Black middle-class newcomers feel at home in the Houston area

8:07 PM 2/16/1998

Black middle-class newcomers feel at home in the Houston area

Texas, other Southern states, becoming a magnet

By LORI RODRIGUEZ
Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle

In the 20-odd years that attorney and Harvard graduate Carolyn McKinney followed her career path across the country, she lived in Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and now, she hopes permanently, in Houston.

"It's a neighborhood of couples and kids and minivans, and then there's me," says McKinney, an African-American who was born and raised in the small Mississippi town of Holly Springs and today lives serenely in a mainly white, suburban neighborhood. "But the people are real friendly."

To McKinney, that friendliness is key.

"A lot of people in the North tend to think that the only thing in Houston is a bunch of rednecks with rifle racks in their pickups, and that's just not the case. That's television," says McKinney.

"Houston is actually more tolerant than a lot of other places that I've lived, and the intolerance that you do see is at least honest. There's a lot of under-the-surface intolerance in the North. In Houston, if somebody doesn't like you, they just don't like you."

Three blocks from the relative calm of Katy but a quick drive from the city's urbane offerings, McKinney at age 41 with a dog, a 4,000-square-foot home and a rewarding job in the Amoco Corp. legal department, is a well-pleased woman.

And she is more: Educated, upwardly mobile and solidly middle-class, McKinney is one of thousands of African-Americans who, in the 1990s, are pouring into the economically restored New South in record and accelerating numbers.

Hailing from all regions of the country, these migrants have turned back a once entrenched tide: The long, black flight from segregation and economic woes.

While 90 percent of blacks at the turn of the 20th century lived in the South, many through the next six decades were driven away by racial strife, drawn to the more accepting and booming industrial North and Midwest. But as manufacturing sagged and the Rust Belt earned its name, the South resurged, thanks to tourism, high-tech development and new corporate centers, according to a new study by University of Michigan demographer William Frey.

In the 1970s, the flow of blacks was staunched and, in the 1980s, for the first time this century, the proportion of blacks living in the South rose.

In the 1990s, according to Frey's analysis of Census Bureau statistics, the one-time exodus came full circle, with the South racking up 65 percent of the black growth between 1990 and 1996 even as it accounted for 46 percent of all growth.

The nearly 370,000 net migration of blacks to the South, for the first time in any five-year measuring period, included net migration from the Northeast, Midwest and West. It also was more than double the gain of the previous five years.

"The growth is in the place that you might call the New South, although in the case of Texas, it might best be called the rehabilitated New South, since things for a few years there were not too good economically," says Frey.

"But as the economy has rebounded, people will move to where the greatest vitality is occurring. Blacks in particular will move to the South when they have a choice, because it does have more of a sense of home.

"Even if they did not grow up there, the fact that there is an emerging black middle-class helps them to network, to get into the community quickly and to get in in ways that are not as effective in other parts of the country."

"Everyone is very hospitable," agrees Lisa Adams, who moved here in 1990 with her new husband, Neal, a Houston native then living in New Haven, Conn. "Especially in the different African-American communities, like Sunnyside near Cullen, there's a lot of older people who sit on their porches outside and, when you drive by, they'll just wave at you."

Most newcomers, like the Adamses who live in far southwest Houston near Missouri City, are settling in the suburbs and metropolitan areas of Sun Belt centers like Atlanta, Dallas and especially Houston, where Harris County between 1990 and 1996 added 63,642 blacks. That numerical gain was the greatest registered by any county in the nation, surpassing Prince George's County, Md., which gained 58,000 blacks, and Fulton County, Ga., which is the Atlanta suburban belt and gained 57,000.

Seven of the 10 metropolitan areas that gained the most black residents, in fact, were in the South, with the state of Texas generally such a magnet for migrants that the metro areas of Houston-Galveston-Brazoria and Dallas-Fort Worth were fourth and seventh in numerical growth.

As the ranks of the black middle-class have swelled, and the South has developed a more diverse and resilient economy, the racial hostility once plaguing the region has eased palpably.

"It's a very different climate," says Frey, a conclusion echoed by African-Americans who have found Texas and especially Houston not quite what they expected.

