Name: Edna, Texas
Address: Edna, TX

Texana rolled here on oxen and logs RoadyGoat

The very existence of Edna is because of a ghost town. Before 1882, the seat of Jackson County was Texana, a thriving river port a few miles from here. But when the New York, Texas and Mexican Railway surveyed its route, it bypassed Texana for a flatter, more direct path. The citizens of Texana knew that without the railroad, their town would die. So they made a radical decision. Instead of fading away, they moved. For over a year, they put their houses, stores, and hotels on log rollers and used teams of oxen to drag them across the prairie to the new railroad depot. The town you're in now, Edna, was built with the bones of Texana. It’s a rare, incredible story of an entire community picking up and moving to chase the future. The old Texana is gone, marked only by a cemetery and a state park, but its spirit lives on in the relocated buildings of Edna.

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Edna, TX RoadyGoat

The 1954 Supreme Court case Hernandez v. Texas, which concerned the racial context of jury selection for a trial that took place in Edna, was a landmark decision determining that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups in the U.S. had equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

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The Railroad That Erased a Town RoadyGoat

The location of Edna is a direct result of 19th-century transportation engineering. In September 1881 the New York, Texas and Mexican Railway — promoted and built by an Italian count named Joseph Telfener — began laying track from Rosenberg toward Victoria. The engineers' goal was simple: find the cheapest, fastest, most efficient route across the flat coastal prairie. The existing county seat, Texana, sat down where the Navidad meets the Lavaca, a key location in the age of water travel. But for a railroad, a riverside town with its uneven bottomland was an obstacle, not an asset. The engineers went around it, laying track roughly eight miles to the west and putting a stop right here. The first train arrived on the Fourth of July, 1882. By 1883 Texana had been bypassed for good; voters moved the county seat to Edna, and by 1884 Texana was a virtual ghost town. Even the Presbyterian congregation gave up and hauled its 1859 sanctuary eight miles overland to the new town. Edna, by the way, was named for the count's daughter. One engineering decision redrew the map.

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Gibson, Henry [Monk]

1905

Henry "Monk" Gibson, born around 1889, was the convicted murderer of members of the Conditt family of Edna, Texas, on September 28, 1905. Gibson, a Black teenager, was employed by J. F. Conditt to plow his field when Conditt's wife, Lora, their twelve-year-old daughter, Mildred, and sons Herschell, Jesse, and Joseph were found bludgeoned and stabbed to death at their home. The youngest Conditt child, ten-month-old Lloyd, survived. Lora and Mildred had been sexually assaulted. J. F. Conditt had been working in a rice field several miles away. Suspicions soon centered on Gibson, who was the person that initially reported the murders. Gibson was taken into custody that evening by Jackson county Sheriff Albert C. Egg. He subsequently escaped while being transferred to a jail in nearby Hallettsville, largely to protect him from possible lynching, and remained at large for nearly two weeks, sparking a massive manhunt that drew national attention. In the meantime his family was arrested and jailed, possibly due to suspicions that they had aided his escape and possibly also due to rumors that local mobs were planning to burn them to death. Governor S. W. T. Lanham called out the troops-elements of the Houston Light Guards and another contingent of cavalrymen from Austin-to protect Gibson and his family from lynching. A contingent of Texas Rangers under Captain William Jesse McDonald arrived to coordinate the search for Gibson and, later, to protect him from angry citizens. Gibson was eventually discovered on October 9, hiding in a nearby barn. He was promptly indicted by a local grand jury. His attorneys won a change of venue to Bexar County where a jury was unable to reach a verdict, at least in part because it was thought that the slightly built Gibson could not have acted alone to commit the killings. Indeed, after the mistrial a Black man named Felix Powell was tried, convicted, and hung in connection with the Conditt murders. The second trial of Monk Gibson was held in DeWitt County, adjoining the county in which the crime took place. Here a jury selected from a panel of 190 White men convicted Gibson of murder on evidence that included testimony that Gibson was seen near the murder scene at the time of the killings and that he was found to have spots of blood on his clothes and skin after the bodies of the Conditts were discovered. Gibson's appeal of the conviction raised the issues of racial prejudice in selection of the jury; Gibson's youth (he was either sixteen or seventeen at the time of the murders); the state's introduction into evidence of photographs taken several months after the crime took place; and Gibson's unsuccessful request for a second change of venue in the case. The appeal failed, and Gibson was hanged in Cuero on June 27, 1908, before a large crowd of onlookers. A subject of massive statewide interest, if not hysteria, at the time, the Monk Gibson case is perhaps most notable now for the fact that a trial was held at all- lynching was not uncommon in the era, especially when a Black man was alleged to have committed violence against a White woman-and for the way that the trial prefigured legal issues relating to race and age that still trouble Texas criminal courts.

