" I used to tell my children about the old shop, and how things used to be like I’m telling you."

- Gill Randle Jr.

How long have you been cutting hair? 

Randle: I’ve been licensed for forty years. Before getting my license, I started cutting hair out of my dad’s garage at the age of fourteen. This was a several years before I went to barber college. I’ve been cutting hair ever since. I officially started cutting hair at my father’s shop after finishing at the Tyler Barber College on Dowling street in Third Ward. My daddy got his license at the exact same school.I am the only barber at this shop now. The other chairs were occupied by barbers who either retired or moved on to other shops. At one time, all these chairs were full. Right now, my clients mostly consist of people who I grew up with. Some of customers are of my buddies from high school, and other customers are people who’ve been coming to me since the beginning of my career.

He offered to give me a brief tour of his homely shop. The collection of duck hunting photos belonged to his father, Gill Randle Sr. Before he passed away, Randle Sr. was an avid duck hunter. According to his son, Randle Sr. would rarely skip an opportunity to catch game fowl during hunting season. Like many barbershops in the Black community, Gill hung portraits of America’s most popular Black civil rights activists on the walls. Tunes by Miles Davis statically hummed from the old juke box, which gave this shop a surreal, 1960s vibe.

I noticed that your shop maintains sort of a 1960s-1970s aesthetic. After all, it is called The Barber Shop Museum. Was this intentional? 

Randle: Yea, we old school. This is how we operate. Usually I’ll have Jazz music playing from that boombox that sits under the portraits of some of my favorite Jazz musicians. My top twoare Miles Davis, and John Coltrane. When the shop was closed down in Fourth Ward, we moved the furniture from that location to here. The chairs you see now are the ones from the original shop. Moving our location to Third Ward didn’t hurt us too much. My dad was a businessman, so he knew how to manage relocation and change. Plus, my dad’s customers followed him from his old location in Fourth Ward, to this one in Third Ward. There were also some young brothers who were looking for work in the area, so my dad employed them as barbers.

It became clear that Mr. Randle has been preserving the memory of his father through the barbershop. Along with inheriting the shop, Randle Sr. passed down all his living customers to his son. Mr. Randle’s shop was not a museum of artifacts, but it was a library of oral histories.

You mentioned that you worked for your father at the beginning of your career. Is this your father’s shop?

Randle: Back then it was common to go get a job, make some money, and do what you can to take care of family. My dad was an independent business owner, so I followed his model when I started cutting hair out of his garage. The big reason why I stayed with barbering was because I kept getting fired from day jobs. It was much more convenient for me to work for my dad’s business. As a barber, I control everything. I determine my own schedule and manage my own time.

This shop is my father’s second barbershop. The first one he owned was located in Fourth Ward, 811 West Dallas Street. The building isn’t there anymore though. When they started to revitalize and revamp Fourth Ward, they started knocking down old building and replacing them with new ones. This happened twenty to twenty-five years ago. We moved to Third Ward around 1961, and we started this current shop after the original went down.When I first started cutting hair, the customers would pass me by because I was young.

People would say “oh he might mess up my hair! He’s gonna put a plug in it.” I was fortunate because I cut hair right next to my dad, so he mentored me through the process of gaining customers. As time went on, I had more and more customers.

Gill gave a brief synopsis of the gentrification of Fourth Ward. This lead to his father moving his operation from Fourth Ward to Third Ward. Fourth Ward was formerly Houston’s freedmen’s town, which was originally the area designated to former slaves during the reconstruction era. Houston’s first group of freed slaves settled near this area around 1866, which was along the swampy flood plains of Buffalo Bayou. This throwaway region of town as all but uninhabitable for Black settlers during the late nineteenth century. White Houstonians were opposed to living in this area, so Black residents weren’t realistically allowed to live anywhere outside of their segregated zone.

This modest Freedmen’s slowly transformed into one of Houston’s first Black institutions in the early twentieth century. Randle Sr., Gill’s father, started his private business before most Black entrepreneurs were legally allowed to own commercial property. Black business owner during that era were masters at pivoting against oppressive Jim Crow policies. The Jim Crow era not only legalized institutional racial policies, but it turned a blind eye to the violence that Whites inflicted on Black communities throughout America. Business owners, like Randle Sr., were responsible for protecting their livelihood from racial oppression while providing for their families at the same time.

