It’s time to rename Cleburne Street after a real hero
Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne, a Civil War leader known as “The Stonewall of the West,” never lived in Texas but has a city about half an hour from Fort Worth named after him. Here in Houston, his legacy finds its way to a street that is knotted on its eastern boundary with Scott Street, named for another Confederate soldier. On its western end is Main Street, not too far from the compound that once housed many of the city’s Confederate loyalists. For many years, Cleburne has been celebrated through a street that bears his name, while the legacy of the Confederacy he supported died after it lost to the Union.
The campus of Texas Southern University, a historically Black university, is surrounded by these streets. There, Dr. Thomas F. Freeman, a legendary philosophy professor and debate coach, taught for over 70 years. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., along with thousands of Freeman’s other students, have fought to change the racist nods of the last century toward a more appropriate scream for America to be what its Declaration of Independence attests — that all men are created equal. Freeman will be recognized by the Texas Historical Commission with a historical marker in the coming months. His wonderful life, hard work and insistence on those he tutored and trained to climb to the top of the mountain should also be celebrated by renaming Cleburne Street to Dr. Thomas F. Freeman Avenue.
After I took on this campaign to rename Clerburne’s street, I thought it fitting to read a little of his life story. What I found surprised me in part, but ultimately only strengthened my conviction that his name does not belong in its honored place on street signs in Houston.
Cleburne, unlike many of his military contemporaries, did not enslave men and women of African descent. Gen. Robert E. Lee owned slaves; so did Confederate general and (later) Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest, Thomas Jefferson and several Supreme Court justices on his shortlist also owned slaves.
In fact, Cleburne suggested freeing the whole of the enslaved population to allow them to fight for the Southern states and thus “enlist their sympathies.” However, Cleburne also declared that wise legislation would keep those same enslaved people who fought to help the Southern states win the war, unequal — largely maintaining the unequal antebellum relationship between whites and Blacks.
Cleburne migrated from Ireland, settled briefly in Ohio, and ended up in Helena, Ark.
When the question of secession reached its high point, Cleburne sided with the South because, according to him, this was the culture that adopted him, and he had great affection for the Southern philosophy. He joined the local militia and soon rose in the ranks to captain. Cleburne fought for the same ideals that the people who adopted him were fighting for — to stop the United States of America from depriving the people of the Confederate States of America from their rights to liberty and to continue, as the Confederate States Constitution of 1861 states, “the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States.”
Obviously, I never met Cleburne. But I did, and with great humility, meet Freeman. Born only a year after the pandemic of 1918, Freeman passed at the age of 100 a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic. In seven decades of teaching at TSU, he saw his debate teams claim eight firstplace titles, 45 trophies and beat Harvard University and the University of Chicago. He was also called on by Denzel Washington to teach him the fine art of debating for his Golden Globe-nominated film “The Great Debaters.”
Cleburne Street saw the likes of political activists and U.S. Reps. Barbara Jordan, Mickey Leland and Senfronia Thompson leave Freeman’s classes and be forced to walk down a street that celebrates a man who promoted inequality of the races. Many of those students walked down Cleburne Street, on cement soaked in the remnants of racism, while fighting to rid Houston and America of discriminatory ideology.
You can help continue pushing the same boulder of progress that Freeman heaved up the mountain toward equality for all Americans by getting behind this campaign to change the name of Cleburne Street to Dr. Thomas F. Freeman Avenue. Call a friend who is a resident or property owner on Cleburne and encourage them to sign and send back the petition letters they have received in the mail. Call or write the mayor and your city council member and encourage their support. It’s time we walk proudly along a street with a name whose legacy is more than worth celebrating.