Progress Denied: Quakertown, White Supremacy, and the Illusion of Democracy in Denton, Texas, 1850–1925
Hollie A. Teague
University of North Texas Press
Sometimes, history isn’t what it appears to be. For instance, in the early 1920s, a thriving Southern Black community was literally voted out of existence by local white citizens.
The North Texas city of Denton, which was sometimes described as a “Ku Klux Box,” was also home to the Quakertown neighborhood. There, Black Texans worked hard to overcome the legacy of slavery, build financial success and family stability, educate their children, and worship God as they saw fit. And they did it all right in the middle of town. A model of “racial uplift” for over forty years, the community was eventually targeted by their white neighbors.
Rather than using the torches and nooses often associated with the Jim Crow era, Denton’s white supremacists perpetrated a devastating act of civic violence. Cloaking themselves in the legitimacy associated with city government, institutions of higher learning, fraternal orders, and civic improvement groups, they were able to cover their tracks while they planned a large-scale racist dispossession. Then, in 1920, they got access to the most destructive weapon they’d deploy—the vote for women.