Milam County Historical Commission
Milam County, Texas
Milam County, Texas
All Credit for this article
goes to Mike Brown
and the
Rockdale Reporter
goes to Mike Brown
and the
Rockdale Reporter
Legendary Sheriff Topic for Talk
Son to present history program on famous dad
by Mike Brown - Rockdale Reporter Editor
2014-09-18
Before there was “the right stuff,” before there was “true grit,” there was Carl Black.
Lots of law enforcement officers are called legends, Carl Black was one. He was Milam
County’s sheriff from 1944 to 1977.
That’s a long time but it was the way he did it that still brings respect, even awe, to
the voices of old-timers who remember him today.
That respect worked on both sides of the law. More than once a standoff ended with “son,
give me the gun” instead of a hail of crossfire.
PROGRAM — From 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Black’s son—retired District Judge William C. “Bill”
Black — will present a program on his famous father in the Milam County Museum in
Cameron.
It’s called “In Jail With Carl Black” and the title is more than a little sly.
The Black family, including Bill, lived on the first floor of the Victorian-era towered
county jail which is now the museum.
Judge Black will have plenty of stories.
BEGINNINGS — Carl Clinton Black was born in Milam County in 1899, the oldest of six
children.
He started out to be a farmer but as a young man entered law enforcement as a “special
deputy” to another legendary Milam Sheriff, L. L. Blaylock.
(Blaylock, who served from 1918 to 1922, was the grandfather of businessman Drayton
McLane and the inspiration for McLane’s “Sheriff Blaylock’s” food brand.)
Black was peace officer in the small farming community of Jones Prairie in northeast
Milam.
World War II changed everything. By the early 1940s Black was working as a regular deputy
under Sheriff Valter White.
White went into the military and his wife Sarah served out the remainder of his term.
Mrs. White stepped down and on Nov. 7, 1944, there was an election for a new sheriff.
Black won with 83 percent of the vote. He would be re-elected 10 times and would not lose
an election until age 77 to a man 35 years younger.
RESPECT — Black was everything you could think of in a Texas sheriff, fair, stoic and six
kinds of tough.
Many remember his large hands which were accompanied by a very light touch when he shook
hands. He was afraid he’d hurt you.
Black could have hurt criminals, but because of the kind of man he was, he usually didn’t
have to.
Glenn Dodson, a former neighbor of Black’s and a Houston author, recalled the time the
sheriff answered a call to a rural community report that an elderly man was “shooting at
people.”
It was true. In fact the man let loose with a shotgun blast, striking Black’s patrol car
as he drove up.
The sheriff was hit in the hand and arm.
SWAT team time? No.
Black called for backup.
Once it arrived he got out of his car, walked across the yard to the front door and told
the man to come out and surrender.
That’s what happened.
FUGITIVES — While violent crime didn’t often touch Milam County, it did happen.
Former Milam Deputy Sheriff Greg Kouba recalled that in 1963 four young men — one from
Milam County — went on a wild and violent crime spree.
First they robbed Wied Hardware in Cameron, then stole a car near Buckholts and burned
down an area home.
Next they drove to Oklahoma, tied up a couple, took their car and went to Yorktown,
Alabama.
There, they shot a man to death, threw him into a well and tossed his injured wife in
after him.
She survived.
The quartet returned to Buckholts, but Black was hot on their trail. Thanks to an
informant, he tracked them to a rural home where they were captured without a shot being
fired.
They were returned to Alabama, and initially received the death penalty before the
sentences were reduced to life in prison after appeal.
LIGHTER SIDE — Not everything in Black’s 32-year tenure was that grim.
With the family living on the jail’s first floor — and Black’s wife Mary preparing meals
for the prisoners — there was plenty of interaction.
One night an inmate slipped between the cell bars to the outside of the jail tower and
scooted down a drainpipe.
The sheriff was on a call.
Mrs. Black heard the racket, tried unsuccessfully to slip the scabbard off her husband’s
shotgun, then ran outside in her nightgown and slippers and tried to whack the escapee by
swinging the gun, barrel first, like a baseball bat.
He took off on foot. But it ended like a typical Carl Black case.
The sheriff returned, went to the man’s home and told him it was time to come back to
jail.
That’s what happened.
HALLOWEEN — Black also had a sense of humor.
In those more innocent days, Cameron-area youngsters had a unique Halloween-night prank.
They’d go out in the country in their trucks, hitch up farm implements, bring them back
to Cameron and drive around the streets all night.
And behind them often would be Sheriff Black and a couple of his deputies.
His rules: “Don’t tear anything up and when you’re through, put them on the courthouse
lawn.”
Old-timers can remember each Nov. 1 meeting a stream of farmers on roads coming into
Cameron to reclaim their equipment from the farm supply lot that the courthouse lawn had
become overnight.
BUSY MAN — Black died in 1989 at age 90.
He is remembered for being sheriff, of course, but also for the many other hats he wore.
In addition to being sheriff, he was the county’s adult and juvenile probation officer,
befriending and helping countless troubled youth.
He served as Milam’s Civil Defense coordinator and for 20 years was chief of the Cameron
Volunteer Fire Department.
But mostly, Carl Black is remembered simply for being Carl Black.
Like this story, recalled by Dodson, who said his father told it to him.
The sheriff raised cattle and horses and ran them on several acres of land. One afternoon
he and his wife were out at their spread when Black parked the vehicle and headed off
into deep grass to check out something.
He stopped and called, apparently without much emotion: “Mary, bring me the gun. I got a
rattlesnake here.”
Mrs. Black got the gun, stepped out of the vehicle and told him to come get it himself.
“Can’t,” he replied. “I’m standing on him.”
.
Carl Black was Milam sheriff from 1944-1977.
His son, Judge Bill Black, will speak Tuesday at county jail-museum in Cameron.
His son, Judge Bill Black, will speak Tuesday at county jail-museum in Cameron.
.