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Freed slaves developed Freedmen's Town in a 5 square miles (13 km 2) area in the Fourth Ward. [2] What was once Produce Row, a group of produce businesses on Commerce Street in the urbanized section of First Ward, is now in Downtown Houston. What was then rural First Ward had many farms, so the process of food production occurred in the First ...
African American Library at the Gregory School, located in the Fourth Ward in Houston. The African American population in Houston, Texas, has been a significant part of the city's community since its establishment. [1] The Greater Houston area has the largest population of African Americans in Texas and west of the Mississippi River.
The Fourth Ward was established as one of four wards by the City of Houston in 1839. [1] By 1906 it included much of what is, as of 2008, Downtown and Neartown; at that point the city stopped using the ward system. [2] The area was the site of Freedman's Town, composed of recently freed slaves. [2]
Although he governed Texas as a slave-holding state and was a slave owner himself, he did not feel that it was in the best interests of Texas to secede from the Union over slavery. Houston and his wife, Margaret Lea Houston, relied on slaves to perform household, agricultural, carpentry, blacksmithing, and other duties for the family. Eliza ...
Sunnyside, the oldest African-American community in southern Houston, was first platted in 1912. [5] When the community opened in the 1910s, H. H. Holmes, the founder, gave the land the name Sunny Side. [6] By the 1940s area residents established a water district and a volunteer fire department. The City of Houston annexed Sunnyside in 1956. [5]
Emancipation Park and Emancipation Community Center are located at 3018 Emancipation Ave in the Third Ward area of Houston. [1] It is the oldest park in Houston, [2] and the oldest in Texas. [3] In portions of the Jim Crow period it was the sole public park in the area available to African-Americans. [4]
Olivewood Cemetery, in Houston, Texas, lies near a bend in White Oak Bayou, along the rail line to Chaney Junction, where the First and Sixth wards meet just northwest of downtown. The 6-acre (24,000 m 2) cemetery is an historic resting place for many freed slaves and some of Houston's earliest black residents.
The region known as Houston is located on land that was once home of the Karankawa (kə rang′kə wä′,-wô′,-wə) and the Atakapa (əˈtɑːkəpə) indigenous peoples for at least 2,000 years before the first known settlers arrived.