81. Ronald Davis: Slavery in Texas

Bob Rivard [00:00:03]:
Welcome to Big City Small Town, the weekly podcast all about San Antonio and the people who make it go and grow. I'm your host, Bob Rivard. This week's guest is Ronald Davis, curator of American history at the Witte Museum, a position he has held since January 2023. Davis is the cocurator of Black Cowboys, an American story, the exhibition currently at the Witte Museum and running through February 2025. For those of us who grew up watching westerns on television and at the movie theater, it might come as a surprise to learn that one in four cowboys on the cattle trails in the nineteenth century were black. Hollywood somehow missed that in its many fictional films and prime time television offerings. The exhibit, which I highly recommend, explores the lives and work of the numerous black men, women, and children, both enslaved and free, who labored on the ranches of Texas and participated on cattle drives before the civil war through the turn of the twentieth century. Ronald Davis, welcome to Big City, Small Town.

Ronald Davis [00:01:06]:
It's a pleasure to be here, Bob.

Bob Rivard [00:01:08]:
We asked you to come on the podcast now for two timely reasons. First, to promote a really worthy and original exhibition, Black Cowboys, an American Story. Second, to tell our listeners about the twenty twenty four conference on Texas at the Witte Museum, which occurs every year. This year, the conference will be a two day symposium on December exploring the foundational role of chattel slavery in the formation and growth of Texas. But first, let's talk about Black Cowboys and American Story.

Ronald Davis [00:01:38]:
Yeah. So, as you know, Erin Erinetta Pierce. Erinetta Pierce. I had a chance. She was introduced to, some of the scholars at UT at a at a department meeting and they mentioned my research to her on enslaved cowboys in Texas. And she we were able to set up a meeting and miss Pierce, made sure I understood American history thoroughly. Let's just say it that way. We talked on the phone for approximately an hour and a half of her asking me questions and and actually they were such really thoughtful and intentional and pointed questions that I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and her curiosity.

Ronald Davis [00:02:17]:
And so after that conversation, again, this is maybe the summer, spring, late spring, early summer of '20 '20.

Bob Rivard [00:02:24]:
And you, Ronald, if I can just jump in, we're a doctoral student, are a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, and so this research was part of your doctorate.

Ronald Davis [00:02:33]:
Yes. It's a part of my dissertation. Okay. And so, we arranged to meet with Maurice McDermott and Bruce Shackleford. And so this is probably now in the early fall of twenty twenty, and we walk in the door and, you know, we introduce ourselves. And I know Bruce Saccoford because I've read his work. He's a fantastic scholar of the West. And we talked about, we said, hey, we would love to do an exhibit and without skipping the beat, Maurice and Bruce said, we're on.

Ronald Davis [00:03:01]:
Let's do it.

Bob Rivard [00:03:02]:
And Maurice at the time was the longtime CEO of the Witte Museum Yes. Built it into its current status? Yes. Amazing woman in her own right Right.

Ronald Davis [00:03:10]:
And did such amazing work for the Witte and at the Witte. And just making space for the community to come in and have conversations is something that I have subsequently learned that she was very that she found very important to to the Witte. And so in then the pandemic hits and all of our we we formed this really amazing steering committee of community members. And in those meetings, you know, we had to tackle the tough conversations, right, that the community members had. And we were able to work with them in particular to develop a very strong concept statement and we adhere to the concept statement that the community gave us. Right? It was a mandate from the community to do this exhibit. And I work with, very closely with Michelle Everidge, just doctor Michelle Everidge and who's the director of operations and Belle Stricker, the chief creative officer at the Whitty. They were then, at the time, and it was such an amazing experience.

Ronald Davis [00:04:02]:
We were finishing each other's sentences as we were getting the exhibit ready, as we were writing label copy. And I knew

Bob Rivard [00:04:08]:
Where did you find everything, Ronald, to assemble that exhibit? Because I personally was surprised that there's so much physical evidence of that time period, and Mhmm. And yet it's something that's missing in the pages of Texas history.

