The World Was Not Worthy of Them: Jack Yates

John Henry Yates was born on 11 July 1828 in Gloucester County, Virginia to Robert and Rachel Yates. His family was enslaved. As a young child the enslavers wife died, and Yate’s mother was tasked with nursing the enslaver’s child. Yates and the child, George Fields were of similar ages, so they became playmates on the plantation. As the children grew up together the young Fields began to teach Yates to read and write. He developed such a love for reading that he would often bring his bible and song book to the field with him and would steal away from the work to read.

As Yates grew into a young man he was afforded some privileges that other enslaved were not because his relationship with Fields. He was allowed to visit other nearby farms where he heard the gospel being preached. He eventually believed, became a Christian, and started to have his own meetings with other enslaved people where he would preach the gospel and pray. He met Harriet Willis, an enslaved woman, on one of the farms in the area and she became his wife after the custom of marriage for the enslaved in those days.

After President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation many enslavers tried to avoid coming into contact with the Union Army so that the executive order could not be enforced. Harriet’s enslaver was preparing to move from Virginia to Texas, the rebel state that was further away from the Union Army at the time. By this time Yates was free, but he could not bear the thought of being without his family, so he asked his wife’s enslaver to re-enslave him so that he could stay with his family. 

He remained in bondage for almost two more years in Texas until Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston on 19 June 1865 and issued General Order No. 3 which proclaimed that the enslaved in Texas were to be freed immediately. Yates and the other newly freed Blacks had no blueprint for how to proceed forward but says that he was led by divine guidance. He told his children that he never forgot to pray and read his bible every morning, because it gave him the strength he needed to take on any task he was presented with throughout the day. About six months after his emancipation, he and his family moved to Houston, Texas because he heard that there was more work there. Yates worked as a drayman where he hauled goods for different merchants in the city. At night and on Sundays he held meetings to preach the gospel. 

The Home Missionary Society sent a Black man to Houston to do mission work amongst the Black community; his name was Isaac Campbell. Campbell learned that Yates was holding prayer meetings and since he needed support to do the mission work, he had Yates travel around Houston and the surrounding area assist him. Eventually Yates was ordained as a Baptist minister. He not only ministered to their spiritual needs, but he also instructed them to buy homes, plant gardens, raise livestock, and educate their children. 

Antioch Baptist Church in Houston was one of the first Black churches in the city, however they were without a pastor. The congregation called on Yates to become the pastor because he was ordained and he was one of the only of the few Black people in the community who could read and write. He was installed as the pastor in the fall of 1868. The church building was a small house-like structure, and the congregation grew to a point where this location was too small for them. Yates raised enough funds to buy a lot where the first brick building owned by Black Americans was built in 1879. The church still meets at this site today.

Yates and other leaders in the community thought that they should commemorate the day that emancipation was proclaimed, 19 June. They would celebrate annually in a grove in the Fourth Ward in Houston, but the White community began to complain about the large number of Black people gathering in the area. One year a Black man was lynched and left hanging amongst the trees in the grove which led to the area being called “Hangman’s Grove”. The Black community no longer wanted to celebrate freedom in that grove where such outrage had befallen one of their members. In 1872 Antioch Baptist Church and Trinity Methodist Church purchased a plot of land for their annual celebrations. They named the area Emancipation Park, it is the oldest park in Texas and for most of its history it was the only park in the area open to Blacks. 

In 1885 or 1886 Yates organized the Houston Academy which later became Booker T. Washington High School. It was the first high school for Black students in the city of Houston. 

Jack Yates died on 22 December 1897.