Recently I’ve been going through the notes of WPA researchers who worked on the New Deal agency’s guide to Houston. The notes contain many typed clippings from old newspapers, which are especially invaluable when the newspapers are no longer extant. But today I spent time at the microfilm machine trying to verify some Reconstruction-era clippings from the Houston Daily Telegraph, and I’m certainly glad that I did.

Consider, for example, this clipping from the June 20, 1875, Daily Telegraph, which was made by someone named Johnnie Therrien. It describes a celebration of Juneteenth in the city. Yes, the article gets some specifics about the anniversary wrong. But it also provides an early description of Emancipation Park, which was purchased by Black Houstonians in 1872 but was still known by a variety of names, including (as in this case), the “Freedmen’s Festival Grounds.”

Notice, however, those looooooong ellipses in Therrien’s clipping. I found the original article on microfilm today, and it’s interesting, to say the least, what Therrien left out. The full article describes one of the banners carried during the procession, notes the absence of a Black militia (which had been a fixture in earlier Juneteenth parades), names the orator for the day, and gives a lengthy summary of the speech. That’s a lot to redact!

(Note: some of these WPA notes, which belong to the Henry Marsh collection at the Houston Public Library, have been digitized, but many have not yet been processed. This particular clipping is among those that has not been digitized yet by the library.)