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©2001
Dunaway Productions
URL: www.unm.edu/~rt66/amarhist.html
Modified: July 19, 2001

University of New Mexico

In Amarillo, blacks had always lived in the Bottoms, across the tracks from the rest of Amarillo in a bustling downtown district: black restaurants, clubs, real estate, groceries. The town was the great crossroads of the southern plains, and you could find pretty much anything if you looked hard enough.

According to the article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, one local citizen, Bone Hooks, optioned lots along the corridor eventually chosen for Route 66. He called it "North Heights," and it was all farms, until black soldiers arrived in the war. Many stayed on and a negro high school was built. Route 66 brought the world to North Heights, and Hooks, now a senior citizen, ended up drinking cocktails with cattlemen in fancy saloons.

"That was a sight to see. I was just a boy walking up from the Bottoms to high school, a few miles," says Charles Warford, mortician to North Heights, in his parlor. "He would be sitting up with the cattlemen right there in the front of the restaurants. Which was something different for us, ‘cause we had to enter by the basement, or the side door." Warford is a gentle man, willing to talk local history.

"How did this happen?" Listening to his voice I am relaxing, as many widows had done before. His bulk--his stomach lies on him like a lamb--is reassuring and adds a resonance to his voice.

"You see, Bone had known those men on their ranches, he’d worked for them; and in this country you depend on your neighbors and your help. They could be the difference between life and death.

"Hooks was a man of vision. Soon after 66 was bypassed, they put the new highway through the Bottoms, and they rolled the black houses out of there. They came here." He gestures with a thick hand, his with snow white hair pulled over a wide, lined forehead.

"When money comes into the picture, race goes out," he smiles. "Companies relocating their employees want properties they can sell quickly; they go to the nice areas of town.

"When I drive through the neighborhoods, I look at the kids. If there’re a few blacks playing, I say, ‘Oh. A few more families moved in.’ I still notice.

"There’ll never be another ‘black’ district in this city. And you know, there’s a lot more interest in black history these last years."