"My dream is s that we are able to slow and possibly prepare something in this community that people who have had to leave this community because they did not want to leave it voluntarily, they did not leave it voluntarily, are able to come and raise their families…My dream is that grownups that are put in, particularly elected official are positions will put the, the families in the community first before their ambitions…so that we can actually seek progress and stop this."
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 Joetta: And that plant was right there on Liberty Road. 

Chelsy: Across the street? What were they saying about the windows and things? 

Joetta: They didn't know what was happening. And it was exploding. Everywhere, everything shook. Just massive. And they would tell them to stay inside and all this kind of stuff that you know, it was like…it was something unbelievable, like something out of a movie  

Chelsy: You know, that doesn't sound real.

Joetta: Yeah, yeah No, because that's that's so unusual, you know, you're in the middle of the city. You're right outside of downtown Houston.  Not supposed to be hearing stuff like that. That's going on maybe in deer park. Maybe where they have a lot of refineries industrial. 

Chelsy: But yeah, and um, so that was Union Pacific’s doing?

Joetta: That was the creosote plant, right there at that rail yard.

"My mother's family was always in Fifth Ward. You know, they came, I'm sure outta some little country town, but they've been in Fifth Ward since the early 1900s. But my great grandparents lived in the houses, actually literally across the street from where I am now."







_{photos from Denise Fraizer's The Nickel: A History of African-Descended People in Houston’s Fifth Ward}

"People come to worship in this community. They never stop going to the churches they belong to, even though they might live in Pearland, it doesn't matter. They’re going to the churches they grew up in."






_{photos from Denise Fraizer's The Nickel: A History of African-Descended People in Houston’s Fifth Ward}