“. . . environmental scarcities will have profound social consequences – contributing to insurrections, ethnic clashes, urban unrest, and other forms of civil violence. . . ”

Thomas F. Homer-Dixon. “Environment, Scarcity, and Violence,” Princeton University Press, 1999.

“The year 1886 was a hard one in Comanche County, a year of social and political upheaval, a year of hardship and drought. By the summer of 1886 the average citizen of Comanche was living on corn pone and blackstrap garnished with turnip greens if he were lucky. Meat was a thing of the past, cattle had to be driven from four to ten miles to water, and most of the herds had been sold before the cattle died of hunger. Farmers could not work, their crops died in the ground, and idle men turned to other things than labor that brought no profit. The people of the county were further agitated by the appearance of a split in the county political organization, a split that soon developed into a full-fledged revolt and the formation of the Human party, the first Populist party in Texas. [The Populist Party was a left-leaning agrarian movement] It did not succeed, however without rousing some hot and flaring tempers still further, for the people took their politics seriously and fought bitterly and sometimes physically over their differing political opinions. Rash actions were the rule rather than the exception. . . Fierce tempers made more fierce by the drought and the political disturbances, were making their points by threats of lawlessness. Mobs in the nominal strength of the law had paid several visits . . . and had come away with prisoners to be left on the first stout limb. . . Comanche County was one watched pot that was beginning to boil.”

Billy Bob Lightfoot. “The Negro Exodus from Comanche County, Texas,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, January, 1953, Vol. 56No. 3, pp.407-416. This is a Master’s Thesis based mostly on interviews made during the 1940s.

The 1886 expulsion of blacks from Comanche would not have become national news if it weren’t for a New York Times reporter at the New York train station when ethnic refugees arrived.

“Negroes Ordered Away,” New York Times, 30 July 1886,1.

On July 26, 1886, a black man man accused of murder was captured near Stephenville and taken nine miles north of Comanche, where he was lynched at noon. Sheriff Cunningham and his deputies dared not interfere with the mob of over 500 and left the scene minutes before.

Town and Country (Comanche newspaper)

African Americans have been violently expelled from at least 50 towns, cities and counties in the United States. The majority of these expulsions occurred in the 60 years following the Civil War but continued to occur until 1954. The justifications for the expulsions varied, but often involved a crime allegedly committed by an African American, labor-related issues, or property takeovers.” Such towns were known as Sundown towns [a term I heard used to refer to Comanche] banned blacks for many years.

Wikipedia

1886: The night of July 20th was one of “unprecedented sensation in Comanche. A large body of men on horseback variously estimated at from 200 to 500 came into town after dark and visiting the negroes [sic] one by one, gave them notice to wind up their affairs and leave the country in ten days’ time.”

Town and Country (Comanche newspaper)

“The Great Plains drought of 1931-1939 was a prolonged socioecological disaster with widespread impacts on society, economy, and health. While its immediate impacts are well documented, we know much less about the disaster’s effects on distal human outcomes. In particular, the event’s effects on later effects on place-based stress. ” This study looked at young men’s exposure to drought and dust storms in 341 Great Plains counties in order to see if there is a link with higher risk of death in early-old age. Contrary to expectations, it turns out that exposure to drought conditions had no adverse effect among men aged 65 years or older at time of death – rather – they actually lived longer compared to men who did not live through a drought. Sue Sanders was right about the common herd.

Serge Atherwood. “Does a Prolonged Hardship Reduce Life Span? Examining the longevity of Young Men who Lived through the 1930s Great Plains Drought.” Population and Environment 43, 530-552 (2022).

Sue Sanders writing about 1893: “That fall and winter was a time long to be remembered, as it still holds the record of being the worst drought in Texas history. How we lived I can’t tell you, bit somehow we got through till spring. None of the farmers had feed or seed to start work on another. . . Assistance finally came from some source at Stephenville . . . Ma received notice to come and get her supplies at Stephenville, but our team was too weak to make the trip. She asked a neighbor who was going to town if he’d haul them out for her. She also asked him not to get back to our house until after dark, as she didn’t want people to see we were receiving help. Other farmers felt the same way: they were ashamed of accepting a loan without security. . . Ma did a heap of worrying in those two years, and the strain put her back in bed. But there is always a turn in even the worst of things, and right after Christmas the rain started. It was a mighty good rain, and it made up for a lot of lost time. Sue Sanders, Our Common Herd, 1939

