The Frenchtown Community

Before Frenchtown had its own church, its Catholic families traveled for Mass. St. Nicholas at Clay and Live Oak, then Houston's only Catholic church for people of color, meant a three-mile walk or a five-cent streetcar ride. So residents raised a building fund at home with la-la dances and sales of gumbo, boudin and pralines. The money was stolen before work began. The Southern Pacific Railroad gave a new site, and the Creoles built Our Mother of Mercy themselves at Sumpter and Granger. The first Mass was said June 9, 1929.

What the plaque says

The Frenchtown Community A distinct ethnic cultural group, "Creoles of Color," developed in Louisiana in the 18th and 19th centuries. With roots in French, Spanish, African and Native American cultures, they spoke standard or Creole French and practiced Catholicism. Free persons before the Civil War, they lost their special status with the onset of Jim Crow laws, and many turned to sharecropping to survive but suffered further with declining agricultural prices and drought. Escaping the devastating 1927 Mississippi River flood, many fled west via highways and rail lines. In Houston, they took jobs in industries related to oil, construction and railroads. They established a tight-knit, culturally unique community called Frenchtown, today bounded by Collingsworth Street, Russell Street, Liberty Road, Quitman Street and Jensen Drive. In 1929, residents built Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church, which later established a parochial school. Families maintained their cultural identity by marrying within the community and closely supporting their neighbors. They held la-las, social gatherings centered on food and music, to raise funds for building new homes. Zydeco music, a blending of Creole la-la and the blues, also played a vital role in distinguishing this community. Frenchtown began to lose its identity as a Creole enclave after World War II as segregation ended, U.S. Highway 59 expanded and more non-creole families moved here. Later, the popularity of Zydeco music and a renewed interest in Creole culture brought attention to this unique community and led to various preservation efforts. The Frenchtown community association has aided in the reclaiming of this vibrant, distinctive area of Houston. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 2.6 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.
• Emancipation Park — 3.7 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.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 4.1 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.
• Rothko Chapel — 4.7 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

• Payne Chapel A.M.E. Church — 0.3 mi
• Zydeco Music in Frenchtown — 0.6 mi
• Mount Vernon United Methodist Church — 0.7 mi
• Peacock Records — 0.8 mi