Houston Negro Chamber of Commerce

Mack H. Hannah Jr., who led the chamber when it took its new name in 1964, was by the Handbook of Texas's reckoning probably the wealthiest Black Texan. Born in Brenham in 1904 and raised in Port Arthur, he was an All-American football player at Bishop College, then sold caskets across six states from 1930 to 1944. He built his fortune in life insurance, a casket company, a savings and loan, real estate and a funeral home. He chaired Texas Southern University's board, served as U.S. consul to Liberia and was a cousin of Hobart T. Taylor.

What the plaque says

Houston Negro Chamber of Commerce In September 1935, several prominent community leaders organized the Houston Negro Chamber of Commerce (HNCC) to empower and promote African-American buinesses in the city. They focused on encouraging business within African-American communities, since Jim Crow laws prevented blacks from accessing opportunities outside of their neighborhoods. With J.E. Robinson, Sr. as its first president, it was the first successful group of this type in Houston's black community. The office was in the black-owned Pilgrim Temple Building from 1935 until moving here in 1963. The HNCC sought to promote the civic, ecnomic, industrial, agricultural and social welfare of Houston residents; encourage alrger patronacge of balc enterprises and practival educatino in the trades and arts to stimulate better business; and develop a more amicable relationship between racial groups. The organization also encouraged residents to pay their poll taxes in order to become eligible to vote, promoted fair housing and emplyment practives, contributed to international commerce, and held contests, better businessesformus, and baquets to motivate the African-American community. During World War II, their office served as a rations hedquarters. A junior chamber was organized in 1942. The chamger also provided platforms for national leaders and partnered with government programs. Women have been actively involved in the HNCC since its formation and hel d offices as early as 1957. In 1964, under the leadership of Mack H. Hannah, Jr., the chamber changed its name to the Houston Citizens Chamber of Commerce (HCCC). Today, the HCCC continues to represent the interests of and promote greater unity among the African-American business community. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Emancipation Park — 0.8 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.0 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 1.4 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.0 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ — 0.2 mi
• John Thomas Biggers — 0.2 mi
• The Murals of Hannah Hall — 0.4 mi
• Dr. Thomas F. Freeman — 0.4 mi