DUANE
Duane's take
Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, every neighborhood has a name, and some names are just names — but some names tell you exactly what kind of place you're dealing with. Between 1910 and 1920, Houston was pulling in a large number of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans, and they found their way to the Second Ward.
Two neighborhoods in particular made room for them — Old Frost Town and Schrimpf's Field — places that offered what industrial workers needed most: inexpensive housing. Nothing glamorous. Nothing fancy.
Just a door, a roof, and a chance. By the 1930s, the Spanish-speaking residents of that corner of Houston had given the area a name all their own. They called it El Alacrán.
The Scorpion. Now, you don't name your neighborhood after a scorpion because things are soft. That name carries a certain pride in toughness — a wry acknowledgment that this wasn't the easy side of town, and the people who lived there knew it, and stayed anyway.
And they built something there. Churches rose up. The Rusk Settlement House opened its doors.
Rusk School educated the children. Sports leagues gave the community a way to come together, to compete, to belong. For a place outsiders might have written off, El Alacrán was generating something real — social ties, education, roots.
But the 1950s had other plans. Urban renewal arrived. Highway construction followed.
And El Alacrán was demolished. Not faded away, not slowly forgotten — demolished. The scorpion, it turned out, couldn't sting its way out of that one.
Still, the marker doesn't let you leave on a note of pure loss. Once notoriously impoverished, El Alacrán gave many of its residents a working start — a foothold, a foundation — toward full integration into American society. That's the thing about tough neighborhoods.
Sometimes the toughness is exactly the point. Sometimes The Scorpion is what gets you through.
What the marker says
Between 1910 and 1920, Houston attracted a large number of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans to the Second Ward where the Old Frost Town and Schrimpf's Field neighborhoods offered inexpensive housing for industrial workers. In the 1930s, the Spanish-speaking residents gave the area a new name - El Alacran, The Scorpion. Churches, the Rusk Settlement House, Rusk School and sports leagues provided social and educational services for the community. Urban renewal and highway construction in the 1950s demolished El Alacran. Once a notoriously impoverished neighborhood, El Alacran gave many residents a working start toward full integration into American society. (2013)