The Freedmen's Bureau, which was officially named the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, was established in March 1865. Led by Major General Oliver O. Howard, it was originally intended to last for one year but did not disband until 1872. Over that time it established around 3,000 schools (including universities and training schools), built hospitals, developed a contract labor system, and created military tribunals to settle legal disputes. However, a lack of funding and military and political support, as well as persistent racism, significantly hampered the Bureau's work. Despite these issues, its effort to educate freed people was largely successful. Rincon Street School was a two-story stone building and educated students of all ages. It was built using funds that were acquired from the sale of a Confederate tannery. It provided a basic education in math, history, geography, reading, civics, politics, home economics, and vocational training. The city acquired the school in 1871 and four years later it became part of the San Antonio school district. Its name was changed to Riverside Negro School in 1884 and was later renamed Frederick Douglass School in 1904. In 1914, it moved to a new, larger building on present-day Martin Luther King Drive where it continues to operate today.

The historical marker is located along the San Antonia Riverwalk.

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The first free public school for African Americans in San Antonio was built at this location in the late 1860s. Named Rincon Street School (at the time, St. Mary's Street was called Rincon Street), it was established by the Freedmen's Bureau, which was a federal agency established shortly before the end of the Civil War to protect former enslaved people and help them transition to freedom. The Bureau implemented a number of programs, one of which was to build schools throughout the south. Rincon School was one of them. This historical marker provides a brief historical overview of the school.

Site of Rincon/Douglass School

San Antonio has a rich history of Black entrepreneurs and political leaders. This tour is a work in progress and explores a few historical sites that influenced the culture and community of San Antonio.

Charles Bellinger was an avid gambler and made a stop in San Antonio on his way to Reno, Nevada. Bellinger stopped San Antonio for a poker game. As a result of that stop, he netted a winning of 10,000 dollars. Bellinger decided to make San Antonio his home and began

Charles Bellinger, "Black Mayor" of San Antonio, was considered the richest Black man in Texas. His great estate is located in the Denver Heights neighborhood and is now owned by the Greater Corinth Baptist Church. Bellinger was one of the most colorful and influential political and entrepreneurial leaders in San Antonio. 

Charles Bellinger, "Black Mayor" of San Antonio's Mansion 

Garlington Jerome Sutton (G.J. Sutton) was born in 1909 in San Antonio, Texas. He was the eighth of fifteen children. His father was Samuel Johnson Sutton, also affectionately called "Professor Sutton" by his students and colleagues for his deep commitment to education. G.J. Sutton's father created the first Black school in San Antonio in 1898 and became the Principal at San Antonio's second Black school, Douglass Middle School. A few years later, he became the Principal at Phillis Wheatley High School, where he remained until 1945. G.J. Sutton's brother, Percey Sutton, represented The Nation of Islam and Malcolm X. All twelve of the surviving Sutton children went to college as Samuel and Lilian Sutton made education a priority in the family. After his father's death, the San Antonio Housing Authority named a housing development after Samuel Johnson Sutton called the Sutton Homes. It was renamed Sutton Oaks Apartments in 2011. G.J. Sutton followed in his father's tradition of public service. After being elected the first Black official from Bexar County, he was also elected as board of trustees of the San Antonio Union Junior College District. The April 4, 1948, San Antonio Light headline "Making Political History, Minorities Combine, Win." emphasized the importance of this achievement. Valmo Bellinger, son of political "kingmaker" Charles Bellinger, gathered the Latin-American community and the African American community in a movement never seen before in San Antonio. Working together to support the Latin-American candidate Gus Garcia, and Black leader G.J. Sutton, Valmo Bellinger and company devised a plan for the Black community to go to the polls for Gus Garcia and for the Latin-American community to go down the line for G.J. Sutton - pulling off a stunning show of community force. While in office G.J. Sutton supported community lead boards to heard accusations on police brutality. In 1972 Texas legislative redistricting opened up a new district, district 57-E, where G.J. Sutton become the first Black representative from San Antonio. He was chosen as Chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus.  G.J. Sutton proposed buying an office building in his district to save on money going to rent and wanted a facility that could better serve underserved citizens. He also helped to revitalize St. Paul Square in San Antonio. Sutton later served as a visiting lecturer at Baylor University. He belonged to many organizations, including the National Funeral Directors Association and The Plaza Club. Mr. Sutton was also a 32nd degree Mason. Mr. Sutton was commended for his outstanding community service by Mission City Elk's Club and St. Philip's College. He received the honor of "Man of the Year" in 1973 from the Independent Funeral Directors Association. Two years later, the San Antonio Express-News would designate him "Politician of the Year." Today, the Texas Legislature Black Caucus presents the G.J. Sutton award for leadership in each legislative session.

