FREEDMEN TOWN PROJECT: HOUSTON, TEXAS

Founded just after Emancipation on the southern banks of Buffalo Bayou, Freedmen’s Town eventually grew to become the economic, spiritual, and cultural focus of Houston’s black community. By the second decade of the twentieth century, it encompassed an area that stretched from Buffalo Bayou south to Sutton Street, and west from Milam and Travis streets to Taft Street. Since 1940, however, through urban renewal, Federal highway projects, and the continual expansion of the central business district, this community has been reduced to the forty-block area that lies just west of Interstate 45.

Archival maps were examined to determine if the boundaries of the Old City/Founder’s and Beth Israel cemeteries extended into the project area. Documents examined include: survey maps, Sanborn Fire Insurance Company Maps, Houston Metropolitan Archives Maps and other historic maps; city directories from the Houston Public Library Texas Collection; Clayton Genealogical Research Center records; and deed records from Harris County Clerk’s office. Records of organizations such as funeral homes (e.g. Bill Claire and Jackson Funeral Homes), the Grand Court of the Calanthe, a fraternal group of African American women founded in the 1890s, and records of churches in the area were examined. Lastly, archival data included an examination of historic black newspapers in Houston. For instance, early editions of the Houston Informer provide pictures of homes on Andrews Street.

In addition, a literature review was conducted to determine land use patterns in the project area. Various books provide information about occupancy in the project area. For instance, The Redbook, gives names of individuals, businesses, churches, and social and educational institutions in Houston in 1915. Other documents provided background information about black Houston since the late 1800s that aid in understanding land use patterns in the project area.

Lastly, current residents and individuals knowledgeable about the project site were interviewed to a) determine if there are burials outside of the known cemeteries and b) identify possible living descendants of individuals buried in the project area.

The first settlement of Houston’s freed black slaves took place along the southern edge of Buffalo Bayou, to the west of the business district in what was then the Fourth Ward. During the Civil War, Freedmen’s Town was within the corporate limits of Houston by one mile. Land in the area was affordable because whites did not want to live there due to the distance from the city’s center and because the area was flood-prone from the bayou. With little or no preparation for their new freedom, the residents of this area found life less than easy. They erected small shanties in which to shelter themselves and worshipped in brush arbors along the bayou or in borrowed churches. Soon, other ex-slaves who were leaving the plantations in great numbers and swelling urban populations all across the South joined them. According to the 1870 census, they seem to have found work in the city as washerwomen, housekeepers, gardeners, laborers, and servants. No doubt, they also supplemented their income with small garden plots and subsistence farming near their homes on the edges of the city. At this time, Freedmen’s Town exhibited a decidedly rural character (Passey, 1993).

According to the National Urban League Study published in 1929, “in many areas the houses were constructed so close together and so nearly occupied the entire lot that scarcely any room was left for a playground or recreational opportunities for children” (Thomas, 1929:30). This problem was so bad, noted C.F. Richardson, the editor of the Houston Informer in 1928, that a person could “stand in the house and hear the inmate in the adjacent house change his mind” (SoRelle, 1980:237).

This pattern is illustrated on both Andrews and Wilson streets that have been continuously and heavily populated since the early 1900s with residential homes, small apartment buildings, and a variety of businesses (see Tables 2 and 3 and Exhibit 4, the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps). The city directory lists individuals by home-ownership (h) and renters (r). Most of the residents on Andrews and Wilson streets were renters. In the early 1900s they rented rooms in homes or lived in the rear of the house. Mrs. Lentis stated that many people rented from Italians. Her family rented from the DeGeorge family. She and Mrs. Clark reported that Andrews Street was a residential area. By the 1930s, small apartment complexes appear on Andrews Street.

Not all of the residents of Freedmen’s Town occupied small rental units or lived in duplexes, apartments, or tenements. A small number of black families lived in larger, single-family bungalows that were erected in the 1920s and early 1930s. The frequency of ads offering homes for sale in the Fourth Ward, which appeared weekly in The Houston Informer attests to black ownership of numerous homes in the area.

Until the mid-1930s the Fourth Ward served as the economic center for black Houston. During this period, for instance, some 95% of the city’s black-owned businesses were located on, or near, West Dallas, in the eastern section of this ward (SoRelle, 1980). Since the late 1800s Andrews and Wilson streets have been the location for a variety of businesses ranging from restaurants, beauty parlors, hotels, confectionaries, real estate offices, cleaners, and grocery and liquor stores. Businesses, such as This Is It Restaurant, now located on West Gray, was located at 1003 Andrews in the 1970s (see Table 2). In the May 8, 1920 issue of the Houston Informer there is an advertisement for Standard Ice Cream Company at 1201-1209 Wilson Street (see Table 3). According to interviewees, there were numerous restaurants and bar-be-q stands in this area.

Boundaries of the Old City/Founder’s and Beth Israel cemeteries did not change in the 1900s. Also, it is apparent that residents in the project area had access to a number of cemeteries. It may be that churches in Fourth Ward followed the rural pattern of burials because: 1) people did not have much money and could not afford to buy burial plots. For instance, a plot in Olivewood cemetery cost $65 in 1900. 2) Transporting bodies a mile would have cost money. 3) Burial laws did not restrict where people could be buried. 4) Lastly, family members who did not belong to a church or families with little money might have buried remains in their back yards.