Sandy Parker

Born circa 1816 in Kentucky, Sandy Parker was a Black Baptist minister in Houston and noted community leader during Reconstruction.1 He married Harriet Rodger in 1867; the wedding was performed by Baptist missionary I. S. Campbell.2 He died in 1873.3

According to the Red Book of Houston: “The Baptists and Methodists had for their leaders and pastors in the beginning of freedom in 1865 two powerful men in the persons of Revs. Sandy Parker and Elias Dibble.” Both men are described by the Red Book as “mediums between the hot heads of both races, teaching their people to seek the friendship and good will of their white neighbors.” W. H. Logan claims on p. 22 that Parker “led his people from what used to be called Baptist Hill on Rusk Street to the present site of Antioch Church on Robin Street between Frederick and Shaw” and was then succeeded by Jack Yates.

An 1872 article claimed approvingly that Parker, “the colored Preacher of the Baptist Church of Houston,” had refused his church building for a political meeting. Yet Parker himself was active in the local Republican Party before his death. See his voter registration in 1867 in Harris County. He was also a delegate at a Houston political convention on July 4, 1867, at which “The credentials of some were their ‘Certificates of Registration,’ which, like ‘free papers’ in the olden time, were thought handy things to carry in the pocket.”4 He was later noted as an officer in the Republican Club of Harris County in 1869, a president of 1869 Juneteenth celebration, part of the committee to welcome Edmund J. Davis to town in 1869, and a city alderman beginning in summer of 1870 (all in Houston Daily Union on AHN).

He was appointed to a mayoral committee to intervene in calming the near-riot of 1868 in Houston.5

Numerous references to a building owned by Paker and rented as a schoolhouse to the Bureau in Freedmen’s Bureau Records, beginning in 1867?

Listed as one of the incorporators for the Bolivar Point and Houston Ship Channel Company.

He is listed as the “spiritual adviser” for Jake Johnson.6

  1. See census record from 1870 for likely birth date and place.↩

  2. See Marriage certificate.↩

  3. His death was reported in the Houston Telegraph on January 9, 1873, which also noted his service as a city alderman in 1870.↩

  4. “The Convention at Houston,” Flake’s Weekly Bulletin, July 10, 1867, AHN.↩

  5. “The Houston Riot,” Galveston Daily News, June 17, 1868.↩

  6. “The Loveland Murder,” Houston Evening Telegraph, August 5, 1870, link.↩