Built in 1912 and home to San Antonio Machine and Supply Company for decades, this building was later acquired by the city and operated as an office building starting in the 1970s. The complex was named in honor of G.J. Sutton in 1982 and demolished in 2019 despite several years of preservation efforts. The building was named in honor of Sutton for his service as an educator and pioneering member of San Antonio's African American community who became the first African American in the Texas state legislature. 

G.J. Sutton Complex (1912-2019)

The Institute also offers educational and public programs to people of all ages, as well as various events throughout the year. This includes the annual Texas Folklife Festival. The Institute is a Smithsonian Affiliate and is currently, as of 2018, forming plans to redevelop its long-term exhibition floor from a thematic approach.

Located in HemisFair Park and operated by the University of San Antonio, the Institute of Texan Cultures celebrates the state's diverse cultural heritage. Its roots go back to 1968 when it began as the Texas State Exhibit Pavilion at the 1968 World's Fair, which was called HemisFair '68. The Institute includes a museum with 65,000 square feet of exhibit space for short and long-term exhibits. There is also a library where visitors can conduct research. It contains a wide variety of historical materials including three million photographs, over 900 oral histories, personal papers, and rare books. The following cultures are represented here: Native American, African American, Italian, English, Irish, Scottish, Norwegian, Swedish, Swiss, Chinese, Wendish (these people came from an area in Prussia), Hungarian, Lebanese, Danish, Dutch, German, Czech, Japanese, French, Spanish/Tejano, Greek, Jewish, Polish, and Belgian.

UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures

Throughout the course of Texas history and the history of the United States, the heritage and culture of African Americans has sometimes been overlooked. For decades and even centuries, African Americans have been viewed as a stepping stone in the makeup of the country and the state of Texas. The San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum was created to shed some much-needed light on the role African Americans have played in the shaping of the city. The city of San Antonio needed a museum that would detail the specifics of the history of African Americans in San Antonio and their role in the make-up of the city.San Antonio is a city that is predominantly Hispanic largely due to it being a major city in New Spain in 1718 when the first group of Spanish settlers arrived on the banks of the San Antonio river. During the historic battle at the Alamo during the fight for Texas independence from Mexico in the 1800s, African Americans aided in that battle siding with Davy Crockett and his troops. One African American in particular contributed in a major way during the battle at the Alamo, and the person was named Joe. Joe was a 21-year-old slave who assisted Alamo garrison commander William Barret Travis during the Battle of the Alamo. Although, most of that portion of history has been overlooked throughout so many years, the SAACAM has been able to provide people that desire to learn this history the opportunity to do so. SAAACAM offers other services that are not only specific to those of African American decent, the center also offers educational opportunities for other races of people to learn as well.The mission for this facility is “To collect, preserve and share the cultural heritage of African Americans in the San Antonio region.” This mission is vitally important because so much of the history of African Americans in San Antonio has been intentionally forgotten. Slavery in Texas is far from forgotten or an afterthought because after all, its role in the course of Texas history helped shape the course of the state’s history as we know it.Texas gained its independence from Mexico in 1836, it wasn’t annexed by the United States until 9 years later because it was a slave state. Although slavery was opposed by the Mexican government, slavery in Texas was accepted by the southern states. Texas was home to an excess of 5,000 slaves by the start of the Texas Revolution. Slavery in San Antonio was unlike slavery in the State of Texas because the city only held 168 slaves of the approximate 3,000 in population in the city. African American men and women that were slaves in San Antonio helped in the battle at the Alamo. African American men were used to fight in the battle but were only referred to by their first names such as Joe, Ben, or Sam. African American women were more of the helpmate, such as cooks, laundry, and fabrication engineers. The videos that are shown in grade school are mere productions of certain events that have taken place. They are romanticized because of the vulgarity and the amount of blood that was shed at the hands of cruel, inhumane slave owners. The videos that are shown in most schools throughout the state are videos of how slaves worked fields, how they were treated as property versus human beings and how they were used to grow the economy for white slave owners. These videos also showed how slaves were brutally beaten and/or killed for defiance or trying to escape plantations. Other details in the museum demonstrate how innovative African Americans were when it came to inventing products that aided them in their work. Slaveowners often stole these ideas and passed them off as their own. African Americans were taken advantage off during these times largely in part that either they could not read or write, slave owners promised them a share off the profits and never came through with their promises, or African Americans did not have knowledge on how to promote their product. Some of the educational opportunities at SAAACAM are, Race Ed, the Black History River Cruise, the Black History Film Series, and an Oral History Workshop. It also offers health screenings, fundraising opportunities that would allow patrons to learn about the Negro League Baseball Era and how African Americans were integrated in the Whites Only game.