Sue Sanders: “Our old milk stock kept alive by eating mesquite beans and even twigs from the trees. The trees themselves were doing well to keep alive, and their foliage was mighty scarce. We couldn’t understand where the cows found water and how they managed to get there and back to the farm every night. But Old Spot, the herd leader, never failed to come walking in, bringing the rest of the herd with her. Even then I was proud of Old Spot. I had always held up for her when Ma had compared her to Jersey. But it wasn’t until later in my life that I realized what the spotted cow was made of. She could keep on living when the going was so tough that the jersey fell out and quit. Erath County then was no place for blue-bloods, whether man or beast.”

The Sue Sander’s Our Common Herd 1939 first edition was reprinted in 1980 by Annette Baxter, Leon Stein, and Barbara Welter (eds.) Signal Lives: Autobiographies of American Women, Arno Press: New York. I picked up the first edition in an Austin bookstore years ago as Larry McMurtry set it down and took a few steps away.

Sue Sanders: “The year was 1893, and we weren’t able to raise even seed. Our chances of eating looked almost hopeless that winter. For months we had been living on bacon rinds, black-eyed peas, and cornbread, with an occasional skinny chicken. In addition to this we got about a gallon of milk from our scrub cows. They had kept on coming up every night, and we’d been glad to start milking them again. This milk meant life to our little family, and we were mighty thankful for it. Ma’s blueblooded Jersey had almost given up the ghost. She lay sprawled out under a tree and made no move to get up and find anything to eat. She kept alive for awhile because Ma would sneak out some of our cornmeal to her. When that was gone, Jersey just quiled up and starved to death. Fannie and I had got fighting mad at Ma for giving almost the last bit of our food to that cow. We thought the little Jersey should take her chance with the scrubs. ‘She’s a different breed than those old common cows,’ Ma would say. ‘How would she look in that herd of cattle? She belongs where they have a big barn, and that full of feed.’ But I will take the old common herd every time. I don’t mind saying that I’m proud to be one of them, both in breed and in fact.”

Sue Sanders. Our Common Herd. New York: Garden City Publishing Company, 1939.

Sue Sanders wrote about the Drought of 1893: “Spring passed without bringing rain. Ma kept us plowing deeper and deeper, trying to draw up moisture from the earth. Plow deep enough, the farmers said, and things will grow till the rains come. I guess it was a good idea, only the didn’t come. We had a couple of showers, but they couldn’t rightly be called rain; it’s sorter stretching things a little to call ’em showers. As summer came on, we saw that there wasn’t any show at all for a good crop; the main thing was to raise enough for feed and seed. We managed to raise some mighty runty cotton and enough nubbins for feed, but nothing more. Many of our neighbors didn’t do that well, and began putting up wild grass and cornstalks for fodder. . . Winter came along and was sorter dreary. We had lots of hard windstorms and cold weather, but no snow or rain. By watching the feed mighty close we got through all right, and Ma figured we were due for a good crop. “First a bad crop and then a good one,” she said. So Fannie and I started our spring plowing early, as we wanted our ground ready for a good soaking. Plowing that hard ground was real labor. I was stronger than Fannie, and it was all I could stand. But she kept at it, swinging those heavy plows . . . and everything we thought might help to get the crops in and make the seeds sprout. I think this heavy work was the main reason Fannie got to be almost an invalid in later life. But all our work was useless. It didn’t rain. The we began to hear rumors of drought all over the South. During that spring and summer water was mighty scarce in Erath County. We had to haul our water for cooking and drinking from a well four or five miles away, and we never knew how long that supply would last. Horses and cattle, coming in from the hills trying to find water, milled around the fence that protected our little [hand dug] water tank, bawling continually. More and more came, and the bawling kept up for days. We got our horses and drove them miles away, but back they came to the water tank, bringing more of the skinny pitiful specimens with them. When either men or beasts get to ganging up, you can look out for trouble. One noon while we were watering our plow horses, the cattle went mad with thirst, broke through the wire fence, and got to the water. In a minute our much-needed water was nothing but mud, in which several of the skinniest cattle were stuck.” Sue Sanders. Our Common Herd, 1939