Though I’ve lived in Houston most of my life, I was well into adulthood before learning of the historic community of Pleasantville. Located between the 610 Loop to the north and Interstate 10 (the East Freeway) to the southeast, Pleasantville holds the distinction of being the first master-planned community in the U.S. created to house middle- and upper-income Blacks.
Not only that, according to multiple sources, Pleasantville residents routinely had the highest percentage of voter turnout in the state for multiple decades. And the community has produced some of Houston’s most impactful and influential leaders.
FOUNDERS
The Pleasantville community was officially founded in 1948, the year residents began moving in, though plans for the neighborhood were said to have hatched the previous year by two Houston Jewish builders and developers, Melvin A. Silverman and H.M. Cohen. The pair sought to create two Houston-area master-planned communities for World War II U.S. military veterans, one for Jewish-American vets and the other for Black servicemen.
Why? Because in 1940s Houston housing discrimination was in full effect for both groups.
“Though Silverman and Cohen are credited as the initial visionaries of the community, Pleasantville’s successful founding would not have occurred without the critical role played by African-American real estate agent and community leader Judson Robinson Sr,” said Mary Fontenot, a longtime Pleasantville resident and president of the Pleasantville Historical Society.
Robinson’s task: market Pleasantville to Black Houstonians, and sell them homes there.
“Silverman and Cohen went to the best realtor in Houston at that time, and that was Judson Robinson Sr. So really, if people learn the real story, they chose him; it was under his name. It was all about marketing and getting those houses to Black Americans.”
Fontenot added that Robinson’s wife, Josie, played a major, yet historically under-appreciated role in Pleasantville’s founding, growth and success.
“But his wife Josie Robinson really had her hands in a lot of building and selling homes in Pleasantville, and a lot of people don’t know that. She was quiet but she was a darn good business woman.”
BLACK MEDIA
Using his contacts with Houston’s Black media, including African-American newspapers the “Houston Defender” and the “Informer” and later radio station KCOH, Robinson successfully inundated Black Houston with visions of a new kind of community for Black people.
According to longtime Pleasantville resident Irma McGruder, “Pleasantville had been advertised across the city’s airwaves and the pages of the Black newspapers as the first of its kind in the nation—a ‘planned community of new homes, spacious and modern in design, and built specifically for the Negro families of means and class.’”
SOCIAL IMPACT
According to the TSU Urban Research and Resource Center (URRC) article “Pleasantville: The Founding and Context of One of Houston’s Most Historically Significant Communities” by A.T. Walker and Iesha Wells, J.D., Pleasantville is part of the forgotten Civil Rights Movement of the 1940s.
Pleasantville’s founding happened amid serious roadblocks to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for Blacks. These roadblocks included the vast majority of Black vets being denied access to earned G.I. Bill benefits; constant white domestic terrorism visited upon Blacks in general and Black military vets and entrepreneurs in particular, the lingering legacy of the convict leasing system and over-incarceration of Blacks and redlining (US government-backed housing discrimination).
Pleasantville residents fought the good fight by making excellence the standard.
“Seemed like everybody would set the bar high to whereas you’d want to be on that bar,” said longtime Pleasantville resident Reverend Clinton Johns. “So, it was just an exhilarating feeling that you got. The pastors, Pastor [Hayward] Wiggins and Reverend King and the Methodist church and all the churches. We all bought into this.”
Pleasantville residents created a hub of Black excellence in several fields, becoming a magnet for the city’s and nation’s movers and shakers.
“Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jesse Owens and Thurgood Marshall are just some of the historical figures who regularly visited Pleasantville, along with Pleasantville’s own activist, the late Carl Hampton, founder of the People’s Party II,” said Fontenot.
And the activism wasn’t confined to Houston. One of Pleasantville’s religious leaders, Reverend Hayward Wiggins, participated in the Summit of Black Religious Leaders on Apartheid (April 19, 1979, at the United Nations Church Center, New York, NY).
POLITICAL POWER
Pleasantville was so politically active and influential, the neighborhood’s nickname, “The Mighty 259th,” refers to its voter precinct. Houston native Attica Locke, TV/movie screenwriter and author of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction winning book Pleasantville said, “Something happened when these developers created this neighborhood and they dropped in thousands of engaged, educated and moneyed Black folk: It changed state politics forever because when that neighborhood got its first elementary school, it got a place to vote. And suddenly they became this political powerhouse, and knew they were, and used that power and have swung many elections.”
“Minnie Wallace who was one of the precinct chairs over here in Pleasantville was a very instrumental part in bringing Pleasantville to political iconic status,” said longtime resident Beverly Adams Demby during a 2018 interview. “Any politician that came to run for office, it was said, especially in the city, that you had to go through District B or Precinct 259 to get elected.”
Demby and husband, Judson Demby, added the biggest factor regarding Precinct 259’s record voter participation was Robinson Sr.’s leadership as Precinct 259’s first chairman and the Pleasantville Civic League that made sure every resident was registered and paid their “Poll Tax” so they could vote.
Pleasantville routinely had voter turnout numbers between 75 and 94%, which helped it elect one of its own, Judson Robinson Jr., as Houston’s first Black city council member.
BUSINESS/PROFESSIONAL
Entrepreneur Robinson Sr. made his mark in other ways by founding, helping to found or serving on the boards of National Real Estate Association, Riverside General Hospital board, Houston Area Urban League, Houston Citizens Chamber of Commerce, Houston Housing Authority and Houston Business and Professional Men’s Club. He also managed the Kelly Homes public housing project (1943) and Cuney Homes (1946).
Robinson Sr.’s neighbor Andrew Brooks was the only Black club owner downtown. Said Pleasantville resident Margaret Chachere, “[Brooks] used to have [his club] on Milam. That was the street for the Blacks. That’s where all kinds of shops and stores for Blacks were located back then.”
Pleasantville also boasts of being home to three of the city’s first Black gas station owners affiliated with a major oil company, the first Black Burger King franchise owner, several of the first wave of Black police officers and firefighters, the first Black/minority elected to the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board and the first Black/minority part owner of an NBA team—(Robinson Jr., briefly, Houston Rockets), and more.
DN: See the sports legacy of Pleasantville.
LEADERSHIP
Before becoming a lawyer and ground-breaking judge, Pleasantville’s Willie Blackmon was a track legend who broke down barriers by attending Texas A&M University.
An educator/activist with Pleasantville ties, Dr. Otis King, was dean of TSU’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law (TMSL) when Blackmon attended. His obituary reveals that along with serving as a professor at the TMSL for almost 40 years and serving as dean for 10 of those years, King was Houston’s first African-American City Attorney, serving during Mayor Fred Hofheinz’s administration.
