After 6 years, Houston’s Freedmen’s Town opens its visitor center

As African drummer Baba Ifalade and his band bounced to the beat of their drums and string lights illuminated the sky in the heart of Fourth Ward Thursday evening, community leaders celebrated a milestone: cutting the ribbon to the Houston’s Freedmen’s Town Visitor Center.

“I am really humbled by this moment in time,” said Jacqueline Bostic, a former resident and the chairwoman of the Fourth Ward Redevelopment Authority and the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone No. 14.

“Today we’re witnessing the past and the present coming together to form the future.”

The event marked the official grand opening of the Freedmen’s Town Visitor Center, a project that’s been six years in the making. Three historic row houses located at 1204 Victor Street adjacent to the African American History Research Center at the Gregory School were renovated to create the visitor center, which will serve as a hub for community events, programs, art and heritage tours.

Project leaders say it offers the community a greater opportunity: a tangible representation of preservation and education on Freedmen’s Town — a story of freedom, resilience and inheritance.

“With the opening of the visitor center we have an opportunity to highlight a legacy of history that has been shaped by generations and emphasizes African Americans in Freedmen’s town as agents in their own history,” said former Mayor Sylvester Turner.

Turner’s administration helped shepherd the initiative in collaboration with the Houston Public Library, the Fourth Ward Redevelopment Authority and the Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy.

“For the ancestors, these buildings were symbols of hope and progress and served as a cultural economic asset during the development of the city, as well as an example of homeownership after the Civil War, which was especially important to the newly freed persons,” he said. “The visitor center will offer guests an opportunity to learn that not only did these descendents survive, but they also thrived.”

The opening comes amid years of advocacy to preserve the legacy of Freedmen’s Town , the Fourth Ward community known for its signature brick roads laid by formerly enslaved people after the city refused to pave the streets. The historic neighborhood where formerly enslaved African Americans settled following the announcement of emancipation in Texas on June 19, 1865 (Juneteenth), was once the epicenter of prosperous Black life in Houston before it lost most of its historical monuments and befell to decades of neglect, false promises and gentrification.

Today, Freedmen’s Town has three sites recognized in the UNESCO Routes of the Enslaved Peoples Project of the 10 in the greater Houston community, and in 2021 Houston City Council voted to designate the community as its first Heritage District.

‘It’s been a journey’

Although the city of Houston has owned the vacant row houses for decades, talks to preserve the homes and repurpose them into a visitor center were formalized in 2018 with the onset of the Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy , a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and celebrating the cultural heritage of Freedmen’s Town.

Still, some didn’t anticipate the project facing the financial and situational challenges that it did.

John Middleton, interim chief operating officer of Houston Public Library, said when former HPL director Rhea Lawson tasked him with renovating the houses, he thought it’d be a simple six-to-nine month project. But instead, it took much longer than he expected.

“It’s been a journey,” he said referring to the time, money and passion that it took to get this project across the finish line.

“No one gave up on his project. When the costs escalated, people found the funds when the time just went on and on and on, Eileen (Lawal, the president of the board of directors for the Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy) kept smiling. Every time we had a deadline, something else happened.”

Regardless of the cost, it was a project that the Fourth Ward Redevelopment Authority was willing to do, said executive director Vanessa Sampson. The Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone No. 14 funded the project.

Some of those setbacks were beyond their control, such as the global pandemic and Hurricane Harvey, Middleton said. But construction delays, newfound discoveries — like finding a roughly 5-to-6-foot wide cistern underneath the structures that prompted further research — and following the city’s practical guidelines were among other factors that delayed the project.

“I don’t think people really realize that this is a historic asset,” said Charonda Johnson, a fifth-generation Freedmen’s Town resident. “Historic preservation is different from new construction.”

Maintaining legacy in Fourth Ward

Johnson’s childhood home at 1208 Victor St. is one of the historic row houses featured in the visitor center.

As one of the entrusted community tour guides, Johnson is excited to use the visitor center to support her oral history, memories and lived experiences.

“When I’m saying that this is my childhood home, it’s not like it’s just fluff,” she said. “We can actually go in here and things of that nature. So, I just like the fact that it’s a timepiece and living history. That can actually be utilized for the future.”

Initially, Middleton said they thought they could just model Third Ward’s Project Row Houses process. But since the row houses were city-owned properties rather than independently owned, they had to be reconstructed as commercial buildings, which imposed stricter guidelines on things like code compliance, accessibility and permitting.

“It’s a whole different ball game than just restoring an old house,” Middleton said.

Although it’s been a long process, he said, “it’s worth it.”

Guests seemed to agree as they toured the three buildings marveling at the artwork and antiques featured in “This Way: A Houston Group Show,” an exhibition featuring work from 10 Houston-based Black artists telling the story of Black legacy and heritage in Houston Freedmen’s Town.

“This is beautiful,” said Pastor Elmo Johnson of Rose of Sharon Missionary Baptist Church.

A group of women danced to “Lover’s Prayer” by Otis Redding, which played on an old jukebox. It was a full-circle moment for one of them, Jarmese Roberts Morris, whose maternal grandfather was cousins with Jack Yates, a former slave who became an influential member of Houston’s Freedmen’s Town and was the first pastor of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church.

As she walked through Johnson’s childhood home, she began to recall stories she heard as a child from her grandparents about the home belonging to her “Aunt Pinky.”

“It’s something I’ve heard over and over. But, you know, being young, I didn’t really remember. But he would always talk about Aunt Pinky,” Morris said.

She didn’t connect the dots until she visited the center and saw the home.

“It’s awesome to be able to see the legacy continue and to see the history passed down because so frequently history is lost. But it’s just amazing,” Morris said.

The exhibition will continue until Oct. 19. In addition to the exhibition, the conservancy will host its inaugural event at the visitor center on June 13, a “porch talk” discussion titled “Uncovering the Genius of a Master Strategist,” which is focused on the life and work of Emmett J. Scott and its academic impact.

“Our hope is that this space serves as a beacon of knowledge, unity, and pride,” said Sharon Fletcher, the acting executive director of the Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy. “A place where all are welcome to discover the past, engage with the present and envision a brighter future.”