yates1985

@Book{ yates1985,
    author = {Rutherford B. H. Yates and Paul L. Yates},
    title = {The Life and Efforts of Jack Yates},
    address = {Houston},
    publisher = {Texas Southern University Press},
    year = 1985,
}

p. 11 - “After his emancipation in Matagorda County, he remained there for five or six months, perhaps more. … They came and found a dwelling place in a settlement of other families (white and colored) about the six hundred block of Louisiana street (near where the present city auditorium now stands.) … He afterwards secured a somewhat better place in what became known as the third ward.”

p. 12 - “Jack Yates first worked as a drayman, hauling merchandise for some of the leading merchants of Houston then, whom may be mentioned, is the late ex-mayor John T. Browne.”

p. 13 - Isaac Sydney Campbell a “colored” man sent to do missionary work by the HOme MIssion Society; Campbell began to send Yates to hold meetings in Houston and eventually ordained Yates.

p. 15 - Antioch originally located on “Baptist Hill” near Rusk and Bagby, but in 1874, the church purchased “two lots in the Seneshal Survey” (Block 3) from a member of their trustee board, Edward Cravey

pp. 18-29: “Efforts to Encourage Home Ownership”

p. 19 - “He bought several lots further west in the Castaine Survey on what is now Andrews Street near Wilson Street in the year of 1869 and advised others to do likewise. … He bought other property in that locality among which were two lots on San Felipe Street (now West Dallas) at Bailey Street which extended the width of the block to Saulnier Street.”o

Pauline Gray-Lewis recalled: “Between this site [of Antioch] and Mason Street, which is a rectangular strip of land six to eight blocks or more in width, the records of Harris County will show that our group in this part of Fourth Ward could point to more individual home-ownerships, with pride years ago, than found elsewhere in Houston among themselves.”

p. 23 - Charles N. Love, editor of the Texas Freeman, recalled that anything he did was “due primarily to what I was taught and learned from two Negro men, namely, Rev. Jack Yates in Sunday School and Professor H. C. Hardy in the [p. 24] public school.”

pp. 30-37: “The Effort to Keep Alive the Joy of Their Emancipation”

p. 30-31:

Men somehow are known to do their best when conditions are unfavorable. Steam, gases and liquids are the most powerful and energetic under compression—force. So it is reasonably safe to say that better results were obtained when sufficient [p. 31] pressure had been brought to bear by seemingly a very intolerant group of citizens that forced this little band of early freedmen in the city of Houston to seek another site upon which to hold their Sunday School picnics and Nineteenth of June celebration.

p. 31 - Originally Juneteenth and annual Sunday School Picnic celebrated by Antioch and Trinity “under a very beautiful grove on some acres of land” in the Fourth Ward bounded by “McGowen, Brazos, and Valentine, etc.”

p. 32:

But there comes a time of break-down in all smooth-running machinery. Why should there be any exception now? There can be brought about such state of affairs among men, although coming through legal channels, that aroused to indignation, even as of then a struggling minority group, and caused their sensibility to shudder in disgust. Something was executed on this lovely spot which gave to that location the name of ‘Hanged Man’s’ grove, and became the second of two reasons why this place was abandoned as a picnic ground. Any site where such an unpleasant scene had taken place was just too vivid for a place of enjoyment.¹

p. 32: It also became clearer that “a few of those residing in the vicinity were openly opposed to this location being used further as a picnic ground by the colored people.” At first “Lubbock’s Grove” in Second Ward “then called Frost Town by the ‘old settlers’” was considered as an alternative, but it was too far away from key Black neighborhoods.

p. 33 - “It was Richard (Dick) Allen, a member of Jack Yates’ church who was particularly interested in real estate, that brought in the compromising site which ended the search.”

p. 34 - Deed for Emancipation Park found in Harris County Volume 10, Page 515, dated July 10, 1872.

p. 44 - Houston Academy founded in 1885 in a “dwelling house known as the Cooper place which afterwards was moved to another site (at the corner of Bell Avenue and San Jacinto Street.)” Then at 3200 block of West Dallas.

p. 49 - Daughter Martha (Yates) and husband Ed Jones lived adjacent to Antioch in “the original site of the Draymen’s Hall, the first local organization for social entertainment and mutual welfare among colored people in Houston and probably in Texas—a labor group.”

p. 50-51 - Yates leaves Antioch to start Bethel