Jackson's Barber Shop & Beauty Salon

Jackson's has stayed in the family. By 2024 Alvin Jackson's son Johnie owned the shop and told KTRK that in the civil rights years the community came in together to talk over the issues of the day. A barber recalled the early crowds, with cars lined "all up and down the streets." The family describes its mentoring as a way to get young people off the street. After the marker celebration the shop held a free back-to-school haircut drive, and a Harris County Historical Commission member said it was likely the first barbershop to receive a historical marker.

What the plaque says

Jackson's Barber Shop & Beauty Salon In the early 20th century, African American entrepreneurship expanded and many new businesses were established. In cities and towns, these areas included barber shops and beauty salons, which quickly became unique spaces for social discussion and support. Customers could receive barber service and also talk about important issues in the community. By the early 1920s, the African American community of Independence Heights was thriving with dozens of businesses. In 1954, Alvin E. Jackson (1917-1999), and his family began work on a two-story building which featured a barber shop and two rental apartments. Later that year, Jackson's Barber Shop and Beauty Salon opened. Jackson's Barber Shop quickly became a meeting place for the community and a symbolic cultural center. Located on historic Church Row, the shop opened its space to church events and meetings, supporting the spiritual needs of the community. During, before and after the Civil Rights era, the barber shop and beauty salon served as a safe space to express and discuss economic, political and social concerns among family, friends and neighbors. Alvin Jackson and his wife Viola (Roquemore) Jackson and the shop were active in the community through mentor programs, fundraising, free back to school haircuts and involvement with the Houston NAACP. Since the 1950s, Jackson's Barber Shop & Beauty Salon has served the community through its employment of more than 75 barbers and community service to thousands. It remains an important cultural center where generations are brought together with shared and remembered experiences. (2019)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 4.2 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Rothko Chapel — 5.5 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.
• The Menil Collection — 5.6 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 5.7 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.

More markers nearby

• James D. Burrus Elementary School — steps away
• Houston Heights Woman's Club — 1.0 mi
• St. Andrew's Episcopal Church — 1.1 mi
• Daniel Denton Cooley — 1.1 mi