Emeline in song
The opera celebrates an improbable victory in a Houston courtroom.
In May 1847, a young lawyer named Peter Gray — who would go on to found the Houston-based law firm of Baker Botts — filed a petition titled “Emeline, a free woman of color v. Jesse P. Bolls” on behalf of a young slave claiming to be free. Emeline used an X to sign her name on the petition.
Consider the courage it took for a black woman to sue a man claiming to be her master at a time when 1 in 4 households in Houston owned slaves. If she lost, she undoubtedly faced punishment and the possible loss of her children through a slave auction. A loss for Bolls meant derision, shame and social stigma as Houston was a small town back then.
More than a year later, Gray argued Emeline’s case to a jury of 12 white men in Harris County in front of a judge who owned slaves. The jury, led by a foreman who was a slave-owner, determined Bolls to be less credible than Emeline and found for the plaintiff, a black woman.
Why did the jury do the right thing? How did Emeline talk the best lawyer in town into representing her? What happened to Emeline after she won her freedom? These questions are mysteries left to the ages, but Emeline’s story teaches that when the voiceless have the opportunity to be heard their stories can reverberate through time.
Emeline must have had many thoughts as she walked out of that courtroom that day, but as Michael Hall points out in his well-written story in the latest Texas Monthly, undoubtedly it never crossed her mind that nearly two centuries later her court case would become an opera staged by one of the finest opera companies in the nation or that it would be performed at the oldest and largest professional African-American theater in the Southwest.
The Houston Grand Opera will debut “What Wings They Were: The Case of Emeline,” a chamber opera at the Ensemble Theater today. For those unable to attend, the Houston Bar Association is hosting two performances next week — lawyers can receive continuing education credit — at a Harris County courthouse near the spot where Emeline’s case was heard. Papers from the famous case and from Gray’s life will also be displayed at the courthouse performances.
Baker Botts celebrates its 175th anniversary this year. The firm has not borne founder Gray’s name since he left “Gray, Botts & Baker” in 1872 to become a justice on the Texas Supreme Court. From the stage, singer Christopher Besch — who plays Gray — will boom out in lawyerly outrage: “Gentlemen of the jury, who here dares call, this free woman of color, anything but free.” It’s fitting that it is Emeline — probably one of Gray’s poorest and least influential clients — who will bring Gray’s name to life again.
This stirring story of Emeline’s courage and Gray’s integrity would have disintegrated into dust if it weren’t for the efforts of District Judge Mark Davidson, who together with former Harris County District Clerk Charles Bacarisse, worked to preserve the county courthouse documents. The papers had been deteriorating in a building in the Fifth Ward with no air-conditioning. Baker Botts underwrote the costs of preserving the file and later, the opera.
Emeline was willing to risk everything for freedom. Gray laid the groundwork for our state where the rule of law governed. Davidson acted to preserve the story. The Houston Grand Opera translated their story into music. As a society, we still suffer because of injustice. All the more reason to celebrate the improbable victory of one legal team in song.