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Conference on Texas

Ode to Juneteenth: Slavery in Texas

December 5 & 6, 2024 • The Witte Museum

Thank you for your interest - the 2024 Conference is sold out.

Are you an educator or student? You may be able to attend the full conference at no cost. Click here for the scholarship form!

painting of slavery market
Johnny W. Banks was a Black Texas Folk Artist from San Antonio. His mixed media paintings drew from his memories and his imagination. Market Days (above) depicts the overwhelming despair of the enslaved at a slave auction in Texas.

A Two-Day Museum-Wide Conference, co-presented in partnership with

including:

  • Steering Committee chaired by Aaronetta Pierce will curate panel discussions featuring scholars from around the United States focused on slavery in Texas, including Dr. Daina Ramey Berry.
  • Anticipated attendance from throughout Texas and beyond.
  • More than 500 attendees expected.
  • 100 scholarships for college students, high school students and educators.
  • Keynote speaker Annette Gordon-Reed.

Keynote Speaker: Annette Gordon-Reed

Annette Gordon-Reed

Juneteenth is America’s vital new holiday that marks the end of slavery, and its legacy continues to influence our understanding of freedom and our fight for racial justice today. Annette Gordon-Reed, MacArthur Genius and the first Black person to win the Pulitzer Prize for History, is one of the integral voices who brought Juneteenth into the national conversation.

Her New York Times bestselling book about this profound day—On Juneteenth—is a powerful, essential work of history that weaves together America’s past with personal memoir; it was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, TIME and NPR. The New York Times calls Annette “one of the most important American historians of our time.” She first rose to prominence when she pushed for scholars and the public to take Black people’s versions of history seriously—no matter how inconvenient they may be. Today, she draws on her book to show us how we can learn from the past and keep striving for progress together.

About the Conference on Texas Ode to Juneteenth: Slavery in Texas

The 2024 Conference on Texas at the Witte Museum will reveal the foundational role of chattel slavery in the formation and growth of Texas. The conference will center on the lives of the enslaved people, especially as mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. Every facet of the expanding Texas economy was impacted by slavery and enslaved labor. Enslaved people not only labored on cotton and sugar plantations, they also worked as artisans such as blacksmiths, seamstresses, and as enslaved cowboys.

In 1834, there were approximately 5,000 enslaved people in Mexican Texas. During the Republic of Texas, slavery increased so that by 1845, there were at least 30,000 enslaved women, men and children in the new state of Texas. When Texas voted to join the Confederacy in 1861, the enslaved population was 182,566 people, the fastest growing demographic in Texas. The economy of Texas was so dependent upon slavery that not until June 19, 1865, now celebrated as Juneteenth, were enslaved people freed from bondage in Texas, two years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

Through new scholarship, the Conference will broaden the understanding of the ongoing legacies from slavery which continue to impact African Americans in Texas.

For more information or to purchase tickets or to inquire about scholarships for the event, please call 210.357.1888 or email MichelleEveridge@WitteMuseum.org.

Schedule of Events

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5

Breakfast
Coffee and Pastries
8 – 8:50 a.m.
Mays Family Center
Generously supported by Wells Fargo Advisors

Welcome
9 – 9:30 a.m.
Mays Family Center 

Plenary Session
9:30 – 10:20 a.m.
Mays Family Center

“Endurin’ de Freedom War:” Slavery and Emancipation in Texas—A Complex History
Dr. Daina Ramey Berry
Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities & Fine Arts, Professor of History, UC Santa Barbara

Concurrent Session 1
Land, Law and Chattel Slavery
10:30 – 11:20 a.m.

Dawson Family Hall – Facilitator: Dr. Anene Ejikeme

  • From Sugar Bowl Slavery to State Prison Farms: Unfree Labor and the Making of a Texas Prison Empire, 1843-1926
    Dr. Jermaine Thibodeaux
    Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies, University of Oklahoma
  • Axis of Misery, Spaces of Hope: Slavery in Galveston and Beyond
    Dr. Robert Shelton
    Associate Professor, Emeritus, Cleveland State University

Memorial Auditorium – Facilitator: Pharaoh Clark

  • Enslaved Cowboys and the Texas Livestock Industry
    Ronald W. Davis, II
    Curator of American History, Witte Museum
  • Securing Slavery in San Antonio
    Cristal R. Mendez, Public Historian, Sandra Ogogor, Graduate Student
    San Antonio African American Community Archive & Museum
    Dr. Teresa Van Hoy and St. Mary’s University Students
    St. Mary’s University

Concurrent Session 2
Enslaved Experience from Colonial New Spain to the Civil War
11:30 a.m. – 12:20 p.m.