Ronald Davis [00:04:22]:
And, you know, and it's a it's a funny thing is that there there are some scholarly articles that are written about the black cowboy experience, but not that many. Especially not that much as far as the that that definitely makes it out into the public. There's a few scholars that's looked at enslaved cowboys, Deborah Lyle's being one of them. But there's just not that much research into it. And to be honest, I think it has to do with how young the study of slavery in Texas is. There are there were scholars who wrote about it, you know, in the early twentieth century, but I think some of the social history aspects of of Texas slavery doesn't really get started until the eighties. And so there's so much to explore about Texas. And that's one of the reasons why we're doing the conference is because we understand as an institution that this is information that we want all Texans to know, all Americans to know, so we can understand our past better.

Bob Rivard [00:05:13]:
The exhibition's been open for

Ronald Davis [00:05:15]:
a while. What's the reception been? It's been so overwhelmingly positive, that it's hard to, it's hard for me to quantify as a curator. But, I know that when people are in the exhibit, if they are moved, a lot of times our admission staff, our admission team will call me and say, hey, there's people here and they want to talk to you about the exhibit. And I'm fortunate enough to be around and it's amazing to hear people say I see myself in this museum or that's my uncle, right? And they'll see little kids with the joy on their faces because they get to see someone who looks like them in the museum. One time, Tex Williams, who's one of the people who feature in the exhibit when we talk about rodeos, you know, he was there for the second opening and we were talking and I've gotten to know him pretty well and he said to me, Ron, I never thought I'd see myself in the museum. Right here, this man is he's one of the most highly decorated black cowboys there is. He's in the National Cowboy and Western Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City and yet he didn't think he would see himself in in the museum. And that's the kind of work that the exhibit does.

Ronald Davis [00:06:18]:
It really gives space for these untold stories to come to light, and Woody is committed to doing that kind of work.

Bob Rivard [00:06:25]:
Are there a lot of families today in Texas, Ron, that understand their their ancestors were black cowboys, whether they were free or enslaved or that their families did have members that, accompanied cattle trails from Texas up to Kansas? Yes.

Ronald Davis [00:06:40]:
There's a strong tradition of black cowboys, especially as you go East Of San Antonio into Fort Bend County, Liberty County. There's a strong tradition there in particular, but in other places like, in Victoria as well. There's a strong tradition of black cowboys and these people understand their heritage and their history. I mean, it's one of the reasons why we have what some people call the Shadow Circuit. It's a it's a rodeo circuit of black rodeos that runs from East Texas all the way up into Oklahoma. And they've been around, I mean there's different lengths of time, but they've been, they've been these places where black people, show off their skills as rodeo performers for decades. And, and so that and they trace their lineage back to enslaved cowboys.

Bob Rivard [00:07:20]:
Well, I said earlier, in our conversation that, I highly recommended the exhibition. I'd go farther than that and say it's actually a very important exhibition. Many of our listeners may not realize that oftentimes when you go to an area museum and you see a major exhibition, it's something that's traveling from museum to museum, and it might have originated on the East Coast or West Coast or or somewhere else. But this is an exhibit, exhibition that was born in our city. Mhmm. It's about our region and and the larger state. And I hope that, not only do people appreciate it here at the Witte, but it would be a shame if it didn't travel beyond our city.

Ronald Davis [00:07:59]:
Well, it actually is traveling. After once it once it closes in February at the Witte, it's traveling out to the Autry Museum of the Western LA, and then it's gonna be there for about six to eight months. And that's a major western That's a major That is

Bob Rivard [00:08:11]:
that is the major

Ronald Davis [00:08:12]:
western art, museum, actually. Yes. And so it's going there and we've worked really closely with their team to kind of get, to kind of merge, like, the stories that were that they're telling about, black husbandry and herdsmanship in California with Texas. And those stories are connected through migration, from Texas to California. And then, well after that it goes to Kalamazoo, Michigan and it's gonna be there for a while and people are just constantly inquiring about the exhibit because we do understand its importance. It's it's forcing people to reimagine what they understood the cowboy to be. Right? The cowboy was an inclusive figure, but it was it was made into a an iconic figure, but in the in making it an iconic figure, it seems like there were certain narratives that were removed from the story.

