How Texas Southern University Became a Legendary College

By: Sydney Williams

Texas Southern University isn’t just a college for African American, it has so much background history that many may not know. In the book Born to Serve: a history of Texas Southern University it shares the upcoming of a school that was once not taken seriously and judge by race.

What stood out the most to me is that TSU students made an impact on the whole city of Houston by just doing one sit in. It changed history and made Texas Southern University Legendary.

Texas Southern University became established by the 50th Texas Legislature on March 3, 1947, below the provisions of Senate bill 140 as a nation-supported institution of better schooling to be positioned in Houston.

Reasons for of the legislature was to perpetuate the segregation of higher schooling in Texas by way of supplying the states black residents a university equivalent to the University of Texas.

The institution, which turned into initially named Texas State University for Negroes, became installed to serve African Americans in Texas, imparting them, for the first time, a program of study comparable to that available to white Texans.

As time went by segregation became worse and the TSU student were fed up with segregation laws and decided to take a stand. By taking a stand they organized a sit-in.

Houston's first sit down-in was held Friday, March 4, 1960 at the Weingarten's grocery shop lunch counter placed at 4110 Almeda avenue, Houston, Texas. 

This sit down-in was a nonviolent, direct motion protest led by using more than a dozen Texas Southern University students. The take sit-in turned into organized to protest Houston's criminal segregation legal guidelines.

As a result of the students' actions, Houston leaders, black and white, met to speak a about way to peacefully desegregate Houston. The students have been unaware of the conferences.

 Media blackouts had been held by many white owned due to the scholars' projects to end racial segregation in Houston. but, not long after the scholars held the March 1 sit-in, Houston businesses quietly desegregated.

Texas Southern is not a predominately black college anymore, they share the love on campus with many other races. As they stand united as one Texas Southern University will go down in history.

Texas Southern put an effect on every segregated school and company there was in Houston. Today the school still strives for greatness as a HBCU. The ancestors of the university paved a way for current students to have equal rights including education.