Black Houston(s) Symposium 2023

Known to locals as “H-Town” and “the Prophetic City,” Houston is the most ethnically diverse metropolitan area in the United States and the fourth largest city in the nation. At least 145 languages are spoken by city residents, and 90 nations have consular representation in the city. As such, it serves as an ideal landscape to reflect on the rich contributions of shifting and dynamic Afro-Diasporic communities in the city over time. For our purposes, the African Diaspora, broadly defined, consists of peoples of African origin living outside the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and nationality. This symposium will provide a platform for community members and scholars to come together in order to unpack the ways in which the political, economic and social landscapes of Houston impact the diversity of experiences for Black people in the city. It will serve as an important backdrop to draw attention to Black Houston(s) rich past, and create the intellectual space for scholars and collaborative working groups to establish research networks that will impact future policy and scholarship.

Thursday, March 23, 2023

PANEL | Looking Back: Black Houston(s) at the turn of the Century ( 12:45 - 1:45 p.m. )

“Learning’s Pleasant Seat": The Birth, Life, and Death of Houston’s Colored Carnegie Library

Alicia Costello is a born and raised Houstonian who graduated from University of Houston-Clear Lake with a Master’s in Literature. After several years in the non-profit sector, Alicia began teaching for San Jacinto College in the middle of the pandemic. On breaks from grading papers, she taught herself local history. In Summer 2022, Alicia and her family moved to Austin to begin a new chapter working at the Texas Historical Commission. She is still searching for good pho in ATX.

Creating The New Red Book

Dr. Lindsay Gary (PhD, MFA, MA, MPA) is a professor-scholar, conceptual diasporArtist, and Afrocentric entrepreneur whose mission is to educate, connect, and empower the African Diaspora. She is an adjunct professor of History and African American Studies and is the Mother (founder) of several businesses. She is the Executive Director of The Re-Education Project (501c3), the Artistic and Executive Director of Dance Afrikana LLC, Co-Director of Ade Ile Properties (Nigeria), and the CEO of Isegun Enterprises LLC (Sawari Tours, Afrikanah Book Club, Gumbo: The Podcast). She is the creator and director of "Who Yo' People?", a documentary film that explores the African heritage of Louisiana, and the author of The New Red Book: A Guide to 50 of Houston's Black Historical and Cultural Sites.

African American Women in the Houston Workforce; African American Women Seek Welfare Assistance: A Dual Determination to Survive Both the Great Depression and Systemic Racism

Dr. Bernadette Pruitt is an associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. She teaches classes on race and ethnicity, internal migrations, slavery, long civil rights, Recent United States history, and the African Diaspora. A 2010 Distinguished Alumna of The Graduate School at Texas Southern University (BA, Journalism, 1989; and MA, History, 1991), she earned her PhD in History from The University of Houston in 2001. Pruitt is the author of one book, The Other Great Migration: The Movement of Rural African Americans to Houston, 1900-1941 (College Station: Texas A. & M. University Press, 2013); and she has written numerous scholarly articles, book chapters, reference essays, and book reviews about Black urban life, Black Texas, and the history of Houston. She is currently studying African American women historians in the Texas academy, as well as examining World War II Black Texas and the Second Great Migration. The scholar has won several awards including the Ottis Lock Book Award with the East Texas Historical Association; two postdoctoral fellowships with the University of Illinois at Chicago African American Studies Department, and Center for Africanameican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) and Department of History at Carnegie-Mellon University; a dissertation fellowship from the Department of African American Studies at the University of Houston; and numerous other research and travel awards from the Texas State Historical Association, Dolph Briscoe Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Huggins-Quarles Award committee with the Organization of American Historians. Pruitt currently serves as a board member for the East Texas Historical Association and Texas state Historical Association. Pruitt also co-advises two student organizations, Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority.

PANEL | Activism Across Black Houston(s) ( 2:15 - 3:15 p.m. )

To Witness: Cell Phone Cameras and Racial Injustice Accountability

Jessica Bray is PhD candidate in the anthropology department at Rice University. Her research focuses on the role of surveillance and policing technologies in livable futures. As a legal and political anthropologist, she is fundamentally interested in personhood and illegality within ethical and technical entanglements. These interests are rooted in her ethnographic fieldwork with organizers and police officers. Her dissertation traces how technolegal devices embody moral distinctions, pose questions about race and colonialism, help people imagine liveable futures, and addresses questions of secrecy and intimacy in contemporary United States.

The People’s Party II in Houston: Revolution on the Bayou

Obinna Dennar - Info to come.

