FREEING UP FUNDS FOR EMANCIPATION PARK 
The Third Ward’s 10-acre Emancipation Park — on Elgin 2 blocks east of Hwy. 59 — is scheduled receive at least $7 million in improvements, though the historic park’s supporters are hoping to raise funds to boost that figure to $18 million. Either would mark a significant step up from the $800 the Rev. Jack Yates and a group of freed slaves pooled to purchase the property in 1872, as a location for Juneteenth celebrations. (It was later donated to the city.) Recent commitments include $4 million from the OST/Almeda Corridors Redevelopment Authority, $2 million from the city, and a just-announced $1 million grant from Texas’s Parks and Wildlife Dept. According to an HBJ report, local landscape architecture firm M2L Associates is currently at work planning an entry plaza, outdoor exhibit area, trails, lighting, historical markers, and a new building with additional parking for the park. Later phases of improvements would renovate or add a community center, pool house, playground, picnic areas, benches, and sports fields and courts. [Houston Chronicle, Houston Business Journal] Photo: City of Houston
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How about adding a statue of President Lincoln? It would be the perfect place to finally have a statue of our 16th President in Houston.
No wonder our government is broke. For only 1 mil I could make that park shine again (skimming a couple thou off the top, of course). How much can a park bench cost nowadays?
I think is fantastic that freed slaves created this park.
Where else in America!?
Houston has a LONG history of Negro rights – the marches, the lunch-counter sit-ins.
We should support efforts to maintain both Emancipation Park and the city’s multicultural history: To keep it relevant.
Any day now, Anglos will be on the other side of the fence!
Hope it encourages more community involvement and less crime. A lot of murders right around there this summer.
If a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, what is someone who doesn’t know what stuff costs?