 Okay, if everyone's at their seat, I'd like to reintroduce our first speaker, important member of the Coalition for the World Worth Building, a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, a registered architect, landscape architect, and winner of the National Humanities Medal, Everett Fly. Thank you, Vince, and thank all of you. I'll give Vince credit. He did not introduce me as a historian. I am a landscape architect, and I'm an architect. I happen to believe that the more we understand our collective cultural and historic connections to place, the better stewards we can be, the better planners we can be, the better community members we can be, the better preservationists and conservationists we can be. So that's the way I'm going to frame my outline, is of course I'm preaching to the choir, so you all know how much history, how many layers, and how deep the layers are on the plaza. So I'm going to pick a few that as I've worked on this, and I've told people, Judge Wolfe is here, I was actually his appointee to the City of San Antonio Historic Preservation Commission. So wherever Judge Wolfe said, go, I went. And so that allowed me to have a broader view or perspective of San Antonio and Bear County history than just one district or one specific geographic area at a time. So this first example, again many of you might know this, and excuse my pronunciation, this is Felipe Elua. He was a mulatto man, reported to come to San Antonio from Louisiana in 1807, not 1907, 1807. In 1817, he petitioned the Spanish governor for land at the end of Alameda, which is now East Commerce. In 1832, Mr. Elua petitioned for an additional land that would now become the area between the River Center Mall and Alamo Plaza. And in 1848, that plaque right there was filed, and you can see if you look close, Mr. Elua's name is right down there at the bottom, at the southwest corner of Alamo Plaza. In case you haven't been to Austin recently, this is the Texas African American History Memorial. It sits on the southwest quadrant of the Texas Capital Grounds. The slide at the right or the image at the right, there are two gentlemen represented there. On the right is Samuel McCulloch. He lived from 1810 to 1893, and on the left is Hendrick Arnold. We don't know when he was born, but we know he was passed away in 1849. McCulloch, who was a mixed race or mulatto man, came to Texas in 1835, and he volunteered as a soldier in the Texas Revolution. He was wounded at the Battle of Goliad on October 9th, 1835, and many historians give him credit as being the first person wounded in the Texas Revolution. In 1840, he was awarded 2,949 acres of land by the Texas Congress for his service to the Republic. Some people think it actually took a letter from Sam Houston to help him get that land. He settled on 210 acres on the Medina River. Some people refer to it as Mans Crossing, southwest of San Antonio. He settled there in 1852. Arnold, Hendrick Arnold, one of the largest there on the left, is reported to have arrived in Texas in 1829. He's widely recognized as a scout, and he was a free Negro. He participated in the December 1835 assault at Bayer, and he served with the Erastus D. Smith at the Battle of San Jacinto. He owned land. Dr. Carlson... Dr. David Carlson helped me find a deed that showed he owned land on Alameda Street approximately, which is commerce, where it crossed the river. These two gentlemen are on that monument in Austin. They're not represented anywhere in San Antonio or Bayer County, but they're both buried here in Bayer County. That's Samuel McCulloch's grave and marker. You can see a state marker there, but that's out in the county, and of course they're closely and authentically connected to Alamo Plaza and the Texas Revolution. And this is just a reference map, a reference map, so that you can see that's McCulloch. That was McCulloch's grant, and the dot right there is Alamo Plaza. So you can see how far at distance he was. This is something I came across of interest to me. This is for reference. This is a Sanborn map of San Antonio. It's an 1895 or 92 Sanborn map, but it has good reference for street layout. So it lines on the map for Juneteenth parades. The original Juneteenth celebration, of course, represents the arrival of Emancipation notice in Galveston on June 19th of 1865. But the Juneteenth parades in San Antonio always went through downtown. The early Juneteenth parades started west of the river. So if you look at the map, if you look at the map, the circles represent starting points of parades, starting points of parades, and the squares represent the ending points of the Juneteenth parades. And then the dashed lines represents the routes through the city. In 1883, the Juneteenth parade actually started in Alamo Plaza. In 1886, the parade started at Military Plaza. It stopped in Alamo Plaza for a two-piece artillery salute. In 1889, it started on the west side. It started on the west side and went to Alamo Plaza for a 24-gun salute. In 1890, it started again at Franklin Square, and it stopped in Alamo Plaza for, again, a 24-gun salute. Again, my point is the celebration was always in the middle of town. Alamo Plaza was always part of that, and in some cases, you know how we are in Texas, they shot off guns. The next example I want to give, and I know you can't read that, so you'll have to bear with me. In June of 1887, there was a group of African-American citizens. Some of them were religious leaders. Some of them were civic leaders, and they called