While cities like Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma dominated national headlines during the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, and places from Detroit to Watts went up in flames, actions to end segregation in Houston appeared nonexistent.
Why?
For better or worse, the “invisibility” of Houston’s desegregation story was purposefully orchestrated.
But the purposeful media “Blackout,” the coordinated effort of local radio, TV and print media to ignore desegregation movement activities, didn’t block Houston’s Black community from experiencing segregation in real-time.
PERSONAL TESTIMONIES
Before Jacqueline Brannon-Giles became a nationally recognized mathematician, college professor and minister, she was a Galena Manor resident who attended elementary, middle and high school in Houston-area schools from the early 1950s until she graduated from Fidelity Manor High School as valedictorian in 1961.
Brannon-Giles, like other Black people in multiple states nationwide, had to endure the indignities of segregation, and denial of admission to white-owned businesses, schools and theaters, etc.
“[Still] We had excellent teachers during the days of segregation,” said Brannon-Giles. “Sometimes, the school district would send old books to the Black high school and I would complain to my parents. They would then take me to Brown Bookstore, and buy new books for me to read to supplement the education I received in the segregated all-Black high school I attended.”
Houston’s desegregation saga was also experienced by students at the university level.
Though born in Texas, Omowale Luthuli-Allen grew up in Louisiana. He returned to Houston in 1966 to be part of desegregation on the college level at the University of Houston.
He was inspired by the “Black Freedom Struggle” of the 1960s, especially the work of Freedom Summer (1964) volunteers. He was also motivated by the words of a Houston power broker.
“A few years before I arrived, Ezekiel Cullen, the trustee over at UH, made the statement that no Negro would ever enter UH,” Luthuli-Allen recalled. “I managed to connect with students from various parts of Texas who were also interested in desegregating the University of Houston.”
Luthuli-Allen also connected with Texas Southern University (TSU) student leaders who preceded him in the movement, including Kelton Sams, Eldrewey Stearnes, Holly Hogrobrooks, Otis King and others.
“There was a lot of activity taking place at TSU. So, we students at UH fell in love and we mixed with the activist element at TSU,” added Luthuli-Allen who not only added to the UH desegregation movement, he helped found UH’s Black Studies Program in 1968.
INITIAL LAWSUIT
But was Houston’s desegregation of schools and public facilities unique? In an HISD timeline sense, definitely.
In 1956, Delores Ross and Beneva Williams, two Black children from the Houston area, attempted to enroll in white public schools but were denied. Their families filed a class-action lawsuit against HISD.
But it was not until 1984, 28 years later, that desegregation in Houston was fully realized. That year, the now-married Delores Ross Phlegm signed an out-of-court settlement HISD negotiated with the NAACP and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund to end the HISD desegregation lawsuit.
What made Houston’s desegregation story different?
HOUSTON UNIQUE
“It’s very much a tale of the strange bedfellows that helped push forward the desegregation of the city,” said Amanda Edwards who, while a Houston City Councilmember, pushed Houstonians to view the documentary chronicling that story, “The Strange Demise of Jim Crow.”
“There were some agreements made behind the scenes, much in the Houston-like fashion, where [Black and white leaders] said, ‘Listen, we do not want to see rampant violence,’” added Edwards.
Edwards is referring to secret meetings and other actions involving power players like Mack Hannah, Dr. Samuel Nabrit (TSU president), Joe Weingarten (president, Weingarten’s), John B. Coleman, A.L. Warner, Judson Robinson Sr., Louie Welch (politician), John T. Jones (publisher, Houston Chronicle) and others.
There was also a 37-member Bi-racial Committee that voted to desegregate Houston immediately even though the committee chair (Leon Jaworski) fought to maintain Jim Crow. The committee was disbanded immediately thereafter.
Unlike cities like Birmingham and Montgomery, Houstonians fighting for desegregation didn’t receive national support and coordination from national civil rights organizations like the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.-led Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
However, according to Edwards and Luthuli-Allen, three things separated the desegregation movement in Houston from similar battles nationally.
BLACKOUT
Media coverage was one of the most effective tools in helping the fledgling Civil Rights Movement gain momentum. Recognizing this fact, Foley’s VP and Publicity Director Bob Dundas devised a plan.
After TSU students participated the first sit-in west of the Mississippi River in March 1960, they led a successful “No Shopping Day” on the Saturday before Mother’s Day that same year. They then targeted Foley’s and three other downtown stores to protest their segregation policies.
Dundas then coordinated the media “Blackout.”
“The powers that be realized that the momentum of the movement was dependent upon publicity, and if they could just shut off the publicity then it became more and more difficult for us to get people to be with us and to get contributions to assist us,” TSU student leader Otis King recalled years later.
BLACK COMMUNITY DYNAMICS
Luthuli-Allen contends the differing “property relations” in Houston compared to those in northern ghettos made for a generally less confrontational local movement.
“Black people were making money, they were buying houses. You had communities like Pleasantville where people had an ownership base. That was a conservative mind. They had something to protect. The urban rebellions that took place in the other parts of the country couldn’t happen here in Houston because too many Black people were working and had a stake in protecting what it is they had achieved,” he said.
That said, zealous Black college students sought to mimic movement actions nationally, like the sit-ins in Greensboro, NC. Black establishment leaders like a young Reverend William Lawson, who initially tried to talk TSU students out of protesting in 1960, called for protests himself in 1965 when HISD’s orders to desegregate were going nowhere fast.
SCRIPTED MOVEMENT
Lawson’s May 1965 call to protest HISD’s “stair-step” integration plan (one grade level per year) resulted in roughly 92,000 Black students staying home on May 11 while about 2,000 students, parents and faculty marched on the school district’s administration building demanding full-scale desegregation.
It was the exact kind of public actions members of Houston’s “white establishment” sought to avoid years earlier by “scripting” as much of the desegregation movement as possible.
Essentially, regarding desegregation in public facilities, stores with lunch counters were instructed to serve a set number of Black patrons.
Nabrit shared in a decade-old interview that the Black business leader “Hobart Taylor agreed to send just one or two well-dressed Blacks to downtown lunch counters, and those businesses received instructions on how to react in case of violence.”
The result: quiet desegregation with no media coverage to galvanize Black support to grow the movement or incite racist white violence in response.
