TX BIOS:  Bones (Hooks)

   Selected and converted.American Memory, Library of Congress.
   
   Washington, 1994.
   
   Preceding element provides place and date of transcription only.
   
   This transcription intended to be 99.95% accurate.
   
   For more information about this text and this American Memory
   collection, refer to accompanying matter.
   
   U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers' Project (Folklore
   Project, Life Histories, 1936-39); Manuscript Division, Library of
   Congress.Copyright status not determined.0001
   
   Words 1110
   
   "Bones"
   
   "Bones", pioneer Negro bronco-buster of the Panhandle, has given 275
   white flowers to relatives of old-timers who have crossed the Last
   Frontier. He has presented many others to those who have done
   something outstandingly "white". Among those who have received this
   "[guardon?] of honor" are the president of the United States Mrs.
   Eleanor Roosevelt, Postmaster General James Farley, Governor James V.
   Allred of Texas, Governor Clyde Tingley of New Mexico and [Ruth?]
   Bryan [Owen?].
   
   May 6, 1940, marked the forty-sixth year since he began the custom. At
   the time he was working on the Clayton ranch in the Pacos region,
   breaking, training and [racing?] horses with young Tom Clayton, to
   whom he became very much devoted. When Tom was injured in a fall from
   a horse, the colored youth gathered a bunch of white wild flowers to
   give to his young employer, thinking that they would remind him of the
   range that he loved. When he was informed that young Clayton was dead,
   the heartbroken Negro gave the flowers to Tom's mother with the
   request that they be placed upon his grave.
   
   Bones was born November 3, 1867, at Orangeville in Robinson County,
   Texas, the son of [Eleck?], an ex-slave who bore the surname of his
   former master, and Annie Hooks. Christened Matthew, he received the
   nickname, Bones, when he was ten years old.
   
   At that tender age he left his home to drive Buck and [Berry?], oxen
   that drew the chuck wagon, for Steve Donald to the latter's ranch near
   Lewisville in Denton County. Here he often watched the cowboys play
   dice in their leisure moments. Once, when they laid the dice down, the
   Negro boy, intrigued with the "galloping cubes", picked them up to
   examine them more closely--and perhaps to experiment with them. When
   the cowboys again started their play, one of them yelled, Where's them
   bones? I'll bet that nigger's got'em". Thinking that he was being
   called "Bones", the boy vigorously protested, "My name ain't Bones".
   By overwhelming majority the cow hands proved that his name was Bones,
   and Bones he became from that moment. 00022Bones
   
   Bones learned to read and write from Bob, young brother of Steve
   Donald. At night he studied the lessons that the white boy was
   privileged to learn in the schoolroom.
   
   As young Bones grew to manhood, he learned, also, that, no matter how
   [expert?] he might be in any work, he was barred from certain
   positions by his color. Picking out an occupation in which he thought
   that there would not be so much competition with white men, he became
   a "bronco-buster". At the age of fifteen he was an expert at breaking
   the wildest horses. In later years he broke horses for the JA, Rowe
   and many other large ranches in the Panhandle, to which he came "when
   he was [grown?]".
   
   Bones is perhaps the only person for whom a train has waited while he
   rode a horse. When his bronco-busting days were over, he became a
   railway porter. One day when the Santa Fe train upon which he made his
   run stopped at [Tampa?], it remained long enough for him to ride an
   outlaw horse that no one else had been able to "top".
   
   When he was thirty-five, Bones left the plains to go to East Texas and
   bring back Indiana Crenshaw as his wife. A short time later, Adeline
   Grundy, a friend who came to the Panhandle with her, was killed by a
   random shot fired from the guns of drunken cowboys, as they passed the
   honeymoon cabin of Bones and his bride, to scare the Negroes, who as a
   race were not welcome in the region at that time.
   
   When his first wife died after a happy married life of twenty-one
   years, Bones "tried one of them new models, but it didn't work". When
   he left the second wife, he gave as alimony his equity in a business
   building that he was "paying out".
   
   Although Bones has not accumulated much of this world's goods for
   himself, he has been instrumental in obtaining various things,
   material and immaterial, for others of his race in Amarillo. Through
   his efforts North Heights, exclusive Negro addition to the city, was
   established in 1926.
   
   In the Heights is located Bones Park, named in honor of the pioneer
   Negro. In the park the base of native stone is all that has been
   completed of an equestrian statue planned as a tribute to the champion
   bronco-buster. 00033Although Bones, the son of a preacher, belongs to
   no church, he was instrumental in establishing the first Negro church
   in Amarillo and the Panhandle. He also helped to erect the first
   school for colored children in the city.
   
   Bones, who never had any "schooling", is a great believer in
   education. One of a family of eight children, he helped to educate his
   three sisters and four brothers, one of whom became a doctor.
   
   Although he never had a child of his own, Bones takes a keen interest
   in the colored boys and girls of his city, over whom he has a great
   influence for good. For years he was in charge of the Dogie Club,
   among whose members crime was practically unknown.
   
   At the 1940 convention of Negroes in Detroit, at which seventy-five
   years of history and development of the colored race in America was
   celebrated, Bones was present with pictures and oral and written
   records of his people in the Panhandle, both black and white, with
   whom he had lived the history of fifty of those seventy-five years.
   
   Old-timers and other white people of the region have grown to know and
   respect the aged Negro, whose heart is as white as their own. No
   pioneer gathering is complete without Bones and his white flower for
   the oldest settler present. "The White Carnation", composed by Mrs.
   John Arnold and Sylvester Cross of Silverton, was written in honor of
   his quaint custom.
   
   Bones has a fund of homely wisdom and philosophy, which, as he says,
   comes from experience. Athough he is a member of no church, he has a
   religion of work and service for his fellowmen. Knowing that Negroes
   in America do not have the privileges and advantages of the white
   people, he yet deplores the attitude of many of the modern generation
   of colored boys and girls. Freedom, he says, is in the heart. Bones is
   well informed on the topic of the day, but his favorite subject is the
   history of the Panhandle and those who made that history, the
   pioneers, of whom he is proud to say that he is one.

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