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Green, Rufus, Sr.

1950

Rufus Green, Sr., African-American champion calf roper and horse trainer, was born near Edna, Texas, on March 30, 1923. He attended school only through the elementary grade level. When he was fifteen years old, he found employment as a ranch hand on the F.W. Gross Ranch in Victoria, Texas, where his cowboy days began as he developed an ability to ride horses. He learned to rope and care for horses under the direction of cowboys James Fry and Richard Miller. Green's ability to communicate with horses enabled him to eventually develop into one of the best roping, barrel racing, hazing, and cutting horse trainers of his time. On weekends he competed against other cowboys on the ranch as they rode bucking horses and roped calves. As his skills developed, he entered local rodeos in South Texas to supplement his income. Green was so successful in calf roping competitions that he made enough money to quit his ranch job and became a full-time rodeo professional during the 1950s. In the early 1960s Green was the first African American to enter the calf roping event in the Houston Fat Stock Show held at the Sam Houston Coliseum. He placed second in the tie-down contest. This event happened long before Blacks were allowed seats inside the arena. During his career, Green competed in more than 2,000 rodeos all across the United States and won many monetary prizes, trophies, saddles, and belt buckles. He was featured in Ebony magazine in 1957. He was named all-around champion at rodeos at Frank County Fair in Ottawa, Kansas, in 1960 and Manor Downs in Austin, Texas, in 1978. Green and his first wife, Doris M. Griffin, had two sons-Rufus Jr., a medical doctor, and Bobby L. Green, a registered nurse. He married again and with second wife, Castella Green, had six foster children. Green also had a daughter named Lawana Green-Stevenson. Green was a founding member of the Southwestern Rodeo Cowboy's Association, a historically Black organization. He was one of the first Black cowboys to receive a Professional Rodeo Cowboy's Association (PRCA) Card. Green trained more than 1,000 competition horses. He also trained more than 100 young men and women to ride, rope, barrel race, and bulldog in rodeos and horse riding competitions. Many of his students went on to be top contenders themselves, including William Hollis, Cleo Hearns, Shirley Gladden, Calvin Greeley, and Cedric Haynes. Later in life, Green not only remained active in the competitive rodeo circuit, he was also a staunch promoter of the events. He and Monroe Lawson produced the first rodeo on the campus of Prairie View A&M University to celebrate Black history. Green received his last trophy saddle for competing in the senior category at a rodeo in Conroe, Texas, in 1978. He continued to compete and attend rodeos and calf roping until his death on January 17, 1982, at his home in Prairie View, Texas. Close friend Monroe Lawson summed up Green's life and personality and stated that he was "exceptional in his roping skills, majestic in his performance, incomparable in his disposition, unique in his sense of humor, shrewd as a horse trader, a master teacher of calf roping and most admirable in his relationships with young people." Rufus Green, Sr., was inducted into the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum's Hall of Fame in 2007.

