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My
name is Jewell Hudler.
I was born here, went to school here, grew up here,
finished high school and went to the University of Texas.
I majored in History and Government.
When I first went, I thought I was going to be a Latin
teacher. I had some
Latin courses, but I was more interested in history. So, I got into the field of history and that was my major for
my bachelor’s degree. When
I started to work on a masters, I decided that I was going to make
political science, as we call government, as my major, so I
majored in political science, or government, then I also had a
minor in history and economics too. I got my master’s degree with a major in government and
minor in history and economics.
Then I started out to work for a doctor’s degree, and a
PHD in government, I never did finish that, but I did over a
year’s work toward it. I
was teaching school in the mean time and I thought it wasn’t
advisable to give up a job. In those days, if you had a good job
you better keep it. So,
I never did go back and get my doctor’s degree. |
| I have always
been interested in history, and in government and today I still
read the paper to see what happens.
The first thing I usually read, in the paper, in the
morning, is the editorial page to see what the editors are writing
about. I got that
habit from my father. He
always read the editorial page.
The editorial page is where you get the drift of what is
politically of interest or politically is current at a particular
time. I’ve always
been interested in local history, as a youngster I always listened
to what everybody had to day about the past.
That is how I happen to be interested in local history.
I always like to hear them tell about who lived here and
what they did and about the colored community that was in McDade. |
| As
I was a child, there were a number of colored families here and
they were a high-class group from the past, most of them took
their names from their former masters.
They were very industrious.
They had been brought up and taught to work and they did. The men in this community usually farmed or in the days when
they had the pottery shop, as people often called it, the “jug shop”, some of then worked there. The wives, of the colored people, helped in the homes of the
townspeople, if they hired extra help and often times, in the
older colored families the wives were called by the children
“Aunts” and the men “Uncles.” |
| This
story in my own family: Steve Price was a good cabinetmaker.
He did all kinds of work and my mother wanted some chicken
coups made. That was
in the days when everybody had chickens and you had coops for the
chickens. So, Mother asked my father to take her down to see Steve so
she could see him about making some chicken coops.
My sister Dempse, who is now Mrs. Payne Williams, was a
youngster and she went with then down there and Mama talked to
Uncle Steve about making some chicken coops.
When they came home, she said to my Mother, “Mama, is he
really our Uncle?” So the colored families in those days were really usually
well known and well liked. There
wasn’t the problems that we face today with the various and
sundry people in our community.
They represented a stayed conservative, industrious group.
Of the families I can remember, the Prices were one.
Steve Price was a fiddler as well as a carpenter and he
played at the dance down at Blue Branch, when they came in and
took some dancers from the floor and took them out and hanged
them. His daughter
was Georgeann and his son-in-law was Cisco Bishop. Some time after
Steve had died, I ask Cisco, I had grown up and was trying to find
out some history about McDade and was writing a paper for the
historical Society in Bastrop,
I ask Cisco if Steve ever talked about the dance?
He said “Oh, I’ve heard it a thousand times, 500 times,
he was scared to death, they played and played.”
They learned that they had come in and ask men to go on the
outside and they knew trouble was brewing and that was at
Earhart’s place. |
| The
ones I remember were Steve and Laura, his wife.
Laura’s husband was Isom and they are buried out in the
Oakhill Cemetery. Georgeann
was their daughter and she married Cisco Bishop, both Cisco and
Georgeann had worked for our family.
Cisco worked for the Brickyard for many years.
I think he probably worked for the Pottery Shop too before
then, but Cisco retired from the brickyard and did work in yards
and helped families who needed it, and Georgann had worked for my
sister and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Payne Williams.
She was a nurse. She
worked for us too, especially when my father got sick for the last
time, she was a very capable person.
In that time when the colored people got sick they
couldn’t just walk in. There was not a place where they could walk into a hospital
like today. In Elgin
they had a hospital and they finally built a little separate
building from the main hospital and there the colored patients
were put in that hospital and thats the way it was in those days,
but that has all long since changed. In her last illness, Georgeann was in that hospital in Elgin |
| Georgeann and
Cisco’s children went to California to live and to work.
They would come back to visit.
I recall there was a little script in the Elgin Courier by
georgeann’s daughter, when she passed away.
The daughter wrote to the Elgin paper to say how well she
was treated. She said “My Mother was treated just like a Queen” Dr.
Morris was the Doctor and I am sorry I don’t have that clipping,
but she would praise the attention that her mother received.