Bob Rivard [00:08:59]:
Well, I think all for all of us who love and appreciate, history, Texas history in this instance, understanding that it's a constantly evolving narrative that needs to be improved, corrected, deepened, is really critically important, and that's happening in our city at many levels. Certainly, the conversation about slavery in Texas is a relatively contemporary conversation. It's not something that everyone grew up with here. It that was more of a Deep South conversation where it was happening, but, long overdue for it to happening. Here, I wanna credit Erinetta Pierce for her leadership in bringing this symposium to San Antonio at a time when there's growing interest in the history of slavery here, as the state and the city and the Alamo trust undertake the $500,000,000 transformation of the Alamo, the Alamo Plaza, and all the efforts underway to correct and deepen that long standing narrative, particularly of the eighteen thirty six Battle of the Alamo, which I believe highly mythologized the Anglo defenders while dishonoring the Mexican troops sent here under the command of general Santa Ana to defend after all what the time what was Mexican sovereign territory. So there there's a lot going on there. The museum, we've just broken ground on. There's a new education center opening up there, next year, I believe.

Bob Rivard [00:10:23]:
Tell me about the symposium, Ron, and and how that came about and, what will take place here, early next month. Yeah. So, that's a great story. But one of the things

Ronald Davis [00:10:33]:
I think that I really appreciate appreciate about the Witte is that they're committed to sharing untold stories. Right? And so one of the ways that we do that is through what we call deep time. And that's telling the stories of the past from millions of years ago, 10 thousands of years ago to the present. Right? And that commitment means that we are gonna tell all the stories of Texas history. And so that's really how this conference was is born is because we are committed to making sure that we tell the stories that weren't told before. And and so that's that's kinda how this thing was born. And it's born through this conversation that The Woody was continually having, right? There was the success of the Black Cowboys exhibit and we were continually talking and people were asking questions about slavery in Texas and why didn't we learn this? How do we how do what can we do as a museum to make sure that we are contributing to this to to contributing to the understanding of the history of Texas and discussing slavery. And we finally we really realized and then with the help of Ms.

Ronald Davis [00:11:35]:
Pierce of course, really pushing us to to talk more about slavery openly, we realized that it was necessary to do a conference that centered the enslaved experience in Texas. And so that's how the conference comes into into being is this this understanding that as a museum we have a responsibility to ensure that we are passing on an accurate view in the history of Texas past. And we understand that you really can't talk about the history of Texas in the nineteenth century without talking about the institutional chattel slavery. Ron, tell me

Bob Rivard [00:12:12]:
in your opinion how important the perpetuation of slavery was to individuals that were fighting for Texas independence and were at the Battle of the Alamo. And I I've read Andrew Torchic's, Seeds of Empire, which is a critically acclaimed view. And I've also read the maybe the more controversial Forget the Alamo, book that came out, a year or two ago. How much emphasis should we put on the resistance, the revolution being about opposing abolitionists in Mexico and its government and, its decision to to end slavery?

Ronald Davis [00:12:49]:
You know, so when I when I look at African American history, I look at it as a way to better understand American history. It's a lens through which to view American history. And so when I think about slavery in Texas, right, I think about slavery as it goes back to New Spain. Right? And so one of the things that we do in the exhibit is show that there were enslaved cowboys and free black cowboys in Mexico working in the Caribbean in the sixteenth century and the seventeenth century coming up through with the Spanish coming up and settling and being part of the original Spanish settlement of this region. Right? And so this story that we're telling, this story about the conference is is a broader story. It's a story about all the parts, all the aspects of Texas, of slavery in Texas. And we want to make sure that we are talking about the experience of the enslaved. Right? So we're not centering we're not centering enslavers, we're centering the enslaved.

Ronald Davis [00:13:42]:
We're talking about what it was like to be a mother, what it was like to be a father. What does a bill of sale mean? Right? When we see a bill of sale, what does that actually mean? It's an economic instrument, right? It's something that someone says that I give all my interests, right? Title and interest to such and such. But when you send out the enslaved person in that bill of sale, what do you what do you come to understand? You come to understand that that bill of sale means family separation. That means that they are separated from their family. And coming to Texas for so many enslaved people was the separation of them from their family, from their kinfolk. And so we're telling the story through this lens of the African American experience. And, and so that's what we're focused on. We're focused on that, on bringing that understanding.

Ronald Davis [00:14:27]:
Like what does it mean to resist? Michaela Ordain, Doctor Michaela Ordain from New Jersey, she's gonna talk about resistance and what it meant to run away and what were the things that an enslaved person had to think about when they ran away. Like, you don't just wake up one day and say, I'm gonna run north without a plan. So you have to have an understanding of the topography. Where can you get water? Can I steal a horse? How is this going to work? And so she's going to talk about that experience. So we're really centering the enslaved life. What it was like to be an enslaved cowboy? What it meant to pick cotton? To work on sugar plantations. Texas was number two in the production of sugar after Louisiana. We don't talk about that.

