tours
At The Rodeo with Those Who Desire
MARCH 3-5, 2023
Houston is a decidedly Southern city, arguably having more in common with Atlanta than San Antonio, but every spring the city dons its boots and Stetsons and redraws the line for where the West begins.
The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is a three-week long, multi-million dollar event that is the biggest of its kind in the world. From its origins Downtown through its move to Judge Hoffheiz's innovative "Astrodomaine," the story of the Rodeo is the story of big business, and its influence on public policy. THOSE WHO DESIRE At the Rodeo, explores those stories, including how the prospect of a Major League Baseball team contributed to the desegregation of the city, the legacy of Black cowboys, and the excesses of real estate developers.
Colored plowboys on cotton plantation in Brazos riverbottoms coming in from the fields. "I never heard of Joe Louis." Texas
Photo by Dorothea Lange, 1938, for FSA
En los brazos de dios - A Tour along the Brazos river
IN PROCESS
The 1,300 miles of the Brazos River cuts through more than red Texas soil as it flows from the Texas Panhandle and past Houston on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. It cuts through over 300 years of history, culture, and commerce, and its fertile bottom soil is vitally important to the history of Houston, the State of Texas, and the whole American West.
It was on the banks of the Brazos that the state's first slave plantations were established, the first Texas millionaires were made, and where Jim Crow tactics were first tested large-scale, before being exported across the country, and indeed the world.
Beneath the McKee St Bridge over Buffalo Bayou.
Photo by Patrick Feller
Swamp Things - How Houston was Built with Mud, Blood, and bricks
NOV 2019
In 1836, brothers Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen stepped out of a boat onto the muddy banks of Buffalo Bayou, and hatched plans for Houston's very first real estate scam. From that original, ignominious origin, our big, beautiful city was born.
Do we love this city?! You bet your sweet, sweaty ass we do! But history doesn't need to be old and musty. Are you interested in a more modern, and nuanced version of the old stories you've heard before? Or maybe you're interested in the stories that aren't getting told? Do you want to see this city for what it really is, warts and all?
Dark Was The Night - A Tour of the Camp Logan Uprising
AUG 2018; JUN-JULY 2019
A bus and walking tour tracing the history and geography of the Camp Logan Uprising of 1917. Alternatively known as the Houston Riot, the uprising was a mutiny of over 100 black soldiers, reacting to threats and abuse from white citizens and the police.
The battle-hardened soldiers of the 24th Infantry were among the most-respected colored units in Army. The war-time posting of this elite fighting force in a hostile Southern city created tensions that erupted on a hot and rainy summer evening. As the sun rose the following morning, 16 people lay dead, including five policemen.
What events set up this night of violence, and what was the spark that ignited the catastrophic explosion? See the places central to the story that are hiding in plain sight.
Brick streets, Wilson at Andrews
Photo by Patrick Feller
Chopped and Screwed - A Walking Tour of Freedmen's Town
FEB 2017
A tour through the oldest and most prominent Black enclave in Houston. Confront the forgotten and ignored past of this historic, and abused neighborhood on the edge of Downtown.
Following emancipation, thousands of newly freed slaves from Brazos River cotton plantations and elsewhere flooded the city, settling along the soggy banks of Buffalo Bayou, in the Fourth Ward. The community that sprang up in the newly dubbed "Freedmen's Town" established the first of Houston's important Black institutions - churches, schools, hospitals, and businesses.
But, in the 1940s white developments displaced Black residents. By the 1960s the Interstate cut the settlement in half. By the 1980s most of the original families had left, and crack moved in. In the 2000s gentrification began, and "Midtown" began to erase its history.
Over the decades, Freedmen's Town truly has been CHOPPED and SCREWED.
Downtown "Ghost Tour"
OCT 2016
A WALKING TOUR OF UNCOMMON HISTORY IN THE HEART OF THE BAYOU CITY.
A walking tour through the oldest part of the city, this tour confronted the “ghosts” of Houston’s forgotten, and ignored past. While not a literal ghost tour (though at least one of the sites is known to have a specter), the tour dealt with adult topics including slavery, murder, police violence, lynchings, prostitution, drug and alcohol use. There was also a fair bit of humor, and a few stops at bars along the way.