Rickey Smiley
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Smiley brought his stand-up characters to Dallas morning radio in 2004. On KBFB, listeners could hear an entire cast of voices in his prank calls, all performed by one comedian.
Radio Hall of Fame ↗Explore Black creative life through visual art, performance, literature, design, and the people building cultural institutions.
Black comedy in Texas
Thea Vidale
Houston audiences saw Vidale at the Good Humor Bar and the Comedy Showcase in the 1980s. She took that club experience to network television as the star of the ABC sitcom Thea.
Houston Press ↗Ali Siddiq
A Houston native, Siddiq discovered his gift for telling stories while incarcerated. After building a stand-up career, he returned to a Texas jail to record a Comedy Central special in front of people in custody.
Comedy club biography ↗Crystal Powell
Raised in Texas and educated at Prairie View A&M University, Powell took her stand-up from Houston clubs to Kevin Hart’s Hart of the City and NBC’s America’s Got Talent.
Performer biography ↗Black Texas artists, past and present
What connects an electric guitar in Linden, a paintbrush in Houston and a ballet stage? Follow the artists through the Texas places that shaped their work.
Artists who shaped the tradition
John Thomas Biggers
In 1949, Biggers founded the art department at Texas Southern University. His impact on Houston hangs on museum walls, but it also lives in the generations of artists he taught. Look for the repeated shapes and gathering of figures in his print Jubilee: Ghana Harvest Festival.
See the work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston ↗T-Bone Walker
Before an electric guitar solo became a familiar sound in rock, a guitarist born in Linden was showing what an amplified blues guitar could say. Listen to how Walker’s guitar answers the sung lines in “Call It Stormy Monday.”
Meet Walker at the Texas Heritage Songwriters’ Association ↗Alvin Ailey
Ailey drew on memories of worship at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Rogers when he choreographed Revelations. In the 1960 work, spirituals, gospel and blues carry the dancers from mourning to communal joy.
Read the company’s account of Revelations ↗Living artists and their work
Beyoncé
Born in Houston, Beyoncé first reached a national audience singing with Destiny’s Child. On Cowboy Carter, listen to how she moves from the handclaps and banjo of “Texas Hold ’Em” to layered vocal harmonies. The record won Album of the Year at the 2025 Grammys.
Explore Beyoncé’s recordings ↗Kelly Rowland
Rowland first sang in church in Atlanta, where she was born. After moving to Houston as a child, she met Beyoncé Knowles and helped form Destiny’s Child. Listen for the shift from the group’s tight harmonies on “Say My Name” to Rowland carrying the chorus herself on “Dilemma,” her Grammy-winning duet with rapper Nelly.
Rowland on stepping out as a solo artist ↗Lauren Anderson
Anderson grew up in Houston and joined its professional ballet company in 1983. In 1990 she became Houston Ballet’s first Black principal dancer. Her work in dance education gave young Houstonians a way into the art she once watched from the audience.
Meet Anderson at Houston Ballet ↗Trenton Doyle Hancock
Raised in Paris, Texas, Hancock builds a world around imaginary beings he calls the Mounds. Characters move between drawings, prints and paintings, so a visit to his work can feel like picking up another chapter in an illustrated story.
Explore Hancock’s work with Art21 ↗Robert Glasper
Born in Houston, Glasper brings a jazz pianist’s ear to collaborations across R&B and hip-hop. His Black Radio series offers a place to start. Black Radio III won the Grammy for Best R&B Album in 2023.
Explore Glasper’s recordings at the Recording Academy ↗Texas in ragtime, blues, soul and R&B
Scott Joplin
Joplin learned piano in Texarkana. In his 1899 “Maple Leaf Rag,” the left hand keeps a steady march while the right hand slips accents between the beats. He also composed Treemonisha, an opera that gave Black singers the leading roles.
Read about Joplin’s life and music ↗Sam “Lightnin’” Hopkins
Born in Centerville, Hopkins made Houston’s Third Ward his musical home. Listen to how he leaves room between his sung lines for the guitar to answer. He could improvise words as he played, turning an encounter or a piece of neighborhood news into a blues song.
Explore Hopkins’s Texas blues career ↗Barry White
Born in Galveston and raised in Los Angeles, White made his deep singing voice instantly recognizable. He was also an arranger. Listen to “Love’s Theme,” the instrumental he recorded with the Love Unlimited Orchestra, to hear how he could carry a melody with strings alone.
Read about White’s voice and arrangements ↗Billy Preston
Houston-born Preston grew up playing gospel piano in Los Angeles. His electric piano solo on the Beatles’ “Get Back” earned him a rare billing alongside the band. For Preston leading a record of his own, listen to “Will It Go Round in Circles.”
