Emily D. West and the ""Yellow Rose of Texas"" Myth

During her lifetime in the early 19th century, Emily D. West was not a famous person. But in many ways, she was ahead of her time. Emily was born a free black American citizen, and she lived most of her life in New York. She was single, literate, and ambitious enough to sail from New York to Texas in the winter of 1835. Emily had secured a one year employment contract near Galveston, TX, with the powerful politician Lorenzo de Zavalla, as caretaker to his family. Emily's connection to Zavalla, and tangentially to the Texas Revolutionary Party, would be the reason she became embroiled in the myth of The Yellow Rose of Texas.In order to dispel this myth, the book delineates the tension between the Texas Revolutionary Movement and the Mexican government, which culminated in the Battle of San Jacinto. By using both United States historical records and official Mexican documents, the book makes a strong case for liberating Emily D. West from ever having any relationship with Santa Ana.What I found equally important and illuminating were the state of race relations in and around south Texas and in Mexico, circa 1835. Since Mexico had abolished slavery in 1829, both its regular citizens and its military members were a diverse group of mixed races. Having grown up in New York state, Emily D. West was herself born a free woman. She would not have been able to live and travel freely had she been born in the deep South.The Texas that Emily D. West experienced was as unique as Emily herself. Texas was a place where free black people could work and own property. Texas held out the promise of true liberty for all. Having been freed from the Yellow Rose myth, perhaps Emily D. West can now find her rightful place in history.

Very well done research that helps to explain the pro-slavery attitudes of the Alamo defenders and the general attitude of Texas settlers as they ventured into Texas to steal land and turn Texas into a slave empire. This book reveals the racial myths that many have come to believe and exposes the psychotic hatred of Mexicans and blacks by many Texas settlers that have been falsely turned into heroes. The real history of Texas is filled with brutal conquest and ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous People, slavery, land speculation and theft by the the likes of Sam Houston, James Bowie, and the rest of these false heroes. The book reveals that the Emily Morgan story is invented racial fiction designed to denigrate African Americans and Mexicans. As usual, Dr. Tucker is a myth buster whose works will finally bring to light the real history of Texas and not the racial propaganda that we all thought was once true. I highly recommend this important reading that is destined to change future generations to the importance of understanding what has been purposely ignored in Texas history in order to inculcate myths based on white supremacy.One of the main aspects of white supremacy is the calculated creation of fiction. It is a force used to devise and create invented historical genuineness, and hammer into others, from birth to death, to accept as confirmed reality, an embroidered web of lies that displays history as if it began with them, allowing for a fabricated historical narrative, totally out of sync with the historical accounts. Lies that are sometimes hundreds of years old, but repeated by teachers and people that don’t know any better are condensed into half-truths, omissions, lies, distortions, and erasures. These lies are spread to the population through tour guides, educational institutions, and repeated by people in front of the Alamo. It is status quo baloney of sugar-coated myth of bigoted proportions. The Emily West story as told by outright racists and the ignorant is false. Simple logic dictates that a supposed slave woman, or a free one for that matter, would not want to help Anglo slavers that came to construct a slave empire in Texas. Another lie out there is that blacks fought freely for the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. It is entirely illogical and foolish to believe that slaves would have been trusted with any weapons since every southern state had some type of law severely punishing any black in possession of a weapon. Why then were a small number of pictures manufactured of blacks in confederate uniform brandishing weapons? Those weapons were unloaded! No African American ever freely and enthusiastically fought for the slave owners! It has been confirmed by credible historic evidence that blacks were sometimes forced to put on Confederate uniforms under gun point, dig ditches or cook food, or they would be killed or tortured, family members murdered, or returned to harsher plantation life, but never would they be allowed to carry a gun! In some instances, blacks were forced into taking pictures, so that southern racists could claim that blacks supposedly were “happy” being slaves and servants to a “superior race.” The Emily Morgan myth is but another invented reality used to construct racial fiction. It has been my experience to take note of the fact that it is an old and much-used device of bigots is to decorate deceitful inventions of racial superiority with a veil of sanitized historical holiness through hero worship and through stabbing, belittling racist narratives, in order to give the appearance of truth to what is nothing less than historical smoke and mirrors. This method of systematic deception is at the crux of much of the existing literature, and still manages to find acceptance in our educational system. There is a host of pre-meditated out right lies that assemble a false history designed to bury the dignity of non-whites. When history is taught in this way, millions are infected. The infection spreads from generation to generation, and on one level plays psycho-ideological havoc on the unconsciousness mind to develop, day after day, narratives that pander to overt and subtle racial thought that is just below the surface. Racial myth even has tourist value. In San Antonio, this has even taken the form of naming a hotel after “Emily Morgan.” Racial myth remains an almost permanent structure of thought that is transmitted from one generation to the next, hibernating, and embedded in the minds of millions, and hidden in bedtime stories that are highly infectious. Mexico sinned in the eyes of most white settlers of that day by abolishing slavery in 1829, and to substantiate the racist view an incident was to be manufactured to prove it; the false story that Emily West (Morgan) had an affair with General Santa Anna. Historians say this story was invented by black faced minstrels many years after the Alamo. Next time you hear about the “Yellow Rose of Texas,” and how she kept General Santa Anna sexually occupied during a military campaign just simply say, “WRONG.” The next time someone start signing this song at some rally educate them that they are signing a slave song that was stolen by white supremacists to support an invented story!