themselves the Colored Club. That's the name of the time. That was the way they called themselves. They delivered a written petition to Mayor Brian Callahan, asking for use of Alamo Plaza to have Bishop Turner, who is a leading African Methodist Episcopal Church Bishop, to come from Georgia and publicly address the colored people of the city. This was a discussion about prohibition, liquor, the sale of liquor. There was a lot of concern at the time about misuse, abuse, and so forth. The Colored Club felt that it was important to have Bishop Turner come at that time. When the petition, this is a written petition, when it was delivered to Mayor Callahan, and that's what's in all those articles, and I'm quoting Mayor Callahan said, no, I will not allow them to use Alamo Plaza or any of them, meaning main or military Plaza. And then the group was savvy enough, the colored group was savvy enough to ask, could we use the federal site, which now is the Garcia Federal Building? Mayor Callahan again answered that they could not use that and that the city had jurisdiction over that federal site. The Colored Club was still persistent enough, and they actually went to the commissioner, the federal commissioner for the site, and his name was Stevenson, and he agreed to let them use the site. On June 7th, the Colored Club assembled, but according to the newspaper articles, so did a group of 3,000, they actually called them hoodlums, this is not my word, they called them hoodlums at the north side of the Plaza. The opponents, the hoodlums began to throw eggs and physically disrupted the Colored Club meeting. The Colored Club went west, they were chased, literally chased west on Houston Street to the St. James AME Church, which would have been at the corner of West Martin at the time it was called Obraje and the San Pedro Creek. The hoodlums followed them to the church building and threw eggs into the church. On June 11th, Mayor Callahan, City Treasurer Ferd Hurf, City Marshal Sheridan, Alderman Dagoner, and A.L. Lockwood were all arrested on charges of having disrupted the Colored Club meeting. The official charge, and I'm quoting, was conspiring to assault Reverend Sutherland, who happened to be white, and Bishop Harry Turner, who happened to be black. The formal charges were changed to assault and conspiracy to deprive American citizens of their right to free speech. To me, that's civil rights. Gus Kampman was eventually added to the list of persons. The case carried on, the Commissioner, Stevenson, was actually threatened with public disgrace if he did not grant a bail to the persons accused. Mayor Callahan refused to post bail, but eventually his bail was released. The only two that actually carried or went to trial were Kampman and Lockwood, and the records seemed to disappear after about a year. So this map, again, just using the Sanborn map as a reference, the star is the Woolworth building. The orange outline is the federal site. There's the Alamo. They were chased from this end of the plaza down Houston Street across the river to the AME Church. There's San Pedro Creek, and there's where the AME Church was located at the time. It's about a mile. So if you can imagine being chased... You can imagine being chased by a mob for a mile. I'm sure it was a harrowing experience. This map, or this photograph, I wanted to include... I came across it at the Briscoe Museum of Western Art, and it shows...it's 1905, and it shows President Roosevelt's arrival in Alamo Plaza. And as you can see, there's all kinds of people in the plaza, and I kept seeing reference in the documentation to this place called the Alamo Pavilion, and that's it there on the left, that two-story structure. And as I continued to research, I came across these examples of African-American entrepreneurs and business people in the plaza. This one here, Jasper Thompson was a black barber. And as you can read clearly, he was the barber at the Minger Hotel. He also turned out to be the first colored fire chief in San Antonio. And I always asked the question, how did the fire know what was the difference between a structure owned by a white person and a black person? But Thompson clearly was there at the Minger. He was the first barber to hold the concession at the Minger Hotel. So I began to track Thompson, and I found out that black barbers held the concession for barbershop at the Minger for 50 consecutive years. That means that the black barbers helped the Minger establish their reputation for hospitality and guest service, et cetera. This one, Simon Turner turned out he was a buffalo soldier. And as you can see, that ad says that he had a confectionery, a fruit stand, and it was at the corner right there at Crockett and Alamo Plaza. And by coincidence, there's a concession there today. It doesn't belong to Turner or any of his family. And then this one, the pearl laundry, that's the ad. And as you can see, it's in German. And that was Lacey Robertson, who was the proprietor. He was an African-American. And in other words, they did the laundry for the Minger and the other businesses there on the plaza. Lacey and his family actually lived right back there on Bonham until he passed away in the early 1900s. He was an active businessman. He actually went to the National Negro Business League meeting in 1900 and met Booker T. Washington, Dr. Booker T. Washington. And eventually that led to Dr. Washington coming to San Antonio in 1911. I'm almost there. The next example I'd like to point out was 1935 to 