Slavery in Early Austin: The Stringer’s Hotel and Urban Slavery | Hacker News Reader

Slavery in Early Austin: The Stringer’s Hotel and Urban Slavery

notevenpast.org

53 pointssamclemens47 comments

it is not impossible to imagine enslaved people taking on leading roles in running the Stringer’s Hotel and other establishments in Austin.

There’s much comforting in imagined logical possibility. Reading Fredrick Douglas’s autobiographies or Blight’s recent Pulitzer winner dissipates such illusion. If the knowledge of children for sale provided in the article somehow wasn’t enough to demonstrate how unincharge slaves were.

What do you think the purpose of the quoted sentence was? To shift some of the blame to the victims? Something else? (I really don't know)

It is structural to American journalism. (edit) a trope, maybe?

Consider:

- Lincoln was not an Abolitionist hero as popularly lionized, but a status quo "moderate,' reluctant to rock the boat. Even though he knew it to be wrong, he did nothing in the affirmative until Secession. That's not moral courage, that's political expedience.

- 13th Amendment, Section 1 giant slavery loophole:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

- for-profit prisons

- elected district attorneys eager to make large numbers of convictions for reelection stats

- politicians at all levels (e.g., municipal, county, state and federal) $upported by the prison lobby

- mandatory minimums

- the highest incarceration rate (per-capita) on the planet except Seychelles

- and corporations eager to exploit cheap labor (most belong to ALEC)

and what do you get?

Slavery never ended, it just hides in a slightly different form, out-of-sight in the prison-industrial complex that most people never think about. And that doesn't even include the matters of discrimination and segregation like Jim Crow laws like poll taxes, red lining, property requirements and voter ID laws.

Here's just a few of the corporations that exploit prison (slave) labor:

- Allstate Insurance

- American Express

- AT&T

- Bank of America

- BP America

- ExxonMobil

- Fruit of the Loom

- GEICO

- Johnson & Johnson

- J.P. Morgan

- Mary Kay Cosmetics

- McDonalds

- Microsoft

- Procter & Gamble

- Quaker Oats

- Sara Lee

- Sprint

- Verizon

- United Airlines

- Wal-Mart

- Wendy’s

Source: http://affinitymagazine.us/2017/06/29/heres-a-list-of-corpor...

Thank you for that list.

This needs much more visibility and attention. Thank-you for posting this.

It is a bullshit citationless list.

It has citations in the form of hyperlinks, which in turn have detailed citations.

Which say something completely different than what the post says they do.

When people ask for citations they generally expect the citation to actually support the argument you are making.

Ok, great, that sounds like the start of a valid argument.

Having bad citations or mispresenting what they say is completely different from being citationless. When some throwaway claims one and means the other I (quite reasonably in my opinion) assume they are simply mistaken rather than being more informed than me.

Lincoln was not an Abolitionist hero as popularly lionized, but a status quo "moderate,' reluctant to rock the boat. Even though he knew it to be wrong, he did nothing in the affirmative until Secession.

Lincoln's election triggered secession by the south. Maybe the Southerner's had a better sense of Lincoln's abolitionist credentials than you?

Secession started after Lincoln was elected, but before he took office, what actions could he have taken? His abolitionist rhetoric was enough to trigger a civil war. That's a pretty big boat rock.

> Lincoln's election triggered secession by the south. Maybe the Southerner's had a better sense of Lincoln's abolitionist credentials than you?

Abolition was clearly in the Republican platform but he was chosen as a moderate candidate in the convention vs some more firebrand candidates, in the hope that he would forestall war. This is not controversial -- you can read accounts of the convention in old newspapers.

The famous quote from Lincoln shows where his priorities lay: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." https://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/24/archives/a-letter-from-pr...

In addition he didn’t address slavery until relatively late in the war; when he did it was as a (failed) tactic to flip rebelling states and excepted slave states like Maryland and Delaware that remained in the union.

