‘Da Mayor of Fifth Ward’ Bob Lee lives on in new book of essays
The friendship between Bob Lee, a community leader and social-justice warrior, and Michael Berryhill, a journalist and a Texas Southern University professor, was unlikely, given their disparate backgrounds.
Lee, a Black man from Fifth Ward, was so rooted in the soil of the community that neighbors called him the area’s unofficial “mayor.” Berryhill, who is white, grew up on the East side of Houston, attended Milby High School and didn’t know many Black people.
Still, the men seemed fated to be friends, and they bonded over words and storytelling.
Berryhill became Lee’s first editor on his essays about Houston’s Black history and his East Texas family for the Houston Chronicle’s Texas Magazine. Lee was his first Black friend, he said, and the first person to hold his daughter when she was born.
After Lee died of cancer in 2017 at age 74, Berryhill gathered up many of Lee’s stories and essays and compiled them into a book, “Da Mayor of Fifth Ward: Stories of the Big Thicket and Houston,” published by Texas A&M University Press. It is the first book in the Prairie View A&M University Series.
“Bob was my friend. He was more than a writer I knew, and I didn’t want to see his stories forgotten,” Berryhill said.
Lee’s essays are recollections and tales of Houston life and his East Texas roots in Jasper, a small town known for the horrific murder of James Byrd Jr., who in 1998 was beaten, chained to a truck and dragged for miles by three white men. Lee spent summers there with his Aunt Crickett and Uncle Dewitt, who taught him about farm life, with its sounds of nature, the aroma of his aunt’s cooking and his relatives singing.
He also learned that former enslaved Black people settled deep into the area’s forest, called the Big Thicket, and made a life for themselves. It was a basic life, but they had each other. These stories of his family are personal and rich with flavor. And each tale is part of Texas’ history.
That’s how Lee would have wanted it.
“I always wanted people to know that we made a contribution to Texas,” said Patricia Prather, a historian who cofounded the Texas Trailblazer Preservation Association with Lee. “He was very interested in our community and the people who helped developed it.”
Prather and Lee would drive across Texas to small towns, where the railroad tracks often served as the racial divide.
They were looking for Black people who didn’t make it into Texas history books, not that there were many who did. They often discovered them in graveyards, the only place where dates of birth and death were easy to find. They learned to look for large grave markers, which usually commemorated someone prominent in the community whose life story needed to be told.
“Neither of us had any training in journalism, but Bob was so good at it. We would drive up and down the main street in the Black community to find people and stories. He told stories like the way it was,” she said.
Together, they created the Texas Trailblazer project that over the years highlighted 72 Black Texans, such as Julia C. Hester, a community activist in Fifth Ward, and Bob “Watermelon Man” Chatham, who was born enslaved and became a successful businessman in Hempstead selling watermelons.
Educators, Prather said, were trailblazers because they often served as leaders in church and other areas of the community.
Lee’s brother, the late Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee, was also a part of his stories. He was the first Black person to serve as a commissioner; he died in 2016 of a heart attack.
In many Black families with both rural and urban ties, there was often someone like Lee, who looked out for people. Cut the yards of elderly ladies whose husbands had passed on and who offered sage advice.
“The lesson from Bob is that we’re surrounded by people who are role models, especially in families, and people who help shape our lives,” Prather said.
To say that Lee had a way with words, would be too simple for the man who meant so much to many.
“Bob loved people and would talk with white racists, and they would become lifelong friends,” Berryhill said. “He made me aware of the problems of the culture of the city. He wasn’t talking about race all of the time. He was talking about people, and he wanted to help everybody. He made me a better person.”
Lee’s storytelling continues to linger like a good book, giving us crumbs of what life was like so many years ago. It reminds us, too, that good friends help keep the stories alive.