Today, this legacy of Black institutional success and grit is all but forgotten. The formerly mosquito ridden flood zone turned community is mostly occupied by high-rises and modern homes. Buffalo Bayou, which is partly occupied by parks, is where you’ll see local white residents walking their dogs, and college students setting up picnic socials for their organizations. Mr. Randle shared with me his experience witnessing this upheaval.

Could you describe some of the changes you witnessed in Fourth Ward’s racial structure?

Randle: I lived through the Jim Crow laws, so I know what you mean. When my dad first started cutting in Fourth Ward, he leased the building from a Jewish guy. I don’t remember his name, but I was about six or seven when my dad began leasing around 1956.Some of the big racial changes in this neighborhood was that more whites moved out and blacks moved in. It was that simple. My dad bought this building in Third Ward from a black lady. Of course, now it’s gone full circle.

More blacks are moving out, and white people are moving in again.I remember growing up in Fourth Ward as a kid and walking three blocks to get to downtown Houston because my dad’s shop was close to it. We would patronize the other Black businesses around the area when I was a little boy. My ran a shoe shining business along with his barbershop, so I’ve been around his businesses for my entire life. 

Periodically, my wife and I pass by where my dad’s businesses used to be. Now I think they’ve built a hotel and some parking lots in the same area. Oh yeah, there are a lot of townhouses there as well.

Do you think that it’s important for people to remember your father’s shop?

Randle: I’ve actually never really thought about it like that. I used to tell my children about the old shop, and how things used to be like I’m telling you.

How about your current shop? What’s the future that you envision for the Barber Shop Museum?

Randle: I haven’t really thought about that too much either. For right now, I’m just going with the flow, and enjoying what I do. One day I might look up and say, “this is it.” But for right now, I’m content. I have my old customers, and some of my father’s former customers. My kids never got into it, and I didn’t push them to. Those customers come to me, just like they came to my dad. The man sitting over there reading the paper is Mister. He’s been going to my father since I was five years old. It’s a blessing for me to keep my dad’s business open. Everything you see here is paid for and paid off. I’m grateful.

Talks with Longtime Friend and Customer, “Mister”

Mister was the elderly man who was previously resting in Mr. Randle’s chair. As man in his late 1980s, he was living archive of Houston’s history. The name of this shop, The Barber Shop Museum, came full circle. There weren’t any glass encased artifacts, nor were there any real exhibits. The last descendants of Houston’s former Black Wallstreet met here, and their unrecorded stories held first-hand historical value. When I approached Misterfor an interview, he seemed eager, yet slightly cautious. He rolled up his copy of the New York Times, and we sat next to a window furthest from the swivel chairs. He wasn’t just a customer of Mr. Randle, but a close friend of Randle Sr.

How long have you known the Randles? It seems like your relationship with them extends beyond the casual client-customer dynamic.

 Mister: I’ve been a customer here for about twenty-five years, since the Randles moved to this area. Me and Mr. Randle used to go to the same high school, the original Booker T. Washington High School. The new school is in the Independents Heights off Yale, but the original was located at 303 West Dallas in the Fourth Ward. That’s thearea where me and Mr. Randle met. A lot of connecting occurred for Black people in that area. Booker T. was a segregated school in a segregated society, along with Jack Yates, Fourth Ward high school, and Phyllis Wheatley high school in Fifth Ward. I actually lived in First Ward, but it didn’t have a high school for me. So, everyone migrated to Booker T. I graduated in 1951.

If you go to Fourth Ward today, they have rerouted all the streets maneuver around Antioch Baptist Church. Antioch Baptist Church was monumental and was one of the most upstanding and prestigious churches in the Black community. When the church refused to sell to the city, the streets were rerouted for segregated zoning. Well, living in a segregated society, the school board eventually sold the Booker T. Washington facility. The new facility was moved was moved to the Independent Heights area, which was an area zoned for Black people at the time.

