Alamo's ties to slavery stir debate; 'We want the truth ... But it needs to be the truth'

Alamo historians typically have not touched on slavery. Scholars who study forced labor haven’t delved deeply into the Alamo and the motivations of the 189 known Texians and Tejanos who died or were executed in the 1836 battle. But it’s common knowledge that William Barret Travis had a slave, Joe, who survived the battle and later escaped to freedom. Jim Bowie traded slaves. There also was abolitionist Amos Pollard, the garrison’s chief surgeon, and a 15-year-old boy, William Philip King of Gonzales, among the defenders.

The Alamo Citizens Advisory Committee has held weekly discussions on the history of the Alamo as it moves forward with a $400 million plan to make over the historic fort. “I’m hoping for an Alamo that interprets those truths, struggles with them, asks lots of different questions,” Carey Latimore, a member of the panel and Trinity University history professor specializing in African American studies, said after the group’s most recent panel reviewed the impact of slavery at the Alamo. A theory has been brewing for years that slavery was an underlying cause of the Texas Revolution. But it’s recently created tension in discussions about the war for independence from Mexico and the Battle of the Alamo. Andrew Torget, a leading scholar on slavery in Texas, said Anglos and Tejanos forged an alliance to harness the windfall of a booming cotton economy. He believes the complexity of the 1835-1836 war makes it “more interesting and more useful to understand” as an event that affected all of North America.