1936. And of course, those were the years that San Antonio was planning with the rest of the state for the Texas Centennial. In 1935, a group of eight civic and business leaders, they were all white, were appointed as an advisory committee to make plans for San Antonio. A group of African-American residents prepared and presented a written proposal to the committee requesting that an African-American be included in a permanent memorial for the Texas Centennial. The person they proposed was a former slave named Joe Griffin. And I'll tell you about Joe in a moment. As an alternate, the group proposed that a, quote, singing master be appointed to direct a Negro chorus during the Centennial events. The advisory committee changed the request to say, and I'm quoting, an allotment of $5,000 to public schools for participation of school children to include Negro students. The African-American citizens changed their request and asked for a recreational center for Negroes, but the proposal was rejected. It's in those articles. Eventually, the proposal was changed because the committee agreed, and I'm quoting again, a share of the $5,000 would be furnished to the public schools for choruses and other activities to be devoted to Negro school children's participation. The spokesperson for the African-American community was John W. Hemings. He was the husband of Myra Davis Hemings, and of course Myra Davis Hemings was a prominent school teacher, a local theater actor, and one of the founders of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. The marker on the left is the Dawson Massacre marker, and of course the marker on the right is right there on the plaza for Samuel Maverick. It turns out that Joe Griffin was a mulatto slave who was the property of Mrs. Mary Maverick. And I'm reading from the Fayette County, Texas web project. The Maverick family came to Texas in 1837 with Griffin, given to Mary near the Alabama-Georgia border en route to Texas by Mary's mother. He continued to be trusted to protect the family when Sam Maverick was away on extended business trips while the family resided in San Antonio. Joe accompanied his mistress and their children as refugees under the protection of Republic of Texas to the city of Colorado, just on the west side of the Colorado River. And they would do this when Samuel was involved in different scrapes and skirmishes in business. Eventually they learned that Samuel had been taken captive in the raid of General Wall. Griffin, Joe Griffin volunteered to take $380 and a concealed money belt to San Antonio with the agreement that he was to play the part of a runaway slave under the protection of the Mexican army. Samuel was about to be sent to Mexico. Somewhere along the road, Joe was overtaken by Dawson, Nicholas Mosby Dawson. At their invitation, Samuel joined them and was one of the folks killed at the Dawson massacre site. It's out of Austin Highway on the Salado Creek. Mexican Colonel Carrasco, who was in charge of the Calvary Detachment, remarked that he had never seen anyone fight with such bravery as Griffin had fought. The Maverick family mourned his death for many years, and Mrs. Maverick wrote that, quote, Griffin possessed the courage of an African lion, but apparently not enough to be included in the 1835 Centennial event. This last photograph, it's a little bit out of context, but it's, as you can read, it's 1921 in Alamo Plaza. It's a photograph by the well-known photographer Eugene Omar Goldbeck, and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library generously allowed me to use this. I wanted to show this because as you look at that crowd, this is the San Antonio that I see. I don't see a line in the plaza and black folks on one side and white folks on the other and another line with Hispanic and Native Americans on the other. They're all right there together. And if you look at that photograph close, I mean really close, there's people in work clothes, there's people dressed up in business clothes, there's women, there's children, and to me that's what the legacy and the history of Alamo Plaza are about. Demolishing and erasing and marginalizing physical traces and presence of black and ethnic history doesn't make the things that remain more important. It's a well-known tactic, a military tactic that if you want to demoralize or conquer people, you physically demolish their cultural, spiritual, and physical landmarks. The landmarks that represent their ideas and beliefs. Eliminating tangible traces of people, some call that cultural cleansing. I'm on record as saying that it would be a huge mistake to demolish the Woolworth. African American history is embedded in Alamo Plaza and it's connected and tied to the Native American burials. I'm sure you've seen the articles that describe that some of the folks in those early burials had African descent. There's intermarriages, there are people working together, there are people living together, there are people working on politics and business together. We simply cannot segregate our collective history and culture and be considered serious stewards of Alamo Plaza and Texas history. Thank you. One, two. We have a few minutes for questions. If anyone would like some questions of Everett? Yes, Beck here. I was just wondering if this documentation is going to be put together in some sort of published work that would be available generally? I'll give you the answer. That was my plan and then there's some representatives here. I began to work with the San Antonio