In the shadow of Houston’s gleaming skyscrapers lies Freedmen’s Town, a historic neighborhood within the city’s Fourth Ward that once stood as a monument to Black self-determination.
The town was born from the labor of formerly enslaved people who settled there after Emancipation. For generations, the neighborhood has fought to keep its story alive in the face of modern development and gentrification during the early decades of the 20th century.
Today, Fourth Ward is within miles of Houston’s Midtown and Downtown areas, bound by high-rises and office towers. Out of its hundreds of historic structures, fewer than 30 remain.
The neighborhood is at a crossroads. Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) funds and the Fourth Ward Redevelopment Authority (FWRDA) are pouring dollars into rebuilding streets, restoring historic structures and supporting cultural institutions.
Alongside these improvements remain hard questions about gentrification, displacement and whether economic gains can coexist with cultural preservation.
TIRZs are zones created by the City Council to attract new investment in an area, helping fund costs of redevelopment that would “not attract sufficient market development in a timely manner.” The tax dollars are set aside in a separate fund to finance these improvements within the boundaries of the zone.
A legacy of self-sufficiency
Miguell Ceasar, division manager and archivist at the African American Library, Gregory School, itself a restored landmark in Freedmen’s Town, said the area is known to be Houston’s oldest African American community. Relying on each other’s acts of survival and pride, forging a safe, self-reliant neighborhood, residents anchored the community spiritually and politically. Schools like the original Gregory Institute educated Black children when segregation barred them elsewhere.
“This was close to the Bayou and wasn’t even part of Houston at the time. The swampy Bayou area was flooding over here and they allowed the Blacks to settle,” Ceasar said.
Ceasar noted the area, once a flood-prone bayou fringe, became a self-contained hub with over 400 Black-owned businesses, doctors, grocers and its first Juneteenth celebrations.
Modern efforts to protect history
Much of this past is preserved thanks to targeted investments by the Fourth Ward Redevelopment Authority, which manages the TIRZ funds dedicated to the neighborhood.
Venessa Sampson, the organization’s executive director, described the board’s mission as balancing a complex slate of needs: historic preservation, infrastructure upgrades, parks and affordable housing.
“We kind of do the unsexy (laughs) type of stuff,” Sampson said. “You can’t build a house if the foundation is not right.”
Major initiatives funded by the Fourth Ward TIRZ, which began in 1999, include restoring Bethel Church, rebuilding West Webster and Wiley parks and transforming the Gregory School into a public library and archive.
Wrestling with gentrification and displacement
However, the progress comes with a painful undercurrent. Being close to Downtown, River Oaks, and Buffalo Bayou comes with rising property values, pricing out some of the families whose ancestors built Freedmen’s Town.
“It’s been challenging because we’ve been having to find a way to get these seemingly competing interests done in a small footprint, but also not having the type of TIRZ that generates increment in a speedy manner,” Sampson said. “The cost of getting projects has increased over time as you’re waiting for increments to get you to the point where you can actually do projects.”
Jacqueline Bostic, chair of the Fourth Ward Redevelopment Authority board and a descendant of Rev. Jack Yates, a formerly enslaved man who helped found Freedmen’s Town and Houston’s Emancipation Park, emphasized this point.
“The Fourth Ward TIRZ has been instrumental in making sure that the area continues to receive tax dollars, which work towards enhancing the community,” Bostic said, adding the TIRZ ensures Fourth Ward now receives tax dollars that once bypassed the neighborhood.
The organization has experimented with affordable housing, including pilot homes built on properties they acquired from the City of Houston. But, Sampson warned against quick fixes before properties revert to market rates and suggested exploring models that promote lasting affordability and economic mobility, so residents can build wealth and stay.
“I don’t know what the answer is,” Sampson admitted. “We have an opportunity to mitigate displacement. But how can we do it in a way that is not Section 8 housing, necessarily, and is not rental property?…It doesn’t matter if you are Black, brown, white or otherwise, if you can afford it, you just displace someone who no longer can afford to be there.”
Bostic echoed the concern, adding that newcomers to the area are not responsible for erasing a neighborhood’s cultural identity.
Freedmen’s Town will never look exactly as it did a century ago. But Sampson hopes the work they’re doing will preserve enough of its soul to guide whoever comes next.
“If you come into the Fourth Ward area appreciating what this community has contributed, then they’re no longer fighting to have a voice or an identity because you have fallen into their space,” Sampson said. “If you go to the Second Ward and you go there with the intent to appreciate what that community has offered, they welcome you with open arms. But when you’re trying to take it and homogenize it, they’re gonna fight for it.”
