But after Juneteenth the message spread from the island, and those 1200 people, plus the other quarter million enslaved people in the state of Texas kept the oral history of what happened here in Galveston alive.
These hybrid trials had no professional attorneys or judges, and no evidence outside the spoken word and a case file detailing the crimes of the accused.
From existing oral tradition, audiences knew the tales of the long siege, the epic duels outside the city walls, and the cunning trick that finally won the war.
Some of the film footage of the assassination is preserved and licensed by the museum, as are recordings of oral histories of eyewitnesses and key figures in the events.
We tend to think of writing as being about poetry or fiction or history, but early literature in that sense was in fact oral-learnt by heart and recited or sung.