Building Community in Houston

Kate Sayen Kirkland’s Building Community in Houston: Alice Baker, Julia Ideson, and Ima Hogg presents three Houston women who used their family, financial, and aspirational capital to bring social justice to citizens of a rapidly growing Southern city from 1903 to 1975. Their inclusive civic service and philanthropy paved the way for Houston’s desegregation and laid the foundation for the city’s openness to hundreds of immigrant communities. Baker, Ideson, and Hogg each listened, convened, cooperated, and built institutions that continue to serve Houston’s majority-minority population today.

Kirkland examines public records, reports in the media, and family papers to explore Baker’s founding and oversight of the Houston Settlement Association, now BakerRipley, the region’s largest nonprofit community building agency. Kirkland’s research in public library records reveals that Ideson, whose activities and influence have not received scholarly attention, established the Houston Public Library as a progressive municipal asset. Using extensive family papers and diaries, Kirkland presents Hogg, whose work as a promoter of the arts is broadly known, as a complex visionary of the urban ideal who also called attention to mental health care, public education, historic preservation, and volunteerism.

These history makers and influential leaders committed their lives to improving the quality of life for Houstonians of every ethnicity and social stratum, becoming important, albeit unintentional, pioneers for social justice.