Could you share with me some of your experiences in Houston’s Fourth and Third Ward with Mr. Randle?

Mister: Mr. Randle was a businessman, and he was amongst many Blacks who ran small independent businesses during that era. When we were teenagers, we used to frequently visit a shop near Prairie and Louisiana Street in downtown Houston. We would go to the Lincoln Theater on Sundays after getting our haircuts together on Saturdays. I moved to Third Ward around forty years ago. But before then, Mr. Randle and I would walk through First Ward, Fourth Ward, and downtown together. It was like walking through a Black Mecca every day. It’s probably why I’m still alive today. We did a lot of walking around. I go to Church down the street at Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ. It used to be a warehouse, and now it’s a Church. We had a Sacco Brothers across the street, which was a major supermarket back then. At the time, Sacco Brothers out-competedKroger, Winegars, and others stores. What you have to know is that this used to be a white area. One of my former student’s father, Dr. John Davis, was a dentist who bought the first house in this part of Third Ward called Sugar Hill. Sugar Hill became the most prominent Black neighborhoods in Houston.

The barbershop that Mr. Randle owned in Third Ward used to be a homestand. It used to be owned by Mr. William Holland, the principal of Jack Yates high school during the 1940s. The Holland family was one of the most respected families in Houston’s Black community. I served HISD for most of my professional life. I was a teacher, deputy superintendent, district area superintendent, principal at Brock Elementary school and Douglas Elementary school, and I ran for the school board. It’s been an interesting ride. I paid my dues and served HISD for about fifty-one years.

Randle Sr. and Mistersponsored Black institutions in their respective spheres. Randle Sr.’sbarbershop provided services to Black men in Fourth Ward, and later Third Ward. Misterserved the Houston Independent School District for more than five decades, providing educational opportunities to Houston’s Black communities during the Jim Crow era. Mister taught at both segregated and integrated schoolsthroughout his career, witnessed one of the brutal socio-political transitions in American history. During this era, Black teachers held much more responsibility in their communities due to the harsh reality of their predicament. America’s poorly executedfaçade of separate but equal schools made it nearly impossible for children in Black communities to receive fair educational opportunities. Black schools were ill equipped with the proper tools to ensure success for their students. These schools often lacked desks, books, and useful school supplies. The facilities were usually subpar, and there was also a lack of teachers willing or qualified to teach at Black schools.

Black educators like Mister were not only responsible for their students, but they were tasked with bringing overall improvements to Black Schools with little to no Governmental support. . Mister gradually worked his way up from his teaching position. He became the principal of his former elementary school, and later rose through the ranks to become one of Houston’s youngest superintendents. What existed between Black men and their barbershops was a nigh incorruptible level of trust spurned by shared experiences. Black barbershops were arguably safer for Black men than predominately African-American churches. “Unlike churches, barbershops are profit generating institutions that various classes of men enter, for grooming services or to socialize, without much at stake; no professions of faith or obligations of membership required.”- Quincy Mills.

Also unlike churches, barbershops were uncensored spaces. Black men had the agency to speak about whatever topic they desired, thus making the barbershop an unconstrained area of the first and thirteenth amendment rights. This was an era where grown Black men were called “boys” in most white-dominated institutional settings. Barbers and customers were only required to subscribe to the concept of mutual respect for their fellow man.

It was coincidental that I met Mister on a casual collection gathering trip through Third Ward. We just happened to be atthe same place at the same time. It wasn’t until weeks after our interview that I learned about the event that marred his reputation. Admittedly which made it difficult to write his piece. After fifty-one years of service, Mister was charged with bribery during the autumn of 2016. Gil Ramirez Group LLC filed suit against the former HISD superintendent for bribery.

According to a report from Houston Chronicle in 2017, Mister accepted personal funds from construction companies. In return, he and his associates would grant construction project contracts to these companies. The suit was originally filed against HISD, but the final verdict held Mister and his associates liable for $4.1 million in damages in January of 2017, with Mister being held liable for more than half of the total sum.One year later, Mister and I were chatting at an old barbershop in Third Ward.