Freedmen's Town, a park bought to celebrate Juneteenth and a city that slowed rap down.
Freedmen's Town
After emancipation, about a thousand freed people settled along the southern edge of Buffalo Bayou in what is now the Fourth Ward. They paved the streets of Freedmen's Town with bricks they made by hand, and by the late 19th century the neighborhood was the center of Houston's African American community. It joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
Emancipation Park
In 1872 Jack Yates, Richard Allen, Richard Brock and Elias Dibble, members of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church and Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, pooled their money to buy ten acres in the Third Ward to commemorate the end of slavery. For years the park opened only for Juneteenth, and from 1922 to 1940 it was the only park in Houston open to African Americans. Emancipation Park reopened after a major renovation in 2017.
Texas Southern And Barbara Jordan
Texas Southern University, in the Third Ward, began in 1927 as Houston Colored Junior College and was established as a state university in 1947. One of its graduates, Barbara Jordan, was born in the Fifth Ward. She became the first African American elected to the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, and then one of the first two African Americans elected to Congress from the former Confederacy since 1901. In 1976 she became the first African American and the first woman to give the keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. The university's school of public affairs carries her name.
Chopped And Screwed
DJ Screw created chopped and screwed, a slowed-down way of mixing records that one critic compared to rap played underwater. He led the Screwed Up Click, a crew of MCs from the city's south side including Lil KeKe, Big Hawk, Big Moe, E.S.G. and Fat Pat. He died in 2000 at 29, and Travis Scott is among the artists who name him as an influence.
Black Houston Today
From the Third Ward to the Fifth Ward, Houston's historic Black neighborhoods carry this history, and Black-owned restaurants, salons, studios and brands are part of everyday Houston.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Houston on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
Brick streets in Freedmen's Town, at Wilson and Andrews Streets. Photo: Sameer-123, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons Emancipation Park, Houston. Photo: WhisperToMe, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons The entrance to Texas Southern University. Photo: 2C2K Photography, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons