William Faulkner famously wrote, in his 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I believe the Nobel laureate was wrong about that. The past is dead. But, like other formerly living things, echoes of the past remain, leaving their traces in the people and events of the present and future. A bit of history, then, is needed for context. East Texas had been the locus of slavery and the plantation system even before Texas became a state. The legacy of that time, and its baked-in racial hierarchy, survived long after enslaved people were freed. Texans who had
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