Dawson Family Hall – Facilitator: Ronald W. Davis, II

  • Lost and Nearly Starved: Freedom Seekers and the Texas Landscape
    Dr. Mekala Audain
    Associate Professor of History, The College of New Jersey
  • ‘Master Jack was sho’ mean to his slaves.”
    Dr. Edmund T. Gordon
    Founding Former Chair of the African and African Diaspora Studies Department, University of Texas at Austin

Memorial Auditorium – Facilitator: Mary Margaret McAllen

  • African Slavery in Spanish Texas
    Dr. Frank de la Teja
    Regents’ Professor Emeritus of History, Texas State University
  • Native American Slaveholding in Antebellum Texas
    Dr. Nakia Parker
    Assistant Professor of History, Michigan State University

Lunch Session

Reflecting on Slavery through Art
12:30 – 2:20 p.m.
Mays Family Center

Aaronetta Pierce
Trustee, Witte Museum

Dr. Kimberlyn Montford
Associate Professor of Music, Trinity University

Vincent Hardy
Chair of Fine Arts & Kinesiology, St. Philips College

Generously supported by the William Knox Holt Foundation

Session 3
2:30 – 3:20 p.m.
Dawson Family Hall – Facilitator: Dr. Nakia Parker

We Refuse: A Force History of Black Resistance
Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson
Michael and Denise Kellen ’68 Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies, Wellesley College

Concurrent Session 4
Building Communities: Plantation Life and Life after Juneteenth
3:30 – 4:20 p.m.
Generously supported by Jill and George Vassar

Dawson Family Hall – Facilitator: Dr. Michelle Cuellar Everidge

  • The Material Culture of Slavery on a Texas Plantation
    Dr. Whitney Nell Stewart
    Associate Professor of History and Faculty of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, University of Texas at Dallas
  • Enslaved Master Builders of Texas
    Dr. Tara A. Dudley
    Assistant Professor of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin

Memorial Auditorium – Facilitator: Deborah Omowale Jarmon

  • OUTSIDER PRESERVATION: Commemoration as Placemaking in Freedom Colonies
    Dr. Andrea Roberts
    Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning & Director of the Center for Cultural Landscapes, University of Virginia
  • The Wilson Pottery Pioneers
    Paula King Harper
    Board Chair, Wilson Pottery Foundation

Reception and Tour
4:30 – 5:50 p.m.
Ewing Halsell Hall

Guided tour of Black Cowboys: An American Story
Ronald W. Davis, II
Generously supported by Bank of America

Evening Keynote
6 – 7:30 p.m.
Mays Family Center

On Juneteenth: The Essential Story of “Freedom Day” and Its Importance to American History
Annette Gordon-Reed
Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard University

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6

All Events in Dawson Family Hall

Breakfast
Coffee and Breakfast Tacos
8 – 8:50 a.m.
Generously supported by Wells Fargo Advisors

Welcome
9 – 9:15 a.m.
Aaronetta Pierce
Trustee, Witte Museum

 Session 1
9:15 – 10:05 a.m.

Escaping Slavery’s Capitalism: How Enslaved African Americans’ Attempts to Free Themselves Challenge American Stories About Citizenship, Policing and Political Economy
Dr. Edward E. Baptist
Professor of History, Cornell University

Session 2
10:15 – 11:05 a.m.

Slavery in America: Legacy of Poor Health and Violence in Black Communities
Dr. Keisha S. Ray
Associate Professor and John P. McGovern, MD Professorship of Oslerian Medicine at the McGovern Center for Humanities & Ethics at UT Health Houston

What Have We Learned?
11:15 – 11:50 a.m.
The Conference on Slavery in Texas: A Synthesis
Dr. Michelle Cuellar Everidge
Deputy Director & Chief Operating Officer, Witte Museum

Lunch Session
Noon – 1:50 p.m.
Performance by The Haus of Glitter

Where Do We Go From Here?
2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Community Conversations led by the team from SAAACAM

Lifting Us Up
4 p.m.
Musical Performance
Oscar Ford
Pianist, Minister of Music Emeritus, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church

Earl Jackson
Director, Minister of Music, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church

Witte Museum Conference on Texas is sponsored by HEB

The Conference on Texas is presented by H-E-B with generous support from Bank of America, the Smithsonian Institution’s Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past Initiative, Wells Fargo Advisors, William Knox Holt Foundation, Humanities Texas, the Smothers Foundation, Spurs Sports and Entertainment, Frost Bank, Jill and George Vassar, San Antonio Area Foundation and Jefferson Bank.

Previous Conference on Texas Resources

guests sit at tables during luncheon
Conference on Texas 2023: Origin Stories

March 23-24, 2023

Dive into Texas’ wild and vivid lands, especially its people, their resilience and how they adapted to or impacted the ever-developing Texas.

Resources:

man speaks at podium on stage
Conference on Texas 2022: Changing Landscapes

May 16-17, 2022

A global conversation about Texas, especially people’s relationships with the land, in the past, present and future.

Resources:

women listening to speaker
Conference on Texas 2021: From Tejas to Texas

May 13-14, 2021

This conference focuses on the transition from Tejas to Texas—the state we live in today.

Resources: