Women who made history despite no one ever having heard of them.
By Teresa Kenney
BECAUSE, OF COURSE, A PHOTO OF
ABIE BURTON COULD NOT BE FOUND
I’m a procrastinator by nature. And going down internet rabbit holes is my favorite way to procrastinate (aside from a lovely nap on the couch). Oftentimes, I’m researching one subject, and two hours later, I find myself engrossed in an article about something ever-so-tangentially-related to my original research. Oftentimes-er, those tangents are about legendary women who barely get a mention in the original material even though whatever badass thing they did merited much more than a mere footnote. I call these women “feminist footnotes.”
Take, for example, the wife of Walter Moses Burton. Now Mr. Burton is hardly a household name himself, although there is an elementary school named for him in Fresno, Texas. He was enslaved at birth in North Carolina and brought to Texas by the man who enslaved him, Thomas Burke Burton, who also taught him to read and write. After the Civil War, Thomas Burton sold Walter Burton some of his land who then made a nice living farming it and actually financially provided for Thomas Burton’s wife after Thomas died.
Four years after the war, Walter Moses Burton was also elected sheriff and tax collector in Fort Bend County and then went on to run and win a seat in the state senate. Clearly, Walter Moses Burton was a remarkable man and deserves not just a book, but also a movie based on his life. But here’s the thing: Almost as an afterthought, the article notes that his wife—whose name is not even given—was once thrown headfirst from a moving train because she refused to leave the “whites only” coach. Let me repeat that: She was thrown. From a moving train. Moving. It was in motion. And again: They didn’t even bother to tell us her first name in the article.
Fortunately, I am a dogged rabbit-hole explorer and found her name in another article: Abie. And I also found that she not only survived being thrown headfirst from a moving train, but she also outlived her husband and their three children because she is a badass.
So, Abie Burton, we salute you. You are more than a feminist footnote to us. •