DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, friends, and I aim to do it justice. Now, if you know anything about Houston's Fourth Ward — the place folks called Freedmen's Town since the days just after the Civil War — you know it wasn't just a neighborhood. It was a world unto itself.
A spiritual place, a cultural place, a business district where African Americans in Houston built something real and lasting out of circumstances that might have broken lesser people. And right at the heart of that world, for generations, you kept running into the same family name: Yates. The Reverend John Henry 'Jack' Yates cast a long shadow over the Fourth Ward, and his son Rutherford Birchard Hayes Yates — born in 1878, right next door to the very property we're talking about — grew up inside that shadow and decided, somewhere along the way, that he liked the shape of it.
Rutherford went east to Marshall, Texas, graduated from Bishop College in 1906 with a degree in printing, and then did what young educated men of his day did: he went to work. He taught school in Vinto, Louisiana. He taught in Palestine, Texas.
He married Erie Sherrod, started a family, and made his way to Dallas with his wife and their infant daughter. But Houston had a pull on the Yates family, and in 1908, Rutherford and Erie came home — staying in the old Yates family home while something new was being built just steps away. By 1912, the house was finished, and I want you to picture it for a moment.
Leaded glass windows catching the morning light. A wraparound porch held up by Classical columns like the man inside had something worth announcing to the world. Doors dressed up with transoms and sidelights.
This was a well-preserved, middle-class home in the Fourth Ward — typical of what was being built in that neighborhood in the early twentieth century, which is to say it was dignified, it was solid, and it was built to last. Rutherford Yates filled that house with purpose. He worked alongside African American printers around Houston.
He taught at the Houston Academy — the very school his father had founded, the same school where Rutherford himself had sat as a young boy and learned what the world might offer a man willing to study for it. Then, in 1922, he and his brother Paul did something that had his father's fingerprints all over it: they built something of their own. The Yates Printing Company.
It grew. It prospered. It kept running, kept printing, kept mattering all the way past 1978 before it finally closed.
That's more than half a century of ink on paper, of work that meant something. And through all those years, that wraparound-porch house on Fourth Ward was more than a family home. Because at a time when commercial lodging in Houston was simply not available to African Americans, Rutherford and Erie Yates opened their doors.
Visiting dignitaries came through. Delegates to church conventions, to other conventions — people who had traveled far and needed a place to rest their heads in a city that wouldn't give them one — they found it at the Yates house. Johnnie Mae, Olee, and young Rutherford grew up watching their parents do that, watching them hold the door open when the world outside kept trying to close it.
The house stayed in the Yates family until 1994. Eighty-two years of one family's story pressed into its leaded glass and wrapped up in those Classical columns. The marker went up in 1998, and it's standing right here because some things in this state are worth stopping for.
This is one of them.
What the marker says
Rutherford Birchard Hayes Yates (1878-1944), son of the Rev. John Henry "Jack" and Harriet Yates, grew up next door to this property (in a house later relocated to Sam Houston Park.) Yates followed in his father's footsteps as a civic and religious leader in Houston's Fourth Ward, originally known as Freedmen's Town, a spiritual, cultural and business district for African Americans in Houston since the Civil War. Following his graduation in 1906 from Bishop College in Marshall, Texas, with a degree in printing, Rutherford Yates taught school in Vinto, Louisiana, and Palestine, Texas, before moving to Dallas with his wife, Erie (Sherrod), and their infant daughter. In 1908, they moved to Houston and resided in the Yates family home until this house was completed in 1912. A well-preserved and typical example of the middle class residences built in the Fourth Ward in the early 20th century, the Yates house features leaded glass windows, a wraparound porch with Classical columns, and doors with transoms and sidelights. During the time that the Yates family occupied this house, Rutherford Yates worked with several African American printers and taught at the Houston Academy (founded by his father) where he had attended school as a young boy. In 1922, he and his brother Paul established the Yates Printing Company, which grew and prospered over the years until it closed after 1978. At a time when commercial lodging for African Americans in Houston was limited, Rutherford and Erie Yates and their children -- Johnnie Mae, Olee and Rutherford -- often opened their home to visiting dignitaries and delegates to church and other conventions. The house remained in the Yates family ownership until 1994. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-1998