Bones Hooks’ “Apartheid” Vision; Erykah Badu’s Stunt; Afflicting the Comfortable
by L. Arthalia Cravin
This website has garnered plenty of recent commentary about the newly installed sidewalks on North Hughes Street. Some of these comments have raised the question “Who Killed North Heights?” We need to put all of these concerns into historical perspective.
A couple of weeks ago I visited Bones Hooks’ gravesite. Mr. Hooks is buried in Llano Cemetery here in Amarillo, Section 61, Lot 11 near 34th Street. I followed the directions given to me by the main office and found my way through section after section until I found Section 61. What caught my attention first was the stark contrast between the area where Mr. Hooks is buried compared to the landscaping and large headstones and monuments in other nearby areas. I found Mr. Hooks’ grave site amid a very desolate- looking section of scattered flat gravestones, most of which were simple brick markers. Mr. Hooks’ gravestone has the name “Hooks” in the center, along with his name and the name of his first wife Anna. It was after I read Bruce Todd’s book, “Bones Hooks: Pioneer Negro Cowboy” that I fully understood where Mr. Hooks is buried. On page 99 of Todd’s book there is this sentence. “Bones was fifty-two when Anna died (at the age of thirty-nine.) She was buried in the segregated section of the Llano Cemetery, where Bones had his own plot prepared right besides hers.”
There is not enough space in this column to give a complete biographical sketch of who Mathew “Bones” Hooks was. Suffice it to say that Bones Hooks came to Amarillo around 1910. He ended up here working as a railroad porter after experiencing blatant discrimination in being unable to buy land under The Public Land Policy Act of 1885 and Homestead Laws that gave an individual the right to buy hundreds of acres of land at two cents per acre. It was this land policy that helped white people to settle in the Panhandle after the railroads came. Bones could not buy land because he was black, but the discrimination also extended to Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans and Native Americans. Poor whites also could not buy land because they were not considered “serious purchasers.” In 1907 Bones bought a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, but because of the tremendous amount of work needed on the ranch Bones came to Amarillo to work as a railroad porter.
When Bones arrived in Amarillo most of the few black people lived in the area called the “Flats” near the present Mt. Zion Church, near Third and Buchanan. Amarillo’s populations jumped from around 15,000 in the 1920s to 43,000 in the 1930s. During the same time the black population increased from around 300 to around 1600, all of whom, however, were forbidden to live south of West Third Avenue. Back then Amarillo was known as the “Queen City” because it was the cattle and banking center for the region, as well as a major travel hub, and center for oil and natural gas activities. Compared to the rest of the city, during the same time the plight of blacks was bad and growing worse with overcrowding and economic racism. According to Todd’s book, what Bones saw more than anything else was the “growing prejudice, the passing away of more and more of the pioneers, the lack of housing and healthcare for his people, and undignified burials.” What Bones knew first-hand was that towns such as Mobeetie, Memphis and others openly opposed any black residents, exemplified by signs such as “Negro Don’t Let The Sun Set On You Here.” It was this harsh reality of race prejudice and constant abuse from “white honkies” that drove Bones to envision a “separate black town,” in Amarillo. (It was not until I read Todd’s book that I learned that the Civil Rights slang term “honkie” or “honky” was actually a reference to white people who drove into the black area of Amarillo and honked horns as a means of harassing black people.) What would otherwise be classified as apartheid, meaning separate living, was what Bones wanted for black people in Amarillo in order to shield them from constant racism and abuse. And so with the help of various people, including Mayor Lee Bivins, vacant land to the north became Bones’ primary focus, and a dream that began to be realized in September 1926 when the North Heights Land Company was formed. What evolved over time was a slow and steady progression of blacks relocating to the separate area known as North Heights.
