Best,
Allan

Also, I don’t know what Port Arthur native you are acquainted with, but I do not believe he or she has been to Port Arthur in quite some time. You say you were told that Port Arthur’s black neighborhoods are located on one side of the tracks and Port Arthur’s white neighborhoods are located on the other. That has not been the case since the pre-integration days. In fact, as a fourth generation native of the Golden Triangle area who grew up just outside of Port Arthur (“white territory,” as you refer to it; for the record, I am not fully white) with quite a bit of family still in Port Arthur, simply put, Port Arthur has no white neighborhoods. There are many whites who live in Port Arthur (36.1% of the city is white, according to the latest census data), but the idea that they live in neighborhoods all to themselves is, for the most part, outdated. In fact, I can only think of one neighborhood located within the Port Arthur city limits that might be mostly white. Many are mixed to some degree with the rest being either almost entirely black or Hispanic.

On that note, it should be said that the racial divide you seem to believe exists in Southeast Texas is not as entrenched in the minds of Southeast Texans as it was in the days of Ms. Joplin. That’s not to say that you won’t find neighborhoods entirely dominated by one race in the greater Golden Triangle (meaning the entire tri-county area, not just Port Arthur or the “white territory” of Nederland, Port Neches and Groves), but it is to say that you won’t find a definitive boundary that starkly contrasts those neighborhoods (i.e., the railroad tracks). And that’s not uncommon in the South. I read here that you’re a columnist living in Houston. I’m sure you notice that Houston, like many other major cities and fairly populated areas, has neighborhoods predominantly occupied by one race (Sunnyside, for instance) that are buffered against each other with mixed neighborhoods, rather than outlined by a distinct physical feature. It is no different in the Golden Triangle.

I notice that you included a picture of Edison Middle School, where Ms. Joplin attended her sophomore and junior years of high school while it was still serving as the TJ campus. Based on her birth date, I assume she attended her senior year at what was then the new TJ campus. I don’t know if you were able to find that or not, but if you would like to see it, it’s located on Stadium Road (it may appear on a GPS as Highway 347 or Twin City Highway) not terribly far from downtown Port Arthur. When TJ, Lincoln and SFA were consolidated, the TJ campus served Memorial’s upperclassmen. When the new Memorial campus was eventually built a few years ago, the building was repurposed and is today Thomas Jefferson Middle School. You can’t miss it; as the name of the road may suggest, it is located directly adjacent to the stadium.

I am forced to agree with an earlier comment in that it appears that you simply passed through Port Arthur, took a look at some landmarks, captured some photos, formed an opinion and moved on. I am glad that you stopped at the Museum of the Gulf Coast; I think you’re correct in saying that it is now, unfortunately, the lone bright spot in a derelict downtown area. I hope that, while you were there, you took the time to look at some of the other exhibits in the building outside of the one dedicated to Ms. Joplin. If you did, or if you ever decide to go and see them at some point in the future, I hope you’ll realize that although Port Arthur’s past is certainly not problem-free and definitely has its troubles, it is, for the most part, something to be proud of. I know it’s hard to believe based on the condition of the city today, but there was a time when Port Arthur was a place of opportunity, and there are many distinguished natives of Port Arthur – black and white. I’m sorry that Ms. Joplin had to seek her place in life elsewhere and that you only saw one side of the Golden Triangle, but do not let yourself believe that the Port Arthur of yesterday is the Port Arthur of today or that what you saw during your visit to the area or read in Ms. Joplin’s writings tells you everything there is to know about us.