Ronald Davis [00:15:07]:
We have a whole cotton bowl, but don't realize that the importance of cotton in Texas is because enslaved people picked it. Alright. So this is what we're really trying to accomplish in this conference is that we're ensuring that we're talking about this broad history of Texas. And that slavery is so intertwined into the nineteenth century in Texas that you can't overlook it anywhere. And that's some there's two things I would really like for people to take away from the conference. The humanity of the slave people. They were not just automatons working on a plantation picking cotton. They were coopers, they were tanners, they were carpenters, they were blacksmiths.

Ronald Davis [00:15:41]:
And yes, sometimes they picked cotton. They milked cows, right? They woke up in the morning and they had to milk the cows before they went to pick cotton. Or they had to pick cotton when they had to milk the cows after the end of the day of picking cotton. If you were an enslaved child, you were expected to work as as soon as you were strong enough to stand up. This is what we want people to understand that the enslaved experience was, is that there was slavery in Galveston, there was slavery in cities, there was slavery in plantations, and what were that how were they similar? How were they different? How did the law affect slavery? What was the law? What was the Texas constitution's stance on slavery? And that tells us a lot about what the people in power thought was important. And so we're focusing on that story, that broad story of Texas's past.

Bob Rivard [00:16:28]:
As, as Andrew George so eloquently, writes in seeds of empire, the the state's first economy was a cotton economy Mhmm. Basically, centered in what we would call East Texas today. Mhmm. And, it was utterly dependent on on slavery, to make it go. Yeah. And people coming into the state very much supported a continuation of that reality, and that is fundamental to the the fight for Texas independence for Mexico

Ronald Davis [00:16:55]:
at the

Bob Rivard [00:16:55]:
time. Do you think that is taught adequately in Texas public schools? The battle for independence or just slavery in general? Because I I feel a

Ronald Davis [00:17:05]:
little bit uncomfortable with speaking about what educators do in their classrooms, but I do feel like 100% of students in Bexar County come to the Witte. And I think what's important is that we'd have this conference and we ensure that we tell the story of Texas' past the way that it should be told and the way that it is taught, the way that historians talk about it. So the way that Torget talks about it, the way that Donna Marie Berry talks about it and her research on the value of enslaved bodies from the womb to the grave and Annette Gordon Reed and how she'll explain the importance of Juneteenth and what does Juneteenth mean to Texans and what does it mean to the nation and what does it represent. And I think those are the things that people that I want educators to take away from the conference as they come. Alright. We do have quite a bit of scholarships. We actually have about a hundred and they're almost full. And so there is this desire to learn it.

Ronald Davis [00:18:00]:
We have a we're almost sold out actually. The conference is almost completely sold out at this point. So there is this hunger for this this understanding of Texas' past and slavery, but I think it's important to to understand this broader context that, yes, slavery was slavery was important from the moment of Anglo colonization in Texas. There's no way around that. They wrote about it that way. They talked about it that way. So, yeah, it was important, but it's important all the way through. Right? There's a reason why they signed the articles of secession in 1861.

Ronald Davis [00:18:30]:
So, we're talking about this entire history of antebellum Texas and the settlement, the Anglo settlement of Texas, not just one specific event.

Bob Rivard [00:18:38]:
I want you to talk a little bit about Annette Gordon Reed, who's the keynote speaker and herself is a Pulitzer prize winning historian and writer, most famously for her book, the Hemings of, Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's, relationship with a black woman, Sally Hemings, and children that he had with her and how long it took for that story to be told in, in the American narrative, but also her highly, praised book on Juneteenth, more recently. And so she'll, that's, she's

Ronald Davis [00:19:11]:
a real headliner. She is and, getting her to we understood how important the conference was, but when she agreed that she wanted to participate in one way or another and and at the very beginning, we knew that scholars had buy in, Right? Because she's from Texas. And her deciding that she wanted to be a part of this conference, let us know that we were on the right track in the beginning. You know? Let us know that we were that that this was something that was really important. Right? And, you know, I drove up to Austin and because she was speaking there and I went to her talk and at the end of her talk, I'm like, she's on the stage, I'm on the, I'm in the crowd and I have her sign my On Juneteenth book And I said, hey, Doctor Gordon Reed, we're doing a conference on the history of slavery in Texas. We would love for you to participate. And she wasn't sure who I was, that's fair. But she definitely, said I'm interested.

