Leavin' a Testimony: Portraits from Rural Texas

This oral and pictorial history chronicles the lives and separate worlds of black and white communities in Jim Crow era Colorado County, TX.

First settled by Stephen F. Austin's colonists in the early nineteenth century, Colorado County has deep roots in Texas history. Mainly rural and agrarian until late in the twentieth century, it was a cotton-growing region whose population was evenly divided between blacks and whites. These life-long neighbors led separate and unequal lives, memorie...