When Joanna Hadjicostandi first arrived in Odessa in the mid ’90s one of the first things she did was read H.G. Bissinger’s book, Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team and A Dream. The chapter on race fascinated the sociology professor and set her on a path she remains on 26 years later.
The UTPB professor is determined to preserve the history of the Black community in Odessa.
Although Black people began moving to Odessa in the late ’30s, largely from East Texas and Louisiana, Hadjicostandi said very little of that history had been documented before she arrived.
”As much as I looked there wasn’t much in the library about the community other than Friday Night Lights and two or three other publications that were not academic, just other small publications about the community,” she said. “I felt it would be very beneficial to younger generations to know the history of their ancestors and how the community developed on the southside.”
The professor realized soon after her arrival Odessa was divided by the railroad tracks with Hispanics and Blacks on one side and whites on the other.
She began her research by tracking down many of the people mentioned in Bissinger’s book and found them willing to share what life was like in the days of segregation. Many of them were leaders, they were teachers, church leaders, entrepreneurs, she said.
The list is long, but among those she spoke with were teachers Arlene Campbell, Fred Deaver and Winfred Richmond. There was also Miltrue Collins, a nurse, and Emma Penny, who ran an informal hotel out of her small home.
“They became my family. They absolutely became my family. Mrs. Campbell, we called her granny, because she became a person I visited very, very often,” she said. “They understood the importance and they just embraced me. I was so grateful for that, of course, having come from a different place with two small children. It was the beginning of a long lasting relationship with the community.”
She could speak for hours and hours about the stories she’s heard over the years about what it was like back then, Hadjicostandi said.
Penny moved to Odessa in 1936, spent 27 years as a district representative, she said. Her home became the only place in Odessa where Black people could stay while traveling through the area.
“Her home was a small two-bedroom house and she told me stories you cannot even believe,” she said. “She told me that the Harlem Globetrotters in 1975, all 52 of them, came through and stayed with her. In order to be able to accommodate everybody she kind of recruited some neighbors.”
Penny also put up national boxing hero Joe Louis, the professor said.
Collins, the mother of NAACP President Gene Collins, helped desegregate the hospitals here, Hadjicostandi said.
“When I talked to Mrs. Collins she explained that when she had her baby at the hospital, they told her her next step was to go to the basement because that’s where they treated all African American and Hispanic people,” she said. “Mrs. Collins just refused to go the basement because obviously all the individuals there had all kinds of diseases. She said ‘No, I’m not exposing my baby to that basement. Call my husband to take me home right now.’ From then on the hospital was desegregated.”
Richmond spoke of living in the home he built by hand room-by-room, Hadjicostandi said. He also built Campbell’s house.
“Mr. Richmond explained that he couldn’t get any loans. He had to buy the lumber or anything he needed on a weekly basis and then continue with his work. That was a gradual way to build their homes,” she said. “The diligence and the integrity of all the individuals I talked to were incredible.”
She also heard stories about other folks, including Dr. Wheatley Stewart, who was the only doctor who would treat Blacks and Hispanics and Edward Downing Sr., who was a principal at Douglas Elementary and Carver School. An elementary school in Odessa is now named after him.
Desegregation occurred in Odessa in 1982, roughly 10 to 15 years later than the rest of the United States and it wasn’t without negative repercussions, Hadjicostandi said.
The Black community had always been a tight-knit one and that changed to a certain extent after desegregation, she said. Black teachers no longer were able to provide the support and oversight to the children they’d grown close to over the years.
“Here’s something that stays in my head: desegregation does not mean integration and that I heard from several of the people I interviewed,” she said.
For years, Hadjicostandi worked on a tri-ethnic committee that was formed after desegregation. It’s goal was to monitor how students were treated and the type of education they were getting. She’s also been on the boards of the Phyllis Wheatley Day Nursery and Gertrude Bruce Historical Cultural Center.
Overall, the stories that originated on the south side of Odessa inspire her, Hadjicostandi said. In fact, she now spends a lot of her time talking to the descendants of those original leaders so she can continue to document their stories as well.
She shares her vast collections of stories with her classes, in peer-reviewed publications and at various conferences, she said. She’s created one documentary so far and she’s determined to to share her decades of work on the internet. Some of the oral histories can be found at https://agradecidassenas.com/videos/
“I wish for the younger generation to be aware of the contributions, struggles, diligence, and strength of their ancestors,” Hadjicostandi said. “The histories are part of my teaching and part of my showing the resilience of people who have been denied a lot of their rights, but kept their integrity and their strength in continuing and creating. The stories are endless. I could tell one story after another, one story after another.”
Before her classes went online, Hadjicostandi said she’d often take her students on a tour of the south side so they could see historic places. They’d often dine at Arthur Ray’s, which famously offered home-cooked meals for more than 40 years. The original restaurant, which was a beer joint at first, was built by Arthur Ray Anderson Junior’s mother, Essie Taylor, by hand.
While things have improved for Blacks in Odessa and the nation, Hadjicostandi said we still “have a ways to go” when it comes to equity in jobs, housing, education and just opportunities in general.
People need to engage in more “critical thinking” when it comes to things like Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory, she said.
“People should not be leery of groups that have developed throughout this country because of the issues of race and racism. They need to understand and critically think about them. Black Lives Matters has become one of those groups that people are fearful of,” Hadjicostandi said. “We’re going back to the ‘60s when people were fearful of the Black Panthers and people didn’t know the first thing about the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers were not a violent group. They were a group that helped kids. When people were treated so unequally and with such violence, sometimes you have to react.”
So what exactly is Critical Race Theory?
“Critical race theory is looking critically at race relations to just put it into a short and quick sentence,” she said. “The people behind Critical Race Theory are not trying to change history, they’re trying to explore, understand and show history in its reality. What went on can’t be disregarded to begin with and what is going on now cannot also be disregarded.”
”As a sociologist I can say that the concept of race is a social and political construct and that taking issue with CRT is at best ignoring the critical analysis of history,” Hadjicostandi said. “This theory is embedded in the history of this country and to remove from the classrooms historical realities that are based on institutional racial discrimination that has occurred in the past, and is still occurring, is not doing justice to history and truth.”
