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By
the end of the nineteenth century, Norris Wright Cuney had become
the most remarkable African American leader in Texas. Cuney technically
began life as a slave on a plantation located near Hempstead
on May 12, 1846. He also was the natural son of the plantation owner,
Philip Minor Cuney, and a slave mother, Adeline Stuart, so he escaped
a typical slave’s life in those days and was educated at the Wylie
Street School for African Americans operated by George B. Vashon in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Cuney left the school when the Civil War began and returned to Texas.
He made his home in Galveston,
where he married Adelina Dowdie on July 5, 1871. Cuney studied law
and was influenced greatly by George T. Ruby, president of the Union
League, a political arm of the Republican Party during Reconstruction
that worked through agents of the Freedman’s Bureau. Cuney eventually
became president of Galveston’s branch of the League.
Cuney supported Texas’ Radical Republican Governor Edmund J. Davis,
and such support led to several appointed positions with the government
and offices within the Republican Party. For example, Cuney became
assistant to the sergeant-at-arms for the Twelfth Legislature in 1870,
inspector of customs and revenue in Galveston and then Sabine
Pass in 1872, and eventually collector of customs in Galveston
in 1889.
Republican Party posts Cuney held included secretary of the Republican
State Executive Committee in 1873 and in 1886 he became Texas’ national
committeeman. Effectively, Cuney headed the Republican Party in Texas.
Cuney’s efforts to gain elective office were mixed. He lost races
for mayor of Galveston
in 1875 and for the Texas House of Representatives and Senate in 1876
and 1882 before winning a race as an alderman in Galveston
in 1883.
For all his success in business and politics, Cuney’s most significant
contribution came from his familiarity with the stevedores, also called
screwmen, who worked the wharves of Galveston.
A Screwmen’s Benevolent Society, a kind of labor union, organized
in 1866, did not include African Americans. So Cuney organized the
Black Screwmen’s Benevolent Association to provide a voice for these
workers.
Cuney also supported education for African Americans, especially in
the segregated schools of Galveston
and at Prairie View A&M. Cuney died in 1898 and is buried in Galveston,
a city he enriched just by living there. |
© Archie P. McDonald
All
Things Historical
October 10, 2005 column
A syndicated column in over 40 East Texas newspapers
(This column is provided as a public service by the East Texas Historical
Association. Archie P. McDonald is director of the Association and
author of more than 20 books on Texas.) |
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