This is flat wrong. The Emancipation Proclamation was drafted in late 1862, the second year of the war when things were very much in doubt. Lincoln issued it in the wake of the major battle at Antietam, which was a brutal "tie" and the deadliest day in American history. The tactical purpose of the Proclamation to try to recapture the momentum and make it clear that the North was now on a path of total war with the South.

I apologize: “relatively late” draws a misleading conclusion. I really meant that it wasn’t a precipitating or contemporary part of the beginning of the war, the primary objective of which (from his policy — obviously many supported it for other reasons) was the preservation of the union.

The rest of your comment speaks to my point: it was a tactical effort to try to split the confederacy but as far as I can tell failed in that effort. It only had “force” in the parts of the country not controlled by the federal government.

Fortunately actual emancipation was ultimately extended throughout the union, at least in theory.

Here’s what the national archive has to say on the subject; in particular the second paragraph speaks to the limited scope of the directive: https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancip...

It should be said that he urged compensated emancipation in the states not seceded. He did justify this by comparing the cost of that emancipation to the cost of the war. But in his statements in general he was very clear that he thought slavery wrong.

> Lincoln's election triggered secession by the south.

Strictly speaking, it was positions on the expansion of slavery that caused the war. New slave states meant more states voting with the south and an ability to keep up with the north and its higher population. Blocking new slave states would mean the north takes over the senate.

> Secession started after Lincoln was elected, but before he took office, what actions could he have taken? His abolitionist rhetoric was enough to trigger a civil war. That's a pretty big boat rock.

There was no risk of abolishing slavery at the moment. And pro-slavery side scored series or political victories prior war, partly due to own increasingly heated rhetorics.

Real question about whether slavery or not was limited to new territories. And that was primary about long term risks - new territory means new state to vote.

> Here's just a few of the corporations that exploit prison (slave) labor:

> (list)

> Source: http://affinitymagazine.us/2017/06/29/heres-a-list-of-corpor....

That article is an absolute joke. Its underlying sources too. So incredibly lacking in evidence or data to support such a huge accusation.

At a glance the underlying source list seems quite thorough and well research, it's available here (below) and every company points to a document that proves it. It's regularly updated.

Can you expand on your complaint?

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Corporations

Because they are two entirely different things. It is 100% complete and total bullshit to say that a corporation who has some, often extremely tenuous, relationship with ALEC "profits from prison labor". There's plenty of real bad stuff going on that needs revealing without resorting to lying.

Ok, so your saying this article is misusing it's source list, not that the underlying source list is an absolute joke like the original throwaway I replied to is?

The underlying source is an absolute joke as well. Whether ALEC somehow benefits from prison labor or not, just because these companies may have a relationship with ALEC doesn't mean they benefit.

The source we are talking about says nothing about benefiting from prison labor, either for ALEC or the corporations that have a relationship with ALEC, so I don't understand your complaint.

Yes, that's the point. I should have been more clear. It is a joke to use it as a reference to support the claim about benefitting from prison labor since it doesn't have any information on it. It may well be an accurate list of companies that have some relationship with ALEC.

I really, sincerely hope you will consider educating yourself on what ALEC is about.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/hidden-history-ale...

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/alecs-horror-show-is-comin...

I'm not defending ALEC, but ALEC supporting something isn't evidence that Walmart benefits from it. You have to show me Walmart is using prison labor directly or indirectly. What specific products and vendors.

You may not like the ALEC list but in some form most of the major US corporations that have existed for sometime have benefited from slavery.

It’s a fact that a number of American and European institutions benefited both directly and indirectly from former and present day slavery. Some have even admitted as much.

If you don’t want to read, here’s another short list: AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Brooks Brothers, Aetna, Lehman Brothers, Domino Sugar, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Princeton University, Columbia, Harvard, Brown, Georgetown,

- https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=154386... - https://time.com/5013728/slavery-universities-america/ - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247

This is about prison labor, not historical slavery.