Located in the La Villita Historic Village, the San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum (SAAACAM) was established in 2017 to preserve and promote the city's African American cultural heritage. Part of this effort is to explore the history of Spaniards, Mexicans, Germans, and Canary Islanders who lived here and whose heritage is linked to the African American community. SAAACAM's programming and initiatives include creating a digital archive of artifacts, offering pop-up exhibits, and Black history riverwalk tours.

San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum

During the early 1960s, demonstrations were taking place across the country to demand the end to racial discrimination at lunch counters and other establishments. Inspired by a wave of successful sit-ins that began with the February 1 1960 protest at Woolworth's in North Carolina, students and others in Texas joined the movement. After choosing locations, Texas protesters followed the same strategies of non-violence and refused to get up from their seats even after being denied service, experiencing violence, or being threatened with the prospect of being arrests. While many cities in the South saw violence in response to civil rights protests, the situation in San Antonio was more nuanced. Economic growth and providing at least a semblance of fairness and tranquility seemed to be the top priority for city officials and business leaders in San Antonio, so the police rarely responded with violence as occurred in some Southern cities. In previous years and prompted by a lawsuit from the NAACP, the City Council in 1954 ordered an end to segregation in municipal parks and golf courses. However, San Antonio municipal swimming pools remained segregated, and while San Antonio schools officially accepted the Brown v. Board of Education, the city followed a gradual approach to integration. Reverend Claude Black said that the city followed a duplicitous approach with the goal to "to give it to you and not give it to you." This "pattern," he explained "made it most difficult to develop the kind of unity that you need in the Black community in order to develop the opposition. Any time you give people in desperate conditions a glimmer of hope, you defuse them." Reverend Claude Black further explained, "San Antonio did not have that raw racist expression, but you did not have either the dignity of being a person, a citizen of the community . . . . It was not difficult for a Black person to develop inwardly a tremendous amount of hostility toward the community." This environment of accepting only gradual change and seeing civil rights as an area of compromise instead of a moral right helps to explain the events that would unfold at San Antonio's Woolworth's lunch counter in March 1960. As sit-ins spread through the South,local business leaders in San Antonia decided that the city's restaurants would not serve protesters who started sit-ins and instead indicated that they would support more gradual measures such as meetings. Mary Andrews, a college freshman at Our Lady of the Lake College and the NAACP's youth group president, took it upon herself to send letters to six stores in downtown San Antonio asking them to desegregate lunch counters. Black ministers started to visit local businesses to negotiate for the integration of downtown lunch counters. The Mayor of San Antonio, J. Edwin Kuykendall wanted to prevent the kinds of protests and negative press in other cities. He suggested desegregation was a moral issue and as a result, church leaders should take up the issue instead of the city. The mayor asked clergy to meet and talk with business leaders about gradual desegregation. Lead by Reverend C. Don Baugh local church leaders convened several meetings with business owners to find a solution. Unfortunately, these initial meetings did not include Black leaders or organizations. On March 13, 1960, a desegregation rally was attended by 1,500 participants where the Reverend Claude Black announced that on March 17, demonstrators would target businesses if they continued to refuse service to African Americans. Facing mounting pressure from the NAACP and local leaders, the city again held a meeting on March 15, 1960, but did not include many Black leaders. One day later, on March 16, 1960, four African Americans were served at the Woolworth's lunch counter. On the 19th, Blacks and white citizens celebrated the desegregated lunch counter with a banquet. The situation in San Antonio demonstrated a measure of change that Black leaders would later see as more superficial than substantive. Looking back on the situation, Baugh said that excluding them "was paternalism. The white man was once again needing to see what he was willing to give the Black person. At the time, I didn't see it."

Built around 1921 the Woolworth Building is best-know today as the site where the first previously-segregated lunch counter in San Antonio served African American patrons. The February 1, 1960 lunch counter protest in Greensboro spurred other local protests and spread to Texas. City leaders hoped to avoid negative press and worked with owners of establishments to pre-empt demonstrations. Leading newspapers supported integration, and when the city attorney and police chief both stated that they would not arrest civil rights protesters, restaurant owners decided to comply with the city's preference that the era of "white-only" lunch counters come to a quiet end. On March 16th, four African Americans were served for the first time at a previously segregated lunch counter at this Woolworths. Several days later, city leaders celebrated this solution as "the San Antonio Way."

Explore San Antonio's Black History

Site of Rincon/Douglass School

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information