htps://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/24/karnes-county-mineralrights/?utm_source=Texas+Tribune+Newsleters&utm_campaign=661795a6de-trib-newsletersthebrief&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-661795a6de%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&mc_cid=661795a6de&mc_eid=71ae657b85
doc = Title to Minerals – 20230824 – Texas Tribune – Black & White Ownership Dispute
Sibley note: This ar�cle is much, much longer than all of the other newspaper ar�cles that we
use in class to illustrate stories about Texas law and mineral rights. But I encourage you to
read it. It is helpful to have a “program” to iden�fy all the “players” (please excuse the
football metaphor). I compiled the list shown below. Any errors in it are mine and were not
made by the author of this story, Alexa Ura.
Incidentally,
In order of appearance:
1. The Korth family (p3; white “pioneers” of Karnes County, TX, southeast of San Antonio,
about halfway between San Antonio and the Gulf Coast
2. Lou Edna Korth Stubbs Nixon (sister of Ellen; granddaughter of Fritz Korth) (p 5)
3. Ellen Ann Korth Vickers (sister of Lou; granddaughter of Fritz Korth) (p 5)
4. Fritz Korth (grandfather of Edna and Ellen (p 5)
5. The Eckford Estate (p 5) – the “estate” of Louis Eckford
6. Louis and Eliza Eckford (husband and wife or brother and sister?)– acquired the land in
ques�on in the 1880s; Eliza’s ½ interest in the 147.5 acres was sold to Fritz Korth a�er her
death; Louis dies without a will; nobody “probates” his estate; he had nine children; there
were over 200 living descendants of Fritz by 2008
7. Natasha Haskins (p 6) – descendant of Louis Eckford
8. Willie Jean Eckford Hardaway (p 7) , a great-great-granddaughter of Louis and Eliza
9. Quinton Hardaway Jr., (p 7), husband of Willie Jean (she dies first)
10. Stella Marks (p 13), a lawyer and descendant of Louis Eckford, takes over a mess of a
lawsuit and cleans it up; gets a proper resolu�on for the descendants
Page 1 of 19
Family legacies and the state’s Jim Crow
past underlie a fight over mineral rights
on a stretch of South Texas scrubland
Descendants of a prominent white family and a formerly enslaved couple are
fighting over ownership — and the oil and gas royalties that would come with it —
of an 147.5-acre tract that has bound and divided generations of their families.
BY ALEXA URA
AUG. 24, 20232 HOURS AGO
Page 2 of 19
Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to
speed on the most essential Texas news.
KARNES COUNTY 1 — A few miles southeast of where a two-lane farm road cuts
across Highway 80 lies a sliver of land — 147.5 acres, to be exact — holding the
stories of two Texas families, one Black and one white.
For almost 100 years, each family has held a half-interest in the property in
northeast Karnes County. One family stayed on it, sinking deep roots and
growing its wealth. The other vanished from it, scattering across Texas and
beyond, succeeding generations often unaware they owned a share of the scrubstudded parcel.
But within the past 15 years, oil and gas riches have made the land valuable, and
descendants of the two families must now reckon with the disparate fortunes
found or lost since their ancestors crossed paths here. Doing so means
untangling the knots that bind together not just century-old family matters and
business deals, but also the racial oppression that so often determined who was
allowed to prosper2.
On one side are the Korths, a white family considered pioneers of the area,
fighting for full ownership of a beloved ranch they believe is theirs. On the other
side are the Eckfords: hundreds of descendants of a formerly enslaved couple,
trying to reclaim their stake in the land and the lost link to their inheritance.
Both families are hoping to share in royalty payouts that could be worth millions
of dollars.
Out on this expanse in the heart of the Eagle Ford Shale, the circumstances
surrounding how these acres of scrub and ranchland passed from one family to
the other are complex, involving life during a time of overt racism, an insanity
trial, a clouded deed of trust and the sale of an estate. All is now under scrutiny
1
Sibley note: Karnes County, TX is southeast of San Antonio, about halfway between San Antonio and the Gulf
Coast
2
Sibley note: I recommend that you should consider this “racial” problem an undisputed fact, like “1 + 1 = 2” or
“Texas is hot in the summer�me.” Texas has a very sordid history of race rela�ons that only began to improve,
very slowly, during the 1960s. Most of us are very uncomfortable talking about this fact of the history of the
state we love. But it is dishonest to deny the past.
Page 3 of 19
as the courts determine whether the Korths effectively divested the Eckfords of
their half-interest over the more than seven decades during which the land has
been in their possession.
Theirs is a story of a land dispute but it’s also about legacy. About one family
wanting to hold on to the investment of generations and another seeking justice
over what went missing in the days of Jim Crow.
And none of it would have happened but for a shale play that brought oil giants
and their hungry interests to town, throwing into question who rightfully owns
the 147.5-acre tract.
A flare burns off excess natural gas 3 along Texas State Highway 80 in Karnes County. Within the past
15 years, oil and gas riches have made the land valuable, and descendants of the two families must
now reckon with the disparate fortunes found or lost since their ancestors crossed paths here.
3
Sibley note: This is called flaring, and it is very bad for the environment and a waste of a valuable natural
resource. We have be flaring gas for many decades because oil and gas come out of the same hole in the ground,
the oil is very valuable, but o�en there is no local gas market – or local pipeline system to move the gas to a
beter market – so oil companies produce and sell the oil but burn off all the gas just to get rid of it. Today, there
is very strong support to build systems that will capture the natural gas, strip out the CO2, and store the CO2 in
geological forma�ons deep underground – AND – find ways to use the methane in the gas to power local
electricity genera�on systems.
Page 4 of 19
The landmen arrive
The first mention of the Eagle Ford Shale in Karnes County’s community
newspaper appeared in the classifieds section in late 2009.
“Have you been contacted by an oil and gas landman recently?” the short
announcement asked. It pointed readers to a website where landowners posted
the sort of lease offers on the table for those lucky enough to own property
within the 26-county swath over the geological formation rich in oil and natural
gas.
Drilling in the nation’s second largest shale field, covering roughly 20,000 square
miles in an arc stretching northeast from Laredo, took off in 2010. It transformed
Karnes County’s ranching and farming economy into an oil and gas powerhouse
with well pads scattered throughout its brush and grasslands.
Oil and gas companies had begun poring over property deeds and approaching
local landowners to sign over drilling rights as early as 2007. That’s when
representatives for Crashiel Resources, acting on behalf of a drilling subsidiary
of ConocoPhillips, reached out to Lou Eda Korth Stubbs Nixon and Ellen Ann
Korth Vickers.
The Korth sisters had inherited many acres of land from their father, a successful
rancher and banker who had inherited it from his father, Fritz Korth, both
prominent figures in the area. The land included 147.5 acres on the eastern end
of one of their ranches, shaped like a capital F, on which the family had plowed
the earth, planted grass, hunted doves and coyotes and leased the land to graze
cattle.
But as the landman and title lawyers assigned to their property tracked down its
ownership, a different family name emerged. An inventory of Fritz Korth’s estate
at the time of his death in 1948 noted that he owned only an undivided half
interest in the 147.5 acres “known as the Eckford Estate.”
“We had always thought we owned it,” Ellen Ann would say later.
In a November 2007 oil, gas and mineral lease proposal sent to Lou Eda, the
landman included a breakdown of the Korths’ mineral interests showing the
147.5 acres — which would net the Korth sisters an $18,437 signing bonus —
Page 5 of 19
were jointly owned by the Korth descendants and what it described as the
“Estate of Louis Eckford, deceased.”
The Korth family entered into a contract with ConocoPhillips in early 2008,
signing division orders that reflected their shared half interest in the tract.
It wasn’t until 2011 that ConocoPhillips began contacting the owners of the
other half interest listed as belonging to Louis Eckford. By then, there were more
than 200 rigs at work in the Eagle Ford Shale.
A century worth of records and deeds linked the land to Louis and Eliza Eckford.
They had acquired it in the late 1880s, less than 30 years from the day freedom
finally came to the Black people enslaved in Texas. Eliza’s half had been sold to
Fritz Korth after her death, but Louis had died without a will. Under state law at
that time, his share would have been inherited by his nine children and later by
their descendants. There were at least 200 at the point ConocoPhillips began
tracking them down.
While some Eckford descendants were still in Texas, some still residing in
Karnes County even, many had not known about their lasting connection to this
place.
In a January 2011 post on The Mineral Rights Forum website, Natasha Haskins
described her shock when she found out she had an interest in her ancestors’
land.
“I don’t know anything about the property because it was owned by my great,
great, great grandparents in the early 1900’s and since the majority of my
father's side family members are deceased with the exception of nine, I
automatically qualified as the heir to 1/2 the mineral rights,” she wrote, asking
for advice on what she was getting herself into.
Page 6 of 19
Louis Eckford’s name in an abstract of �tle dated Nov. 21, 1889, declaring his purchase of land
from the guardian of Lula Haskins. Much of what is known about the Eckford couple has been
passed down through family lore and deduced by piecing together history captured in
handwriten documents.
The Eckfords
Louis Eckford was born in Texas around 1840. His enslavement appears to be
recorded on page 42 of the 1860 census of Karnes County.
He and Eliza, who was born in Mississippi, wed the next year and welcomed their
first child a year later — a union that wasn’t recognized for at least a decade
when the Texas Legislature legalized the marriages of people “formerly held in
bondage” and legitimized their children.
Much of what is known about the couple has been passed down through family
lore and deduced by piecing together history captured in handwritten
documents. Some of the early work of pulling those threads together was done
by Willie Jean Eckford Hardaway, a great-great-granddaughter of Louis and Eliza
who was among the first descendants to hear from the companies interested in
the family’s mineral rights.
Willie Jean was steadfast in her exploration, using quiet moments to escape to a
small office in the back of her San Antonio home. She dug deep, uprooting
documents confirming some of the details of stories that until then had been
faint tales passed by word of mouth. Other details were lost to the past; her
father had been an only child and died decades before. So deeper she went trying
to fill in as many of the empty spaces in the tapestry of her family’s history as
she could.
Page 7 of 19
“It was mostly [out of] curiosity,” said Quinton Hardaway Jr., who became her
widower when she died of cancer in 2016. “Curiosity got hold of her, and that’s
when she took it and ran with it.”
What eventually became known is that after emancipation, Louis and Eliza
settled in the Flaccus community — also called the McTennel Colony — a
settlement of Black residents where many freed slaves retained the surnames of
the people who had held them as property.
They appeared to mesh with the local white community. In June 1891, the
residents of Flaccus wrote to the editor of the Karnes County News to thank
“prominent white friends,” including the editor and the county judge, for joining
them at a recent festivity, possibly a Juneteenth celebration.
“We the colored citizens of the McTennell colony wish to make a few remarks
concerning our celebration,” they wrote. “It passed off quietly and we hope all
who were present enjoyed themselves.” (The spellings of McTennel vary in
records.)
Louis’ name appeared on the county voter rolls as early as 1867, but the stench
of the Civil War still permeated the area where most residents had supported the
Confederacy. The Knights of the Golden Circle, a secretive organization that
supported the preservation of slavery, had been active in the area with a “castle”
in nearby Helena. White residents in the county made the trip to Karnes City to
attend minstrel shows.
More generally, Texas was a segregated society controlled by white men who
denied Black people full citizenship and pursued measures to keep them
subservient.4 The state Legislature initially refused to ratify the Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Amendments, which abolished slavery and guaranteed equal rights
under the law. And the white power structure either sanctioned or turned a blind
eye to the racist terror Black Texans faced, from lynch mobs to the emergence of
the Jim Crow.
Despite all of that, freed slaves and other Black people seemed to find prosperity
in Karnes County. Louis and Eliza, with their growing family, began acquiring
4
Sibley note: Unfortunately, this statement is true and very understated. This statement is not hyperbole
spouted by someone with a “woke” agenda.
Page 8 of 19
and selling land near McTennel Creek with the 1880 census listing him as a
property owner and farmer. But their fortunes would turn around the time the
county promoted itself as the “banner county of the south west” rich in fertile
lands and access to the railroads connecting it to the major hubs of San Antonio
and Houston.
In 1889, Louis purchased land, including the 147.5 acres in question, from a
prominent family.
Four years later — just after a second transaction involving the land that showed
it had been paid off in full — he was dragged from his home, beaten and jailed,
according to family lore. A month later, records show, Louis was declared insane
by a jury. It was an astonishing turn of events, considering that just a few
months before he had been asked to give remarks during the Arbor Day
celebration in McTennel Colony, which was described by a local paper as a
settlement of “intelligent, progressive and prosperous colored people.”
Louis was put “under restraint and medical treatment” at a state facility in
Austin, at the time known as the Texas State Lunatic Asylum. The court in Louis’
trial had determined there was no one to manage his affairs, leading his
descendants to believe his trial amounted to nothing more than a land grab, but
Eliza hired an attorney and convinced a probate court to allow her to serve as his
guardian.
When Louis died in 1896, his stake in the 147.5 acres passed to their nine
children while Eliza retained half.5 (Eliza later gained slightly more than half
when she was preceded in death by a child whose share was distributed to his
mother and siblings.)
In retracing their story, Louis’ descendants initially believed he died in a fire at
the state hospital, buried in an unmarked grave in the capital city, but The Texas
Tribune found a newspaper clipping from 1894 that indicates he made it back
home two years before his death.
5
Sibley note: Under Texas law at that �me (and s�ll true today, but with differences), if a husband died without
a last will and testament, most of “his” property would be inherited by his children, not his wife. However, If the
property were acquired during the �me of the marriage, in most cases the wife already owned a ½ interest in
the property as her half of the community estate. Her ownership of that ½ was not affected by the death of the
husband or by whatever he provide in his will, if he had one.
Page 9 of 19
“We learn that Louis Eckford, a former good colored citizen of this county, but
who has been confined in the lunatic asylum in Austin for some time, has so for
recovered as to allow his return home,” read an entry in the local paper. “His
son, Will, left for Austin Wednesday after his father.”
Ownership of the 147.5 acres remained unchanged — with Eliza preparing a will
that would leave her share to her seven surviving children — through 1923 when
Eliza took out a $300 loan from Fritz Korth, a local rancher known as a money
lender who would also serve as a director of the local bank. The loan was secured
by a deed of trust on the land.
The Eckford descendants today have questions about the loan, doubting Eliza
would put the property on the line when it was worth far more than the loan
amount.
But the deed of trust would come into play when she died two years later, a year
short of the repayment term on the loan. In her will, Eliza had picked someone
to administer her estate, but a probate judge rejected Eliza’s choice, arguing he
lived too far from Karnes County. The judge instead appointed T. D. Ruckman,
part of a prominent family that owned the local bank.6
It’s unknown why the Eckford children didn’t claim any of the land while its sale
to pay Eliza’s debts languished for 14 years — or if they knew they still owned
the half that had belonged to Louis.
But in 1939, Fritz Korth paid $735.50 for it, and the 147.5-acre tract passed into
the control of the Korths.
The Korths
Though the area was first inhabited by indigenous people and later Spanish
colonists and Mexican settlers, many of the small towns that dotted early Karnes
County were established in the mid-to-late 1800s by what are described locally
as pioneering families, among them the Korths.
6
Sibley note: This is very despicable ac�on by the probate court and the bank involved.
Page 10 of 19
With its loamy soils spreading out from the banks of the San Antonio River, the
land was productive, and the arrival of the railroads broadened access to
markets.
A longtime resident of the town of Runge, Fritz Korth was a well-known figure.
He established his wide-ranging business and ranch interests early on,
cultivating land and selling property. He would wear various hats throughout his
life, serving as a Runge city commissioner and a director of the Karnes County
National Bank.
His two sons would grow into prominence themselves. Fred Korth, an attorney,
served as secretary of the Navy under President John F. Kennedy, while Romeo
Korth took after his father as a rancher and banker, succeeding Fritz as a director
of the bank and serving on a local school board and various associations.
Fritz’s death in 1948 made the front page of the Karnes County News, which
called him a “widely known, good and beloved pioneer citizen” and described his
funeral as “one of the largest ever held here.”
It fell to the brothers to manage his estate. The probate proceedings noted
Fritz’s half interest in the 147.5 acres on which the family had maintained cattle
and worked the land since taking possession in 1939.
The Korth ownership share was split between the brothers and their mother,
though Romeo would eventually buy them out.
The 147.5 acres had become part of a larger ranch called the “The Colony” that
Romeo and his family would work for many years to come, though some ranch
hands would continue referencing the smaller area as the Eckford tract.
Romeo’s grandchildren, who knew him as Daddy Ome, would later recall
summers spent on the ranch, stacking hay bales and eating his dove and quail
soup. His daughter Lou Eda, having gone to school in San Antonio and married
while in college, would eventually return to help run the ranch, modernizing its
operations.
Over generations, the wealth drawn in part from the family’s ranching
enterprises allowed them to broaden their portfolio. Today, including the ranch
Page 11 of 19
inherited by the Korth sisters, the extended family has amassed significant land
holdings in South Texas.
The lawsuits
The Korths were long ensconced on the land and things would have remained
that way if not for the landmen that came calling. Spread across the state and
country, lines to the Eckfords began ringing, and the effort to lock up drilling
rights would bring these two families back together generations later.
The issue moved into the courts in September 2012 when Burlington Resources
Oil and Gas Company, a subsidiary of ConocoPhillips, asked a district court to
grant them a receivership lease covering the Eckford interest in the 147.5 acres.
The legal mechanism is used by companies when they’re unable to locate the
mineral rights owners of an estate despite “diligent effort.” It would allow
Burlington Resources to drill and set aside any leasing bonuses or royalty
payments so the missing owners — in this case, the unknown descendants of
Louis Eckford — could later claim them in court.
Three months later, the Korth family filed its own lawsuit, trying to establish
that it owned the entire 147.5 acres outright. Drilling would begin that year.
The ensuing dispute captures the parallel yet starkly different stories of the two
families, tracing more than a century. Ownership of the tract was passed on
Page 12 of 19
through wills and estates over generations on the Korth side and unknowingly
carried over on the Eckford side.
Lawyers for the Korth family point to their stewardship of the land and the
property taxes they’ve paid over more than 70 years to defend their ownership
claim. The Eckfords, they’ve bluntly argued, didn’t come back to Karnes County
until the oil and gas companies arrived.
The Eckford descendants have countered that they didn’t initiate this squabble;
the companies eager to drill the land did. And it was the Korths, they’ve said,
who stopped recognizing their co-ownership of the land even though it was on
record.
In their lawsuit, the Korths argued that Eliza Eckford transferred full ownership
to Fritz Korth through the 1923 deed of trust used to secure the $300 she
borrowed from him, which did not specify that she only owned half.7 They also
claimed full ownership of the land through adverse possession, a complex legal
framework under which someone can claim ownership of a property even if it
didn’t originally belong to them.8
This set off a legal roller coaster of partial victories for each side and winding
appeals that have extended the dispute for more than a decade. In 2016, a
district judge rejected the Korths’ claim regarding the scope of the 1923 deed,
finding that the Eckfords were co-owners, but he agreed the Korths had met the
requirements for claiming the land through adverse possession and awarded
them ownership without a trial.
The Eckfords appealed with a lawyer in the family, Stella Marks, taking over the
case. Marks, who grew up in Texas but had been living in California, hadn’t
specialized in oil and gas issues or real property for that matter but she had done
appellate work.
She eventually rearranged her life to spearhead the family’s legal case, believing
it a service she owed to those who had come before her.
7
8
Sibley note: A first-year law student would call this a bullshit argument.
Sibley note: “Adverse possession” is complicated and legally dangerous to the Eckford family’s rights.
Page 13 of 19
Marks had a modest upbringing; as a child she was bused north from East Austin
to what had been a white high school. Her father had been in the military, and
her mother worked at a state home for young boys with disabilities. Her
grandparents had both graduated from college but could not get teaching jobs
because of their race. Instead, her grandfather rose to be the head waiter at
premier Austin hotels. Her grandmother operated a tea room for the Black
faculty of what would become Huston-Tillotson University, who weren’t allowed
in other lunchrooms.
“I had so much responsibility to give back, given the sacrifices that my family
made so that I could have a good life,” Marks said.
When the San Antonio-based court of appeals in 2017 ruled the local judge had
been too quick to award the Korths ownership, it was the Korth family’s turn to
appeal. The Texas Supreme Court rejected their request to hear the case, and the
matter was ultimately sent back to Karnes County district court and set for trial
in the summer of 2023.
About $574 million worth of oil and gas has been extracted so far in the area that
includes the land in question, according to public production data records
compiled by the Eckfords’ lawyers. But what share of that is attributed to the
147.5 acres is not a matter of public record. The percentage of royalties to be
paid out is likely millions of dollars.
The trial
On a warm July morning, members of the Korth and Eckford families filed into a
Karnes County Courthouse recently restored to its original 1895 style. The seat
of government looked much as it had more than a century before when the early
chapters in the Korth and Eckford saga played out, some in the same secondfloor courtroom in which the families would sit during a trial of the Korths’
lawsuit seeking full ownership.
The two families sat on slatted benches on opposite ends of the courtroom. A
few shared one bench in the middle. Behind the Eckfords hung portraits of
former county judges, including some who appeared to be ancestors of T. D.
Ruckman, the banker who had administered Eliza Eckford’s estate and whose
name would echo through the courtroom during the five-day trial.
Page 14 of 19
The case, Eckford family lawyer Wayne Collins told the jury, was about two
families who settled near Ecleto Creek and tried to grasp at the American dream.
The trial itself turned out to be an unconventional setting for two family
reunions.
During pauses in the proceedings or while congregating in the hall, the Eckford
descendants connected for the first time with distant relatives. They traded
photos pulled from pocketbooks and wallets, asked about each other’s children
and traced family lineages.
“Now, who are your parents?” was repeated over and over.
Over long tables at lunch, the smaller contingent of Korths traded stories about
working on the ranch and recalled how grandfather Romeo had ridden horseback
into his 90s. They were divided over his cooking, particularly his famous boiled
okra, and were planning a formal family reunion in October.
For roughly 40 hours, including awkward breaks during which the two families
mostly steered clear of each other, their attorneys recited winding family
histories and laid out the complicated legalities of adverse possession and cotenancy to a 12-person jury.
Several hours were filled replaying video depositions of the Korth sisters, the
landman hired by Burlington and a title attorney, who reiterated that the
Eckford children held on to their half interest in the 147.5 acres because Eliza
could not have sold to Fritz Korth what did not belong to her.
Page 15 of 19
The courtroom jury box inside the Karnes County Courthouse is lit by window light. The trial
itself turned out to be an unconven�onal se�ng for two family reunions. Credit:
Eckford and Korth descendants also took the stand. Frank Spencer Stubbs, Fritz
Korth’s great grandson, offered a detailed look of the ranch’s geography and
explained the backstory of a series of photos that chronicled the family’s deep
ties to the ranch. It included several images of his mother, Lou Eda, vaccinating
calves and working on the ranch but also one of her at age 4 holding a pail in
front of cotton shrubs. He also described the family’s efforts to enrich the land —
a necessity his grandfather, Romeo Korth, instilled.
“If you don’t take care of the land, your livestock will never survive,” Stubbs
recalled him saying.
Among the Eckfords who testified was Thelma Loftis, who at 84 is the oldest
living descendant of Anthony Eckford, Louis and Eliza’s seventh child. She said
she was there to provide insight into her family.
When he testified, Kneeland Youngblood read off the names of some of the
nearly 30 Eckfords who had been in court that week, each standing in the
audience as they were called. An educator. A banker. A D.C. lobbyist. An oil and
gas man.
Where the Korths had a long and dedicated connection to the ranch, the
Eckfords’ presence in the courtroom was subtly framed as the living legacy left
behind by Louis and Eliza, who had survived slavery and whose descendants had
survived the Jim Crow era.
Though the historical context of the time period in which much of the case’s
events played out was evident, it was hardly mentioned.
But the heaviness of that history, that for the Eckfords this was about more than
mineral rights, began to weigh over the proceedings as the trial came to a close.
As the judge began reading his instructions to the jury for their deliberations,
Marks rose from the attorneys’ table and walked to the back of the room out of
the jury's view. Leaning on an archway at the courtroom entrance, she wiped
tears from her eyes.
