On September 2, 2002 a group of city officials and Houston’s then-mayor, Lee P. Brown, solidified the fate of an abandoned brick building at 1300 Victor Street in Freedmen’s Town Historic District. Through a significant restoration effort, Fourth Ward’s late-1920s-era African-American elementary school, vacant since 1984, was to become a dual-purpose cultural center and research […]
Archive | Communities
Progressive Programming at KUHT
By Emily Vinson The KUHT television program People are Taught to be Different had the noble aim of improving intercultural understanding, and showing viewers that people are, at their core, much the same. Against a simple stage setting, elegant dancers interpreted moments of joy and sorrow, anger, and love across cultures, as the narrator provided […]
The Turkey Day Classic: Houston’s Biggest Football Rivalry
It has been over 50 years since the last Turkey Day Classic was played, yet still to this day the game is the conversation among Jack Yates and Phyllis Wheatley Alumni alike. The classic initially began as a rotation of holiday games between Yates, Washington, and Wheatley High Schools in 1927. By 1946, the overwhelming […]
Los La Rottas de Houston: A Colombian Family’s Immigration Story
By Alex La Rotta Growing up, my siblings and I occasionally asked our parents how we ended up in Houston. I was particularly interested in trying to find meaning in my dual Colombian-American identity. Here we were, this large Colombian family (forty-plus members and counting) spread across Houston, yet it seemed so happenstance. We did […]
The Growth of the Latter-day Saints Church in Houston and Katy, Texas
By James Thornock The story of the church of Latter-day Saints in Texas began with the founders of the religion as well as the state of Texas. Just before his death in 1844, church organizer Joseph Smith sent a representative to Sam Houston to negotiate for a tract of land where the Latter-day Saints could […]
German Settlers of NW Harris County
By Stephanie Gomez In the northwest corner of Houston sits the Tomball community, known for its safe suburban feel, old town buildings, and superior school districts. On a quick walk through Tomball, the visitor is exposed to a variety of delights that add to the community’s character: small restaurants with the most comforting southern dishes, […]
Around the Region Table of Contents 13.2
Download the full pdf. Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring 2016) Letter from the Editor by Editor-in-Chief Joseph A. Pratt 2 Home in the Pines: Creating the Woodlands By George T. Morgan, Jr. and John O. King with Joseph A. Pratt 8 Houston: Becoming the Ranch House City By Stephen James 13 The Bryan Museum: History in History A Conversation […]
WIMS Opening Dialogues across Race, Region & Religion
On March 7, 2016, the Welcome Wilson Houston History Collaborative and Center for Public Hisotry hosted it’s second Historically Speaking panel, “Wednesdays in Mississippi: Opening Dialogues across Race, Region, and Religion Then and Now” to discuss how the 1964 project was used at the time to combat racism and how similar methods re currently being […]
Around the Region: Letter from the Editor
At times Houston’s “suburbs” appear destined to reach from San Antonio to New Orleans and from Dallas to Cancun. Our city appears to know no bounds. Yet when I first moved to Houston upon entering Rice University in 1966, our city seemed to stop roughly at the current location of Loop 610. What a difference […]
Home in the Pines: Creating The Woodlands
Since opening in 1974 The Woodlands has grown dramatically as a distant suburb where people can live and work without commuting daily to downtown Houston. It has partially fulfilled its aspiration to be an environmentally friendly place to live for people from all economic strata of life, with housing for the rich, the middle class, […]