Sheila Jackson Lee: “Then I want to salute Wheatley High School and those who have attended it. It was named after Phillis Wheatley. It was…”

“Then I want to salute Wheatley High School and those who have attended it. It was named after Phillis Wheatley. It was an African American high school in the great city of Houston in the fifth ward. Two of its many graduates were the late Congressman Mickey Leland and late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, and obviously many other great Americans who went to that high school. Unfortunately, the original Wheatley High School--over the valiant efforts of Wheatley graduates because ``everything new'' seems to be the direction we want to go--was torn down. But I believe there is a way to find common ground, and I am going to encourage HISD to meet with these valiant former alumni to find a common path of preserving that history in the new school and bringing the community together. We look forward to meetings forthcoming, for HISD to lend a hand out to people who want to preserve history, to tell the story of a school that was built in 1927 out of a material that in fact actually lasted. And when African Americans could not go to any other school, when those who went off to World War II and Vietnam couldn't go elsewhere, they had the Wheatley High School that sits proudly in the fifth ward. There is a Wheatley High School that was modernized, but the original building of terra-cotta material--so beautiful if you had seen it-- could have been restored.…”