African American Community and Archive and Museum and the purpose was to collect and gather material like this. So I put my book on pause and so that's where I am. And then Vince and Patty and others called and said, what about the Woolworth? So here we are. But there's lots of work for all kinds of students, not just me. I mean, this is like over my head. There's so much material. I can't believe how much material is out there. It's simply a matter of wanting to know about it, not being ashamed of it, and facing it for what it is is our authentic history. So I'll get to it eventually with the book. First, some comments. To speak to the colored. That was so important. Otherwise, I lost my purse recently and I had to get another driver's license. And so I needed a birth certificate. Well, I turned 81 two weeks ago. I had never seen my birth certificate. And so when I went down to the birth certificate place, they gave me a copy of what is my birth certificate and it has the printed name, address, blah, blah, blah, blah. And color. And I suppose they expected someone to write black and white, the people who were documenting me. And what they did was where color, they just added ed. So I'm officially colored. I'm neither black nor white. I'm colored. But the comments that I wanted to make is that picture that you showed in the 20s is so indicative of what San Antonio has been over the years. When we were Mexico, the predominance in this area was mestizo and mulatto. And so we are today what we have always been. We just have not acknowledged our past. And I want to know how many people hands know the story of Black Betty? No hands for Black Betty. One Black Betty person. Thank God. The rest of y'all need to find out. She was in the Shartan Suite. She was Black. And she had a cafe here in San Antonio when this was Mexico. And when those Easterners came and took over the Alamo, they closed her restaurant, brought her into the Alamo and her helper to be the chief cook and bottle washer. And at the fall, the Mexican soldiers came into the Alamo as the story goes, with their bayonets at the end of their guns. And there was a human cry, as you can imagine, from Betty and the guy. And an officer from the Mexican army came in and said, no, no, no, no, no, these are our friends. So Betty went back into San Antonio after the siege. She reopened her restaurant. But after San Jacinto and those newcomers came around, she had to leave and she went closer to the Rio Grande. And then when they started coming down the river, looking for slaves that had run away, she moved over into Mexico and we lose her in history. But understand there is a lot of history here in San Antonio that has to do with Meso-Africans and people of African descent. There was a Meso-African mayor of San Antonio here in Mexico and a Meso-African governor of one of the provinces. And I remember it has to be in the books. Santa Ana came with the Mexican flag to remind people that Mexico had abolished slavery and that if these newcomers wanted to stay with these people and slave, they need to get their butts back to the east coast because they weren't going to be allowed to do that. And that's why the Alamo battle in San Jacinto happened. And a year after San Jacinto, this became a part of the Confederacy. That's not in the history and that has to be told. And the Woolworth building, the contemporary civil rights history from 1960 needs to be told and then the real history of San Antonio needs to be told as well. And that's the place. Not where Robert D., the councilman, once way down the street around the corner, at the crisis building, but right where it happened on Alamo Plaza. Thank you, Nettie. We have time for another question. Anyone? Where? I'm sorry. Got it. Coming. My name is David Lee. I do have a question. I love your presentation. I'm wearing the alfos that came here back in 1994 and such, making San Antonio my home. The history is rich. I've done, have enlightened my wife and I and others. The question we asked earlier about if you want to make this information available. I understand you said you're going to make it available in your book. But this portion that is being presented today, is it some kind of way to be presented out in the community and later on included in your booklet as well? Because this information needs to be known to the community as whole. It also may enrich the sale of your book if you can do that. Where's, oh there's Deborah right there. So Deborah Brandon is there from the San Antonio After American Community Archive and Museum. And what we've been doing is having what we call Open House the fourth Saturday of each month. And so again what we've been doing is looking at ways to expose some of this material, develop some new presentations, et cetera. So that would be to begin with check with Deborah or check with the SACAM website. But we have been having open houses. We had one last week. We have another one coming up. It's the 22nd of February and so forth. So we'd be happy to, Deborah's the person to schedule something with you and see what we can do. Yes. All right, thank you, Everett. So just so everyone knows, this is being live streamed. You can go to www.bear.org under the commissioners 6.6.8, under the commissioners court live broadcast. It also will be archived so you'll be able to access these presentations later on the web. So until Everett gets his book done, you will at least have ability to get that presentation. So thanks again to Bear County for that.