Few American cities are as emblematic of the intertwined promise and peril of roadway construction asHouston, Texas.
Rose Childress:The Ship Channel Bridge opened for traffic on March 2, 1973.
I remember it vividly because I had not been driving for very long.
At that time, I lived on the northeast side of Houston.
My family would often go to Galveston, which is to the southeast.
Before the Ship Channel Bridge, there was the Washburn Tunnel.
As a Black person, as a young person, you didnt use it.
The tunnel was between the small cities of Jacinto City and Pasadena.
Pasadena was 100 percent white.
We did not go to or stop in it.
A Klan headquarters was there.
Those areas were tightly run 50 years ago.
Over time, the demographics have changed tremendously.
Those of us who are older still remember and are still mindful even though the demographics have changed.
Because the demographics have changed the attitudes have changed.
There are surely a lot of folks just rolling over in their graves.
AARP:What neighborhood did your family and other Black families live in?
Childress:Pleasantville was an area where Blacks with a little money lived.
A number of them worked at the Ship Channel as longshoremen.
Teachers, doctors and Black politicians lived there as well.
There was also the Fifth Ward.Congressman Mickey LelandandCongresswoman Barbara Jordanwere from that area.
I was the third of four children, all born in Houston.
Our parents were working folk.
My mother did day work, and my father worked at the steel mill.
They were from Louisiana and never finished high school.
We lived in a house set up on bricks.
Once the bridge was built, we were able to go from one side of Houston to the other.
It tremendously changed the amount of time it took to get from the north side to the south side.
I think the bridge increased the pay of folks because it provided more job opportunities.
Economically it was good, but then the neighborhoods became commercial districts.
Pleasantville now is surrounded by commercial buildings and warehouses.
Other areas, like Denver Harbor and neighborhoods to the east, saw more and more land acquired.
Instead of houses and apartments, there are a lot of warehouses.
People start to move out when that happens.
More people began to work at the Ship Channel, and it became more racially integrated.
Before, you had to know someone to have a chance of working at the Ship Channel.
There was a lot of segregation and whites didnt want to lose their jobs to Blacks and Hispanics.
What impacts have you seen?
Childress:There are a number of oil refineries.
I used to work at a school that was a stones throw from the Ship Channel.
In fact, there were little tributaries where people would go fishing and crabbing.
The water has been impacted.
When I taught school, we would often talk about the difficulty so many kids had with learning.
As teachers we attributed part of that to the Ship Channel Bridge and the industries in the area.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jimmie Briggsis a documentary storyteller, writer and advocate for racial and gender equity.
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Page published February 1, 2023
