Kangsen Feka Wakai
Texas Southern University was born out of the struggle for equality in the realm of education within a larger society rife with racism and discrimination. 
It was initially named Texas State University for Negroes. According to campus folklore, TSU came to being as a way of preventing a black student from enrolling at the University of Texas in Austin. He had argued it was his constitutional right.
In any case, its mission was to educate the state’s African-American populace, which had been clamoring for such an institution for years.
TSU would become the first Historically Black College and University to host a law school. But thirteen years after its inception, TSU would become the scene of a significant marker event in Houston’s history; morphing itself from a mere token of segregation to an incubator for social change.
On March 4th, 1960, several TSU students embarked on a mission to confront Houston’s version Jim Crow head-on and in the process alter the city’s racial climate for good. Theirs would be the first blow against Jim Crow in a fight that would last years.
Recently, TSU faculty, staff and students were treated to ‘Silencing Jim Crow’, a new media project exploring the brave role some students played in tearing down the walls of segregation in the city.
The project was conceived and produced by TSU Journalism Professor, Serbino-Sandifer Walker to mark the 48th anniversary of the historic event.
“Call them social revolutionaries, freedom fighters or trouble makers…I would argue that they were modern day American heroes who championed civil rights and played a vital role in silencing Houston’s Jim Crow laws,” opined Sandifer-Walker in a Houston Chronicle article.
On that day, the students began their march on a campus flag post where they walked to Weingarten’s Supermarket on 4110 Almeda. It was at Weingarten’s lunch counter where their sit-in began.
“As students, we were in a better position to protest because there was going to be little retaliation,” said Otis King, one of the student protesters.
Currently a lawyer, King is a native Houstonian who grew-up in Houston’s Fifth Ward neighborhood. He described how as a result of their protest, Felton Turner, an innocent black man was attacked, beaten with chains, hung on a tree and branded with three Ks on his back.
The documentary also featured an in depth interview with Arthur Gaines—the man responsible for desegregating Houston’s restaurants and hotels.
After the screening, Professor Maurice Hope-Thompson of the department of communications moderated a panel that included three of the former student protesters; King, Dr. Earl Allen and former TSU professor, Holy Hogrobrooks. Guests included the dean of the department of communications, James Ward.
Before introducing the panelists, ‘Silencing Jim Crow’ producer and event organizer, Prof. Sandifer-Walker, pointed out that the intent of the project was to convey to the younger generation a piece of their own history.
“This film is geared toward the younger generation because many of you are not aware of what they had to go through. I want you to walk out of here believing in TSU; especially its role in desegregation,” Sandifer-Walker emphasized.
The panelists revealed their individual and collective motivations for joining the ranks of those willing to confront Jim Crow.
“If you know it’s the right thing to do and feel comfortable with it, then you should do it,” said Hogrobrooks.
Hogrobrooks was no stranger to activism. Her parents had been very involved in voter registration drives and had instilled in their daughter a sense of social responsibility that manifested itself when the occasion arose. She became a frontline warrior in the battle against Houston’s version of Jim Crow.
In ‘A sit-in to face down Jim Crow’, Sandifer-Walker’s Chronicle article on those historic events of the early sixties, she describes, Jim Crow as “a phrase used to describe a system of Southern laws that denied basic rights.”
Jim Crow laws were strongly enforced South of the Mason-Dixie line between 1880-1964.
King who was in law school at the time knew of the probability of being blacklisted in his field for his involvement in the strike action but not even that could dissuade him from the joining the struggle.
“What motivated me was awakenings, where things become clear. It was the second awakening. The first was when Martin Luther King initiated the Montgomery bus boycott. Then when we saw what the students in North Carolina were doing, it just blew my mind,” said King.
Allen, one of the student protesters recalled how their stance on March 4th rattled that system to its core. The authorities in Houston, including the mayor had sworn that they weren’t going to tolerate any challenge to the status quo, which might affect Houston’s immaculate reputation.
“We knew our place. They knew their place and knew we knew our place. This day, we decided to get out of our place and they didn’t know what to do.”
This March 4th, Sandifer-Walker and current TSU students will reenact that fateful march that ignited civil rights movement in Houston. The march will begin at the campus flag post and end at 4110 Almeda Street, now a U.S. Post Office building.
Click here for more information on the project chronicling those historic events visit:
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