Tag: the Civil War

When Lenwood E. Johnson, the son of Texas sharecroppers, moved into Houston’s Allen Parkway Village project housing, the Freedmen’s Town section of the city had yet to be designated historic and the village had yet to be saved. By the end of the 1990s, the village was preserved and Johnson had proved to be something of an unlikely hero here in Houston’s 4th Ward, historically one of the poorest sections of the city – but always ripe for redevelopment because of its proximity to the downtown.

The recent violent and furious protests by armed sign carriers at town hall meetings, called to discuss health care reforms, recall not the democratic discussions New England used to be famous for so much as distant white protests against civil rights reforms. Cartoons disparaging the president and his family bring to mind an earlier time when Blacks were routinely ridiculed in the nation’s press.