BlackTexas.org should make it easier for Texans, journalists, students, researchers, and advocates to understand how state policy affects Black Texas.
Texas policy legacy · 1936–1996
Remembering Barbara Jordan
Houston raised Barbara Jordan. She graduated from Phillis Wheatley High School and Texas Southern University, studied law, and came home to practice. In 1966, Texans elected her to the state Senate, the first Black woman to serve there. She helped secure the state’s first minimum-wage law.
“My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total.”
On July 25, 1974, Jordan spoke those words as the House Judiciary Committee considered the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. The daughter of Houston’s Fifth Ward was asking the country to weigh a president’s conduct against the Constitution. Her own copy of that statement survives in the archives of her alma mater.
Select a district to see its member and source. Search by name or district, compare the serving roster with the separately reported election transition, and zoom into a city.
DemocraticRepublicanVacant / unassigned
District area does not indicate population or vote share. In the after edition, stripes mark reported winners pending certification and seating; solid colors mark continuing terms.
Boundaries: Texas Legislative Council Plan H2316 (House) and Plan S2168 (Senate), generalized for display. Same district geometry and member evidence as the US50.org legislative-map presentation. Checked November 5, 2026; dated snapshot, not a live feed.
Identify the people who lead the Texas Legislature and the U.S. Congress, then follow the official sources to their offices and your own representatives.
The Speaker leads the Texas House. The lieutenant governor presides over the Texas Senate; the president pro tempore is a senator chosen to perform specified presiding duties.
National chamber and party leaders guide House business. These offices are separate from Texas’s state House and from the congressional district that represents your address.
Source check: November 6, 2026. Selected presiding officers and principal floor leaders, with official source links for the full leadership lists. Serving offices are separate from election results. This section does not assign future leadership for the 90th Texas Legislature or the 120th Congress. Leadership roles can change; this is a dated reference with no automatic updates.
Black Texans in elected office
Houston · Texas House
Al Edwards
In 1979, Edwards authored House Bill 1016, making Juneteenth a legal holiday in Texas. His statehouse work gave a celebration long sustained by Black Texas families a place on the state calendar.
More than four decades later, Jackson Lee helped carry Juneteenth recognition to Congress. In June 2021 she presided as the House approved the legislation that made June 19 a federal holiday.
Leland participated in Houston sit-ins as a Texas Southern University student. In Congress, he chaired the House Select Committee on Hunger. He died in 1989 on a flight to visit refugees in Ethiopia.
Born in Waco, Johnson worked as a psychiatric nurse in Dallas before serving in both chambers of the Texas Legislature. In Washington she became the first woman and first Black member to chair the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
Taylor became San Antonio’s first Black mayor when the city council appointed her in July 2014. In June 2015 San Antonio voters elected her to the office.
Dallas elected Kirk its first Black mayor in 1995. He led trade missions as mayor and later became the first Black U.S. Trade Representative, negotiating on behalf of the country.
A former public defender and civil rights attorney, Crockett served in the Texas House before winning a Dallas-area congressional seat in 2022. Her exchanges in committee hearings drew a national audience online.
Born in New Orleans, Green earned his law degree at Texas Southern University and led the Houston NAACP. After serving as a Harris County justice of the peace, he entered Congress in 2005 representing Texas’s 9th District.
Follow the decision from the Capitol to the community.
Start with a public question. Identify the district and responsible institution, read the bill or budget provision, and examine what it could change. Keep the difference between a proposal, a vote, an enacted law, implementation, and an observed outcome visible.
Black Texas is not a single experience. Community relevance should be explained with evidence about affected people, places, institutions, and access—not assumed from a district label.
Independent publication. BlackTexas does not speak for the caucus or the Texas Legislature. Source review date: October 19, 2026. Historical and session-specific material retains its context.
