Community and National Leader

Dickerson Conference: Community and National Leader Moderator: Atinuke Adediran, David and Pamela Donohue Assistant Professor, Boston College Law School Dylan Penningroth, Professor of Law and History, University of California, Berkeley: Black Lawyers & the Idea of Civil Rights Christopher (Chris) W. Schmidt, Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Faculty Development, Chicago-Kent College of Law, and Research Professor, American Bar Foundation: Navigating the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Divide: Earl B. Dickerson and the National Lawyers Guil

Community and National Leader

Dickerson Conference: Community and National Leader Moderator: Atinuke Adediran, David and Pamela Donohue Assistant Professor, Boston College Law School Dylan Penningroth, Professor of Law and History, University of California, Berkeley: Black Lawyers & the Idea of Civil Rights Christopher (Chris) W. Schmidt, Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Faculty Development, Chicago-Kent College of Law, and Research Professor, American Bar Foundation: Navigating the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Divide: Earl B. Dickerson and the National Lawyers Guil

A Texas Peasantry? Black Smallholders in the Texas Sugar Bowl, 1865–1890

This article examines a small community of former slaves in Texas's leading sugar-producing county and argues that local conditions fostered the growth of a Caribbean-style ‘reconstituted peasantry’. Using local sources to compile a database of 79 African American landowners, it traces the postwar decline of the sugar plantations, the process of black land acquisition and the smallholders' strategies for survival. The smallholders' position, however, was precarious, and most lost their lands at the close of the nineteenth century. The piece concludes by suggesting that more intensive local research into former-slave communities may force a reconsideration of the notion that all American slaves became landless wage labourers. © 2007 Taylor & Francis