Now here for seven years, Adams remains taken by the economic opportunities in Houston's sheer bigness. She is an account manager with McCoy Inc., her first post with a major firm and a welcome, if initially nerve-wracking, challenge. Her husband is a water quality inspector for the city of Houston and a Navy reservist. They have satisfying jobs, a nice home and two daughters, Paige, who is 3 months old, and Elysha Bre, who is 3 years old, and, as Adams says with bemused chagrin, "talks Southern."

"I wouldn't want to move back for anything," says Adams. "In Connecticut, you have to travel so far to get to where and what you need. Here, it's so big that everything is at your fingertips.

"Plus, there's so much to do. You have your sports arena, your Astrodome, your AstroWorld. These are things we would have traveled six hours for back home. If we wanted to see a ballgame, we would have had to go to New York. If we wanted to go to an amusement park, we would have had to go to New Jersey.

"New Haven's very small, very cold; you basically have a lot of friends, stay inside and do a lot of home activities."

Of today's Southern migrants, most like the Adamses are working age and about one-fifth are college graduates who substantially are shifting the demographics of their new locales. About 7 percent are age 65 or over, says Frey, with many returning to retire in familiar surroundings or to be near their families.

McKinney is a short flight to her parents in Holly Springs, has a brother and sister-in-law and "perfect nephew" in Houston and another brother and sister-in-law in Dallas. The Adamses relish the comforting nearness of Neal's family in Sunnyside.

"I thought that the opportunities and quality of life here were much better," says Fox television reporter Lloyd Gite, who returned to Houston in the 1980s after years in New England, New York and finally Detroit. "But I also felt that I just needed to come back home. I had nieces and nephews who were growing up and I wanted to be part of their lives."

When Gite, who was raised in the Third Ward and MacGregor Terrace, left his Dallas broadcasting job shortly after college, race played a major role, says Gite. "At the time, there just were not a lot of opportunities for black men."

Today, Gite at age 46 covers entertainment and general assignments for Fox, owns a home off Memorial and Shepherd behind River Oaks and enjoys the closeness of his family. The opportunities, as he says, have somewhat opened up.

Despite the softening racial backdrop, Rice University political scientist Bob Stein believes it's more the flourishing job market that pulls many black migrants toward Texas. But if some of those jobs were not accessible before, it helps considerably that now they are. "In 1998, there's simply more jobs," says Stein, "and the racial obstacles aren't there anymore."

Stein and Frey dovetail on the middle- and upper-class makeup of the migration. "You're not getting poor blacks moving south," says Stein. "These aren't the Okies moving around, or people moving from Chicago to Milwaukee to qualify for welfare benefits. These are professional and skilled workers."

A case in point is League City police Cpl. Onzelo Markum, who grew up in Harlem, was educated in the East and moved South from Boston in 1991 when his wife, Deirdre Williams-Markum completed her Baylor Medical School training.

"We based the determination, quite frankly, on which would be better in terms of employment: For her to move to Boston with me, or me to move to Houston with her," says Markum. "We felt it would be a lot easier for me to be employed as a police officer here; there were better employment and economic prospects here in Texas."

Today, the couple are so embraced by their new neighbors that Markum already has headed the League City Police Officers Association and is a candidate for the District 9 U.S. Congress seat. Williams-Markum is a Rice University psychologist who counsels students.

"The racial climate has been very favorable to us in terms of being able to fit in easily, and especially in being able to contribute to the community," says Markum.

"There are still clear areas where there are racial problems but not so much so that there are still Klansmen walking on the streets. There's still a battle, but I think that it's moved from the streets to our elected officials, to the board rooms, to the school rooms.

"It's moved to a different level. But there's certainly a greater emphasis on a person's character and ability here than there is on race."

Many apparently agree. In July 1996, Texas was home to 2.3 million of the nation's 34 million African-Americans and had the third largest black population, behind New York's 3.2 million and California's 2.4 million but beating Florida's 2.2 million and Georgia's 2.1 million.

"The big story for the 1990s is that Texas is drawing a lot of blacks back from California after losing them for years," says Frey, with the Lone Star state now the No. 1 destination of California blacks.

