Draymen
According to introduction to beethwintz1992, p. 20, “In July of 1865, white mechanics officially protested the hiring of black mechanics, while white teamsters tried to block the employment of blacks as wagon and omnibus drivers.”1
In January 1866, a local veterinarian complained about Black draymen using “glanded horses and mules” and suggested infected animals should be shot; the Telegraph hoped that city “authorities will take some measures to have the nuisance abated.”
On February 14, 1866, the Tri-Weekly Telegraph complained that “The steamboat landings are in a miserable condition, and draymen do as they please there. The strongest bully gets all the custom by delaying his competitor. A policeman should be stationed at that point.” The same column also refers to a dray that had capsized; and another about speeding fines.
In 1871, a bill was passed by the state House to incorporate a “Draymen’s Club of Houston.”2 The text of the bill, passed May 9, 1871, lists the incorporators as: Henry Ferguson, Silas Phelps, F. W. Wilson, W. F. Rice, H. Taylor, Johnson Rice, Ed Craven, John Perry, and their associates.
Describing the intersection of Main Street and Commerce Street as he found it in 1872, Jesse Ziegler said that “the intersections were so jammed and blockaded that it was difficult to cross the street. At one time eighty per cent of the commerce of Texas passed this corner. Ox-teams, mule teams and the long ten-foot tailed drays (which can only be found today in Henry Ford’s Magic City) passed here trying to reach the boat landings.” Ziegler also refers to the 1878 draymen strike.
See also the image of racing draymen in Edward King’s Scribner article on Houston during Reconstruction, from 1873.
For later conflicts over streetcars and jitneys, see Frances Dressman, “‘Yes, We Have No Jitneys!’: Transportation Issues in Houston’s Black Community, 1914–24,” in beethwintz1992.
