While the history of free African Americans during slavery has received new attention in recent years, one of the surprising gaps in the published studies of African Americans in Texas is the coverage of free blacks in the antebellum period. One brief, forty-year-old book exists on the topic: George R. Woolfolk, The Free Negro in Texas. The primary purpose for this book, Free Blacks in Antebellum Texas, is to fill that gap with essays by Harold R. Schoen and Andrew Forest Muir, early scholars who conducted the most complete studies on the topic, although neither published a book. Schoen published six articles on "The Free Negro in Republic of Texas" and Muir four articles on free blacks in Texas before the Civil War. Free black Texans experienced the dangers and risks of life on the frontier in Texas. Those experiences, and many others, required of them a strength and fortitude that evidenced the spirit and abilities of free blacks in antebellum Texas. Sometimes with support from a few whites, as well as their own efforts, they struggled and survived. This book, Free Blacks in Antebellum Texas, represents the first time Schoen and Muir's works have been published as a monograph. Editors Bruce A. Glasrud and Milton S. Jordan include a thoughtful introduction and a wide ranging bibliography. BRUCE A. GLASRUD is Professor Emeritus of History, California State University, East Bay; Retired Dean, School of Arts and Sciences, Sul Ross State University; and resides in San Antonio. Glasrud is a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association as well as two Texas regional associations, East and West. He has published twenty-nine books, including, in addition to the two-volume Tracking the Texas Rangers, The African American West: A Century of Short Stories, The African American Experience in Texas, and African Americans on the Great Plains. MILTON S. JORDAN, a retired United Methodist Pastor, is a native Texan. He is a graduate of Southwestern University in History and has a Master of Divinity degree from Southern Methodist University. A Past President of the East Texas Historical Association, he is co-editor of Just Between Us: Stories and Memories from the Texas Pines and a new edition of If Not Me, Who? a memoir of East Texas civil rights activist Wendell Baker. Jordan lives with his wife Anne in Georgetown, Texas.
