San Antonio is working to preserve African American heritage

Pieces of San Antonio’s African American heritage have disappeared over the years.

Many of the hotels, gas stations and other San Antonio businesses in a 1930s “green book,” which listed safe places for Black travelers to visit, no longer exist. An 1870s foundation of the St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the oldest Black churches in Texas, was discovered near San Pedro Creek downtown only two years ago.

But the city is launching a three-year effort to identify, preserve and protect cultural resources tied to local Black history. It will hold a public meeting at 6 p.m. Aug. 11 at the Little Carver Theatre, 226 N. Hackberry St., to give residents a chance to share their own thoughts and experiences and provide guidance on the project. Three university scholars also will discuss “identity and nomenclature” dating to the Spanish colonial period.

An online survey available through Aug. 15 allows the community to submit information on people, places, stories and events that should be recognized. Photos can be uploaded on the online survey form.

Shanon Shea Miller, director of the city’s Office of Historic Preservation, said her office has begun gathering stories, photos, videos and family reunion books at community meetings. Seventy people scheduled appointments to give oral histories.

“We’d love to hear from as many people as possible,” Miller said.

The five-year-old San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum is providing guidance on the initiative, with its CEO and director, Deborah Omowale Jarmon, serving on an advisory committee. Although SAAACAM is focused on preserving stories of people of African descent — including those with Mexican, Caribbean or Indigenous lineage — the city’s process is important to the nonprofit community archive’s mission.

“When we look at growing SAAACAM and sustaining SAAACAM, we recognize these policies need to be in place to help to honor those stories,” Jarmon said.

Jarmon encourages people to get involved in the process.

“They are initiatives that complement each other,” she said. “The city’s is to drive policy. SAAACAM’s is to ensure that our history doesn’t go away. We take pride in stewarding the stories of African descendants in San Antonio.”

The city recently secured $50,000 through the National Park Service’s Underrepresented Community Grant Program to develop an inventory of historical African American sites and resources in neighborhoods within a three-mile radius of downtown that remain intact, largely unaffected by urban renewal and modern development.

Neighborhoods with schools, churches, homes and other places connected to Black history dating to the 1800s include West Side communities around West End Baptist Church and today’s St. James AME Church site, along with areas near the historic Baptist Settlement on the near East Side.

The federal grant program was created to diversify nominations to the National Register of Historic Places.

The city also has a $30,000 grant from the Texas Historical Commission that is being matched locally with a National Trust for Historic Preservation grant awarded to the Conservation Society of San Antonio to identify historic structures, places and historical assets.

Possible results of the work include historic landmark designations, historical markers, naming of streets and public places and designation of heritage trails.

Using archival directories and insurance maps, the preservation office tracked a dramatic increase in Black churches built from post-Civil War Reconstruction to the early 20th century, when segregated schools were added in those neighborhoods. Many of those structures have since been demolished.

The initiative also will explore intangible heritage — food, music, festivals and forms of spiritual expression that are important to San Antonio’s African American community.

In the online survey, Anthony Gordon of San Antonio identified the Rev. Samuel Horace “S.H.” James Jr., a Baptist pastor and San Antonio’s first Black city councilman, who served from 1965-1971, as “instrumental in the eventual desegregation of the city.” But Gordon felt acknowledgment also should be extended to the reverend’s daughter, Angela James, who was “bussed from the East Side to Jefferson High School” in the late 1950s when schools in San Antonio were desegregated. She died in 2007.

“She was only 12 years old when she entered as a freshman and graduated at 16” at Jefferson, Gordon wrote in comments posted on the survey.

The project is expected to wrap up in spring 2025. The advisory panel of scholars and community members also includes Gregory Hudspeth, Maria Greene, Nettie Hinton, Everett Fly, Charles Gentry, Carey Latimore, Pamela Walker and D.L. Grant.

People can also send comments to ohp@sanantonio.gov; call 311; or write to the Office of Historic Preservation at P.O. Box 839966, San Antonio, Texas, 78238.

shuddleston@express-news.net

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