The East Side, St. Paul Square, St. Philip's College and the stage at the Carver.
The East Side
Segregation pushed San Antonio's Black families to form their own communities east of the San Antonio River, and as those communities grew, St. Paul Square became the epicenter of Black San Antonio. Churches like St. Paul Methodist and Mt. Zion First Baptist, founded in 1871, became safe havens while racial tension ran high across the South. During the Great Migration of the 1920s the East Side grew again, and that growth led to the founding of San Antonio's NAACP chapter.
St. Philip's College
In 1898 St. Philip's began as a Saturday evening sewing class for Black girls, a church school where a small group learned cooking, sewing and caring for the sick. In 1902 Artemisia Bowden, the daughter of formerly enslaved parents, took over its teaching and running, and over 52 years she grew it from a day school to a normal school, an industrial school and, in 1927, a junior college. When the Episcopal Church withdrew its funding in the 1930s, she raised money by taking students on singing tours across the country.
The college was integrated in 1955, and today St. Philip's is the only public college designated as both a historically Black college and a Hispanic-Serving Institution.
The Carver
When it was built in 1929, the building that became the Carver was the only library and performance venue open to San Antonio's African American residents. Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Paul Robeson played there, and it later took the name of George Washington Carver. After the city tried to demolish it in the 1970s, the community saved it, and it reopened under city ownership as the Carver Community Cultural Center, which still brings acclaimed artists from around the world to the East Side.
Black San Antonio Today
From St. Paul Square to St. Philip's, the East Side carries the history of Black San Antonio, and Black-owned restaurants, salons, shops and brands are part of everyday San Antonio.
Shop Black-owned businesses in San Antonio on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
The original site of St. Philip's, in La Villita. Photo: Darrylpearson, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons The George Washington Carver Library and Auditorium. Photo: Renelibrary, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons