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Book Review
| A Southern Family in Black & White: The Cuneys of Texas. By Douglas Hales. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003. xii + 178 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $29.95.)
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Many Texas biographies, the dominant sub-genre in Texas historiography, verge on hagiographies virtually unmarked by recent scholarship on race, class, and gender. Douglas Hales tantalizingly reveals the rich potential of this often-stale formula by focusing on three generations of Galveston's bi-racial Cuney family. Even as Hales provides compelling mini-biographies, he threads life stories with intriguing explorations into late-nineteenth-century Texas Republican intra-party economic and racial squabbles. |
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Louisiana-born Philip Cuney arrived in southeastern Texas in 1837, and over the next decade acquired 105 slaves, becoming one of the state's fifty largest slaveowners. Cuney parlayed his wealth into political power, including a stint as a state senator. Predictably, Cuney used his political power to reinforce slavery, yet, unconventionally, sent his mixed-race offspring North to receive an education when they came of age. |
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