Houston's First Sit-In

The students at the counter had help the plaque does not name. Law student Otis King cofounded the Progressive Youth Association with Eldrewey Stearns and Holly Hogrobrooks, and TSU president Samuel Nabrit risked political censure by publicly commending the protesters. Doctors of the Black Houston Medical Forum pooled money for bail and court costs. Desegregation came quietly: Hobart Taylor, Houston Chronicle publisher John T. Jones and Foley's vice president Bob Dundas persuaded seventy downtown stores to integrate over one weekend under a media blackout. In early 1961 TSU students sat in for six Saturdays at Union Station.

What the plaque says

Houston's First Sit-In From 1896 until the 1960s in the southern United States, Jim Crow Laws effectively banned African Americans from using public facilities and basic services that were used by whites. In March 1960, thirteen students from Texas Southern University (TSU) started a non-violent movement protesting these laws and changed Houston forever. These young architects of change formed the Progressive Youth Association (PYA), meeting at the South Central YMCA or in their apartments to plan strategies. These "War Room" meetings are where they organized Houston's first sit-in. On March 4, 1960, the thirteen students met at a flagpole on TSU's campus and marched in pairs one mile to Weingarten's Supermarket (4110 Almeda Road) with the objective of being served at the lunch counter. Dozens more joined them as they marched, singing black spirituals. Though white employees refused to serve the students and patrons hurled insults at them, they sat there silently for hours, occupying all 30 counter stools in shifts. More sit-ins occurred over the following days and weeks. The sit-in at Weingarten's Supermarket was the first in a series of non-violent demonstrations leading to the peaceful end of segregation in public places. Houston's lunch counters quietly desegregated on August 25, 1960. Department stores, hotels and restaurants soon followed, and Houston's Astrodome opened in 1965 as an integrated facility. The sit-ins ended with the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Today, these thirteen unsung heroes are remembered for starting a movement that advanced civil rights and equality in Houston. (2009)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 0.3 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.
• Emancipation Park — 0.7 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.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 1.0 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 — 1.3 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

• The Houston Light Guard — 0.3 mi
• San Jacinto High School — 0.4 mi
• South Main Baptist Church — 0.5 mi
• The Playhouse Theatre — 0.6 mi