The two are very related. You may want to read up on the period of Reconstruction. The southern states moved to use of prisons and sharecropping/terrorism to maintain their hold on cheap labor.

There’s too many studies and books on this topic so I won’t post them. Instead, I’d recommend reading more about the parts of American history not called out in your standard high school text books.

I responded to another comment but your list is total bullshit, as evidenced by your own link. Those are companies that have had some, often extremely tenuous, relationship with ALEC, and a quick glance at the actual source shows that many of those companies cut ties with ALEC nearly 10 years ago.

>>Here's just a few of the corporations that exploit prison (slave) labor

Apples and mangoes:

Would it be better if prisoners didn't work at all or is $1 a day better for them?

Is this forced labor?

Did these companies set the salaries or did the Government?

If you have one group who wants $20 an hour and other group who would work for $1 a day you have an initiative to enlarge the second group.

As for Goverment setting the salaries - it becomes much more complicated through lobbying and etc. If you go high enough I believe companies and governments are no longer on different poles.

> you have an initiative to enlarge the second group.

Only if the efficiency and quality is worth it. Which, having had the pleasure of meeting some of our local incarcerated, its vanishingly unlikely.

Does anyone know where this hotel existed? The article says it is where the "Piedmont" hotel currently stands, but there is no Piedmont hotel in Austin.

As an aside, I'm getting to detest more and more how Google only seems to show current events. It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to search for anything historical.

Seems to be the space on the southeast corner of 8th & Congress, next door to the Stateside Theater.

Pieced this together via:

1) "[...] named the Avenue Hotel but locally known as the Stringer’s Hotel" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swante_M._Swenson)

and

2) "The Jan. 18 announcement indicates that The Avenue’s name is an homage to the original structure built on the site in 1880, the Avenue Hotel." (https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2019/01/18/31-story-...)

I came to the same conclusion by looking at the maps in the article and looking for the Avenue Hotel. You can it is at the corner of Congress and Hickory St.

Hickory St (now 8th St) is 3 blocks south of the Capitol.

I guess at some point the tree named streets were converted to numbered streets.

Re: tree named streets were converted to numbered streets

https://www.statesman.com/news/20171101/austin-answered-why-...

> "On the eve of the Civil War, an advertisement appeared in the Texas Almanac ..."

This was 1862. The war was well underway by then. I'm really not sure how that made it into the article. I'm very curious if an editor added it in, because I suspect that the author knows better.

If it was late Dec. 1862 it was just after The Battle of Fredericksburg, a bloodbath for the Union.

I pass this site every morning, negotiating a throng of homeless people. Not everything about modern Austin is more humane.

That second map was made by a sociopath. North faces to the right? For those less familiar with Austin, Pecan St is also 6th Street.

It's an interesting frame of mind to think about who would have been walking down the same streets I walk, over 100 years ago.

Having the East at the top of the map is very common. That’s why they call it “the orient”.

>That’s why they call it “the orient”.

Not challenging your claim that East-on-top is common (since I have no idea), but: it's called the orient because oriens is Latin for rising, and the sun rises in the east. Many other languages also have a word for east based on their word for rising. For a cursory reading, check out the Wiki article on the etymology Orient: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient#Etymology

The grandparent comment makes a valid point, just backwards. The reason orientation and orienteering contain the string "orient" is because Europeans historically put the East at the top of maps, a practice which changed some time after the introduction of the compass.

Which points North, unless it points South; Chinese maps traditionally put the South at the top.

Here's an example of such a map, of the form known as "T and O": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#/media/File:D...

It's interesting to me that, as moderns, we barely recognize such a stylized image as a map.

I learned more than I expected about maps. So so you think it was a style decision in the late 1800's to make a map with the top facing east? Or was it still common?

North was pretty standard by the 1800s, or indeed by the 1600s.

But there's a map in the public library of my hometown, showing it in 1890, in which the Old West Side is at the top of the map. So I'd guess that non-standard orientations were more common than they are now.

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