage murder of Henry Smith.

Schools in Paris did not officially desegregate until 1970, 16 years after a Supreme Court ruling outlawed school segregation. And then, additional school districts were created in the small town, including one specifically to accommodate “white flight.” (And there is a 20-foot “Jesus in Cowboy Boots” statue in Paris’ cemetery that was “whites-only” when it was established and remained that way for almost a century.)

Sources:

The 1893 Lynching of Henry Smith, ThoughtCo.Com

Paris, Texas: Mississippi 50 Years Ago, Paris, Texas Chronicle

Paris is Burning: Lynching and Racial Violence in Lamar County, 1890 – 1920, East Texas Historical Journal 

The torture and lynching of Henry Smith, 1893.

9. Houston Police

All are correct.

*Following a protest by TSU students against environmental racism, Houston police barricaded and shut down the campus. About 300 cops fired over 5,000 rounds into the men’s dormitory, and arrested 488 residents. No cops were arrested.

* Klan members were known to function openly within the Houston Police Department (HPD). An anti-Vietnam War radio station was twice bombed off the air, but HPD stalled for months after two Klansmen with weapons, Klan literature, and bomb-making materials were found in their car following a routine traffic stop near the station.

* On July 26, 1970, at least 200 HPD, along with pigs from other agencies, surrounded the headquarters of Peoples Party II and unleashed a barrage that left 21-year-old Carl Hampton dead and four others wounded. About 50 people in the neighborhood were arrested. No cops were charged.

* On Cinco de Mayo, 1977, José Campos Torres was beaten and thrown into Buffalo Bayou by six HPD pigs who said they “wanted to see if the wetback could swim.” Only two of the murderers were convicted—of misdemeanor homicide. They were given a $1 fine and one year’s probation. On Cinco de Mayo, 1978, Houston’s Northside erupted in the Moody Park Rebellion.

Sources:

The Police Assassination of Carl Hampton, It’s About Time

The Death of Carl Hampton, Bayou City History

Liberals Accuse Houston Police, New York Times

HPD History Shows Problems Not New for Department, Houston Chronicle

Echoes of the Moody Park Rebellion, Revolution

10. “True” is correct.

Over the last 50 years, the number of prisoners in Texas has increased by 509 percent. Black people are 13 percent of the total population, but 27 percent of the jail population, and 44 percent of the prison population. Black and Latina/o people are routinely murdered and brutalized by police: Pamela Turner. Nicolas Chavez. Joshua Feast. Botham Jean. These are but a few of the names of Black and Brown people in Texas killed by police of one type or another in the recent past.

Sources:

Incarceration Trends in Texas, the Vera Institute of Justice

Prison Population by State, World Population Review