Ronald Davis [00:20:08]:
And so I was able to get in touch with her people and she understands why we need to do this conference and why we need to speak frankly about it. And so her commitment meant that other scholars saw this conference as serious. So that now we have coming to the Whitty, coming to the San coming to San Antonio, a list of the top scholars in history for two days at the Whitty Museum. I was talking with my colleague, doctor Micelle Everidge, and we were sitting there looking at each other and looking at this lineup and saying, I don't think there's been a conference with this with these scholars all in the same room at the same time talking about their specialty in this way, geared towards a public audience, making sure that the facts are broken down succinctly for everybody to get. And it's just such a powerful thing to be able to be

Bob Rivard [00:20:58]:
a part of. That's exciting. You mentioned earlier conference attendees. How many people will be at the conference? And you said there were a few tickets left. So if listeners want to jump on real quickly and see if they can attend, how how do they go about doing that?

Ronald Davis [00:21:12]:
Yeah. You go to, our website, woodymuseum.org/conference. Our maximum was about 400 and, well, I think we're in the middle 300, three 30, three 20, somewhere around there. So, they're going fast and we have scholarships and we encourage educators and students to apply. We'll do everything we can, but we're running short on those too. Well, the conference will be of

Bob Rivard [00:21:36]:
interest to so many more people than three or 400 people. Mhmm. Will the Whitty be videoing all these presentations and placing them online for people to access a little bit later on?

Ronald Davis [00:21:47]:
Thank you for asking that question. Yes. Every panel will be recorded and they will be able to access it. But we're also the the conference is doing a a look so much more too. We're gonna, miss Pierce is gonna do a talk at the lunch on the first day about, black art and its depiction of slavery in Texas. We're gonna have, doctor Kimberlyn Montford do a selection of some spirituals. And we're gonna have Vincent Hardy, who is who is a professor at Saint Philip's. He's gonna perform a speech by Frederick Douglass.

Ronald Davis [00:22:18]:
Right? One of the very fun things about that is, you know, Frederick Douglass, because he he was becoming an outspoken abolitionist, has to flee overseas for a little while, just to kind of stay safe. So he

Bob Rivard [00:22:30]:
got I didn't know that chapter of

Ronald Davis [00:22:32]:
his life. Yes. Just so he's just so he's not kidnapped and brought back into slavery. And he's he ends up in Ireland for a little while. And in 1846, he delivers a speech in Belfast, Ireland on the problem with the annexation of Texas. And so we've taken that speech and we haven't added any words to it, we just edit it now and Vincent Hardy is gonna perform it. And powerful. Like, so we're also trying to incorporate the arts in our understanding of African American history.

Ronald Davis [00:23:03]:
On Friday, the House of Glitter dance troupe is going to do several performances that both engage a the black past and is kind of a call to movement. And we wrap up the conference with a call to action. What are we San Antonians now gonna do with this information? How are we how are we gonna take this information and spread it, whatever that means to to to an individual? So I think this conference is not just about learning, it's also about what's next steps. How do we ensure that this information continues to roll forward? You know, for some students that come, it may mean that they become a history major and want to study a new part of the African American experience. That is important as well as the person who says I want to go out and be an activist or the person that says I want to become a teacher now. I want to teach this information. There's no wrong way to activate your activism. And so we're just hoping that people will come, they'll absorb this information, and then when we have a conversation about what's next, they understand that they can do what's best for them.

Ronald Davis [00:24:08]:
That's what's next.

Bob Rivard [00:24:10]:
Do you think the exhibition, which of course is ephemeral, will will change the permanent collection and presentation of Texas history at the Witte? Will there be more incorporation of the black experience as a result of this?

Ronald Davis [00:24:22]:
100%. We we are focused on telling untold stories and I think the best the way that we do that best is by reaching out to our communities and having them involved in the creation and formation of the exhibits. So we we do our steering committees and we take those seriously and every steering committee member is as proud as I am for that exhibit and the staff are for that exhibit because they were part of its creation as well.

