Activist was ‘a warrior’ for civil rights
Friends say he worked hard for poor, minorities
Ovide Duncantell was 75 years old when he chained himself to a tree in southeast Houston. The “MLK Tree of Life,” which the Black Heritage Society had planted in 1983 to honor Martin Luther King Jr., stood in the way of Metro’s new Southeast light rail line. But Duncantell wasn’t letting it go without a fight.
So in 2012, he tied himself to the oak tree and prepared to face down any authority or bulldozer that threatened.
“I’m 75 years old,” he told a reporter, “but I’m still a warrior.”
Duncantell, who died Thursday at 82, never stopped being a warrior, his friends and colleagues said. An anti-poverty and civil rights activist, he fought for minorities, the poor and the disenfranchised. He was a founding figure of Houston’s Black Heritage Society in 1974, toiled for years to rename a street for King and, in 1978, helped organize the society’s first Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade — a parade that remains an annual Houston tradition.
Duncantell grew up in Louisiana and, after high school, he served in the Air Force. After he was discharged in 1959, Duncantell married his wife Naomi, who died in 2015.
The couple intended to move to California, the story goes — but when he and
Naomi stopped in Houston to visit her brothers, they simply decided to stay.
In the 1960s, Duncantell started working as an anti-poverty activist and community organizer, working to connect Houstonians with social services they needed. By the next decade, he decided to get involved in politics so black Houstonians would be represented in city or county government.
He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Texas Southern University. He ran for office several times — including for city council, county commissioner and mayor of Houston — but he never won. He did, however, pave the way for African-American candidates who did win, colleagues say. ‘He was our general’
Joseph Tasby first worked with Duncantell in the 1960s. They were community organizers, he said, but they also thought of themselves as “freedom fighters.”
“The movement in Houston for poor people and black people was pioneered by Ovide Duncantell,” Tasby said. “He always called himself a good soldier, but he was our general.”
Shelby Stewart, a retired Houston police officer, said he first met Duncantell in 1982.
“He was firm in his beliefs that African-Americans would receive equal treatment, and he fought for that all his life,” said Stewart, who grew up in the 1960s reading about Duncantell’s activism in the black-owned Houston Forward Times newspaper. He was a young police officer when he first met Duncantell, who spent time in the southeast Houston neighborhood Stewart patrolled.
“We would talk about the state of race in America and the issues in front of us,” Stewart said. “And I’d talk to him about the racial issues that black officers had in the Houston police department.”
In the 1960s and even later, Duncantell was no friend of the police. He was known for his activism and got arrested frequently, said Samuel Saljarvi Thomas, who was on the front lines with him.
“He was a very aggressive kind of individual, very outspoken,” Thomas said. “We knew we had to have somebody aggressive who would go out and take risks.” But his fellow activists always stood by to call an attorney and get Duncantell out of police custody, he said.
“If you were black and standing up to HPD in the ’60s, you could get a beating within an inch of your life,” Stewart said. “He had the courage to do that.”
In the late 1960s, Duncantell and others worked to get the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to speak to their group in Houston, Thomas said — but he was assassinated before the appearance could occur. Duncantell then resolved to honor his hero’s memory throughout the city.
“We promised (King’s) father we’d do what we could to make sure Dr. King’s last name would stay alive in our community,” Thomas said.
In 1969, Duncantell and others started working to get South Park Boulevard — a major thoroughfare — renamed for King, Thomas said. But it didn’t happen until 1978 — almost a decade later — because for years, they couldn’t get enough people in the neighborhood to support the change by signing a petition.
Duncantell and his colleagues didn’t give up, though, and in 1978 the Black Heritage Society’s first Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade proceeded along the newly named Martin Luther King Boulevard. Parades to honor the assassinated civil rights icon are common today, but the Houston parade has been said to be the first of its kind.
A ‘rich life of service’
The parade eventually became both a celebration and a thorn in Duncantell’s side. The competing MLK Grande Parade, was started in 1995 by Charles Stamps, a former Black Heritage Society volunteer. For nearly 25 years, Houston has marked the day with dueling parades.
City regulations prevented scheduling two downtown parades on the same day, so the two organizations have vied for the city permit that would make their parade the more official downtown event. In 2007 Duncantell and the Black Heritage Society sued the city of Houston, arguing that its regulations were unconstitutional, and in 2008 a coin toss was used to determine which of the processions could march downtown.
The controversy continued until earlier this year, when Mayor Sylvester Turner endorsed the Black Heritage Society’s parade in a call for unity, saying that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
After learning of Duncantell’s death, Stamps — who started the competing parade — expressed his condolences.
“He is going to be sorely missed,” Stamps said Thursday. “He did a lot of good in Houston.”
Turner said next year’s MLK Jr. Day parade will be “extra special,” honoring both King’s legacy and Duncantell’s “rich life of service.”
In a statement, the mayor recalled that he and Duncantell both ran for county commissioner in 1984.
“We both came up short,” Turner said. “However, his commitment to the community and holding people accountable never waned.”
Duncantell “was a great voice for the voiceless, and he was consistent across the years,” said Virgil Wood, who marched with King in the 1960s and got to know Duncantell after he retired to Houston in 2005.
The activist grew older, but he didn’t lose his spirit for activism, said Sandra Massie Hines, the honorary “Mayor of Sunnyside” and vice-chairwoman of the Black Heritage Society board.
Hines recalled watching Duncantell standing there, tied to that oak tree, in 2012 — smaller and older than he was in his prime, but still just as committed.
“He didn’t want water. He didn’t want food,” she said. “This was his vision, his passion.”
And Duncantell succeeded.
After a long day and much of the night, the parties all came to an agreement. Metro didn’t move the rail line, but the city’s transit organization did pay $100,000 to move the tree to MacGregor Park and pledged up to $650,000 to build a statue of King and a memorial plaza to surround it. The statue was unveiled in 2014.
‘A fighter for justice’
Duncantell’s act of defiance prompted a visit from Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who called Duncantell a friend and a mentor.
“He had a can-do spirit and was a fighter for justice. When many said ‘no,’ he said ‘yes,’” Jackson Lee said in a statement.
Former Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia posted a video Thursday on his Facebook page that reflected on Duncantell, whom he considered a longtime friend.
“This is a tough moment, because with Ovide’s spirit and his willingness to always be up for a good fight, he always made me feel that we would always have Ovide with us,” Garcia said in the video.
Garcia thanked Duncantell for his “fighter spirit” and for “reaching across communities” to work together and get things done.
Wood said Duncantell’s work cut across race and class, but his great success was helping people work together without making them assimilate and lose their identity.
“With every fiber of his being, he expressed what he felt was his mission, and did it well,” Wood said. “We’re going to miss him.”
A funeral service has not yet been scheduled for Duncantell who is survived by a son. A spokesman for the Black Heritage Society said plans could be announced as soon as Monday.