In 1871, the Texas Senate was considering an immigration bill. The idea was to spend public money to send two agents to Europe to recruit immigrants. Then as now, Texas needed labor.
One of the agents was to go to Great Britain and the other to Germany. The Texas Senate wanted a specific kind of immigrant.
Sen. Matthew Gaines, an African American, proposed amending the bill to send an agent to the ports of Africa.
In 1871, 30 percent of the people in Texas were of African descent. They’d worked to build the state’s infrastructure. Why tax them to recruit immigrants who would immediately get rights — the right to attend public schools, for example — that African Americans were denied?
Today this country’s immigration policy is ugly, unethical, unfair and inhumane.
Sen. Gaines’s speech is a reminder that this kind of injustice has been part of our history for ages.
• Source and note: A copy of the speech is in the East Texas Research Center at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. Thanks to my friend Sam Collins for sending me a copy.
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