Bob Rivard [00:24:46]:
And this question may be outside your your purview at the Witte, but do you

Ronald Davis [00:24:50]:
see San Antonio eventually having an accredited African American history museum? Well, absolutely. We actually have, the San Antonio African American Community Archiving Museum, who was one of our partners as as well as the Smithsonian. And they, they already have a place at La Vida, where they do tours and talk about San Antonio's African American history. They are actively collecting African American objects and and oral histories. And so we do have an African American museum in San Antonio.

Bob Rivard [00:25:18]:
But do you see the day when they perhaps are in more permanent, location and and it's more of a draw for both locals and visitors than it is today?

Ronald Davis [00:25:29]:
I think in the next couple of years, they just recently brought the Crest Building

Bob Rivard [00:25:33]:
Mhmm.

Ronald Davis [00:25:33]:
Which is a powerful, powerful, powerful thing. They can tell their story definitely better than I can, but I can tell you that, I've been at Community Charettes with SACAM and I've had people say, I'm gonna get the chance to step into the building that when I was a child I could not. And I think that's a powerful statement to be made and to be heard. And so, I think within I don't know for sure their timeline, but yes, we we have a museum already that's dedicated to African American history and that's doing a very good job at at ensuring that

Bob Rivard [00:26:04]:
history is preserved, protected, and shared. So, you know, our time is short, but I wanna ask you about contemporary politics in Texas and how that influences your work or affects it. We're a deeply divided nation as we saw in the last presidential election that just concluded. Texas, of course, is a deeply red state. Do you or your colleagues experience pushback from conservative white groups or individuals or find donors, influential donors at the Whitty objecting to the exhibition and events that like the symposium that address these important issues?

Ronald Davis [00:26:39]:
We at the Witte, we ensure that everything we do is grounded in primary sources. Alright. So when it is Hector Bazey telling his story because he wrote his autobiography, It's not me telling you what I think he said. He's telling you exactly what he said and what he felt. And so because we are grounded in primary sources, we haven't actually seen those kinds of things happen. And our steering committee members ensure that we do that. Our board of directors is extremely supportive, our staff. And so I can say that it's our methodology that means that we're doing things the way they should be done by by standing by those primary sources.

Ronald Davis [00:27:20]:
And when it's someone else telling me a story, there's not much to argue with. You know, there's just not much to argue with. And because we operate with this understanding that there has to be a compassion and an empathy with how we tell these stories and how we exhibit these stories, and how we share this information. That's what ultimately matters. That's what really matters is that we're our our fidelity to the sources is what we strive for. And so we're not thinking about those types of things. We're we want we are doing what is right as historians, as scholars, as a museum professional, and we're operating by those things, those rules, those guidelines.

Bob Rivard [00:28:00]:
Well, I hope everyone in San Antonio run, regardless of their political orientation or or beliefs will take the time to go to the Witte Museum and and see Black Cowboys, an American story. It's an exhibition that you should and I'm sure you are very proud of, and and, it's it's great to see it in San Antonio and originate in San Antonio and and move beyond there. And then the symposium for the very few, seats that are still left, if listeners are listening on December, I think is gonna be, a groundbreaking event and one I look forward to attending. Just I I do wanna reiterate, like, I really want students and educators and

Ronald Davis [00:28:36]:
the public to come, so we're short on tickets. If you hear this, I mean, please stop by the Whitties website. Come by, purchase a ticket. Educators, students, we have scholarships available. Please, please come by. We would love to see you there. We would love for you to be a part of this conference, not just attend it, but be

Bob Rivard [00:28:54]:
a part of the conference. Ronald Davis, thanks for coming on to Big City Small Town. Welcome to The Last Word, my weekly commentary on life and work in San Antonio. The elected trustees who set policy for the San Antonio Independent School District have a challenging job. How do they improve education outcomes for the district's 44,700 students and stem the outflow of burned out teachers leaving the profession. That challenge is made far worse by the state's top elected officials and legislators. Governor Greg Abbott, lieutenant governor Dan Patrick are starving the state's 1,200 public school districts in their continuing bid to win support for school vouchers that would allow families to pull their children out of public schools and send them to Christian and other private schools at taxpayer expense. I don't envy their task, yet this large gap between available funding for the district and its many needs have led district leaders to place unrealistic financial demands on the city of San Antonio, Bexar County, and Western Urban, which seeks to acquire a 2.3 acre property the district now uses as an employee parking lot.