Fast forward to the current uproar over the blight in North Heights and the poorly constructed sidewalks. What cannot be overlooked is that North Heights was conceived as a “separatist” vision. But it was borne out of the realities of the social and racial times that Bones’ faced, not only in Amarillo and Texas, but also in America. Black settling in North Heights was no different that of any other town in America, from Childress to Shamrock to Memphis, Tennessee to the Bronx, New York. Separation of the races was and continues to be the unwritten code in America. North Heights is just an example of a unbroken chain of this reality. What has happened to help transform North Heights into the wholesale blight that it is today was the gutting of one of the primary institutions of community cohesion– black schools. There are still schools in North Heights but few black teachers or administrators so that there is no real community-school involvement because “strangers to the community” now drive in and leave before dark, none willing to reside in the area.
The economic melt-down that has produced the current pandemic blight of North Heights began with Bones Hooks’ vision of a separate and safe community for blacks in Amarillo. What it became in the eyes of the white community was a “second-class” separate area deserving of second-class treatment. The poorly installed sidewalks fit the “second class” pattern. To the rest of white Amarillo, North Heights is a buzzword for “slum” area, not worthy of serious economic development or investment. What other part of town could have the high-traffic corridor such as North Hughes and be totally devoid of strip malls or other bustling economic activity? What other part of town could have the beautiful up-sloping topography yet have slums dwellings at the crest of the hill as the major view for travelers on Amarillo Blvd? Wonder why? Carl Sandburg wrote a poem entitled, “Storms Begin Far Back,” in which he said, “this storm didn’t just come out of nowhere, it had seed time, in the womb time, before it came to town howling.” North Heights is no different. It was a long history of race-driven neglect that has remained unbroken and unchanged. The question to be asked now is what do we do about it? Do we wise up, rise up, and change it, or just grumble and complain?
Now to Erykah Badu’s stunt. As you know Erykah Badu shot a video last week in Dallas in which she started walking fully clothed and finally fell down “buck naked” at the spot was John Kennedy was shot. It appears that she did so for some artistic reason of displaying “freedom and raw” emotions, or something about not fitting the mold and doing what other people want you to do. Lots of people think that what she did was disgraceful and a crime—public indecency. I wonder why no one called the police and had her arrested. I think that her stunt was also a disgrace and that she should have been arrested—regardless of notice of “unfettered artistry.” But, I think that Ms. Badu could have done so much more with the video if she were determined to strip down “butt naked.”
Whether you know it or now a recent report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the Women and Girls Foundation gave some numbers on wealth disparities among women. According to one report, the “wealth data” shows that “while single white women in the prime of their working years (ages 36 to 49) have a median wealth of $42,600 (still only 61 percent of their single white male counterparts), the median wealth for single black women is only $5.” Another report said that the median wealth for black women was $100, compared to $42,600 for white women.
As so I say to Ms. Badu, if you really wanted to make a “naked statement” why didn’t bare your naked butt and point the nation eyes toward this horrific disparity. This would have been a real political statement about wage discrimination, gender discrimination, and race discrimination. And so I say to you Ms. Badu, the next time you want to show your naked butt, pick a topic worth focusing on because you lost me on the exact point you were trying to make by falling down butt naked at the spot where Kennedy was shot.
Now to my recent commentary about local churches
I have heard through the grapevine that I ruffled a few feathers by wondering out loud where the black churches are when it comes to community involvement. Some have said that I was too harsh, too critical, and too judgmental. A few said this: “I have felt the same way, but never had the nerve to say it.” To anyone offended by my commentary I say this: “If the shoe fits, wear it.”
Finley Peter Dunne, a Chicago writer and newspaper columnist, is credited with first using the phrase “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” He used the phrase to describe the wide-ranging role of newspapers. The quote has been used since Dunne’s death in 1936 to refer to a host of situations, including the role of today’s churches. As a born-again, spirit-fill Christian, I would be remiss to turn a blind eye to the current plethora of churches abuses of every sort that grieve the Holy Spirit. If Christians remain silent about God-less-ness, “in the “houses of God,” then who else will speak? There are times when the very calling upon our lives is to “speak truth to power” wherever it may be found. Jesus Christ spent his limited days on this earth speaking truth to power and as fellow-sufferers with Christ we are called to do no less today. I will continue to speak truth to power wherever I see it. Thank you.
Copyright 2010 - L. Arthalia Cravin. All rights Reserved. No part of this commentary may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.
