Freedom Papers of Silvia Hector-Webber Brought To Light

We at the Webber Family Preservation Project want to make our sincere and deepest gratitude known to the team at Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder. The exhibit that the Webber Family Preservation Project was able to present to the public would not have ever happened without them. When we first reached out to inform the Dolph Briscoe Center in Austin at the University Of Texas they were in possession of the Freedom Papers of Silvia Hector-Webber, they were unaware of their existence in their collection and the importance of them. In reaching out to them we also proposed to work with them in making them publicly available and having them displayed but we were quickly dismissed. That ignited in those of us in the organization a desire and drive to change that. Our organization had been formed by descendants and preservation experts who were tired of descendants being told their history, and decided it was time that descendants tell their history. That’s when we reached out to the Josh Koskoff and the legal team. They not only responded immediately to our email but set up a meeting and started on the journey to where we are now.

Even with legal representation the negotiations and navigation of that journey was still hard and a consistent fight to for inclusion and progress. But had we not had the team atKoskoff, Koskoff & Bieder we certainly would never have made it past the original conversation with the Dolph Briscoe Center and University of Texas. We are eternally appreciative to the legal team at Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, and their support, commitment, and dedication to restorative justice by inclusion of the descendants who are represented in the documents, pictures, and stories of those in universities, libraries, archives, and museums in our country. Without them we would still be in the position of requesting to just view the Freedom Papers of Silvia Hector Webber with the rest of the public and certainly would not have had the ability to ensure they’re publicly displayed in a respectful, accurate, and inclusive way and with the necessary context to understand what they show about the history of Texas, race, and gender, and our country as a whole.