Page 16 of 19
During closing arguments, Marks had composed herself as she spoke of the
importance of considering the people behind the events in question to figure out
“why they did what they did or didn’t do.”
The ancestors of both families had desired to leave a legacy for their children.
That much was clear, she said, before focusing on the Eckfords and the
unlikelihood that Eliza would have put her entire legacy at risk for $300.
“When they were born, they were considered property. When they died, they
were property owners,” Marks said. Indicating her relatives sitting in the
audience, she said, “they are the embodiment of achievement that Louis and
Eliza couldn’t have imagined.”
During the Korth side’s closing arguments, a polished, experienced attorney
named Ricardo E. Morales stuck to the documents in retelling the story,
including the more than 70 years of property tax receipts in the Korths’ names
and the deeds given to Fritz Korth. He told the jury the Korths did not consider
the two families co-owners, and that the inventory of Fritz Korth’s estate
showing only a half interest in the land holds no legal weight.9
Even if the Eckfords were once co-tenants, Morales said, the Korths had ousted
them from the land over the more than seven decades they had been in
possession, legally earning the property.10
And he questioned what he called the “118 years of silence from the Eckford
children” and why Louis and Eliza’s adult children did not come forward when
the land was put up for sale after Eliza died.11
“We don’t know why five generations ago they did what they did, but it’s what
they did,” Morales said. “Now that [the land] has value, you can’t undo that.”
9
Sibley note: More BS arguments.
Sibley note: More BS arguments.
11
Sibley note: More BS arguments.
10
Page 17 of 19
The verdict
Three hours after the jury was sent back to deliberate, a bailiff crossed the creaky
floors of the courtroom and handed the judge a note saying a decision had been
reached.
The jury faced multiple questions regarding the Korths’ claim that they owned
the land in its entirety, including whether the Korths had acquired a
presumption of deed, whether they had adversely possessed the land and
whether they had acquired full title to the land. The room collectively held its
breath as the jury answered “no” to each question.
The Eckfords exchanged both stunned and relieved glances or nods as the judge
confirmed that the jurors had agreed on the verdict. Some of them began to
quietly weep. “We won,” someone in the family whispered.
The Korths quietly exited the courtroom.
Once the judge gaveled out, the Eckford descendants stood to tearfully embrace
each other. At the back of the room, Ethel Turner’s thoughts turned to Willie
Jean, whose research had served as a foundation for the legal fight but who
hadn’t lived long enough to see it resolved.
“It started with her,” said Turner, a cousin of Willie Jean’s. “She passed, but we
picked it up. For her and for all of the family.”
Still, it remains unclear how the decadelong saga will end. The lawyers
came back together last week for a post-trial hearing, and the judge must
still enter his final judgment in the case. Already, the Korth family’s
lawyer has indicated they could appeal and kick off another round of
litigation.
“We’re disappointed with the jury verdict,” Morales said two weeks after the
trial. “We thought there was plenty of evidence to support the ouster over 72
years of possession, and we’re certainly looking at any and all appellate issues in
the case.”
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The Eckfords also have a pending legal claim, regarding the accounting of the
royalty interests to be paid out from the production on the land. For now, the
royalties remain in suspense, as is typical when there’s a title dispute.
But for some Eckfords, the victory came before the verdict.
Craig Smith remembers traveling as a child to Karnes City, the place his
grandmother knew as her homestead with a house just four blocks from the
courthouse in which he sat all week watching the trial.
He had thought about his grandmother while there, how she had run an
upholstery shop in San Antonio at a time when Black people could not easily
start businesses and how the case, for all it had taken, had shown their greatness
— and the greatness of what Louis and Eliza accomplished. The “richness” of
their story was what the family was fighting for, he said.
The Eckfords weren’t asking to be paid back for anything, Smith reasoned. They
were questioning why their share in the land was taken from them.12
“When people see other people being courageous enough to stand up and ask for
justice,” he said, “that’s a great thing because there may be other families, other
groups, other individuals that have been taken advantage of through no fault of
their own but blocked by a system that was manipulated against them.”
“It’s only justice that people are seeking,” he said.
12
Sibley note: IMHO, this is the correct way to state the essence of the case.
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