Preserving Third Ward’s legacy
In the midst of the Jim Crow era a century ago, leaders in Houston’s African-American community worried that the story of their people would be forgotten over time if left to white historians to document it.
So they did it themselves. The result of their efforts, Red Book Houston, was published in 1915 and chronicles African-American life in a fast-growing Southern city at the turn of the 19th century.
Now, with different forces threatening to erase the legacy of black culture in Third Ward, community leaders there are working to revive the Red Book effort — with a modern twist.
“It’s our vision to mobilize community tradition bearers and storytellers to videotape and document the stories of residents and collect artifacts, photographs and documents to preserve a record of the rich contributions of AfricanAmericans in the Emancipation Park Third Ward neighborhood,” said Carl Davis, who is spearheading the effort on behalf of the Emancipation Economic Development Council.
The Red Book project is part of a broader campaign by EEDC and other community groups aimed at
preserving and revitalizing Third Ward’s cultural history even as a surge of development projects rapidly reshape the neighborhood.
“The wave of gentrification threatens to overtake the culture fabric of this historic neighborhood and displace long-term residents,” the EEDC wrote in its project mission statement. “Efforts to preserve the culture, traditions, and character of the Emancipation Park neighborhood of Third Ward must be accelerated.”
At a kickoff celebration Saturday night at the Emancipation Park Cultural Center, organizers urged longtime residents to come forward with stories, photographs and artifacts.
For the past decade, developers have been scooping up land in Third Ward, replacing row houses with town homes and luring young professionals who enjoy the neighborhood’s proximity to downtown, the Museum District and the Texas Medical Center.
Surging home values are driving up property taxes, threatening to force longtime residents to relocate. With each new development — a city-subsidized H-E-B is set to open this year — civic leaders grow more concerned that the history and culture of their neighborhood will be forgotten.
Assata Richards, director of the Sankofa Research Institute at the University of Houston and chairwoman of the EEDC, urged those in attendance Saturday to spend less time thinking about what they don’t want to happen in Third Ward, and more time focused on what they do want.
“We’re not in a fight against gentrification,” said Richards, a third-generation Third Ward resident. “We’re in a fight to preserve, protect and revitalize the historic Third Ward. When we do that, then gentrification ceases.”
As part of the revived Red Book project, organizers plan to create a coffee-table book documenting the people, businesses and institutions that shaped Third Ward over the past century. They also plan to create an online repository of Third Ward family histories and hope to work with the Harris County Historical Commission to erect historic markers throughout the community.
The goal, Richards said, is to ensure that even as new money flows into Third Ward, the community will remain a vibrant, majority-African-American community.
“Our history gives us a blueprint for our future,” Richards said. “But we must create that blueprint ourselves.”