By Kelsi Peace, Features Editor
James Francies, 76, asks a very direct question he said he likes to ask and waits for eyes to shift downward and people to squirm uncomfortably.
“What would this world, or [the] United States be like, had it not been for slave labor?” he asks, never releasing eye contact. “Ever thought about that?”
Then he laughs, allowing the listener to breathe, because James, too, knows the power racial issues possess to cause discomfort. He explains the history behind today’s term “African American” as an example of the way things have changed and how complex race has become.
“When I was born, I was born a little colored baby,” James said.
James was born in 1930, before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. presented his “I Have a Dream Speech,” where King used the words “black” and “white” to refer to skin color. James said after the speech, society would call him a black man until Jesse Jackson’s 1988 bid for presidency, where he was referred to as “African American.”
James is a virtual black history textbook. He cites dates and names with an astonishing precision and is avidly researching African American involvement in early rodeos.
James’ theory is that Andrew “Bone” Hooks rode in the first rodeo in 1863. In all likelihood, James said, black cowboys rode broncos because the event would have been considered too dangerous for white participation at the time, James said. He’s still hunting for his evidence.
A trail to progress
James is no stranger to the life of a cowboy. In fact, he was hailed as the oldest active trail boss in 2002, after more than 40 years spent on the trail.
But perhaps the most impressive detail about his history as a trail boss is the way in which he got his start.
In 1956, James approached the Houston Fat Stock Show about joining the trail ride that had started four years earlier in an attempt to renew interest in the stock show. According to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, (the name changed in 1961), at www.hlsr.com, four men comprised the Salt Grass Trail Ride, which is the show’s original trail ride.
James would be the first black man to join the trail, and James said the man he spoke to warned him, “I can’t give you no protection.”
What the man meant, James explained, was that on the trail anything could happen – a drunken man could rope him for entertainment, fellow riders could light matches between his toes while he slept or someone could urinate in his boots.
“They’ll strictly do it you,” the man told James, “because you’re of a different race.”
Instead, he suggested James start a trail with other black cowboys and James agreed.
James approached the president of Prairie View College with his plan: create the Prairie View Trail to lead away from the university, giving it a purpose and offering graduates a chance to stay connected to the agriculture world.
James got his trail, promising to prohibit alcohol on the trail and to “maintain a high degree of respect.”
“For 42 years, we never had not one problem,” James said. “Of all the trail rides that we made, I don’t know of anything that brought a discredit to that college. That was a great achievement.”
Over the life of the trail, James estimates about 60,000 riders have ridden the trail – a staggering number considering that the first year James set out with six other riders, a wagon and a driver.
The trail has spurred changes over the years, with James involved in breaking down racial barriers.
In 1963, trail riders with the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo arrived in Houston for a parade and faced heavy traffic that sent the show to request that the city allow the trail riders to camp in Houston Memorial Park, which was formerly the U.S. Army’s Camp Logan during World War I.
When the park’s owners, Will and Mike Hogg, sold the land to the city in 1925, James said they wrote a mandate.
“In that deed, right today, it says that no Negro or black would ever camp all night in Memorial Park,” James said. “It’s still there, but it’s smeared over.”
James said he watched the mayor, president of the rodeo, police chief and councilman gather to debate where to send the Prairie View Trail riders.
In the end, they were granted a 200×200 foot area in the park that James remembered as “boggy, boggy, boggy.”
James woke the next day to find the National Guard, sheriff and police surrounding the camp, James said he assumed, for protection.
“The next year when we came in, they gave us a spot over there with all the other trail riders,” James said. “And I found that to be interesting.”
People packed together to watch the parade, James said, holding up his interlocked fingers to demonstrate the crowd’s density. James said he could hear them murmuring, “Where’d those darkies come from?” and he added, “They called us everything.”
Mostly, James laughs at the ignorance. He recalled only one incident of blatant racism, where a white man spurred his horse ahead of the Prairie View riders, declaring, “I’d die and go to hell before a bunch of n****** are getting ahead of me.”
Nearby, a 13-year-old girl had her foot in the stirrup, and the sudden movement startled her horse. The girl hit her head on the ground and later died.
“I guess that was the only really racial incident that I encountered in 42 years. And of course it was what he was saying,” James said.
As of 1992, the Prairie View Trail became the front trail in the park, and James said media and visitors were always brought to the Prairie View camp.
“That’s one instance that I can say I saw desegregation and interrelations work without any bloodshed and without any really open confrontation or protests,” James said. “It opened the doors, and we never had any protests … it just came about.”
Sharing the knowledge
In his riding days, James and the other cowboys stopped at schools along the trail to teach the children about life on the trail, according to the livestock show’s H Magazine. Today, James shares his expertise in Abilene’s Black History Museum.
The museum was was moved to the G.V. Daniels Center four years ago, where visitors peruse photographs, literature, inventions and newspaper clippings to the background noise of the rowdy bingo players in the adjacent room.
This year’s turnout left James a little disappointed, he said, but in years past, many enthusiastic schoolchildren have enjoyed the museum he so passionately advocates.
“For some reason, when we talk about Black History Month and the way that things are changing now days, it’s really leading away and sweeping a lot of stuff under the rug,” James said, adding another of his direct questions: “Why are we sweeping it under the rug?”
But James will tell it like it is, and he said in the four years he’s been in Abilene he hasn’t seen great interest in Black History Month. However, he added that he understands the reason for it.
“It’s hard to take interest or hold to something that you know nothin’ about,” James said.
With plans to partner with Frontier Texas! next year, James seems optimistic that he will be able to encourage interest.
Jeff Salmon, Frontier Texas! executive director, said the plans are still tentative and probably won’t become a reality until 2009. The museum alternates its temporary displays, and in 2008 will feature a women’s history display, Salmon said.
This year, Frontier Texas! has a black history display that Salmon said is primarily photographs and text; James and other people from the G.V. Daniels museum helped with the display, Salmon said.
This year, the G.V. Daniels Black History Month museum is humble but filled with information. Countless articles featuring James and the Houston Stock show are spread across a table in the back, and James grins from a photograph, dressed in the chaps and cowboy hat he said he loves. The museum is quiet except for the occasional shout from the room next door, and James’ explanations. But he doesn’t keep talking about his accomplishments.
Instead, he points out an ironing board, which, he explains, is just one of 145 items he knows of that have been invented by blacks.
And, of course, he asks what life would be like without the inventions and their inventors, never releasing his gaze. And then he laughs.
