These newcomers settled on the fringes of the third, fifth, and fourth wards. The Freedmentown area north of San Felipe and the streets west of downtown not only attracted the largest number of the new black residents but also housed the first black churches, schools, and political organizationsThe Fourth Ward in Houston, also sometimes referred to as Freedmen's Town, is one of that city's most im
portant African-American historic communities. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was the center of black cultural and professional life in the city.Fourth Ward provided a home to early black religious and educational institutions. It had, in fact, achieved this distinction even before emancipation. In 1851 black Methodists began worshiping in their own church, adjacent to the white Methodist church on Milam Street in the Fourth Ward. This black church briefly housed a school for blacks in the late 1850s.
