Alva Review-Courier -

TEXAS CITY, Texas (AP) — When Lynn Ray Ellison lived in "The Rectangle" — the area of Texas City where the city's African-American community lived and thrived in the 1940s, '50s and '60s — life was different, he said.

The Galveston County Daily News reports more than 500 black families lived in a 10-block radius between the borders of Texas Avenue to the north, Bay Street to the east, 10th Street to the west and Fourth Avenue to the south. They owned and operated businesses, attended Booker T. Washington School, which closed in 1967, and worshipped at the six churches that lined the block.

"Th...