Bob Rivard [00:30:09]:
It was once home to Fox Tech High School's baseball team. Trustees want many tens of millions of dollars for the property, including a new $45,000,000 school, a new parking garage, a guarantee that at least 1,250 affordable housing units will be developed inside the district, and an annual payment of $400,000 that district officials believe is equal to the interest they would earn if they sold the property and bank the money. Trustees would do better to buy a lottery ticket. The demands have no basis in reality and will never be met via negotiations. And if the developers and baseball team owners are unable to buy the property, San Antonians will be left with blight, vacancy, and surface parking lots where buildings once stood long ago. A failed deal would be a historic setback for downtown and the decades long effort to transform the many neglected pockets of San Antonio's urban core. Ironically, most of the speakers opposing the district's land sale, who appeared at a Monday night board meeting, are focused on property the district does not own or control, the aging substandard soap factory apartments acquired by Western Urban and slated for demolition. The three eighty one unit complex is spread over nine acres in three separate pieces separated by Martin And Santa Rosa Streets, forgetting for the moment its poor construction and decades of neglect that defined the soap factory prior to Western Urban's acquisition, the lack of density alone justifies a ground up new development.

Bob Rivard [00:31:47]:
Western Urban promises to develop more than 1,500 new residential units, and UTSA expects its continuing expansion of the downtown campus to soon include significant student housing that does not now exist. I would suggest a relatively simple solution to the impasse. The county will underwrite the cost of the parking garage, and the city can consider including funds in its 2,027 bond to build a new magnet school at or near the Fox Tech campus for the district to replace the aging inadequate building that now houses the Advanced Learning Academy. Weston Urban can pay a fair market rate for the land, and the district can forego its imagined annual $400,000 in interest when everyone knows any funds acquired in the land sale will quickly be allocated to other pressing needs and spend. Western Urban, in turn, can guarantee every tenant the $2,500 moving stipend equivalent to more than one month's rent and a lease deposit for most tenants. And the City and Opportunity San Antonio, the city's housing authority, can guarantee, promise every tenant another affordable residential unit inside, say, a two to three mile circle from downtown. That guarantee would have to extend to the full timeline of the apartments being raised. As buildings are scheduled for demolition, tenants would be able to safely and securely relocate to other guaranteed rental units.

Bob Rivard [00:33:18]:
There is no perfect solution to a truly transformative downtown project. It isn't easily developing new buildings in a 300 year old city, which is why most developers go for the easy buck and develop outside the urban core where land is plentiful, costs are cheaper, and there are fewer hurdles to surmount. San Antonio deserves a more vibrant downtown, one where vacancy blight and a depressing number of surface parking lots affect the life and work in a city where too few people live in the center city and too few businesses exist there as a result. The school district property is the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle that has been painstakingly pieced together over the years by Western Urban, a company that has displayed an unusually high commitment to building community in all of its projects, and, yes, a company that supports and sponsors this podcast. Protesters now slandering Western Urban are loud, but their numbers are relatively small. Trustees should look to the district's future and do what's right, not what is easy. For most of the thirty five years I've worked as a journalist in San Antonio, the city's biggest inner city school district has been losing students, closing campuses, and fighting an exodus of teachers. The only path to reversing those trends is to build enough housing to increase residential density downtown and in the district.

Bob Rivard [00:34:46]:
Nobody lives in empty parking lots. No taxes are collected on blighted blocks. If the $1,000,000,000 development plan by Western Urban is undone by one missing piece of the puzzle, the entire city will lose. That's my last word for the week. Thank you for listening, and please share this episode with friends and colleagues at work. And please check out our new YouTube channel where we are starting to post videos of some of our events and episodes. A special thanks to our sponsor, Westin Urban, building the city our children want to call home, and Geekdom where startups are born and nurtured into new businesses. Shouldn't you be a member? Special thanks to our production team, producers Ashley Bird and Maura Bobbitt with Blooming with Bertie, and Erica Rempel, videographer and content creator, and Alfie de la Garza of Sound Crane Audio.

Bob Rivard [00:35:42]:
We'll see you next week.