By A’Viyon M. Robinson Rev. John Henry “Jack” Yates (1828–1897) was a father, husband, man of God, community leader, and entrepreneur. In 1926, students honored Yates’s legacy by voting to name their new school Jack Yates Senior High School. Photo in the public domain. When mentioning Jack Yates High School to a native Houstonian, they might recount fond memories or well-known anecdotes about a school whose legacy is […]
By Antonio Lopez and Andres Rios The original Jack Yates campus, located at 2610 Elgin, was the second Black high school in Houston. The school became a pillar of the community and a beacon of education in the Third Ward. The school has been home to notable alumni, from musicians and artists to activists and politicians. Photo courtesy of the Sloane Collection. A pillar […]
Houston’s Fourth Ward as seen through the lens of Roxanne Quezada Chartouni’s camera in 1987.
By Matthew Crow Few of Houston’s residents today realize that during World War I Houston had a military base just west of downtown. Camp Logan, one of sixteen auxiliary military training camps established during the era, sprawled across much of the area that is now Memorial Park, south from Washington Avenue and across the bayou […]
In the late 1950s and early 1960s young people in Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Tennessee held sit-ins that caught the eye of Texas Southern University (TSU) students in Houston
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 […]
There is a movement that places importance on knowing where food comes from for nutritious, environmental, and economic reasons. This trend has taken many forms, such as community gardening, schools gardens, farmers’ markets, and even restaurants that support local growers. The UH – Oral History of Houston has collected several interviews that document this endeavor. […]
Our series “When There Were Wards” will appear over three issues of the print magazine tracing the history of Houston’s ward system and featuring highlights on each of the six wards.
Clatter of light rail running down Main Street, cars roaring by, crowds gathering at the crosswalk champing to get on with the day—hectic life fills twenty-first century downtown Houston. But when a Houstonian takes a short stroll from the busy intersection of Congress and Main to nearby Sesquicentennial Park and wanders down the walk to […]
The struggle to preserve the history of Freedmen’s Town in Houston, Texas is entangled in the questionable systems of urban renewal and development, which inevitably work to displace many of the poor African American residents from the community.
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