Black Voting Rights, Economic Justice, and the Struggle for Democracy in Houston

Dr. Wesley G. Phelps is an associate professor of history and director of undergraduate studies at the University of North Texas, where he teaches courses on recent US history and queer history. He received his Ph.D. in history from Rice University in 2010 and taught for eight years at Sam Houston State University before joining the UNT history department in 2019. His research focuses on how democracy operates at the grassroots and how marginalized groups of people have struggled to participate in the democratic experiment. His books include A People’s War on Poverty: Urban Politics and Grassroots Activists in Houston (2014) and Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement (2023). He is currently producing a 10-episode podcast series titled “Queering the Lone Star State,” which will chronicle landmark legal cases in the struggle for queer equality in Texas, to be released during Pride Month in June 2023.

PANEL | The History of African Americans in Sugar Land, and how the Convict Leasing system built Fort Bend County ( 3:45 - 4:30 p.m. )

Debra McGaughey, Vice President, the Society of Justice & Equality for the People of Sugar Land (S.O.J.E.S.)

Ursela Knox, Board Member, the Society of Justice & Equality for the People of Sugar Land (S.O.J.E.S.)

PRESENTATION | DEI Hack-a-Thon ( 4:45 - 5:45 p.m. )

DEI Hackathon Executive Team

Saheb Nibber, Angelina Shen, Aishat Iginla, Omar Reyes

DEI Hackathon First Place Teams:

Jackeline Maya, Jessica Leyva, Gisselle Gonzalez, Donalia Barrett
North Houston Early College High School

Anna Wang, Eva McKay, Kari Sparrock, Zhiling Zhang, Chelsea Obu
The Awty International School

https://www.smartcityhouston.com/dei

PANEL | Black Houstonians and Rice: Two Histories ( 6 - 7 p.m. )

Sitting with Velma McAfee Williams

Alexander X. Byrd is Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Associate Professor of History at Rice University.

Searching for Jack Shelton

W.Caleb McDaniel is Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Humanities and Chair of the Department of History at Rice. They are the co-chairs of Rice University's Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice, established in 2019.

Moderator

Karen Kossie-Chernyshev is three times a graduate of Rice University and the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in History from a Texas institution. She also holds an M.A. in Francophone African Literature from Michigan State University. She has hosted local and international workshops and published scholarly essays and chapters on African American history and religion with the support of numerous fellowships and grants, including awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities Texas (Texas Council for the Humanities), Summerlee Foundation, and the Mickey Leland Center for World Peace (Texas Southern University). Her edited works include Angie Brown: A Jim Crow Romance (Outskirts Press, 2017) and Recovering Five Generations Hence: The Life and Writing of Lillian Jones Horace (Texas A & M University Press, 2013), which showcase selected overlook works by Texas’s earliest known African American woman novelist, Lillian Jones Horace (1880-1965). Dr. Kossie-Chernyshev is currently working on a born-digital, multimedia project on Horace's life and works thanks in part to her participation in "Born Digital Scholarly Publishing," an NEH Seminar hosted by Brown University (2022).

Moderator

Dr. Bernadette Pruitt is an associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. She teaches classes on race and ethnicity, internal migrations, slavery, long civil rights, Recent United States history, and the African Diaspora. A 2010 Distinguished Alumna of The Graduate School at Texas Southern University (BA, Journalism, 1989; and MA, History, 1991), she earned her PhD in History from The University of Houston in 2001. Pruitt is the author of one book, The Other Great Migration: The Movement of Rural African Americans to Houston, 1900-1941 (College Station: Texas A. & M. University Press, 2013); and she has written numerous scholarly articles, book chapters, reference essays, and book reviews about Black urban life, Black Texas, and the history of Houston. She is currently studying African American women historians in the Texas academy, as well as examining World War II Black Texas and the Second Great Migration. The scholar has won several awards including the Ottis Lock Book Award with the East Texas Historical Association; two postdoctoral fellowships with the University of Illinois at Chicago African American Studies Department, and Center for Africanameican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) and Department of History at Carnegie-Mellon University; a dissertation fellowship from the Department of African American Studies at the University of Houston; and numerous other research and travel awards from the Texas State Historical Association, Dolph Briscoe Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Huggins-Quarles Award committee with the Organization of American Historians. Pruitt currently serves as a board member for the East Texas Historical Association and Texas state Historical Association. Pruitt also co-advises two student organizations, Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority.