Explore Preston’s keyboard and solo work ↗Leon Bridges
Born in Atlanta and raised in Fort Worth, Bridges found an audience one open mic at a time. He recorded his debut album, Coming Home, at Fort Worth’s Niles City Sound. A decade into his career, memories of the city helped shape his album Leon.
Hear Bridges talk about Fort Worth ↗Solange Knowles
Solange set her 2019 visual album When I Get Home in the Houston she knew growing up. Black cowboys ride through Third Ward streets in the film. When she brought it home for screenings, neighbors could watch at the S.H.A.P.E. Community Center, where she had gone to summer camp.
Solange on bringing her film to Third Ward ↗Texas hip-hop, from mixtapes to the Grammys
DJ Screw
Robert Earl Davis Jr. grew up in Smithville. In Houston, he slowed records down and used two turntables to repeat pieces of a verse or beat. Friends asked for custom tapes for birthdays and other occasions. Those cassettes carried his “chopped and screwed” sound from one listener to the next.
Explore DJ Screw’s archive ↗UGK · Bun B and Pimp C
Bernard “Bun B” Freeman and Chad “Pimp C” Butler grew up in Port Arthur and made their hometown part of Southern rap’s vocabulary. They recorded as Underground Kingz. In 1993, moviegoers across the country heard their track “Pocket Full of Stones” on the soundtrack to Menace II Society.
Read UGK’s Texas history ↗Scarface
Brad Jordan grew up playing guitar in South Acres. As Scarface, he gave the Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” its opening verse, narrating a sleepless night from inside the mind of a frightened man. That gift for first-person storytelling carried into his solo career.
Read the Houston Chronicle profile ↗The D.O.C.
Tracy Curry first recorded with West Dallas’ Fila Fresh Crew. After meeting Dr. Dre, he took his writing to Los Angeles, contributed lyrics to N.W.A and recorded his own album, No One Can Do It Better. One of West Coast rap’s formative voices came out of Dallas.
Read about his Dallas beginnings ↗Megan Thee Stallion
Growing up in Houston, Megan Pete watched her mother, rapper Holly-Wood, record in the studio. Megan built an audience with her own freestyle verses. In 2021, she and fellow Houston artist Beyoncé won two Grammys for their remix of “Savage.”
Explore her recordings with the Recording Academy ↗Black Texans in film and television awards
Al Freeman Jr.
Born in San Antonio, the son of jazz pianist Al Freeman Sr., Freeman won a 1979 Daytime Emmy for playing police captain Ed Hall on One Life to Live. He later portrayed Elijah Muhammad in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X and taught acting at Howard University.
Read about Freeman’s career in Playbill ↗Jamie Foxx
Before playing Ray Charles in Ray, Foxx sang in the choir at Bethlehem Baptist Church and played piano for New Hope Baptist Church in Terrell. His portrayal of Charles earned him the 2005 Academy Award for Best Actor.
2005 Academy Awards ↗Forest Whitaker
Born in Longview, Whitaker won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.
2007 Academy Awards ↗Chandra Wilson
Wilson grew up performing with Houston’s Theatre Under the Stars. In 2007, her fellow actors honored her twice for Grey’s Anatomy: for her performance as Dr. Miranda Bailey and as part of the drama’s ensemble cast.
Wilson’s awards record ↗Beyoncé
Houston’s Beyoncé and songwriter DIXSON shared a 2022 Academy Award nomination for “Be Alive,” the original song they wrote for King Richard.
2022 Academy Awards ↗Black Texas writers and poets
Start with a novel, a poem, or a memoir. These four writers bring readers to a debate classroom in Marshall, a fictional East Texas town, and the Houston of a poet’s imagination.
Sutton E. Griggs
Born in Chatfield and educated in Dallas and at Bishop College in Marshall, Griggs published Imperium in Imperio in 1899. His novel imagines a secret Black government and asks what political freedom could mean under Jim Crow.
Handbook of Texas biography ↗Melvin B. Tolson
At Wiley College, Tolson taught English and speech and coached the debate team. Begin with “Dark Symphony,” collected in Rendezvous with America in 1944. The poem draws on musical form to tell American history through Black experience.
Poetry Foundation profile ↗Attica Locke
In Bluebird, Bluebird, Houston native Locke sends Darren Mathews, a Black Texas Ranger, to investigate two murders in East Texas. What neighbors will tell him depends as much on family, land, and race as on his badge.
Explore the novel ↗Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton
Houston’s first Black poet laureate also writes for the page and stage. In Black Chameleon: Memory, Womanhood, and Myth, she uses mythmaking to tell a personal story about growing up as a Black girl.
Texas Institute of Letters biography ↗Who can claim Texas?
Seven clues. Choose the artist behind each one.
Continue with Texas resourcesBlack business directory ↗Black churches & community ↗
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