Houston NAACP marks 100 years with gospel songs, dances
HOUSTON—When James Douglas told his teachers during career day in high school in the late 1950s that he wanted to be a lawyer, they didn’t believe his dreams could come true.
“All of my teachers thought I was crazy,” Douglas said. “In fact, they told me that would be one of the worst things I could do because an African-American would never be able make a legitimate living in Houston as a lawyer.”
The Houston Chronicle reports Douglas continued to dream while growing up in Kashmere Gardens. He went on to attend law school at Texas Southern University, become associate dean for Syracuse University’s College of Law and now is a professor of law back at his alma mater.
Those ingrained dreams he had for progress among African-Americans also propelled Douglas to join the NAACP in 1981, when he moved back to Houston after stints in Boston and Syracuse, New York. Douglas, now 74, has served three years as president of the NAACP’s Houston branch, which this month is celebrating 100 years as an organization.
The 5,500-member group serves as a pillar for activism in the Houston area’s African-American community made up over 1 million residents and has advocated on a host of issues, including integrating the Houston Independent School District, bail reform, affordable housing, better public education and anger over the killing of AfricanAmericans by police.
“I just always believed that things were going to change,” Douglas said. “Fortunate for me, I was correct.”
The marches and rallies the NAACP led during the civil rights movement may be a part of the past, but Houston members agree there is more progress to be made in the city and across the country.
“The struggle is not yet over,” said longtime member Howard Jefferson, 81. “While we’ve made strides, those strides we’ve made are being attacked and rolled back in many instances.”
At City Hall, a large and lively crowd recently danced and clapped along to gospel songs crooned by different artists to mark the group’s founding.
Cynthia Jones, 57, who sat on a bench on the lawn of City Hall, was excited to see some of her favorite gospel artists and celebrate the anniversary of the organization.
“Even at this 100th anniversary, it has a purpose. There’s still a need for it obviously because it hasn’t been abandoned,” said Jones about the NAACP. “In this political climate and the kinds of changes were seeing in the country today, I think that it’s more important now that the organization exist and it stays strong. I think we need more activity from NAACP and organizations just like it.”
Houston’s branch of the NAACP was organized locally on May 31, 1918. It became an official branch when the National NAACP formally constituted its charter at the National Convention on July 1, 1918.
As Merline Pitre recalls in her book “In Struggle against Jim Crow,” enthusiasm for a local chapter grew after the Houston Riot of 1917, where over a 100 black soldiers angered by the treatment of AfricanAmericans by whites marched to Houston and killed multiple whites and wounded others.
Pitre writes that a field worker for the NAACP, Martha Gruening, who was investigating the 1917 riot, noted that Houston would be an ideal place to start a chapter.
“Considering the state of race relations in Houston, and aware of the large middle class and the politically active black population of the city, Gruening wrote to NAACP Executive Secretary James Weldon Johnson that she had ‘never seen a situation more promising,’ ” Pitre wrote.
As the local chapter become a reality, Lulu White was placed as the first paid female executive secretary for the Houston NAACP and helped advocate for change in the city in the early 1940s and ’50s. She pushed back against discrimination at Houston shipyards. She also spoke out to the National NAACP about the low number of African-American officers on Houston’s police force, citing in 1948 that only 15 of 503 were black and noting black officers were told to arrest people only of their same race.
As the civil rights movement burgeoned, native Houstonian Carol Galloway recalls being right in the thick of it when she joined the NAACP in the 1960s. The 78-year-old, who went on to serve on City Council and the HISD school board, remembers being in her 20s and preparing the Rice Hotel for Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit to the city.
Galloway joined the NAACP after witnessing her father get pulled over by a police officer in Sugar Land when she was 9 years old. She remembers the police officer calling her father the N-word and not believing the new car he drove could be his.
The moment stuck with her, and the young woman in her 20s eager for change in her hometown went on to become president of the organization in 2007.
“Ain’t nobody going to talk to me like that, Daddy,” Galloway remembers telling her father. “That’s not going to happen to me. No way.”
Congressman Al Green also played a vital role in the city’s branch of the NAACP, serving as president for 10 years. He helped orchestrate the purchase of the chapter’s headquarters and increased membership to the thousands.
“The NAACP has always had a very clear, very concise mission that is easily understood, and that is the elimination of discrimination,” Green said. “Now it can be very broad in its scope, but people understood what the NAACP was all about and discrimination was a significant impediment to success for AfricanAmericans. So, AfricanAmericans could relate to the mission because it was one that impacted their lives.”
Over the years, the organization has achieved numerous victories for the minority community in Houston, filing a lawsuit that integrated the school district, serving as a founding member of the task force to establish the public defender’s office and working with Mayor Bob Lanier to save the city’s affirmative action program that was in danger of being dismantled.
In 2018, the Houston NAACP introduced a new initiative called “Homes for Christmas,” to promote home ownership among African-Americans. As part of the initiative, the chapter will offer a free home-ownership course, and they hope the program will help 100 African-American families become homeowners by the end of 2018.
Attendees outside City Hall swayed and bobbed their heads as music group Soulfruit sang their rendition of a song made popular during the civil rights movement, “A Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke, and it echoed out onto the lawn.
Before the festivities, Douglas said times have changed for AfricanAmericans since the chapter’s founding and now people come from various socio-economic backgrounds and live across all parts of the city. He hopes that even with the growing divide, they can still reach out to help those who may not be as fortunate.
“Now we all don’t hurt the same. Some of us are much better off than others,” Douglas said.
“I try to explain to especially the young members of the NAACP, one of the things we have to do is we have to try make sure that the people who don’t hurt as much are willing to help the people who hurt.”
One of the things we have to do is we have to try make sure that the people who don’t hurt as much are willing to help the people who hurt.” —James Douglas, Texas Southern University law professor and president of the NAACP’s Houston branch