Dr. Patricia Bixel

They saved each other.

There's a black gentleman that swims out and recovers and saves people out in the Gulf.

And so during the storm itself, race is not a particular factor.

After the storm, it does become somewhat problematic, and the black community does not receive the level of help from the relief efforts that the white community did.

The Black Galvestonians were allowed to come to the wards in the afternoons, at which point they were given access to what was left.

The Black community protests this.

And interestingly enough, Clara Barton, also in her history as working with the Red Cross, there was also a very strong network of Black Red Cross units and Black Red Cross agencies and groups around the country.

And those groups sent relief directly to Black Galvestonians.

And they wanted to make sure that their donations went to the Black community, and the Red Cross facilitated that.

Clara Barton was very concerned about the even and equal distribution of relief goods.

And so to her utmost, she did the best she could to see that there was equity in this.

Of course, we're talking about a Southern city.

And so that time and place was not as perhaps just and equal as it should have been.

The interesting thing about Galveston, though, given the city that it had been, the Black community, developed their own parallel system of relief in many cases for their own communities.

They protested what they saw as unequal treatment by the overall relief efforts on the island, but they also developed their own network of support for each other and reached out to the national Black organizations that facilitated relief going to that community in Galveston.

Because of Galveston's position as a port, because of the connections, the economic and financial connections it had with the rest of the country, people knew about Galveston.

They were invested in Galveston.

They had relatives in Galveston.

They visited Galveston.

There was a major relief event that occurred in New York City.