"California and Texas have always had a strong two-way exchange, but now that the Texas economy has gotten better, the move to Texas has accelerated."

While urban centers are favored sites, Frey's figures show fast-growing black populations in less likely, and even startling, rural areas. Between 1990 and 1996, for instance, the resolutely non-metropolitan Polk County in East Texas racked up the greatest percentage change of black population of any county in the nation, growing by 82.5 percent. The adjoining Tyler County recorded the fifth greatest change, growing by 58.9 percent.

"Retirees and near-retirees who are African-American will naturally seek to move back where they were born, to a warmer climate and to a more hospitable climate," Frey says of the rural appeal.

Also in the top 25 counties with the greatest percentage growth were Williamson County, which is part of the Austin-San Marcos metropolitan area and grew by 50.6 percent, and Collin County, which is part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area and grew by 45.1 percent.

Harris County, which in July 1990, already had 551,448 African-Americans, according to the census estimates, grew by 11.5 percent to 615,090, making it the sixth largest county population in the nation.

The local infusion of so many ambitious, successful blacks plus the mushrooming middle-class already here have wrought noticeable changes. Williams-Markum, who moved to Houston ahead of her husband and has been here 10 years, remembers when the area had little to offer socially to African-Americans like her. "There were only a few places where black middle-class people could go to and feel comfortable in," says Williams-Markum. "It's improved in that respect; there are lots of places where we can go and feel at ease."

LaDon McLemore, a 27-year-old from Muskegon, Mich., who moved here in August 1996, and now lives in the bustle off Texas 6 near Sugar Land, similarly is taken by the metropolis he calls "a giant melting pot."

"My main concern was getting somewhere," says McLemore, who currently works at Enterprise Rent-a-Car but is enrolled at the University of Houston in pursuit of a law degree or MBA. "I felt Michigan was a place where you were going to hit a glass ceiling sometimes no matter what you were doing. But I felt Houston was a place where individuals with a set goal would find it easier to achieve."

The most recent Census Bureau projections show the South continuing to attract huge numbers of blacks through the year 2025. Texas, alone, is expected to gain more than 580,000 black migrants, more than any other state including Georgia, which is expected to gain more than 530,000.

As Tennessee, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia are projected to gain between 100,000 and 270,000 blacks, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Michigan, California, Illinois and New York are expected to lose between 100,000 and 1.4 million.

"This African-American migration makes the South even more of a New South," concludes Frey. "And from a migration standpoint, Texas is unique because it's growing both from migration and immigration. That's not the case with other states experiencing the same high level of immigration."

With the city's Hispanic and Asian-American populations for some time the fastest-growing groups locally and statewide, the African-American migration to Texas and Houston along with black natural growth provide what some consider a welcome balance.

Eric Graves, who returned to Houston in 1994 after five years in Denver, in his previous job with Texaco worked closely with the city's diverse constituencies. Graves, now BFI vice president for corporate communications, says the city is changing dramatically and believes it is for the better.

"Communities where minorities were not necessarily welcome in the early '70s are now predominantly minority, and I find that noteworthy," says Graves. "Parts of Sharpstown, Bellaire and Pasadena were off-limits. There were varying reasons for exclusion but, simply put, minorities either couldn't afford to live there then or just weren't welcome."

"The complexion of our City Council and the focus of our government also have changed decisively. The bottom line is that we are poised to become the city of the next century because of our diversity."

Graves, who grew up in the Third Ward and points to the many women and minorities now leading Houston institutions, corporations and government bodies, thinks the city has learned to nurture and appreciate its diversity. While the lesson for some was a reluctant one, nonetheless, it took.

"Houston's greatest strength is the fact that the minority and ethnic groups of Houston see the value of working together on issues of community concern, as evidenced by the stadium vote, the mayoral election and the affirmative-action proposition," says Graves. "That's different than most cities where groups still tend to cluster together and hold separate issues.

"That's not to say that in Houston we don't. But when there is a larger community need, we seem to rise above our own. This is what separates us from cities like Chicago, Miami, Dallas and Los Angeles."

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