Friday, March 24, 2023

KEYNOTE | Dr. Jonathan Chism and Dr. Melanye Price ( 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. )

Dr. Jonathan L. Chism is an Assistant Professor of History and Associate Director for the Center for Critical Race Studies at the University of Houston-Downtown. He received a Ph.D., a Master of Arts, and a Bachelor of Arts from Rice University, and a Master of Divinity degree from Southern Methodist University, Perkins School of Theology. Chism is a religious historian whose research explores diverse ways African American religious groups and figures have pursued social justice in the twentieth century. He is the co-editor of Critical Race Studies Across Disciplines: Resisting Racism through Scholactivism, with Lexington Books (2021). He is the author of Saints in the Struggle: Church of God in Christ Activists in the Memphis Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968, published with Lexington Books (2019), and 30 Day Journey with Martin Luther King Jr., published with Fortress Press (2019).

Dr. Melanye Price is a Special Assistant to the President of Prairie View A&M University and inaugural director of The Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice. Dr. Price holds an Endowed Professor of Political Science and served as the principal investigator for their African American Studies Initiative, which is funded by the Mellon Foundation. Price is the author of two books: The Race Whisperer: Barack Obama and the Political Uses of Race (NYU, 2016) and Dreaming Blackness: Black Nationalism and African American Public Opinion (NYU, 2009).

Dr. Price completed her B.A. magna cum laude in geography at Prairie View A&M University and her MA and PhD in political science at The Ohio State University. Price was the 2017 Black History Month lecturer for US Embassy in Germany where she lectured at universities and community organizations in across the country. Professor Price was one of the contributors to Stanley Nelson’s documentary, Obama: Through the Fire, which aired on BET. She is a regular contributor for The New York Times Opinion section and has also done political commentary for MSNBC, CNN, Ms. Magazine, Elle Magazine and National Public Radio.

ROUNDTABLE | Ancestors & Memory ( 12:45 - 1:45 p.m. )

My Frame of Reference: A Reflection of Inherent Connection and Progress in Houston

April M. Frazier is an artist and photographer from Houston, Texas. She is a graduate of Prairie View A&M University, BBA, MIS, 2002 and Rice University, MBA, 2011. April was an IT professional in the Oil & Gas industry for fifteen years including a 10-month expat position in Hamburg, Germany. April transitioned to photographing professionally in 2011 and specializes in creative collaboration with minority and women owned businesses in Houston. April’s personal photography projects include architectural and documentary images from her travels across Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. Her most prized and ongoing work involves research and documentation of her ancestral roots in Texas through the creation of imagery on lands with familial connection from the time of enslavement to present day. Her exhibition, Frame of Reference was a culmination of this work and received national acclaim from its initial showing at the Houston Museum of African American Culture. April’s work has enjoyed displays across Texas, New York, Oregon, Vermont and abroad. April is also a launch partner for the Getty Images Black History and Culture Collection and utilizes the robust archive to bring light to the stories of African Americans and others of the Black diaspora. April was also brought on to the SlaveVoyages.org Redesign Project to provide creative and informed design input to ongoing the work set to spotlight data of the journeys of the enslaved to Texas within the database.

Beyond Concrete: Red Clay Routes and Roots

Viktor le. Givens is a found object installation performance artist whose practice centers around the gathering and arrangement of ancestral objects to activate spaces for site specific public rituals. By connecting the material culture of his ancestors with pre and post modern spiritual theologies, le. Givens hopes to extend and re-imagine the folk customs of his family . His material archive is comprised of the forgotten and discarded household items found during excavations of East Texas, Louisiana, Havana Cuba and Mexico City. Through the accumulation of these rich cultural artifacts , le. Givens. seeks to create spaces that inspire the activation of cultural and spiritual (re) memory. Currently Viktor’s practice is exploring the creative potential in reinterpreting the archive to produce interdisciplinary new works.

Beyond Concrete: Red Clay Routes and Roots

Felicia Johnson was born in the mountainous valleys of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and has spent most of her life enjoying the lush, fertile heat that is Houston, Texas. She often finds herself in the middle of things, watching people and places transform around her. As a storyteller, Felicia's work documents and reflects change, both as a concept and a catalyst. Inspired by ancient ancestral themes, her work depicts movement, memory and the dreamscape, connecting cultural legacies with current needs and future visions.

Beyond Concrete: Red Clay Routes and Roots

Earthea Nance - Info to come.

ROUNDTABLE | Rethinking Black Houston(s) [ HUM 117 ] ( 2 - 3 p.m. )

Taylin Nelson is a fully-funded doctoral student at Rice University and completed an MA at King’s College London in the Eighteenth-Century Studies program taught in conjunction with the British Museum. She currently works as a Hobby fellow at the literary journal SEL, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 and often publishes with BSECS “Criticks.” You can find her forthcoming publication in Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Cultures and Societies Series edited collection, Letters and the Body: 1700-1830, titled “Labouring Bodies: Work Animals and Hack Writers in Oliver Goldsmith’s Letters.”

