Fifth Ward, Houston
By the mid-1880s, it was virtually all black, home to working-class people who made their livings in Houston's eastside ship channel and industrial areas or as domestics for wealthy Houstonians.
Also home to the famous "Island of Hope (Anderson Memorial Temple) COGIC" the oldest Pentecostal church in Fifth Ward.
The city government ameliorated the 1883 complaints by establishing a drawbridge at San Jacinto Street that crossed the Buffalo Bayou.
[5] On February 21, 1912, with stiff Northern winds blowing in, the largest fire in Houston's history began.
Some Jewish people remained as landlords, but most of them moved away, with many of them going to New York City, including The Bronx; and Long Island.
The community was known as the "bloody Fifth" because of some highly publicized violent incidents in the neighborhood; Michael Berryhill of the Houston Press stated that the Fifth Ward was not as blighted in the 1940s as it was during the 1990s.
[8] In the post-World War II period a large number of black migrants, many of them from Louisiana and some from East Texas and other areas in the Deep South, settled the Fifth Ward.
[10] The city government established some pocket parks and added pavement, gutters, and curbing to several streets in the southernmost part of the Fifth Ward in the period 1964-1974, during the term of Mayor of Houston Louie Welch.
[13] Ernest McMillan, a community activist and contributor to the Fifth Ward Enrichment Program, said in a 1987 Houston Chronicle article that "One of the differences between this neighborhood and one like River Oaks is that they have lots of support and all kinds of resources available.
[3] In 1974 Whit Canning of Texas Monthly stated that the Fifth Ward was characterized by a "project-type apartment complex", "narrow streets" and "small stores".
[12] West wrote that the Fifth Ward had its environment "out in the open, on the street" and that it had "more barbershops, pawnshops, churches, loose dogs, abandoned buildings, bars, broken windows" while there were "fewer sidewalks, streetlights, fire hydrants, culverts, curbs, parks, jewelers, museums, libraries, garbage trucks.
The article added that Japhet is "more like a village than anything else -- fragrant organic gardens are everywhere, bursting with vegetables, fruits and flowers, and the whole neighborhood comes together for a big party every full moon.
[41] The center, operated by the Houston Department of Health and Human Services, houses ten agencies, including the Fifth Ward Branch Library, American Red Cross, Harris County Juvenile Probation Program, Mayor's Citizens' Assistance Office, Neighborhood Centers Inc., and Fifth Ward Head Start.
[39] It was named after John Wesley Peavy Sr., an East Texas native who served as a precinct judge in the area.
[15] As of 1979 most businesses in the Fifth Ward were personal service affairs common to other low income neighborhoods in the United States, such as pawnshops, funeral parlors, bars, barbershops, cleaners, cafes, and liquor stores.
As of 1979 Mack Hanna, a black man from Houston, owned the Standard Savings Association, the only financial institution in the Fifth Ward.
"[44] KBR maintained offices in a 138 acres (56 ha) campus on Clinton Drive,[45][46][47] within the boundaries of the East End and the Fifth Ward.
[53] As of 1979 the intersection of Lyons Avenue and Jensen Drive was called "Pearl Harbor" due to many violent incidents occurring there.
[54] The southern edge of the Fifth Ward, along the Buffalo Bayou, housed farms in its early history before becoming a host of slums and the city dump by the 1920s.
[9] The 359-acre (145 ha) Englewood Rail Yard, located in the eastern end of the Fifth Ward, is 4.5 miles (7.2 km) long.
[56] The rail yard was the location of a now-defunct wood preservation plant which is a continued source of creosote contamination to the neighborhood.
This plant, as of 1979, gives a distinct odor that caused area Mexican Americans to name it el Creosote.
[57] In 2019 the Texas Department of State Health Services conducted of a study of an area in the Fifth Ward around Lavender Street, near a creosote facility of a former rail yard, where cancer rates were higher than normal.
[60] The north-south Southern Pacific Transportation Company railroad tracks separate the Fifth Ward from Denver Harbor.
David Benson, an assistant to Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee, described the railroad line as "a semi-permeable membrane."
[1] As of 1997[update] even though most of the Fifth Ward and the adjacent Denver Harbor neighborhood are zoned to the same high school, the areas are represented by different board members.
[68] As of 2019[update] due to the proximity of Interstate 45, Bruce Elementary experienced noise pollution and twice the amount of asthma compared to the HISD average.
[97] The Human Organizational Political and Economic Development, Inc. was established in the summer of 1967 by Methodist minister Reverend Earl Allen and operated a Black Arts Center, the Roxy Theater and published the Voice of Hope.
The Emergency School Aid act provided $164,000 in September 1978, and the National Endowment of the Arts stated that it would give a grant of $15,000 one month later.
Reginald Adams, the executive director of the Museum of Cultural Arts Houston (MOCAH), oversaw the creation of the mural.