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Hernandez v. State of Texas

1950

The first and only Mexican-American civil-rights case heard and decided by the United States Supreme Court during the post-World War II period was Hernández v. the State of Texas. In 1950 Pete Hernández, a migrant cotton picker, was accused of murdering Cayetano "Joe" Espinosa in Edna, Texas, a small town in Jackson County, where no person of Mexican origin had served on a jury for at least twenty-five years. Gustavo (Gus) García , an experienced Mexican-American civil-rights lawyer, agreed to represent the accused without fee. García envisioned the Hernández case as a challenge to the systematic exclusion of persons of Mexican origin from all types of jury duty in at least seventy counties in Texas. It was not surprising to him when Hernández was found guilty and the decision was upheld by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals . The Supreme Court acted upon a writ of certiorari and heard the arguments on January 11, 1954. With García were James de Anda and Chris Alderete of the American G.I. Forum and Carlos Cadena and John J. Herrera of the League of United Latin American Citizens . García argued that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed protection not only on the basis of race, Caucasian and Negro, but also class. Those who administered the process of jury selection introduced discrimination because of exclusion based on class. The state of Texas contended that the Fourteenth Amendment covered only Whites and Blacks, and that Mexican Americans are White. The state admitted that no person with a Spanish surname had served on any type of jury for twenty-five years, but that this absence only indicated coincidence, not a pattern of attitude and behavior. García and his associates presented comprehensive evidence that in Jackson County discrimination and segregation were common practice, and Mexican Americans were treated as a class apart. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous opinion of the court in favor of Hernández and ordered a reversal of conviction. The Supreme Court accepted the concept of distinction by class, that is, between "White" and Hispanic, and found that when laws produce unreasonable and different treatment on such a basis, the constitutional guarantee of equal protection is violated. The court held that Hernández had "the right to be indicted and tried by juries from which all members of his class are not systematically excluded." This decision was a major triumph for the "other White" concept, the legal strategy of Mexican-American civil-rights activists from 1930 to 1970. Faced with the separate but equal doctrine they argued that segregation of Mexican-origin persons was illegal in the absence of state law. Hernández was the logical extension of that argument. The case was a valuable precedent until it was replaced in 1971 by Cisneros v. Corpus Christi ISD , which recognized Hispanics as an identifiable minority group and utilized the Brown decision of 1954 to prohibit segregation.

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Brackenridge Cemetery

1800

Among family members buried there: John A. Brackenridge (1800-62), a Warrick County, Ind., neighbor from whom young Abraham Lincoln borrowed law brooks, 1855 founder of Texana Presbyterian Church; his son, George W. Brackenridge (1832-1902), emissary to Benito Juarez in Mexico from President Lincoln in 1860s, founder (1866) San Antonio National Bank, donor San Antonio's Brackenridge Park, member first board of regents, the University of Texas, serving 30 years, philanthropist; daughter Mary Eleanor Brackenridge (1837-1924), on first board of regents, CIA (Texas Woman's University).

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Trooper Bill Davidson Memorial Highway

1992

Honors Texas DPS Trooper Bill Davidson, killed April 14, 1992, during a traffic stop on US-59 in Jackson County by Ronald Ray Howard. The case sparked a landmark civil suit by Davidson's widow against Tupac Shakur and Time Warner over the lyrics of 2Pacalypse Now.

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Confederates of Jackson County

1860

From 1860 population of 2612 came more than 100 Civil War soldiers, one an infantryman on a crutch: M. K. Simons, a Mexican war amputee, brigade quartermaster, 2nd Texas infantry, C. S. A. Officers included Capt. C. L. Owen, veteran of the Texas Revolution and Mexican war; killed at Shiloh in 1862. Composed chiefly of Jackson County men were Co. D, 1st Texas Cavalry; Co. K, 2nd Texas Infantry; and Co. M, 27th Texas Cavalry (Whitfield's Legion). Jackson men were also in other units, including Confederate marines and Terry's Texas Rangers, and saw much of war's greatest action.

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Edna, Texas

Music in Edna

Songs About Edna

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Rivers & Roads in Song near Edna

History of Edna

Texana rolled here on oxen and logs RoadyGoat

Edna, TX RoadyGoat

The Railroad That Erased a Town RoadyGoat

Gibson, Henry [Monk]

Green, Rufus, Sr.

Hernandez v. State of Texas

Brackenridge Cemetery

Trooper Bill Davidson Memorial Highway

Confederates of Jackson County

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