Zainab Abdali is a PhD student in the English department at Rice University. She researches South Asian Anglophone literature, with a focus on War on Terror narratives and the connections between the War on Terror and the global prison-industrial complex. Her work has been published in the journals Western American Literature and Religion and the Arts.

Megan Oakes is a third-year PhD student in the English department at Rice University. Her research centers on environmental narratives in speculative fiction, with a focus on fantasy fiction and the ghostly/spectral.

Chaney Hill is a fourth year English, Ph.D. student at Rice University. Her research interests include American literature of the South and the West, Critical Regionalism, Public Memory Studies, and Critical Texas Studies. Her article, “Necro-Settler Coloniality in Texan Mythology and Identity: Forgetting the Alamo,” was recently published in Western American Literature. She also has a forthcoming article entitled, “The Roots and Routes of Black Emancipation in Sutton Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio,” which is set for publication in Texas Studies in Literature and Language. In addition, she has worked on several public facing projects, including Rice University’s Racial Geography Project and summer programming for Rice’s Environmental Studies program that teaches high school students about Environmental Justice and climate change. She is also a daily editor for the Southern Review of Books.

Emily Vinson Vinson is the Preservation Coordinator at the University of Houston Libraries. Prior to UH, Emily worked as an archivist at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy; a project archivist preserving unique audio recordings at New York Public Radio; and a fellow in the Preservation Division of New York Public Library. She holds an MS in Information Studies with a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Preservation Administration from the University of Texas, Austin. Emily is active in the Association of Moving Image Archivists and regional coordinator for the Maintenance Culture: Sustaining Digital Creative Works project. Currently, Emily is managing an NEH-funded project to preserve and make available forty years of Houston’s LGBTQ radio and television history.

PANEL | AI: A Tool for Social & Economic Parity? ( 2 - 3 p.m. )

Marcus Bowers - Info to come.

Tiffany Sams - Info to come.

Don WIlliams - Info to come.

PANEL | An HBCU Legacy: Art, Archives, and Digital Humanities at Texas Southern’s University Museum ( 3:20 - 4:50 p.m. )

Raymond Burgos is a sophomore Art major at Texas Southern University, raised on the Northside of Houston. One of his greatest inspirations is his mother who raised him, encouraged him, and always believed in him. Since childhood, drawing has been a passion of his. In this stage of their life they consider themselves to be a multidisciplinary artist. His practice is heavily focused on finding ways to solve practical problems with creative thinking, though he is an illustrator at heart and continues developing his skills. Raymond’s interests are centered around collaboration, learning from our past, and pushing the boundaries of how we utilize art. Currently he is also working with Emancipation Park and the Texas Southern University Museum as an intern. During his internship, Raymond is researching the history of the art program at TSU and helping with planning interactive programs for Emancipation Park and their annual Juneteenth celebration.

Analisa Esther is a Graduate Fellow for the University Museum at Texas Southern University. Esther received a BFA in Dance and BA in History from Texas State University. She is currently pursuing a Masters in History with a focus in Black History. Analisa Esther has traveled throughout the Western Hemisphere performing and teaching dance in places like Port of Spain, Trinidad and Queretaro, Mexico. With the University Museum, she promotes social and cultural programs and brings awareness to the art legacy that is housed within the museum. Esther also works with an elite team of specialists that preserve and extend cultural legacy in the Houston community.

Kaylene McCoy-Mosley is a junior Art major and Museum Studies minor at Texas Southern University. McCoy-Mosley is the Social Media Manager on the Executive Board of the Underground Fashion Society Org at Texas Southern. McCoy-Mosley is also an intern for the Smithsonian HBCU History and Culture Access Consortium, which is a project that strives to digitize and showcase artworks at Texas Southern on a national and international scale, as well as to preserve the university’s histories. McCoy-Mosley has a deep passion for music, art, and her Black culture, and in the future wishes to use her degree to become a museum curator.

Tatyana Neal is a sophomore Art major at Texas Southern University, raised on the Northside of Houston. One of his greatest inspirations is his mother who raised him, encouraged him, and always believed in him. Since childhood, drawing has been a passion of his. In this stage of their life they consider themselves to be a multidisciplinary artist. His practice is heavily focused on finding ways to solve practical problems with creative thinking, though he is an illustrator at heart and continues developing his skills. Raymond’s interests are centered around collaboration, learning from our past, and pushing the boundaries of how we utilize art. Currently he is also working with Emancipation Park and the Texas Southern University Museum as an intern. During his internship, Raymond is researching the history of the art program at TSU and helping with planning interactive programs for Emancipation Park and their annual Juneteenth celebration.