Things have changed now, Colored people are excepted in all
hospitals, if they have the money, as everybody else are required
to have. |
| Times have
changed in the streetcars. In
Austin and cities in the South, colored people sat in the back of
the streetcar. They
just didn't sit any place in the car. There was a designated place and there was a designated place
in the train for them. They
sat in a separate part of the car from the White, so those were
things that were accepted for a long time, but we have seen with
the changes in the attitudes and peoples rights that has all
passed that’s behind us. They
have the same rights as others in hospitals and in public places.
Of course, also this business of colored in restaurants. Now, I think there is still a selectivity in that probably
partly brought about by custom and by charges that were made, but
we can go into a cafeteria and we see colored people there as well
as white. There is no
difference but that’s one of the
changes that came about. |
| There were a
number of substancial colored families in this area.
Some lived in town, some worked for families on the farms
or they rented property and farmed individually for themselves.
The Reese family was one of them that lived here.
Then, there was Cisco Bishop’s family.
I don’t know what his father’s name was. But there were a large number of the Bishops. |
| I think one of
them worked as a porter on the Pullman car on the railroad.
I know there were several of them who worked on the pullman
cars and they would come back to McDade to visit and see their
families and the white folks that they knew as youngsters. |
| The
colored people had a church in McDade.
I don’t know when it was established, but it is still at
the same place that it was and on the same land as the early
church. The early
church served as a church and also as schoolhouse.
The children had separate schools and they went there. When the Supreme Court came with it’s decision that there
would no longer be a separation of children “Segregation” in
the schools, well then provisions were made for the children to go
to the white schools, but that was a slow go.
After the Supreme Court decision, eventually that came
about and the colored school was closed.
One of the things that happened with the population and
there was once a sizable population of colored people in McDade.
When the school issue came up, the end of segregation, it
soon came about as a result, but before the law was ridigly
inforced. Some
colored children in this area, couldn’t go on to high school
because the colored school didn’t have high school classes, and
to graduate from a good high school you had to leave McDade
because McDade just had 10 grades. Then a child had to go out of town to go to school.
They didn’t have money for transportation and the same
thing for a time was true for white children.
They didn’t have transportation.
Now children finish up grades here and we no longer have 10
grades. Transportation
is provided for them but it wasn’t for the colored people.
I remember very well, asking in Bastrop, about provisions
for a certain colored girl who had finished school here, about her
going to school elsewhere. He
very courteously said to me “Well, she can go, all she has to do
is come up here,” but then she didn’t have means for
transportation and none was provided. |
| About colored
people voting in McDade: They were allowed to vote.
Now, there was a time, when we had a poll tax and you had
to pay your poll tax to vote.
I think it was $1.75.
It was said the poll tax was put in to bar the Negro from
voting and the poor white too, as long as the poll tax was a
qualification for voting, the Negro couldn’t vote unless he paid
his poll tax and that was sufficient to disqualify them. Then laws
were passed outlawing the poll tax as a qualification for voting
in Texas. I can remember then, there was no effort made to keep the
Negro from voting, but most of them didn’t vote.
I know only in the last few years are they voting.
In McDade my brother, who was election officer for many
years, would urge the Black qualified people to come and vote, but
most of them didn’t. That
was an issue through out the south on voting.
In many states it was impossible for them to vote.
It was not until the civil rights bills were passed and in
lot of controversy in various southern states, was the Negro free
to vote and of course, some people say they are not free now.
I think that any of them that want to vote can vote now.
In a lot of places they are glad to have them vote because
issues in question at the time of election.
People want their votes but Negroes I think today,
certainly in this state, can vote if they want to. |
| The colored
people traveled in wagons and they could ride the train and the
bus, but they sat in the back of the bus and they sat in the back
of the train. I can
recall going to Houston on the Houston Texas Central Railroad,
which came to be owned by Southern Pacific and many times I went
to Houston on a train to go to Victoria where I taught school.
That was the best way to go and on Sunday afternoons when
you got to Hempstead, Hempstead was an area where they have a lot
of colored people and right out of Hempstead there is the Negro
College, State College, Prairie View.
Young Negroes would get on the train at one of the stations
there and then just walk back and forth, back and forth, through
the train’s passenger coaches.
They did that. That
was the beginning of their, you might say, protest or showing that
they had the right to do that if they wanted too.
Conductors on the trains would be very antagonized with
them. Maybe they
would ride 10 miles or so down to road to the next station.
They would be all dressed up going back and forth, back and
forth, showing that they didn’t have to sit in a certain place.
That was the beginning of the resentment protests against
the transportation problems. |
| The Negro workman
went into industry and learned a lot and became a very qualified
worker. In the southern industry and the local industry also they
learned skills and began raising their standards of living. Many colored people worked in the factories making
automobiles in the beginning of the auto industry.
Slavery ended in 1865 before there was a McDade. |
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