Rita Reyes is a rising senior receiving her B.A. from Texas Southern University in Arts with a minor in Museum Studies. Currently, she is an intern for the Smithsonian HBCU History & Culture Access Consortium, with the goal of digitizing, promoting and educating the world on the University Museum’s historical and current collection of artworks and murals. Her areas of interest are digitization, preservation of cultural/historical sites, and raising funds in order to sustain the work of underrepresented visual artists. Reyes’ future goals are to preserve the works of Black and Chicano artists in the Southern region while obtaining her Masters in Museum Studies, with a focus on technology advancements in museum spaces.

Ben Schachter is the Digital Humanities Program Manager at the University Museum at Texas Southern University. Schachter received his B.A. in History and Latin American Studies from Rice University. His previous experience includes several archival and digital humanities projects, primarily focused on the study of the history of slavery in Texas, the US South, and the Caribbean. These include an undergraduate thesis on an enslaved family in Fort Bend County and work on the SlaveVoyages database. In his current role, he is tasked with managing Texas Southern’s participation in the Smithsonian HBCU History & Culture Access Consortium, a project which aims to digitize and promote the University Museum’s holdings to a broader audience.

Dr. Alvia J. Wardlaw is the director and curator of the University Museum and professor of Art History at Texas Southern University. She is a leading national expert on African American art, and has been the director of the University Museum since its founding in 2000. Dr. Wardlaw has curated countless notable exhibitions, including “John Biggers: View from the Upper Room” and “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend.” She has also written and edited many published books and articles. Dr. Wardlaw served for over a decade on the Scholarly Advisory Committee for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture during the critical planning and implementation phases of the museum’s development. She is a member of the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame and recipient of the 2021 Art League of Houston lifetime achievement award.

PANEL | Connecting and Dividing: Houston Highways in Black Neighborhoods [ HUM 117 ] ( 3:20 - 4:50 p.m. )

Historical Geographical Analysis of Interstate 10’s Effect on Fifth Ward

Josué Alvarenga is a graduating senior at Rice University majoring in Political Science with minors in History and Politics, Law, and Social Thought. His research focuses on the I-10 freeway, especially paying attention to its impact on the Fifth Ward community.

The area formerly known as Freedman’s Town: How freeway development helped destroy Houston’s first Black neighborhood

Ben Baker-Katz is a senior at Rice University studying History and Political Science. Ben has been researching the history and impact of Houston's freeway system at the Baker Institute for almost a year, and he's excited to share some of what he's learned. One fun, and entirely unintended, consequence of that research is that he can now freehand draw a surprisingly accurate map of Houston's freeway system. When he's not doing school work or conducting research, Ben serves as editor-in-chief of the Rice Thresher and enjoys playing a number of different sports, including rugby and baseball.

Impact of the Highway System on Black Houston through Housing Prices - The Case of Riverside Terrace and Texas State Highway 288

Hyeyoung Doh is a junior at Chung-Ang University, majoring in English and Urban Planning. She is currently serving as a visiting undergraduate researcher at Rice University’s Baker Institute. Her research interests include gentrification and displacement, as well as urban regeneration. In 2022, Hyeyoung worked on a sponsored research project from Seoul Institute titled “Can the Youth Generation Be the Answer to the Revitalization of Commercial Districts in the Post-COVID-19 Era? - Focused on Mapo District, Seoul”. Now, she is working as a member of Rice University's Houston Highway project, creating interactive maps of the people and buildings that have been displaced by the highway construction.

"A Valuable Tool": Highways, Segregation, and Displacement

Matt Drwenski is a research associate at the Center for Energy Studies. Working under Fellow Ed Emmett, his current research focuses on the displacement caused by the construction of Houston’s freeway system. Drwenski holds a master's degree in history from the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor's from Rice University. He taught high school history for seven years in Houston, Texas.

The Impact of Highway Development on the Historic Black Neighborhood of Independence Heights

Samuel Lee is a second year student at Rice University studying political science and anthropology. His anthropological and political interests have converged with the study of urban policy, infrastructure, and transportation, and their relations to social equity, living quality, and the environment. His work on the Houston Highways project with the Baker Institute’s Center for Energy Studies focuses on the economic, social, and environmental effects of highway construction on historic neighborhoods like Independence Heights.

The Socio-Spatial Destruction of Fifth Ward by US-59

Indrani Maitra is a civil engineering student at Rice University. She is interested in urban planning, particularly transportation infrastructure systems and exploring their socioenvironmental impact.